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.

[Ronburgundy]

I ask because your comments imply that those who avoid oFollow are just being overly paranoid and goody two-shoes. In reality, if oFollow works as others have described, then it's simply a gimped botting program. I asked if you were ok with honor botting and your response makes very little sense - you're not ok with it because those programs because they make all decisions, yet you're ok with oFollow that makes movement decisions. Your rationale is that /follow used to have that functionality so it is ok now, willfully disregarding that Blizzard removed that functionality. I assume that you'd be ok with a program that allowed decursing to work the way it did with addons in Vanilla, even though Blizzard explicitly removed the functionality because it made healing too easy.

The reality is this is a botting program, and I'd be surprised if you're not caught relatively soon. I actually hope you do. You can BG very effectively without /follow, but if you want to do something that is clearly cheating, then I have no respect for any of your "accomplishments" in WoW.

"Accomplishments"?. Sorry, but my accomplishments in life, are not derived from a fictitious virtual world in which I participate for the sole sake of my own enjoyment.

Thanks for describing my own post to me though, just incase I didn't understand what I wrote when I wrote it.

If anyone doesn't want to use oFollow. THEN DON'T! I wasn't saying that not using it makes you a goody two-shoes, I was saying that its an untested resolution to our current situation that might have negative effects from its use. SO YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES, MUCH LIKE SPEEDING ON THE HIGHWAY.

But thanks for trying to make wild tangents about the subject, and making subtle attacks on me.

I'm also confused why you are attacking my opinion. That is my opinion, if that is how I feel, and you feel differently then congratulations. Your not going to change my opinion on the subject. You also don't see my trying to persuade people to have the same mentality as myself.

I merely stated that the Program works as it is intended. Regardless of the possible negative effects it may also have.

I am not sure why I even replied to your inquirey about the botting program. It has nothing to do with whether oFollow accomplishes a mimic of /follow effectively or not. Which was the subject of my original reply, that it does indeed accomplish it effectively, regardless of the possible "legality" issues.

If anyone wants to try and use it, you can find help in the wow.publicvent on configuration and useful macros.

But use it at your own risk.

[zenga]

All I can say is that I have used oFollow, and it works great. Yet, if you are the kind who doesn't speed on the highway, I would heed the warning on the site.

There are gradations of speeding on the highway. If you are allowed to do 120km/h and follow the traffic that is doing 130km/h on a bright weekend day, then you can't compare that with a joker doing 200km/h who comes back at 5 am from the pub. There is a clear difference there, just like there is a clear difference between using an available feature that might be not intended and clear automation.

[Ronburgundy]

The inhabitants of this thread obviously don't want to discuss oFollow, and would rather nit pick at posts because they were not written word for word how they would have written them.

Did you really take my "speeding on the highway" metaphor literally? How dense are you people? It was a metaphor to make a point. There are inherited risks that you must accept if you take part in both activities, using oFollow, and Speeding on the Highway. Holy crap.

...just like there is a clear difference between using an available feature that might be not intended and clear automation.

Well, it doesn't seem that blizz is going to distinguish between the two. The way I see it is if we box in bg's they are going to try and stop it, regardless of how.

[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.

[Fat Tire]

"Accomplishments"?. Sorry, but my accomplishments in life, are not derived from a fictitious virtual world in which I participate for the sole sake of my own enjoyment.

I dont care about ofollow, follow in random bgs or even random bgs. I just quoted this statement because I could not agree with it more.

You guys that like random bgs might want to pay attention to the ptr. Role checks and the end of oqueue in randoms.

Holinka ‏@holinka30 Mar
@Wiredmana Agreed, Premades ruin unrated battlegrounds. Working on making it difficult to do. Sad a cool addon like oQueue does this


Holinka ‏@holinka30 Mar
@CuddlyKittyHugs @Wiredmana I've said a few times, the only part of oQueue I don't like is circumventing premade restrictions

[Owltoid]

I dont care about ofollow, follow in random bgs or even random bgs. I just quoted this statement because I could not agree with it more.

You guys that like random bgs might want to pay attention to the ptr. Role checks and the end of oqueue in randoms.

Holinka ‏@holinka30 Mar
@Wiredmana Agreed, Premades ruin unrated battlegrounds. Working on making it difficult to do. Sad a cool addon like oQueue does this


Holinka ‏@holinka30 Mar
@CuddlyKittyHugs @Wiredmana I've said a few times, the only part of oQueue I don't like is circumventing premade restrictions

Yes, yes, we've been through this "accomplishments" debate before, which is the whole reason I put it in parentheses. Next time I'll put it in italics and pink font to help clear confusion.

It's premature to call the end of oQueue. Hopefully it's just the end of greater than 5 man random BG premades. Blizzard doesn't care about an addon that helps you find 4 players to play with cross servers, they care about bringing more than 5 in a coordinated fashion.

But you already knew all this stuff, and it doesn't belong in this thread.

[Peri Helion]

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?

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.

Owltoid – Note the bolded part of my quote that you left off, and the bolded itallicized part for emphasis.

My question is NOT just about oFollow, but about the NEXT solution that comes along as well.

The fact remains nobody has even made an attempt to see if a generic question about efforts to restore a /follow function would be deemed a violation. Sure any inquiry is likely to get no response, but for the amount of effort put into this thread it would take less effort to make an inquiry - and as I said above there are people on this site with a better reputation/credibility who could make an inquiry with a higher probability of getting a response.

[Owltoid]

So you want someone to ask a general question of if a macro/method can replicate follow if it would be allowed? And you think Blizzard would answer that general of a question, when they rarely opine on specific questions? Otherwise, what specifically would you like to see happen or what specific question would you like asked? I can guarantee you that even if they did answer, a program that reads the binary would still not be legit.

We currently have a follow method that works very well for melee boxers in mountable areas - use IWT with a multi person mount. I doubt Blizzard will come out and say whether they support the method - they will instead issue suspensions/bans for misusing game mechanics, remove/modify the mechanic to make it no longer useable, or just keep quiet while we continue to use it. This open dialog doesn't really exist, even for Lax or Rob or Tim.

ETA: others have asked general questions about simulating follow and others have also asked if multi person mounts with IWT is legit. To my knowledge Blizzard has been silent.