AV weekend

[zenga]

Blizzard's stance has always been, if you can do it with a macro or addon, its okay.
And in the past they have changed the API, specifically to break functionality in certain addons.

As long as the addon API allows it.
I cannot see anyone having an issue with it.
If they change the API, so this functionality is broken... and you find a way around it, that could lead to repercussions.

That said, its your accounts... so make your own decision.

That is quite a bogus statement. By that logic any flaw/bug in the API can be safely used, because the API allows you to do so. The rules are pretty clear about this. Reality is that blizzard has changed it so that raids can no longer queue up for the non 40 man bg's. They did that for a reason. This addon circumvents that.

You mixed up the odds that you get banned with what is ban-able (or what is against the rules). Only a minor fraction of the people that buy gold get caught, but that doesn't make it 'safe' or 'okay' to buy gold because blizzard penalties only a minority. The same goes for circumventing ingame mechanics.

But yeah, I don't see them throw out a big ban wave for using the addon.

[Ualaa]

That is quite a bogus statement. By that logic any flaw/bug in the API can be safely used, because the API allows you to do so. The rules are pretty clear about this. Reality is that blizzard has changed it so that raids can no longer queue up for the non 40 man bg's. They did that for a reason. This addon circumvents that.

You mixed up the odds that you get banned with what is ban-able (or what is against the rules). Only a minor fraction of the people that buy gold get caught, but that doesn't make it 'safe' or 'okay' to buy gold because blizzard penalties only a minority. The same goes for circumventing ingame mechanics.

But yeah, I don't see them throw out a big ban wave for using the addon.

Going back to the early days of Burning Crusade.

There was an addon called Decursive.
In the form it had, you clicked on a button (which you could also keybind).

Doing so, your toon would scan the raid for a debuff which your class could Cleanse/Remove Curse/Etc.
If there was no debuff present, no mana was wasted.

You didn't have to know which spell to use (Abolish Poison vs Remove Curse, for a Druid).
Just press the button.

We had a lady who played a Paladin on our raids.
She would follow the group, and press a single button (thousands of times, every raid).
She would typically have 1000 decurses more than the next best person, with close to zero damage/healing on the night.

Blizzard had the blue post saying they didn't like how the addon worked.
And were changing their API, specifically what can and cannot be accomplished with an addon.
And that minor patch they did, broke the addon.

Maybe Blizzard's stance has changed.
But as of early Burning Crusade, a blue posted if you can do it entirely with an in-game macro or an addon (nothing external to the game), it is fine to use without repercussion; when we don't like what you can do with an addon, we will change the API to break it.




Many functions of the addon API are protected, so cannot be used in combat.
Many are not.

Jamba gives the ability to "strobe" the /Follow command, once a second indefinitely without any user input beyond enabling the feature.
Evidently /Follow is not a protected function that Blizzard gives a shit about.
But it is absolutely automated use of a function, without user input at the time of the numerous /Follow commands issued by the addon.

But it is part of an addon... which Blizzard has complete control over what can and cannot be done via in-game addons, not a third party software such as the G15's profiler.
Because the addon is doing this, you're not going to get banned for automation.

If Blizzard decided to not allow an addon to initiate /Follow, or to Strobe the /Follow command...
They would change their addon API, so an addon is unable to perform that functionality.

They're unlikely to turn around a ban you.

Exactly the same deal with Preform AV Enabler.
The addon is allowing a functionality.
Something that Blizzard can break, if they want to break.
It is not a third party, out of game, tool that people are using to "bot" with, or "automate" the timing of their queue for this game.
The addon uses Blizzard approved addon API, and nothing else.
Evidently a blue (or several blues/whatever) do not like this addon, which is warning that at some point it might be broken should Blizz decide its worth the time to do so.

As of now, it is expressly allowed because that functionality exists within the addon API; I'm not claiming it is something Blizzard is happy about, nor that it will always work... but it does now.
And as long as you can do it with their Addon API, they're not going to ban you.

[valkry]

Going back to the early days of Burning Crusade.

There was an addon called Decursive.
In the form it had, you clicked on a button (which you could also keybind).

Doing so, your toon would scan the raid for a debuff which your class could Cleanse/Remove Curse/Etc.
If there was no debuff present, no mana was wasted.

