oFollow Discussion

[Owltoid]

Has anyone tried asking Blizzard?

I see from the various Follow threads there are members of this community that have contacted Blizzard directly in the past to determine if what they were doing were acceptable. I appreciate Ron taking one for the team and giving it a try, but even if he never gets banned it isnt conclusive.

I also see this degenerating into a marketing war (not on these pages though) as people with a vested economic interest in either elevating their own product or denegrating the author of their competitors software begin to make this personal and use a lot of adjectives and invective without any definitive statements from a clear and unbiased party.

Blizzard very rarely "approves" something, and often you don't know until bans start coming out. If you want to ask Blizzard "is it ok to have another program read the binary so that my slaves will move on their own?" then go ahead - waste of time for something that is clearly against the rules.

There is no marketing war here, unless you're suggesting that others are trying to market their botting program over oFollow. This isn't a ISBoxer vs Keyclone vs HKN vs PwnBoxer debate - this is a debate whether a gimped botting program is ok because it simulates functionality that existed in the past.

[Peri Helion]

There is no marketing war here,

Correct, I said not here

I also see this degenerating into a marketing war (not on these pages though)

emphasis added

Like many who read this thread I look at lots of different sites and even though this thread has stayed pretty focused on the product and facts other sites seem to be making a point of attacking the author and attaching labels and names to the product and author, rather than discussing facts.

Blizzard very rarely "approves" something, and often you don't know until bans start coming out. If you want to ask Blizzard "is it ok to have another program read the binary so that my slaves will move on their own?" then go ahead - waste of time for something that is clearly against the rules

I hear what you are saying, and surely if you formed the question like that you would get blank stares, but perhaps something like ....

"Is an addon that restores /follow functionality to BGs prohibited?"

.... wouldn't be a waste of breath? Or at least save future wasted breath put into speculation on this thread, or any others like it when another solution is proposed?

(Also, I assumed that since some people early in the original /follow thread alluded to direct communication to Blizzard some in this community had better credibility/recognition and therefore access to Blizzard, but I could certainly be wrong).

[Owltoid]

I hear what you are saying, and surely if you formed the question like that you would get blank stares, but perhaps something like ....

"Is an addon that restores /follow functionality to BGs prohibited?"

That's not an accurate description. oFollow is not just an addon, but a combination of an external program and an addon. If it was simply an addon that used LUA code, I don't think you'd have anyone opposed. If it was just LUA code then you may have people saying Blizzard will remove the functionality in the future, but you wouldn't be accused of cheating (I am making that accusation of the users who use oFollow).

Now that it seems like the community has a decent understanding of oFollow, and that it does use an external program to interact with WoW and move toons accordingly, I support the "ban discussion of the product" bandwagon. It's a botting program - just not a very functional one.

BTW, the other site has a similar conclusion - Tim has stated that he believes it to be a botting program and it should not be used.

[Ualaa]

That's not an accurate description. oFollow is not just an addon, but a combination of an external program and an addon. If it was simply an addon that used LUA code, I don't think you'd have anyone opposed.

I agree, if the program is reading information from the game, and then acting upon it... it is something most of us should avoid, assuming we care about retaining our accounts.

But I wanted to point out, just because it is a program + an addon, doesn't make it automatically bad.

IS Boxer is both a program (which you pay for) and it generates wow macros/FTL/etc via its' addon.
Without the program running, your IS Boxer addon won't be much good.

Still, IS Boxer doesn't read anything from the game, and it sounds like oFollow does.
IS Boxer has no way of knowing if a spell fired off or not, if it was resisted or not, if your toons are in follow range when you issue the follow command, etc.

If oFollow reads anything from the game, that's too close to prohibited actions for me.