Question for the lawyers in General

Community General Discussion
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With the continuing popularity of World of Warcraft user interface add-ons (referred to hereafter as “add-ons”) created by the community of players, Blizzard Entertainment has formalized design and distribution guidelines for add-ons. These guidelines have been put in place to ensure the integrity of World of Warcraft and to help promote an enjoyable gaming environment for all of our players - failure to abide by them may result in measures up to and including taking formal legal action.

1) 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.

2) Add-on code must be completely visible.
The programming code of an add-on must in no way be hidden or obfuscated, and must be freely accessible to and viewable by the general public.

3) Add-ons must not negatively impact World of Warcraft realms or other players.
Add-ons will perform no function which, in Blizzard Entertainment’s sole discretion, negatively impacts the performance of the World of Warcraft realms or otherwise negatively affects the game for other players. For example, this includes but is not limited to excessive use of the chat system, unnecessary loading from the hard disk, and slow frame rates.

4) Add-ons may not include advertisements.
Add-ons may not be used to advertise any goods or services.

5) Add-ons may not solicit donations.
Add-ons may not include requests for donations. We recognize the immense amount of effort and resources that go into developing an add-on; however, such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game.

6) Add-ons must not contain offensive or objectionable material.
World of Warcraft has been given a “T” by the ESRB, and similar ratings from other ratings boards around the world. Blizzard Entertainment requires that add-ons not include any material that would not be allowed under these ratings.

7) Add-ons must abide by World of Warcraft ToU and EULA.
All add-ons must follow the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement.

8) 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.

15 July 2009 Music Distribution through UI Add-Ons

We have recently seen a number of User Interface Add-Ons that are making modifications to the World of Warcraft in-game music files and wanted to take a moment to go over some important points with the community in connection with this. While we are currently allowing Add-Ons that remove or replace existing sound files, keep in mind that it is illegal to distribute copyrighted materials, in this case in-game music and audio files, without authorization. One of the primary goals of the user interface is to allow players to customize their game experience and we hope to avoid making any modifications in the future that will prevent this.

13 April 2009 UI Add-On Development Policy Update
On 20 March, we released the new add-on development policy to the public as an ongoing effort to help ensure add-on integrity, safety, and quality for the community. Since that time we have been in touch with many UI development communities on what the policy means to them and the continuing development of these add-ons. We would like to announce further that we are providing a sixty-day grace period beginning at the time of the initial release of the policy for UI developers to comply with the new policy. After May 19th, Blizzard Entertainment will begin to enforce the Add-on Development policy, and developers found to be in violation of this policy will be contacted directly.

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.

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Also about your comment on RWF guilds using shady tools like this. Maximum himself very recently just said if these were possible to use, none of the RWF guilds would ever use them and jeopardize their entire relationship with blizzard and competing in general. So no, they wouldn’t use them. Because who’s to say in 5 years when 1 person in the guild isn’t with them anymore and they spill the beans on them.

He said he could see like top 30 guilds using these maybe but then they’d get banned eventually.

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They will put their WA and other tools behind a paywall I dont believe they are above SaaS tools

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They won’t do it. Too many randoms will narc. Either immediately or in 5 years.

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Are you sure? Because it seems to me that anyone with any sort of nouse would check things like the legal documents easily available to read. Despite those docs waffling a fair bit, on things like “don’t do this or else” it’s pretty clear. And I’m no lawyer/solicitor, just a player.

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I think, while it may look simple enough and be completely innocuous in nature, it will probably still violate the pinned message about third-party software and applications.

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Oh yeah when one gentlemen posted the blue post I deleted the .py I just put it to you guys as a POC - this will be made and available, not by me but its going to happen, thats how the war begins, blizz nukes functions - coders compensate, it happend in other MMOs

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It’s always funny how people will go to such lengths to design or buy tools to play for them in a video game which is meant for fun. Rather than just learning

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Its a prof of concept, and besides that youre countering the points brought to general about persons with disabilities surely ethical handling of such tools is to be considered

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It’s on blizzard more than ever to make sure people with disabilities are catered to. Which I believe should have been the way it was since the start. Addons doing it is not the ideal. They have an email for accessibility concerns as well for very specific functional accessibility issues if need be.

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Yes. Warden does scan your computer for such things.

Blizzard may also monitor your computer, console, or other device (including mobile device) for the signatures of unauthorized programs and communicate this information back to Blizzard about that unauthorized activity to prevent cheating and fraud, and to enforce our EULA. You understand that users should have no expectation of privacy concerning the transmission of any user generated content or communications

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You might be able to use it for suggestions, but not to send keypresses, like the one in the video, that’s instant ban. Even suggestions only would too be against the ToS, so bannable, depending on their interpretation of “in connection”.

Their ToS is broad enough to turn anything they want into a bannable offense, even MMO mouses, macro keyboards etc.

Also, where would you get the combat info from? OCR from a screen feed?

If so, I’ve already thought of that, it’s not new, and you’d have to use an external/virtual display and machine to dodge the warden.

It’s not really worth risking your account, if not for sheer accessibility, and I think you can do a better job using already available tools and the API, even if crippled.

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Echo and sneak.lua disagrees.

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Ion is/was a lawyer…let’s see if he will weigh in!

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You know Sendryn its possible for a clever script to make units frames just how you want them in Midnight, I might be that clever for a friend :two_men_holding_hands:

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Money’s that tight huh

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I was pressing the keys if you notice I was pressing them as the suggestion came up and missed a few, theres no automation involved, its just a POC hekili type suggestion, in fact in its current state it would be useless beyond an opener because theres no way to detect procs that make a spell instant or cost no resource so I dont see a big deal about a suggestion app that just keeps track of key presses.

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I’m not touching anything that doesn’t go into the addons folder, downloaded from Curse.

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I think that if you are asking lawyers, then you already know.

1 Like