You’re right; it’s not really nefarious. I did use quotes around it, so that’s my excuse for picking that word “Subversive” might be closer to what I really mean (tying to subvert users’ ability to see what realms are busy/etc)
Regardless - to me, it just seems odd they would suddenly decide to purposely cripple this sort of addon, after allowing them to work for the last 15 years (and there have always been Census addons for WoW since I can really remember).
Trying to cripple spammers is a more viable reason, IMHO.
Scan through the other responses, and you’ll see I basically proved that it’s NOT to try to break ClassicLFG, since ClassicLFG doesn’t even really use SendWho() in any manner that would affect its core ability.
It’s not what it does now. It’s what it did originally. Refer to the thread that I linked to read about the controversy. In any case, the add-on’s creator removed the original functionality and it is now a simple chat parser, but Blizzard went ahead with their change to the API so that no one else would create an add-on that will do what ClassicLFG originally did.
How “originally”? I looked at ClassicLFG code from a month ago (v1.0.0, Aug 25, 2019) and it’s the same as the most recent version (v1.0.1, Sept 11, 2019)
I just now grabbed v0.5.1 from Aug 13, 2019 (the first version tagged as “Classic”) and it’s STILL the same (only 1 call, when someone whispers a party leader).
If it was before that time, why would Blizzard wait until NOW to break /who?
I’m pretty sure it has to be for some other reason.
Interesting. I’ll have to play around w/ that, because something seems broken with their entire /who system if the results return “all layers” in some situations, and “just my layer” in others.
Using the example picture they posted, I’d want to see what
/who c-"Hunter" 1-2
returned, to see if it shows only “my layer” hunters (just ‘Snowblood’), or all the hunters from the 2nd pic.
Otherwise, this really looks like something Blizzard could have fixed on their side, by just always returning “all layers”.
You aren’t going to get anywhere. Blue post has a Nostradamus prediction, and now everyone against ClassicLFG can point to any given update that touches add-ons and say “see, this is the one!” (Even if had no impact, much less “significantly limit.”
BTW, it seems blizz fixed the /who discrepancy (and now always returns all players, regardless of layer) ~10 days ago. So… the hotfix last night still doesn’t really make too much sense… unless they were (sadly) truly trying to block addons like CensusPlusClassic.
I’d bet it was to break CensusPlusClassic, Blizzard does not want us informed, they refuse to release subscriber and server population numbers or faction ratio themselves so this was our only alternative.
If the guild auto-invite addons that seem to whipser everyone on the server not in a guild and auto-invite them to join used this functionality, it’s possible that it factored into the reason for the change.
This seems like a really bizarre mentality to me, but I’ve seen/heard it from other people, too.
I would argue that using addons (that appropriately abide by API policy) is, in fact, “using your brain” in a greater capacity than not using addons.
Blizzard created the UI API on purpose - to allow people to customize things, and make it so people could adapt the UI to their given playstyle. So, why not adjust things so that they are more convenient for use for you?
That said, CensusPlus isn’t even in the same realm as general UI addons, as it’s more of a data gathering addon. There are some of us who really enjoy seeing this sort of data, and being able to play with different ways of visualizing it. (Well, maybe that’s only me…)
Hazyrd, good grief, can you be more insulting? I used censusplus to find a new realm to try. It also had a guild population section, so I used it to find a guild as well. I also checked the Horde vs Alliance ratio to make sure I wasn’t going to get steamrolled by Horde all day long.
I play alone, research rather than go with popular opinion and consider myself self sufficient. I am very far from stupid.
“Subversive” might be closer to what I really mean (tying to subvert users’ ability to see what realms are busy/etc)