[re] Addons still able to execute remote /follow commands?

Yeah its almost like one is a easy button press and the other would need more time

Go fig

1 Like

Chiming in here as this is a feature I use all the time in my game play. I don’t use it for accessibility reasons though. I am a multiboxer. I use a couple addons (M.A.M.A. and DynamicBoxer) to help make my play style more seamless (I am not breaking TOS by using external software/hardware). These addons allow me to send follow commands from one running instance of WoW to another.

Disabling /follow as is being discussed won’t break my gameplay but will make it significantly more tedious, especially on MacOS which lacks a focus-follows-mouse feature. I will have to activate each client to press a macro; effectively turning what I can currently do with 1 key-press into 2N-1 where N is the number of characters I am playing (usually 2 or 3). That is a huge number of extra key presses over the course of a gaming session.

This change is being sold as a step to harm boosting. While it may slightly inconvenience that community, it will have a huge negative impact on other communities.

Blizzard, please don’t make this change!

2 Likes

Accessibility isn’t a zero sum game. This is just thinly veiled transphobia.

5 Likes

Another blind player here. For those that are skeptical about actually being able to play WoW Classic using this addon that have not checked out the website and/or the YouTube videos of people actually doing so, I hope you reconsider. While certain information is naturally unable to be conveyed due to the fact that, well, we can’t see, this addon is an amazing bit of work and enables most of the game to be played completely alone. But this is where we run into the issue this topic talks about. Right now, the best we can do is to automatically manage the following and refollowing automatically since if you give it a shot, you realize that especially in large groups, and even more so if you are not just following one person but have a group that are aware and can help dynamically, you quickly realize that this is very distracting and limits your usability in large groups, which would otherwise be completely possible and fun.
For those that were addressing alternate features, we have made several inquiries for different, arguably much smaller issues, like missing bell sounds from certain transportation like elevators or ships, which went completely unaddressed. I truly hope that Blizzard themselves are working on features that make this game, as well as retail WoW, more playable, but I hope you forgive my very cautiously optimistic, or perhaps slightly pessimistic, view on this issue. Hearthstone is being made accessible by a mod developer, WoW classic as well as retail are being made more and more accessible by mod developers, and until Blizzard can tell us what accessibility features are actually being planned this is the best we have, and most of us are happy enough to finally at least be able to experience the same thing you do, even if not on the exact same level.
It’s easy to dismiss these things especially if you don’t have a disability or don’t know anyone with one, but I’d like you to consider that a disability is never far away and that the only thing standing between your perfect vision and you being one of us is an unfortunate accident, or even just age.
Maybe a bit dramatic, but these things are important and people are putting in the work to help. We shouldn’t dismiss that just because bad actors are misusing a feature, the removal of which doesn’t even guarantee that this is no longer an issue.
Thanks

5 Likes

Yep, they would have to actually press buttons to control their character’s movement, just like literally every other player playing this game. And no, it wouldn’t be every single cast. When they want to stop moving, they would press one button. Then they cast one or more spells. Then when it’s time to move again they press another button. This could be further simplified with an addon that follows when a given button bind is pushed down and unfollows when it’s let up.

Another simple way of making this easier is to simply macro the following line into all casted spells:
/run FollowUnit("player")
This will stop following your current /follow target. It will still require 2 button presses to actually start casting a spell on the current TBC client, but it could still be useful for some players.

I tried it with the macro I just mentioned, and I think you’re really overselling how much of an additional burden it would be.

Providing my input as a non-blind player that really wants this boosting functionality gone.

Please find a solution so those that use it for accessibility reasons don’t have their gameplay ruined. This game is infinitely better when it’s filled with players who want to actively play. But holy hell, please expunge this entitled boosting culture from all games. Hypocritical classic players wanting a more real mmorpg but they want to dance around all the downsides that don’t groove with modern ideologies. Leveling is meant by actively playing not being afk at the instance.

Just really surprised blizz didn’t put in the patch 7.3.5 anti-high level xp boosting measures for classic at the onset. You cannot blame people for acting like water taking the path of least resistance to most benefit themselves.

