Keymaps Legal?

[Arckon]

I've been reading up on the legality of multiboxing(the GM Conversations wiki) and the fine line people walk to pursue it when i came across:

"Multiple key presses/uses of abilities from a single command, spoken or typed? Not okay."

Isn't that exacly what keymapping does?
For example when you set up a FTL you make is so when you push the button <1> on your keyboard, character one recieves keypress <1>, then keyclone sends <Shift+1> to your second character. Isn't pressing one key and having a 3rd party software sending two keys to the game illegal ?

[Fizzler]

I've been reading up on the legality of multiboxing(the GM Conversations wiki) and the fine line people walk to pursue it when i came across:

"Multiple key presses/uses of abilities from a single command, spoken or typed? Not okay."

Isn't that exacly what keymapping does?
For example when you set up a FTL you make is so when you push the button <1> on your keyboard, character one recieves keypress <1>, then keyclone sends <Shift+1> to your second character. Isn't pressing one key and having a 3rd party software sending two keys to the game illegal ?

Just above that statement there is this.

so hitting 1 key and have it do 1 action in each game window is fine?
"Absolutely!"

You are not pushing multiple keys at once. You are pressing one physical key which is performing one ability per client.

[Bettysue]

Here's the way someone explained it on the official forums and i thought it was clever, and simple enough that anyone could understand.

The rule is 1 press = 1 action, this is the premise of the explaination.

Now open 5 notepads on your computer, and pretend they were your WoW windows.
Press your desired key in your replication program and 1 character should show up in each notepad.
v = V = Paste when you press the v key. Just because 1 window gets unmodified v, and another gets ctrl+v doesn't mean you have violated the rule. It's still doing 1 thing for the 1 press.

Now if I were to press v and get v then a few ms later have 4 show up I would be violating the rule, because, one or more notepads would now show v4, with me only having pressed v.

[Coltimar]

I see his point. Push 1 on client a and get Shift+1 on client b, RtCtrl+1 on client c, etc.

[Lax]

Honestly there's a lot read into every little thing that any GM has said or posted, and in the end these minutiae mean absolutely nothing and serve no purpose other than a flame war between people who are, in fact, following the rules.

What Blizzard wants from you is extremely simple: They want you to not be botting, and not hacking the game. If you're not doing those things in order to achieve your multiboxing, then there is nothing to worry about.

The blue posters do their best to explain the difference between cheating and not cheating, but clearly they were not always prepared for the language parsing that everyone is trying to do on every line of text they ever typed about multiboxing. If you push (or release) a button (or move another type of input, like a joystick, etc) and as a result, several things happen at that instant, there's nothing wrong with that itself. However, if it were reading game memory in order to determine whether to cast a particular spell, or doing this automatically at some instant other than when you move an input to make that happen, then it would be a violation of the Terms of Use and/or EULA and thus "bannable".

The argument of whether holding down 1 key can, via software, be allowed to hold down multiple keys is absurd. It's absurd because it makes no difference to the question of whether you're botting or otherwise cheating, to have to hold down 1 key or to hold down 1 key per other key being pressed. You can literally use a popsicle stick to achieve the exact same result, and you don't even have to be Macgyver. Hint: lay it across multiple keys. All of the software available here does it ("but they're only modifiers!!111"), and nobody has been called a botter (let alone banned) for moving diagonally instead of just straight or to the left.

On the other hand, if the question was about using software that emulates something like the pecking bird toy like Homer had in a certain Simpsons episode (pressing the button for you every x amount of time), then clearly this is a violation of the terms. (However, fun side note, using the actual pecking bird toy is not expressly prohibited since it is purely hardware).

Hopefully this helps clear things up a bit, although I am sure that people in a certain mindset will attack me for this post.

[alcattle]

If you're paranoid - go full hardware. Its the only way to be 100% sure.

If you take the statistics that no one has been banned for using multi boxing software that we know of, go ahead and use software. Many are doing it without issue.

The only thing different I see Fur, is the software can change the input "key" and have different output on different clients. As long as it is one input<-->one output then we are complying with the aim of TOS.

[BobGnarly]

Their position is: one press on the keyboard = one key sent to each client. They don't say it has to be the same key, and in fact, I saw a conversation with a gm that asked specifically this question and they said it was fine as long as there was a single event per client for each external event (key press, mouse button, etc). Sorry, I can't find it now, so take it with a grain of salt.

I used to fret over this quite a bit until I realized something. You can do the same thing without keymapping in software. I can bind each key to a different action on each client, so that each client does a different thing. We do it all the time with things like our spread-out macros. We also make round-robin (in-game) macros to allow us to round-robin things like frost nova, or thunderstorm. We are, in effect, making each client do a different thing with the same keystroke. The software just makes this a little easier.

[Meshuggenah]

Seems to me that Blizzard's anti-"bot" policy is more geared towards AFK playing.

Somebody made a ticket about me in a BG (finally!) not long ago. A GM turned up and the conversation went something like:

GM - "Hello, may I speak with you a moment?".
Me - "Sure"
GM - "Was just checking you're there. Have a nice day!"

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who makes "creative" use of the toggle function on the G15 keyboard to prevent chronic RSI. Is this technically against the rules? Probably. Have I ever been banned or even questioned because of activities like this in over 9(?) years of boxing MMO's? Of course not. As long as you're at your keyboard, not "hacking" and your credit card is valid, Dev's simply don't care.

The "Botting/Macroing/Hacking" mentions in the ToS are blatantly designed to prohibit very specific types of behavior. The reason boxing and botting are mentioned so frequently in the same context is because the people doing the mentioning have an agenda.

[Ualaa]

There are probably a lot of things which are technically against the rules.
I agree, if you're at the keyboard and able to respond, you're probably going to be ok.

Some of the things you can do with a G15 could potentially be an issue.
My roommate uses it to press 1, wait 1.5 seconds, press 2, wait 1.5 seconds and press 3.
Which is basically dots on a warlock and then wand attacks.

I cannot see keymaps as being an issue.
You are pressing a single key, which does not loop or repeat itself.
Each of your clients is getting a single input from this key press.
It doesn't make a difference if the keystroke is A or Shift A, either can be keybound within wow.
One physical input, and one response (even if its across multiple clients).

[Arckon]

Their position is: one press on the keyboard = one key sent to each client. .

Thats exacly my point Bob when you set up an FTL using keymaps you are having one key sending one, two, three + keys to clients that aren't the main. So we enter the grey area i am questioning of weather or not they base it off or "One key = One Action" or "One key = One key" and as this thread has progressed it seems people are conflicted. I was just out to see if anyone had a snapshot of a conclusive answer, i mean you guys who are end game are more likely to get busted for it (especially in arena tournaments) than someone like me who is starting out.