I’m quite confident that you simply don’t understand what weakauras is or how it works, and this scares you. It has some complicated words and if statements so therefore it must be botting software, right?
It just uses the in-game lua and calls on supported functions and scripts that are implemented and approved for use by blizzard themselves. It is an insanely popular addon especially with high performing raiders that are under huge scrutiny by blizzard over on retail, where the API functions are even more advanced than classic.
If usage of weakauras was getting people banned, we would know about it. A few people who are taking part in boosting / RMT / botting getting banned then blaming the weakaura are huffing some premium grade copium, and so are you it seems.
A weak aura that dose that would be breaking the same rule set already talked about above not having one key stroke per action (botting) and multiboxing (broadcasting keystrokes) depending how its done.
The weak aura itself would not be illegal and in fact completely fine. All it would be doing is sending a command to do x action something completely allowed by addons. The issue once again is how its being used not the weak aura itself.
Also weak auras are vary limited in how they can “detect” actions and likly would be like the hunter melee weave weak aura using autohotkey to send keyinputs further breaking the rules again not on the weak aura side.
The issue here is not weakauras, it’s people using in-game functions to multibox. Multiboxing is against TOS, weakauras reacting to in game chat functions is not.
Other weakauras that do similar things are the old ‘!sappers’ command which would prompt people to auto-respond in chat with how many sappers they have and if they’re on cooldown or not. Should this be bannable? It works in almost exactly the same way, mechanically speaking.
Yes the above example is completly fine as no “action” is happening with the !sapper command as blizzard defines actions as but not limited to gcd triggering command or movement. As such thou no keystroke no action so still 1 action per keystroke.
prove it. the auto follow weakaura reads party/raid chat. if someone inserts keyword “!!follow”, it takes the name of the person who said that and runs the chat command /follow where target is the name of the person who said !!follow. By binding /follow to a hardware event, you effectively break the game for other addons. The good example of this is an addon designed to make the game accessible to players who are blind.
It’s the same as the auto-invite weakaura/addons. They read the chat channel for the term ‘inv’ or any other keyword you decide to include, and then run the chat command /invite to invite them to a group.
Should weakauras/addons that track cooldown usage, buffs and boss abilities be removed as well because that’s automating the display of information available in the game client but not visible with the default blizzard ui?
follow and auto-invite weakauras require a hardware function to run but not in the methodology you’re using to describe it. A player needs to press enter to broadcast a message to a chat channel in order for the weakaura to function. This differs from botting where a script immitates a hardware event based on different encoded factors and the obvious which it is not a human actually playing the character.
commands issued via weakauras are implemented by blizz themselves, they are not attempting to immitate player gameplay, it’s as simple as a '/follow ’ following a chat prompt.
Just as you can also type /cast heroic strike. No one is getting auto-detected and banned for using blizzard implemented functions.
Two types of ban detection exist, botting/cheating software detection which is pretty mysterious, blizzard keeps their exact methods secret to hinder avoidance, but they certainly aren’t banning people for using functions they implemented into their own game. The 2nd type is auto banning following mass player reporting, this isn’t monitored or human filtered, people get banned for literally no reason other than collecting a bunch of player reports. These auto bans are usually overturned after an actual human reviews it (usually requires multiple appeals).
auto-follow already requires a hardware event. someone needs to enter a chat command into the party or raid chat channel in order for the following to occur.
He’s speaking about requiring a hardware event broadcast to that instance of wow which dose not happen by another player entering a chat message into chat.
This is also how blizzard defines a “keystroke” unless a hardware event sends a command to that instance of wow it’s not a keystoke.
Which I haven’t seen any talks about said change he mentioned but may of missed it.
Been used a lot by players who buy gold boosts, and some have indeed been banned. not sure what the justification was, just know for sure they were banned for using it.
Not saying you’re wrong, just telling you what happened. They were not MB players, they were gold boost buyers. And yes gold boosting is scummy, and yes I am guilty of selling them, but my overseas competition has provided a certain WA that’s gotten players banned; on the surface its just an auto-follow, but maybe its more?
Auto hotkey has been confirmed by blizzard multi times as being legal but many things done with it can get you banned. The main exmaple given by blizzard is any case that more than one action happens per keystroke as per there definition of keystoke and action.
They give the general advice if a human can’t do it likly not allowed.
I reached out to our UI and accessibility teams and we’re investigating this.
In general, we agree that accessibility is important, but that doesn’t mean that every effort to stop automation or botting is an attack on accessibility. There are lots of game functions that the game requires a hardware event for, and it makes sense for /follow to be added to that list, based on the behavior Kruffzz suggested. We’re targeting that change for both Wrath of the Lich King Classic, and Dragonflight releases.
Before making decisions like this, we reach out to gamers with disabilities. To be clear, the change we’re planning will still allow a disabled player to follow a guide, including through the use of a Macro or UI Mod to issue the follow command. The behavior it prevents is for UI Mods to initiate a follow on their own based on receiving a message from another source, such as a message from another player.
Small change for little to no gain in all honesty. It’s not going to fix the problems that people are hoping it fixes. It partially inconveniences the people buying gold boosts from other players and those who run multiple accounts will just manually follow their other account.
Weak auras are great, but its too strong of an addon. It can basically play the game for you, or at least tell you exactly what to do, and when to do it
So obviously weak auras can do more than macros. Because their calling the api to do things that macros can cannot. Some of these api calls are “protected”. These protected api functions are the ones that can do things that you might care to automate like casting spells add-ons (and therefore weak auras) are allowed to use these functions, but calling such a function needs to be associated with a hardware event such as a key press or button click.
Well, technically yes. Its a WA that so long as you have it; basically auto copies what another player does so long as the trigger requirement is met. Its kinda like Simon says, expect that it also does. What I mean is, say for example I set it up to trigger anytime someone in guild chat says help, it will then also say help in guild chat automatically. The more people have the WA, well you get the idea. This gave me some ideas, and tested one of them and realized this is automation.
Standard pop-up Simon says type warnings and do this, do that stuff ad stupid and toxic as that is, technically don’t break the rules even if they should. This one on the other hand can actually react as instructed, and that made me a lil nervous.