I cannot imagine how much more enjoyable classic would have been had all the fixes/changes done since launch were anachronistically in place for launch back in Aug 2019.

In summation, I hope blizz provides more baked in native functionality (meaning no weakauras) to replicate the things needed for players needing accessibility.

As a reminder:

Multiboxing is not against the Terms of Service.

I’ve been multiboxing WoW since TBC original release. In all that time, I’ve never gotten a ban, because I never violate the Terms of Service. Since the changes to policy regarding key broadcasting, I have utilized the follow-command weakaura here:

https://wago.io/KIVs1t-Ni

Until Blizzard’s policy changes to “Multiboxing is not allowed” then I will continue to multibox and follow any strictures that are in place.

With regard to the upcoming changes that will “break” this /follow weakaura addon - it isn’t going to stop me (or others) from multiboxing. All that we’ll do is to change our macros to include a /follow command. The only real effect these changes will have (on me personally) is to aggravate my RSI (repetitive stress injury) by forcing me to click from one windowed WoW client to another more quickly and spam my macros faster.

I’ll be sure to be thinking of the devs while my hands are hurting. If the devs REALLY don’t want people to multibox - then just change your policy for god’s sake to “NO MULTIBOXING ALLOWED”. Don’t make it so we’re just in more physical pain to match the actions per second required of the playstyle that you’re just hampering, not stopping.

4 Likes

so the person they follow has to worry about 2 people when the ground gets nasty?

seems a bit tedious.

1 Like

I have a friend who previously played WoW in late TBC and then Wrath the first time around. Since that time, he fully lost his eyesight about a decade ago. We’ve played a few games over the years that are somewhat accessible⁠—at least with verbal guidance⁠—with couch co-op Diablo 3 in the console ports being one of the better experiences; however, he hadn’t tried to get back into MMOs.

That is until he came across this add-on for Classic a few months ago. Though we had to put plans of playing together mostly to the side for a bit here while he was busy, I think he was more excited by the prospect of using your add-on to replay parts of this game than basically any other game in the last few years.

Personally, I hope they do what is suggested by Waah and find a way to punish the boosters misusing the tool instead of actually hurting the accessibility functionality. But, whatever the eventual outcome, I just want to say how important and precious having truly-usable accessibility options like this add-on is to at least one my best friends. And, with that, I’d like to thank you and anyone else out there making add-ons or mods that extend accessible access to this and other games.

6 Likes

It isn’t that high effort. At least not if your natural movement style isn’t a bunny on speed. :slight_smile: But, yes, you need to care about the position of a second player too.

It is just what you make it. If you are perceiving that as tedious, then it is. (What would be absolutely ok.) Others probably take it as a challenge and actually like it. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Well, I guess you have no real idea how difficult/complex it is to play the game and dungeons/raids totally blind, compared with what you are doing as a sighted player. :wink:
And yes, it is of course not totally breaking their game. It is just making their gameplay worse. They could do without that.

But why? The thing is, imho restricting FollowUnit is unnecessary, and just adressing the symptoms, not the cause.
Personally, I totally agree that boosting should be restricted. I don’t like it. (That is my personal opinion, though.)
But restricting that won’t change anything on boosting. Those guys will continue boost. It probably will get slightly less comfortable, but that’s it. But it will get much more uncomfortable for other audiences, who are using FollowUnit for a good and valid reason.
Boosters will just get back from Netflix to their PC every 20 minutes to press the follow key. Or set up a script that is doing that for them. They won’t really care about that change.
Blind players will have more effort all the time, as following is such an important part of their general gameplay.

So, where is the value of restricting FollowUnit?

As suggested, there are imho much better ways against boosting. No xp for afk players. Or xp only, if a player took part in combat during a specific time frame. In dungeons. That would keep boosters much more from doing their boost thing and won’t affect other players.

