Quick ELI5 on the weakaura. Follower installs the WeakAura (an ingame addon), leader types “!follow” in party, follower will follow the person who typed it. Leader types “!stop” in party, follower will stop following.
Anyway, I was boosting some alts in RFC/WC/SM and those three alts were permanently banned for “exploitative behavior”
Trying to retrace my steps throughout my entire time leveling these characters, I can only think of a particular instance where we invited someone to the party to soak up some free boosts and he saw me using this WeakAura. We later kicked him because he kept getting d/c and invited a different hunter. My thinking is the guy we kicked got mad and reported me for hacks/programs/mysteryscience.
Did a little research and others have posted about permanent bans after using the WeakAura, along with a retraction of the ban upon appeal with no response given.
Anyway just a little PSA. This particular weakaura does look pretty sketch in game admittedly.
The rules are rather clear one action one key press.
If the weak aura is making them type /follow when they see the text line from the main that is not following that and. It permitted as automation.
It’s further bad if the weak aura is making the toon follow by moving itself but doubt that think it’s just making them trigger /follow.
That being said this further falls under blizzards anti multiboxing rules that you are not allowed to broadcast key strokes to another account via software which is exactly what that is doing it’s broadcasting a command to get them to preform a set action which goes adverse to blizzards rather clearly announces rules.
So ya that was the cause of the bans vary likly and the weak aura dosent just look sketch it is sketch and not permitted as per blizzards rules. I wouldent take a retraction of a ban esp with no response as something being allowed as vary likly was pre the updated rules on multi boxing while the ban may of just been lifted as they appealed it plus good account history.
That’s all very nice. If they didn’t want this functionality, they’d protect the lua functions that allow it.
Thankfully I didn’t come to argue about whether an in game addon is against the rules or not. Just providing a small PSA to anyone who might be using this particular weakaura.
Doing so often causes many things they do want to work to not work also, so no that is not a fix or a solution.
They prevent this kind of thing by making rules which they have that are rather clear one keystroke one action which is not happening here. While further is using software to send a command to another account another rule that have clearly set as a no no that this is doing.
Addons are legal how you use them may not be massive diff.
You are not permitted to use an addon or software to broadcast a command to another account in your case follow than have another account take action on that. This was added to the rules awhile back.
You are further not permitted to use addons the allow more than one action per input eg is using this to have multi chars all type follow at once is more than one action from a single input.
Yes breaking clear and known rules do warrant a perm ban.
So basically you think the current API is set up such that exploitative behavior can take place, yes? In a game API that has been developed over the last 20 years.
Furthermore, you would posit that instead of protecting the exploitative Lua functions, they would instead just ban people but keep the Lua functions totally accessible to addon developers.
Yes it is set up in a way it can take place. As there is many legit uses for it set up that way and blocking all possible ways to expoilt it would cause many of those legit ways to not work. Making many usefull tools for players not breaking the rules to not work.
What matters in the end is never if you can do something but is it legal to do. It is no different than I can go and download a movie and sell 3000 Copy’s dosent make it not illegal to do so.
The rules are clear you are not allowed to broadcast commands with software to another account. While you further are not allowed multi actions from one input these rules are known and have been for a long time in fact one of the two going back to when the game first released. The other being recently and made big news so hard to miss.
If you pick to break the rules yes should accept your punishment. Just since you can do something dosent make it right just like being able to prevent something dosent mean they should. There is a cost to everyrhing. In this case your cost of breaking the rules is a ban.
No the important part is adding to your psa that even since you claim some bans where retracted without reason it is still at best a grey zone and much more likly to be in the not permitted area hense your bans and as such even if some might get retracted wouldent expect them to be. A vary important thing to be clear of unlike your post that makes it sound like it’s only sketchy vs having clear rules that outline it as not allowed so you are taking a massive risk to do so.
That’s not news in fact blizzard themselves have openly posted that. They outright tell people addons themselves are legal but how you use them may or may not be.
You mean the vary stance and statments that have been said every time they have broken a addon for doing to much or after mass bans. Hell look at gnome macros that have existed for a long time but have resulting in quite a number of bans and blue posts warnig use with care. One of many examples you can find quite a number with a simple search it’s not uncommon for blizzard to post and warn about doing to much with your addons.
Also will note gnome is also doing exactly what you claim don’t know about uaong there own games addons not third party programs to do more than what the in game default up can do.
Again that is a third-party program, one which operates outside the confines of the game client and the addon API. You seem to be having trouble understanding the distinction.