You didn't have to know which spell to use (Abolish Poison vs Remove Curse, for a Druid).
Just press the button.

We had a lady who played a Paladin on our raids.
She would follow the group, and press a single button (thousands of times, every raid).
She would typically have 1000 decurses more than the next best person, with close to zero damage/healing on the night.

Blizzard had the blue post saying they didn't like how the addon worked.
And were changing their API, specifically what can and cannot be accomplished with an addon.
And that minor patch they did, broke the addon.

Maybe Blizzard's stance has changed.
But as of early Burning Crusade, a blue posted if you can do it entirely with an in-game macro or an addon (nothing external to the game), it is fine to use without repercussion; when we don't like what you can do with an addon, we will change the API to break it.




Many functions of the addon API are protected, so cannot be used in combat.
Many are not.

Jamba gives the ability to "strobe" the /Follow command, once a second indefinitely without any user input beyond enabling the feature.
Evidently /Follow is not a protected function that Blizzard gives a shit about.
But it is absolutely automated use of a function, without user input at the time of the numerous /Follow commands issued by the addon.

But it is part of an addon... which Blizzard has complete control over what can and cannot be done via in-game addons, not a third party software such as the G15's profiler.
Because the addon is doing this, you're not going to get banned for automation.

If Blizzard decided to not allow an addon to initiate /Follow, or to Strobe the /Follow command...
They would change their addon API, so an addon is unable to perform that functionality.

They're unlikely to turn around a ban you.

Exactly the same deal with Preform AV Enabler.
The addon is allowing a functionality.
Something that Blizzard can break, if they want to break.
It is not a third party, out of game, tool that people are using to "bot" with, or "automate" the timing of their queue for this game.
The addon uses Blizzard approved addon API, and nothing else.
Evidently a blue (or several blues/whatever) do not like this addon, which is warning that at some point it might be broken should Blizz decide its worth the time to do so.

As of now, it is expressly allowed because that functionality exists within the addon API; I'm not claiming it is something Blizzard is happy about, nor that it will always work... but it does now.
And as long as you can do it with their Addon API, they're not going to ban you.

Vanilla*

I thought it was pretty lol when the removed that because I went on my resto druid, 3rd on dispels to first... easily. X-perl frame highlight, + keybind + mouse + reaction speed was always good enough dispelling for me. This is going to sound arrogant, but I always got asked how I got so many without the addon or how my healing was so good or my dps on my ele sham was topping dps (naxx lvl 80), and people would get angry/frustrated when I replied with "skills and practice, makes me better than everyone else in our raid so far." Most people want to be the best or close to it, and don't like it when they can't because the person who is, is just better. That's the game, welcome lol.

As for this Av addon though, it's not the end of the world if it gets broken, we were doing xrealm premades without and will just go back to that method if needed. Premades will never disappear. It's how I get my 2 groups of shams into the same AV, I queue both groups, if they don't pop at the same time, I don't join, easy.

But yea, for mass used addons, bans won't be handed out, Blizz will just break them, simple fix for them.

[Ualaa]

Vanilla*

I thought it was pretty lol when the removed that because I went on my resto druid, 3rd on dispels to first... easily. X-perl frame highlight, + keybind + mouse + reaction speed was always good enough dispelling for me. This is going to sound arrogant, but I always got asked how I got so many without the addon or how my healing was so good or my dps on my ele sham was topping dps (naxx lvl 80), and people would get angry/frustrated when I replied with "skills and practice, makes me better than everyone else in our raid so far." Most people want to be the best or close to it, and don't like it when they can't because the person who is, is just better. That's the game, welcome lol.

As for this Av addon though, it's not the end of the world if it gets broken, we were doing xrealm premades without and will just go back to that method if needed. Premades will never disappear. It's how I get my 2 groups of shams into the same AV, I queue both groups, if they don't pop at the same time, I don't join, easy.

But yea, for mass used addons, bans won't be handed out, Blizz will just break them, simple fix for them.

When I moved from raiding in Everquest to playing World of Warcraft, and eventually doing WoW raids too...
Addons made things immensely easy, compared to EQ.

In EQ, all the buffs and debuffs were on the target.
There was no warning that this guy had a curable affliction on them.
You had to notice it on your own.
And then pick the correct curative spell, target them and cast it.

