I am looking for some clarification for the “automate or streamline multiboxing in any way” multiboxing policy. I am using a Weakaura that utilizes the WoW lua interface to have a character follow another with a keyword ("!follow") being used in party chat. As this uses built-in code, does this qualify as a Terms of Service violation? I want to stay in the rules here and not get banned!
Thanks for any input you folks might have.
Here is a link to the weakaura I am using:
I’ve heard of boosters not even boxing getting canned for weak aura follow. If you only have two to 4 just make an ingame follow macro and put it on a keybound actionbar slot.
the simplest thing to remember is that each game client has to react to a hardware input to do something (that being one wow action) so reading the chat via code to run an action is definitely NOT reacting to hardware input.
presumably they all share the same keyboard for input so what dingringding said makes more sense. a follow macro assigned to an actionbar slot that has a keybinding (and you press that key) is a hardware input for the other game clients to action and is ok.
Plus if I add a /focus mouseover to another button then do /follow focus I can switch follow targets if need be (handy when rping).
Let TOONS be the number of toons, and KEYS be the number of human interactions necessary to issue some command to each of them.
If KEYS < TOONS then its against the rules. Period.
If KEYS > TOONS then its probably fine.
For example, “alt-tab, click, alt-tab, click, …” is okay because there are two actions for each toon. Alt-tab is one action, click is the other action. (Blizzard has long made clear “alt-tabbing” is perfectly acceptable.)
This WeakAura violates the rule in the following scenario:
TOONS=2) to followKEYS=1) and both complyNow here’s the grey area:
KEYS = TOONS ???
If you made subtle versions of this WA, so you could issue a command to each toon separately using a different keystroke… is that legal?
If you only have one other toon in your party, its trivial. One keystroke is only telling one other to follow.
If you have two other toons in the party (TOONS=2) then you need to configure two weakauras, each mapped to a different keyboard button. Then you have to strike both buttons with your fingers, resulting in both weakauras sending the appropriate command to each toon. One command goes to the first party member, the other to the second.
To be honest, I’m not sure whether this qualifies as acceptable. I don’t multibox myself, and I’m not about to start, but if I did then this is the minimum I would do to make a WA like that even remotely plausibly legal.
Still might fall against the rules, but its not as clear-cut a violation as commanding all party members in a single keystroke.
PS. I predict Blizzard will protect the follow command out of combat, if people abuse this.
They already have disabled it in PVP - I’d expect them to take similar action if they didn’t want folks like myself using /follow in PVE environments.
I do think it would be good to get clarification from a Blue though. 
Thanks very much for your response - I’m taking it into consideration.
I’ve actually gone ahead and deleted the weakaura, until it is for sure okay for me to use. There is a lot of ambiguity to the language that Blizzard provides, and I really don’t want to get dinged for a violation of the ToS.
Honestly I’m hearing people getting false flagged for add-ons so false flagging weak auras wouldn’t surprise me. I’m gonna Uninstaller most if not all my add-ons except dbm just to be safe. Not just for boxing but solo play.
Most popular addons do nothing that would confuse Blizzard into thinking there is something fishy going on. Blizzard even has engaged the addon community from time to time, so if there was a concern then they would just bring it up.
Except in the case of console port and they just flat out banned people, which is horrible because a lot of those users can’t use a regular keyboard and mouse or an mmo mouse. There’s a forum post floating around where a guy got false flagged for TSM too. I have heard of them breaking API or something to break an addon but this appears to be a larger crackdown, outside of MBing to try and catch botters.
Maybe that’s why they did this update to Mbing in order to crack down on all external software and hardware along with potentially some addons? If so, this is very scary stuff because of how some things were already handled. Having the wrong addons could yield to a ban and a person wouldn’t even know it due to how they respond and may have to appeal several times only to get banned again cause the rules weren’t clear.
Although (back on topic) tbh it’s easier and better to just make a /follow focus macro in your other client then use /focus mouseover if a person needs to swap focus (one you’re following dies wanna change lead don’t want them all dogpiled ontop of each other while following etc). Plus you can do focus assist target macros (look those up I can’t remember how to make those right off hand) but it would make it to where whichever target is your focus targets target is what you hit so there isn’t any issues there, and that’s just ingame macro usage. It’s all without addons or anything crazy either and gives a little more flexibility on target swapping. Best mode of prevention is to simply not have it to start with and learn without it. That’s just me though so /shrug.