Have you found that the target marking restriction applies out of combat?
From what I’ve managed to determine “within a very short time” means “with one hardware event”. If so, there should be a supported way to do what you want.
i normally do but even that wasnt working last time i was on my lock.
and my brez was broken too.
i dont get this break. hence asking blue if its fixed
From the documentation, it doesn’t appear to be.
It will not accept secret arguments in combat, but that shouldn’t be unduly restrictive.
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/API_C_GuildInfo.SetNote
The wiki might not say anything here, but it is 100% a protected function. All function is blocked, even when rested in a city trying to use the API. It is restricted and causes taint to attempt to use it.
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I am using your addon as well, and this is very sad. Guild management with the default UI is already very bad since this UI has not get any change since years.
I am author of an addon that allows you to import character notes from a text file. I build this because I use a excel spreadsheet to manage my raid roster and want to update the notes in the guild without going through every single player by hand.
Sadly this is not possible anymore. Why not only restrict usage for the guild APIs to out of fight? This would prevent any kind of abuse, but still keep the functionality of GRM or my addon!
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Why not only restrict usage for the guild APIs to out of fight? This would prevent any kind of abuse, but still keep the functionality of GRM or my addon!
This is the same thing I am asking… why not just restrict when not in a secret value condition like being out of combat or not in a pvp instance?
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Yay. good changes. keep up the good work. I love the reduction of spell and screen clutter. I also love the reduction of required add-ons. I hope it goes down to zero needed to compete in pvp/pve.
Yes, out of combat.
It’s entirely inconsistent in functionality now. Sometimes it will mark 3 party members, sometimes 4 or all 5. If it misses anyone, clicking it a second time does nothing to mark the remaining.
Forget trying anything that might mark party and my hunter pets at the same time, that’s just totally game breaking apparently.
Bad enough they took away the ability to do simple things like this via /script, at least we could still use clunky macro commands, but now it’s just frustrating hit and miss and mostly pointless even bothering.
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I have been a guild leader for well over a decade and run a guild leaders discord. I can tell you from experience that the default Blizzard guild interface is broken and only barely fit for purpose.
I and many others use addons, including Guild Roster Manager, to fill the holes that Blizzard refuses to fill and to fix/bypass many of the bugs that Blizzard deems “too minor” to consider fixing. I know they know about them - there have been many many reports over the years, threads in these forums that have lasted years and some minor acknowledgement from current Blizzard staff that they’re aware of them.
Blizzard’s whole argument for restricting addons was to stop the “unfair advantage” people using addons were getting whilst in instanced encounters - raids primarily. Now raids are very important to a lot of people, but the number of people who raid more than they play NOT raiding also, I would suggest, is “too minor” bearing in mind the complete scattergun approach Blizzard have used here. If they’re going to restrict addons in combat situations - then just do that!
It is pure laziness to just disallow addon developers from using these processes ALL THE TIME when you could just have the functions protected whilst in combat.
I understand the point about stopping the “unfair advantage” in raids and at the same time making it easier for devs to create encounters without having to take into account both people who use those addons and those who do not, but come on - you’ve done sooo much guild bashing over the years it’s starting to feel directed and personal.
Guilds are one of the core parts of playing WoW. A huge number of people are in guilds and from personal experience I know that plenty of those in guilds simply would no longer be playing WoW and therefore paying subscriptions, if they had not been in a guild.
I recently had the misfortune to visit the Ambassador discord channel. Having tried to discuss the possibility of having some guild representation there I came away with the distinct feeling that they seemed to think guilds were run by NPCs. They just could not understand WHY there was any need for help for those running guilds and raids. And not in a “recruitment” way, but in a pure “how the heck do I do this” way.
Guild Leaders, and Raid Leaders are real people. We have lives and our own issues. We don’t get paid by anyone to do this job and, for many, leading raids and guilds IS a job. We have spreadsheets, websites, discords, have to deal with recruitment, break up fights, deal with drama, manage the roster and deal with the day to day of managing sometimes hundreds of people from all walks of life.