People would time their buffs, casting first on themselves and then on each target in the raid in turn.
So when your buff was expiring (even if it was useless to your spec/role), you would know to refresh it on those who benefited immensely from it.

There was no Deadly Boss Mods, or anything equivalent to it.
Through trial and error, you would learn to run away after the boss did a certain emote or a certain attack.
You could not go to a website to look up the strategy, nor watch a video of others doing it.
Even if you played the beta, the last ten of the thirteen bosses in the raid would be brand new content to you.
Also even if you could see others do it, there wasn't one cookie-cutter approach to winning an encounter; what worked for one guild might be utterly impossible for yours, even though your gear was far better than theirs... it was not at all uncommon for there to be nine very different ways to kill a boss -- in warcraft, everyone discovers the one "correct" strategy for almost every fight with almost no variance.

One of the guys in our raid had a dozen chess clocks, and would use them from the first kill of a given trash mob in an area onwards.
So we would know when trash would start to reappear... which would of course suck if you were fighting the boss.

If you died, you were naked... and possibly a 10 minute run, through hostile mobs to your corpse.
Sometimes a stealth rogue could pull your corpse to you... in a dungeon or raid.
And sometimes a warlock could summon your corpse.
Other times, you would un-ding 2-3 levels while trying to get your gear back; sure a cleric would restore most of that lost experience (90% per rez)... but a raid could cost you 25 hours of leveling time.

Initially everything in Warcraft seemed like easy mode.
And having people struggle on raids... with so much done for you, so much more information given... was rather frustrating.

[JohnGabriel]

Thats probably why WoW became so popular. The old school paper d&d crowed is getting smaller and smaller, the general public doesnt like things that tough.

[zenga]

...
Blizzard had the blue post saying they didn't like how the addon worked.
And were changing their API, specifically what can and cannot be accomplished with an addon.
And that minor patch they did, broke the addon.

Maybe Blizzard's stance has changed.
But as of early Burning Crusade, a blue posted if you can do it entirely with an in-game macro or an addon (nothing external to the game), it is fine to use without repercussion; when we don't like what you can do with an addon, we will change the API to break it.
...

But it is part of an addon... which Blizzard has complete control over what can and cannot be done via in-game addons, not a third party software such as the G15's profiler.
Because the addon is doing this, you're not going to get banned for automation.

If Blizzard decided to not allow an addon to initiate /Follow, or to Strobe the /Follow command...
They would change their addon API, so an addon is unable to perform that functionality.
...

Exactly the same deal with Preform AV Enabler.
The addon is allowing a functionality.
Something that Blizzard can break, if they want to break.
It is not a third party, out of game, tool that people are using to "bot" with, or "automate" the timing of their queue for this game.
The addon uses Blizzard approved addon API, and nothing else.
Evidently a blue (or several blues/whatever) do not like this addon, which is warning that at some point it might be broken should Blizz decide its worth the time to do so.

As of now, it is expressly allowed because that functionality exists within the addon API; I'm not claiming it is something Blizzard is happy about, nor that it will always work... but it does now.
And as long as you can do it with their Addon API, they're not going to ban you.

First off, as said earlier, I don't expect anyone to get banned for using preform AV enabler. But that's not the point.
The principle you refer to (if it's possible with the API it's fine) is the general rule of thumb. But there are quite some examples where this is simply not true.

e.g.

- a simple addon could let you do all emotes at the same time
- there are quite some possibilities to aoe dc people while using a specific addon
- it's possible (within the current API) to have multiple people on interrupt duty, all hitting their interrupt button, though only one player his spell will be on cd provided all these people have the addon

If you are into hardcore raiding, you might have noticed quite some bugs on bosses. And it's a very thin line to know when it's a bug or when it's intended, and even more when you are exploiting.
The same is true for the duped epic games/tgc mounts recently. They have banned people who just bought these in massive amounts cause it was clearly not legit, while for most they just removed the item without a gold refund (i.e. you bought something over a trade window, and you end up geting punished for that).

And so on ...

The point is that there is always common sense needed, and that they reserve themselves the right to act. No blizzard won't ban you for using AV enabler because it's so wide spread, but they removed the ability to queue up with raids and this addon circumvents this, which is clearly unintended behavior.