7 Likes

hi.
Other blind player here. i hope blizzard ill not block follow opportunities. it will made our gameplay more difficult

3 Likes

Yes, it is hard to have a discussion about something when someone can’t realistically put themselves in the other person’s shoes, but that doesn’t mean that my perspective is invalid, necessarily. Rather, I think what it means in this case is that it falls on those who have experience playing the game blind with a sighted guide, or who have heard from people who play blind with a guide to explain how the negatives of this change would outweigh the positives of it. What I haven’t seen and would like to see in this thread is someone who:

  1. Identifies as either playing blind with a guide or knows a lot about the experiences of one such player

  2. Fully understands the change and its implications, meaning they understand that this is not simply removing /follow from the game and that they further understand that addons still have the ability to, for example, play a sound in response to a chat message keyword indicating that they should /follow their guide, or that they could have a /follow macro whose target could be dynamically changed at any time via an addon

  3. Explains their reasoning as to why this specific change negatively impacts the blind player experience, for X, Y, and Z reason, with specific scenarios

And another question for blind people who play with a guide, if you’re reading this - would you not feel more engaged if it was you who commanded your character to follow your guide, instead of just having your character magically commanded by another player to stop and start your character’s movement? From my perspective, even in a hypothetical scenario where I place the blind player experience at the absolute top of my priority list, I still am not convinced that blind players would actually have more fun with their movement being more automated. And again, fully acknowledging that I don’t have a great idea of what it’s like to play blind with a guide, which is why I’m asking you guys to explain why I’m wrong to think this.

Sure, it won’t be enough of an inconvenience for some people, but not everyone is equally inclined to boost; for some people it will be enough to stop them from doing it, or will reduce the amount they do it, both of which are positive effects. Furthermore, you’re only considering the boosting aspect of it - there are also multiboxers which benefit heavily from the current FollowUnit API. We should do what we can to discourage both boosting and multiboxing, as both have a negative impact on the game.

Now, if there were a perfect solution that would allow us to not restrict FollowUnit while simultaneously killing boosting and multiboxing, then sure, maybe I’d have a different stance here. But unfortunately, as far as I’m aware, there is no such perfect solution.

How can you possibly suggest no exp for afk players as a means of fighting boosting, when just one paragraph before that, you told me that requiring players to tab back from their netflix to get exp would be ineffective at fighting boosting? If I don’t get exp while afk, all I have to do is make a weakaura that plays a sound when I’m about to go afk so that I tab back every few minutes to reset the afk timer. Also does nothing to discourage multiboxing, but the planned change does.

That would be terrible. Let’s say I’m a healer, and my group is a bunch of pumper DPS with front-loaded burst damage. They go into a pack and immediately kill a mob, but I never got into combat, because I was drinking or just conserving mana. Well, guess I just won’t get as much experience as everyone else. :upside_down: Also does nothing to discourage multiboxing, but the planned change does.

Hopefully soon they do just ban it. That’s what I see coming out of all this accessibility discussion going on. The sooner the better.

And if you have to play the game in such a way that hurts you, I’d recommend not doing that.

Blizzard doesn’t have any problem making games that people play at a competitive level that cause RSI:

Aside from the fact that its incredibly fun, there are huge advantages to mulitbox play in WoW. I don’t want to derail the discussion however; I only wanted to post about the reality of how many play the game and call to attention the apparent contradiction in policy vs. implementation vs. reality.

I don’t genuinely believe that breaking the /follow mechanism is going to save the world from boosters or RMT. I only think it’ll cause negative issues for a small portion of the population, and do more harm (not just to me) than good.

2 Likes

So, you are a healer that isn’t part of the combat for, let’s say 5 minutes, because you were drinking and conserving mana? Why are you even part of that group? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Because no xp on afk wouldn’t have unintended side effects on other players. It of course would be as useless and missing the intended effect as restricting FollowUnit would be. :slight_smile:

Unfortunately the players that your are targeting with that change are exactly those people that are inclined to boost on a level at that they are even motivated to download and install weakauras to make it more comfortable. And they are for sure willing to just download some other tool to still do it.
Players that are not that inclined to boost most probably won’t even use the weakaura/FollowUnit.
Therefore the restriction won’t change anything on boosting and has no mentionable positive impact.