People like Arkaan are an absolute Godsend and make our lives just that little bit easier - despite Blizzard’s efforts to apparently deliberately make our lives harder.
PLEASE look into this in greater detail, and make the decision to change the blanket restrictions to more localised “in combat” (or even “in instance”) restrictions. There is no reason for it to be set the way it has, even by your own metrics, and you already have the code in place to be able to change this with very little effort on your part.
Just do the right thing here. Please.
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This announcement is inaccurate regarding when the restrictions come into play, as it the functionality mentioned is clearly restricted even when I am sitting solo in Silvermoon, or Stormwind, or Dornogal, or … you get the idea.
I use the Guild Roster Manager (GRM) addon mentioned in this thread by @Arkaan and a couple of others. Let’s face it - Blizzard’s guild interface is partially broken and what works is mostly unhelpful and in some cases counterintuitive to actual guild management. Prior to GRM, I maintained an elaborate large spreadsheet to help me track which alts were connected to which mains, when players should be promoted or demoted, and who should be kicked for long-term inactivity. One of the things I use GRM for is to write notes to the Officer Note field when I demote someone to inactive so that we know what their rank was prior to going to inactive. I can no longer do that now - no matter what my status in game is.
If you can’t give guilds some developer love, at least don’t break stuff that helps us to maintain them.
I haven’t had an opportunity to explore what else these changes
Do better, Blizzard.
[Edited for clarity and a typo]
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“This announcement” had nothing to do with the guild note issue that was raised halfway through the thread…
During my attempt to research the latter issue, Microsoft Copilot returned the following code snippet, indicating that the call to SetNote must be made in response to a hardware event to avoid error:
-- Example: Set a public note for a guild member
local playerGUID = "Player-1234-56789ABC" -- Replace with actual GUID
local newNote = "Raid Leader"
-- This must be triggered by a hardware event (e.g., button click)
local function OnButtonClick()
C_GuildInfo.SetNote(playerGUID, newNote, true) -- true = public note
end
-- Create a simple button to trigger the note change
local btn = CreateFrame("Button", "SetNoteButton", UIParent, "UIPanelButtonTemplate")
btn:SetSize(120, 30)
btn:SetText("Set Guild Note")
btn:SetPoint("CENTER")
btn:SetScript("OnClick", OnButtonClick)
I haven’t tested it.
This announcement IS inaccurate. The changes that were made affected far more than what is specifically addressed. These things were all working prior to the changes that the announcement addressed.
What was announced was that the changes were to macros and were applied only when a player was in an instance. Given that a whole bunch of other things have ceased to work which previously worked makes this particular announcement inaccurate because it has either inadvertently or deliberately left out the changes that have broken this particular addon (and quite possibly others).
You can be pedantic about whether or not this constitutes “inaccurate” or not, but the fact remains that with the changes announced here, a bunch of things that worked the day before no longer work.
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As mentioned, the announcement is innacurate in that it glosses over those changes that affect guilds. Not for the first time, guilds are being sidelined by Blizzard.
We have had information from the WoW Dev Discord specifically stating they made changes relating to these macros and chat messages which did affect the public and officer guild notes, and the Guild info section of a guild interface.
So the “guild note issue” raised “halfway” through the thread is relevant, because this change to the guild notes was made as part of this Blizzard-announced change. They just didn’t say it was part of it. Doesn’t make it not true.
And please don’t use AI to “prove” something. That AI simply takes its information from the internet and the internet, especially for this type of thing, is slow to update and is often incorrect. IF you want to use AI to “prove” something, use that information it gave you, and find the proof that it works. What you’ve basically done there is say something like “I know this is true, and you’re all wrong, because someone told me so, and they must be right because they have a lot of data to look at”. Remember - Garbage In, Garbage Out.
