Why are things like Auto-Invite allowed? It’s by definition automation.
I just say this because so many of the Summoning spammers and porting mages have auto invite, and then there’s people with professions (enchanting, etc) that use it as well.
So you’re complaining that when you ask for an invite, for a group, enchant, layer etc its “automatic” and too fast? which only helps the people searching for those things?
Okay bro. go touch grass
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No, it’s more that it’s automation, which is against the rules… and gives an edge to players who utilize it. I.E. if someone is looking for an enchant in trade, the people with the against-the-ToS auto invite are going to invite them before people who aren’t using it.
But I’m sure you didn’t respond to this with an open mind, so good day to you.
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It’s part of the Blizzard-provided API. They only care if you automate spells / combat for the most part. Sorry, this feature isn’t going away or it would have many many years ago. They would break the part of the API that allows this if they didn’t want it happening in the game, as it’s nothing even close to being new in this day and age.
If you want a further explanation, skip to about post number 4 where someone who writes code related to doing this chimes in
Not all automation is against the TOS. I frequently automate selling multiple things in my bags, disenchanting, and prospecting in retail. All without issues for about 10 years.
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I will guess auto fight, gather will not be allowed. Auto reply inv should be ok. Dosent break the game, but auto follow has been removed to prevent multi box
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And even if they did disallow it, they would just break add-ons that had some sort of automation. It wouldn’t be a retroactively bannable offense to use these add-ons now, then have it broken later.
Now, if they changed the API to make add-ons unable to interact with the game this way, and people used tools that are considered “breaking ToS” to continue doing the stuff they’re currently doing with add-ons, that would be a completely different story.
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This is easily one of the most pedantic bad logic posts I have read in a while.
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It exists because Blizzard created and maintains APIs so we can use addons to do that.
They don’t do for character abilities and skills, or character movement.
That was banned by ToS: automation through 3rd party software.
Addons that use existing in-game APIs and options for such things like messaging and inviting is not banned. It can fall under spam if it is done for someone who hasn’t asked.
For instance, if you’re looking for an enchanter and you get a whisper and invite, you cannot COMPLAIN about it.
Now if you get invited to a guild out of the blue with a whisper then yeah, thats a bad usage and it is being done in “spam”.
Because Blizzard allows it. Similar to AHK, some means of automation are permitted while others aren’t.
Ultimately, Blizzard can revoke your access to the service at any time, for any reason (or no reason).
true, i think auto invite should be banned as well 
it robs the act of inviting of that personal touch
I kind of agree with you on this one. My experience is I post what enchants I’m looking for in trade and get an insta invite and about half the time they ask me what enchants I want, which was already laid out in the trade message. I’ve started breaking up the word “enchant” in some way to get around the auto inviters because many of them aren’t reading trade at all and just relying on the spam invites.
Plugins already do a lot of automation but some of it is questionable. If you know LUA you can check out the Auctionator addon, it uses weird invisible frames to time loading the next 50 auctions when doing multi page scans.