3 Likes

Throughout this thread and the one that he has posted on the Community Council forum, Kruffzz is advocating for change that he has unilaterally deemed to be inappropriate. He does not like people being able to afk while getting boosted. And he does not like people multiboxing.

Kruffzz even goes so far as to conclude that “We should do what we can to discourage both boosting and multiboxing, as both have a negative impact on the game.”

As to the boosting, the general consensus seems to be that boosting was too rampant and was bringing in a huge amount of gold into the economy via the mages and paladins’ ability to farm hundreds of gold per hour in raw drops. And the boosting also contributed to RMT arguably with people preferring to pay hundreds or thousands of gold to have their character leveled in lieu of playing in real groups or questing in the open world.

Blizzard has recently taken steps to reduce the prominence of boosting via select dungeon nerfs. We have seen that they have deterred the lesser geared players, but not much has changed for those in high-end gear that can kill quickly. At some point, if people want to pay very high prices which equate to literally thousands of gold to level their chars, there is not much anyone can do to stop that from occurring. With the release of the level 70 Blizzard boost in WOTLK, I imagine people will just buy the boost directly as opposed to hoping to find a Slave Pens booster. The focus should be on dungeon mechanics in WOTLK in the 70-80 era at this point in Classic’s lifespan.

As to the multiboxing, Blizzard has banned the use of broadcasting. It is still very much accepted to play multiple characters as long as you are abiding by the one click, per action, per character rule. Removing the ability to have multiple characters follow at once doesn’t stop multiboxing as it just creates another step in the macro, as others more tech-savvy than I have pointed out in both this thread and the other.

Long story short, Blizzard should not let Kruffzz’s crusade against boosting and multiboxing lead it to make a short-sighted decision that in reality will not change anything for either of the two types of gameplay Kruffzz’s is speaking out against.

6 Likes

I thought pressing one key to activate follow on multiple wow accounts is regarded as key broadcasting which is banned. I also multibox two characters, but use 2 computers and 2 keyboards with basic wow macros.

You are correct that “key broadcasting” is banned, but this is unrelated and the explanation is slightly technical.

This discussion is regarding the FollowUnit API, which is not a protected function and thus does not require a key to be pressed at all. Any non-protected functions can be used by addons (or WeakAuras, etc), which is necessary to enable the bulk of the games’ customization via these addons.

As an example of this sort of automation, the ItemRack addon can be configured to equip specific pieces of gear automatically, such as equipping +mount speed items when mounting, as doing this by hand is quite tedious and easily forgotten.

Per the linked post at the top, Blizzard intends to mark the FollowUnit API as being “protected”, which means that any attempt to utilize the functionality of following players would require a “hardware event” (i.e. a button press or mouse-click).

The controversy stems from the reasoning used to justify it — to inconvenience boosters.

If this change is made, boosters will be inconvenienced such that they will be required to have their “customers” press a button to /follow them, but this will only affect the laziest of their customers, as players already have to deal with automatic disconnects for any player that has been AFK for an extended period of time. (Note: the FollowUnit API does not clear the AFK flag)

Those that will be disproportionately impacted by this change, however, are the individuals that rely on this API to implement accessibility features to their game. While I doubt anyone would argue that players with disabilities are anything other than a tiny fraction of the entire player-base, any change that impacts this demographic should warrant some additional criticism before any knee-jerk decisions are made.

Lastly, to address the elephant in the room – multi-boxers – this change adds nothing beyond more minor inconveniences. This demographic is clearly in Blizzards’ good-graces, and this style of play is allowed, yet this change disproportionately affects these players as well.

In short, if the intent of the change is to prevent or otherwise abolish boosting, this isn’t the way to do it. As stated above by myself and many others, this change won’t fix that issue, and those that are emphatically saying otherwise are letting emotions cloud their vision.

5 Likes

So, feature removed with Wrath.
No value, but gameplay made worse for disabled players.
Great job. -.-

3 Likes