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The original post did not claim to be a complete list of all changes in the patch, and I never claimed to have “proved” anything.
I was offering information that I hoped might be helpful.
Sheesh.
As it turns out the code generated is not helpful, as the API doesn’t allow that type of hardware event (button press) to be automated, and I’m not sure that even if the addons created actual buttons to click that the action would be allowed. Having a button to click each time you wanted to do something when dealing with mass promotions or demotions, or when adding a number of new guild members would not be particularly helpful anyway.
Text boxes have event handler routines too, so I would start there.
Just tested the C_GuildInfo.SetNote(…)function in game right now. It is not able to be used via a hardware event. It is 100% protected, popping a Force Taint error when attempted. I have updated the wiki accordingly.
I find it amusing that the amount of people who complained about “unfair advantage” of addons (which are freely accessible by all) are now finding out that by bringing Blizzard’s attention to such things means they are getting heavy-handed and slowing but surely restricting all manners of API, thus breaking more than just the “unfair advantage” addons.
WeakAuras was the first to go, but now addons that were supposed to be unaffected like GRM are now approaching the bandsaw blade.
I’ve already canceled my subscription a week after the drop of the pre-patch. Since I was on a 6-month subscription, my time ends in April. The more things that happen like this just help in solidifying my decision to leave. I’ve been playing since March of 2005, and will finally be quitting thankfully.
No amount of player housing content will make up for the fact that you are gutting the game we love.
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I suspect this is to prevent an exploit of communicating combat information via guild notes.
One scenario is that a person could change their own note to indicate that they have a certain debuff or will handle a particular mechanic. Locking down the API in combat would prevent this.
But the reason combat lockdown isn’t enough is that the person setting the notes does not need to be in combat, or in the instance, or in the raid group.
If somebody who is out of combat and watching a live stream uses an addon to set a guild note to indicate who should handle a mechanic, etc, there is likely no way to determine that the person whose note is being changed is in combat.
My guess is that Blizzard will eventually find a way to restore the lost functionality. Introducing a delay in propagating guild note changes (15 seconds or so would make it useless for combat coordination, I would think) seems like one possibility.
That is correct. There was an exploit that involved an addon using guild public/officer notes and/or the guild info note, which this restriction stops.
And yes .. you’re right - Blizzard could have found a completely different way to resolve this without creating a blanket restriction on them. They’ve done it for other things, so I have no idea why they suddenly just decided to restrict all access at all times for these. Other than the fact that they are guild functions and Blizzard has made it clear that guild functionality is not a priority or even anywhere near the top of their interest list right now.
So rather than spending the additional time creating “rules” for when these areas are accessible, which would have allowed GRM and various DKP addons, etc, to continue using them, they’ve just gone “yeah, that’s just guilds - no-one uses guilds, right?”.
I think you are being a bit uncharitable. This change is only 10 days old.
This is obviously a weird edge case. The first thing you think of when trying to block addons from automating encounters is not guild notes. So the problem likely came to light relatively recently.
Just speculating, but as an initial response, they brute-forced it, and may be working on a more surgical solution. Refactoring the API takes time, needs to be tested, etc.
But .. the first thing you think of when you’re Blizzard, and you’re actually specifically making a point of blocking addons from accessing guild notes during raid combat .. is guild notes 
They’ve had enough time now, and experience, with other functions that they’ve blocked only in raid/combat.
This was done to stop people in guilds in raids having addons send/receive information via these guild notes whilst in raids. All they had to do was block addon access to these notes whilst in an instance/in combat. Exactly the same as a whole load of others they’ve blocked.
And forgive me, but I’ve been watching Blizzard dismantle and break anything to do with guilds, little by little (or sometimes in larger chunks, like when they wiped the guild vaults and had no backup to restore what got wiped), for years .. so no, I’m not feeling charitable.
I’m feeling like Blizzard is putting some effort into improving things in certain areas, but anything to do with guilds is at best an afterthought and at worse doing something to break them more.