Follow In Battlegrounds Broken After 5.2

[Eteocles]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...775?page=6#104 - Basically saying they didn't mind it affecting "us"; though the silver lining is it might get reverted in Arenas, but BGs will still be followless.

[valkry]

I'm not quitting Battlegrounds, AV is now the best honour grind and I will use it. I just won't be able to use /follow, sucks to be my team in that BG

EDIT: IMO, if the QQ from boxers was big before this removal, if everyone kept boxing in BGs, imagine the QQ after...

[Jeppis]

just what i thought, multiboxing still allowed :P i'll resub just for fun i still can do pve, world pvp, 2v2 arena and queue to bg's with my handicapped wheelchairpaintrain and make more hate than ever

[Syferr]

I really hope Lax is right, hopefully they look at some of the constructive posts and emails they are receiving and change this back. I think lifting the limit on how many accounts you can have under the one Bnett account and only letting toons on that bnet account /follow would work well.

[Vardion]

The question for me now really is: Is it worth it? Do I want to spent money just to annoy other players? This change and the comments from the blues clearly show that we are not welcome in BGs anymore. If I am not welcome in one part of the game, I will not limit myself to the parts where I don't bother other players (i.e. instanced content). I always had the impression that Blizz was unbiased towards multiboxers. With IWT, follow and the macro system it actually felt that this game was made to be boxed. Now they are starting to move in a direction where I don't have that feeling anymore. I will still wait for a comment from some of the big shots (like Ghostcrawler) but at the moment my addiction has been rapidly cured by that action

[Wavingdark]

Been a good 8 years! I played vanilla to rank 13 (1% from high warlord lord Rank 14). In BC, I started Boxing 5 accounts and move up to 10. With this action I am going to cancel all 10 accounts. If they revert this change I may reconsider re-activating. If they did truly kill wow pvp with this patch. I just wanted to say thanks to all of you veterans that got us started with boxing.

[Pazgaz]

Accounts Cancelled. Been playing since 2005 and MB since Wrath.
I'll be trying Rift I guess.

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://www.wowhead.com/npc=69099



There is your pvp gear, we dont need honor to get it.

Also just do RATED BATTLE GROUNDS, my eperience is that 25 percent of the time the oppenet will not show up.

You dont need follow if the oppenet is not there.

You can get enough conquest for a purchace in 20 games.

[moog]

Of course, this is the perfect time to go single-boxing in BGs but emulate MB teams - say 5 of you team up, with a designated lead char, you manually follow the leader and have macros that work off his target.
It will look like a 5-box team but recover from fears and deaths more easily.
It would freak out the opposition

[TRoN]

Don't underestimate the commercial value of the multiboxing community that have active accounts. Blizzard don't really want to mess with us. They just want to make a two-head politic that suits the majority of players but don't warm multiboxers too much.

Just as an example of a single player - me:

I have an active subscrition since the release date (2005) and I began multiboxing 5 toons on WotLK (2008). So lets put it in numbers:

Subs:

((2013-2005) * 12 + 4 * (2013-2008) * 12) * 12€ = 4032€

Boxes:

1 set of collectors edition (vanilla to MOP) + 4 normal (bchest + WotLK + Cata + MOP) + 2 innactive accounts (vanilla + TBC) + 5 BattleChests I bought last week to RAF another batch of toons (sic!!) = roughly 1200€

11 transfers: 220€

TOTAL: Around 5500€

I think most multiboxers are driving (or they will sooner or later) 5 toon teams. So if we were just 100 (because I think we are some more), that means a potentially income equal to 500 normal players.

Any company, even a big one like Blizzard, will not waste 500 clients mostly because this mean a mountly income. So the real deal is those '500 players' * many time * cost of subscritions and/or services they pay.

I'm sure Blizzard will not harm multiboxers as long we stay cool and behave according to the rules without 'crossing the line' (imho, some of us, regarding PvP, are stepping that line and this measure is consequence of that).

He have to agree that removing /follow on BG/arena are very welcome to the majority of the community and, even most of the modern bots don't use follow, it can help to stop or minimize the plague. For instance, botters cannot state 'Hey, you're wrong! I'm not a botter, I'm a multiboxer'.

Tbh, I think they didn't thought about /follow beeing a essencial feature to us. Someone, in the morning briefing, may have thrown on the table his big idea to stop botting:

"hey and if we remove /follow in BGs and arenas?"
"hell yeaah!!"
"brilliant!"
"mmm, do the bots follow?"
"sure, I remember to have seen a bunch following the same char"
"yea, this time we've got them"
"and the community will rejoice"
"to work, then. let it happens right on the patch"
"but the patch notes were already announced"
"that will be a surprise"
"yeah, and then we can write in the forums: aren't you thankful?"
"hehe..."

TL;DR: 1. Multiboxers are important to Blizzard because in this type of business (subscrition based + extra services) a few thousend accounts means good money. 2. Assumption that some Blizzard decisions are taken without serious ponderation. 3. Removing follow in BG/Arena was not aimed to us. Maybe they didn't even know it was so crucial.