TSM offers a premium tier as well and it is not banned and surely has a much greater effect than a stats addon.
While I think it´s bad that addons can track a players performance, it is something that has been in the game for over 20 years now.
If Blizzard wanted to disable that, then they would have done so long time ago.
zygor, tsm, raiderio to name the most common ones
I mean ever since I got into decent raiding guilds I pretty much haven’t stepped foot in a PuG heroic for a long time. PuG groups just tend to be a volatile mess anywho, so its best to avoid them if you can.
and yet they’ve broken single addons before.
But do you get what I’m saying?
They want to develop/encourage a community that can play around with their game.
They just don’t want you to PROFIT from it.
Maybe another angle to consider is that it opens up some legal grey area in that “I PAID for this… therefore, you have to support it.”
And rather than deal with the red-tape of “3rd party addons are not covered by Blizzard, etc”… they just divorce themselves entirely from it.
I dunno. It seems easy to me to just say “you can’t profit from our game.”
It’s against TOS and the main reason for that is that Blizzard doesn’t want players to be separated into different classes based on whether or not they’re willing to pay for the best addons. While not every player uses addons, they’re all equally able to do so whenever they want. Blizzard wants to keep it that way.
You think the threads about DBM are bad now? Imagine if you had to pay for it.
What’s the add on called ?
Only if they build coordinates and DPS meters into the game. There’s no reason for either not to be basic features at this point.
Except you are wrong. It unlocks features in the add-on as well as providing daily data updates among other things.
It’s not simply “faster log processing” like your trying to pretend.
That’s not what happened. The devs stated publicly that THEY were tinkering with the AH backend and accidentally broke things.
TSM had nothing to do with the AH lag at that time and never has.
Ban Patreon/premium addon features. It’s technically profiting off of Blizzard’s dime. I don’t care how cool the addon is, it is very slimey. 
I can only think of 1…the one that let people draw on the map and give directions where to go (cant remember the name)
And the only reason that only affected a single addon was because it was a brand new concept that no one had tried, so if they would have waited there would have likely been more.
And its not like this WCL addon is a new concept. On curse you can find mutliple wcl addons for various versions of the game and from different authors
Although, I do find this one concerning, because if true, WCL forced someone else to pull their addon down while offering “enhanced” features themselves
If it’s the one I’m thinking of (Augmented Virtual Reality - AVR), it let you draw directly on the “world” itself, and share your drawings among peers, which would make directing people in raids trivial.
https://www.wowace.com/projects/avr
On topic, making API/scraping calls to WCL costs them bandwidth $, imagine multiple people doing it… If someone were to make an addon that keeps checking WCL’s DB, it would have to require their permission, or work with its own DB, with delayed updates.
It’s really something that is hard to be offered for free, by design, given the amount of load it would impose on WCL’s servers.
I don’t know how the Raider.IO addon works, but it should have similar issues if pulling from the server. However, considering how frequently it updates, and that it looks like it’s done by the owners of the site, it’s more likely they just push their whole DB (the relevant bits) on each player using it.
TSM is essentially a bot which which enables a player to scan and process data at a rate that would be impossible without it. That heightened speed confers a competitive advantage in the market which translates to financial gain for the user. It should absolutely be banned alongside dbm. If weakauras and custom targa graphics are the cost of removing these cheats, so be it.
Yeah - they realised they could monetise it so they took down the free competition.
Oh noes! Good thing their website is commercial, supported by subscriptions and ad revenue then!
Scrapers ignore ad revenue and subs… so?
I’m not defending them BTW, just listing costs.
Also, like I posted, if you push a delayed version of your own scraped DB to each player, it’s feasible, but it requires constant updates.
That is not grey. That is 100% against the rules for addons.
Yes, yes that is.
For those who are not familiar, here is the policy for Addons.
- Add-ons must be free of charge.
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.
NOTE - if you have to pay money to access that addon, such as a Sub to a stream, website, or anything else, then that violates the rules.
Yeah I am not sure the best way to go about it either these days. Not sure if the Legal email gets read or not. Not sure Hacks is the right path?
- Blizzard Entertainment has the right to disable add-on functionality as it sees fit.
To maintain the integrity World of Warcraft and ensure the best possible gaming experience for our players, Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to disable any add-on functionality within World of Warcraft at its sole discretion. For more information…If you are an add-on developer and have any questions about and this User Interface Add-On Development Policy and how it pertains to the add-on that you’ve developed, please don’t hesitate to email us at WoWUI@blizzard.com.
That might be a good email to use to report it.
The UI and Macro rules are based off this Legal Policy page
Applications May Not Charge Premiums To Use The APIs. “Premium” versions of Applications offering additional for-pay features are not permitted, nor can players be charged money to download an Application, charged for services related to the Application, or otherwise be required to offer some form of monetary compensation to download or access an Application when those features use the Blizzard Developer APIs. Likewise, Applications may not include interstitials soliciting donations before features or functionality becomes available to the player. Also, players may not be required to watch a video advertisement before accessing a feature or function of the application.
While I agree that it is against the rules…
Blizz’s lack of action to stop it is what makes it grey. Rules are only real if they are enforced…and people have provided multiple examples of “paid” addons that have been operating for months (years?) that Blizz has ignored
Lack of action does not make something grey. It just makes it slightly less risky. It is still against the rules if it violates them. The data for that quest one is what is sold, not the addon I think. It works without the data packs, but is better with it. Right? That one? I am not awake enough to have read the whole thread yet. That is just the one “grey” example I can think of. It is not technically against the rules.
Generally speaking, they really don’t allow people to pay for access to addons in any way. If the one the OP is talking about is paid, then Blizz is very likely to shut it down. They can disable it, and have done it, many times. They don’t really care about breaking other addons. Addons are not supported, in that Blizz won’t help if they don’t work or Blizz breaks them.
/makes more coffee and shares
The addon itself can’t be behind a paywall.
But creators can populate the free addon with data that IS behind a paywall.
It’s why things like Zygor have existed forever without getting stomped out.
I don’t agree with it at all, but Blizzard it’s how Blizzard seems to approach things.
IIRC they don’t even like things like donation links showing up within the in-game addon. But if the good stuff comes from buying packs elsewhere, technically no issue.