Addons and Macros in World of Warcraft have become too powerful and even make automated gameplay easier. An ancient chat command now needs to be adjusted.
Whether in World of Warcraft Classic or the current Retail version – at some point, everyone comes across multiboxers flying through the wilderness with 10 druids at the same time or a boosting group that seemingly allows itself to be carried through dungeons without having to level manually.
Both are a thorn in the side of many WoW fans and Blizzard, which is why a discussion in the “Community Council” forum, basically a council of players, has led to a change.
What is the problem? The “/follow” command is simply a nice convenience for most WoW veterans. It allows you to follow other characters for a while. It’s nice when the doorbell rings or the phone rings and you don’t want to miss the raid or a long flight.
But the addon functionality of World of Warcraft allows for much more. Through various interface addons, the boosting provider can send a message that causes the boosting customer to automatically go to “/follow” thanks to an addon – all without the customer having to perform any key presses.
The booster can therefore ensure, through an addon, that the “pulled” characters automatically follow him out of the dungeon and back in. Thus, the boosting customer does not need to be at the PC at all and can go completely afk during this time while the booster fulfills his part of the agreement.
Why isn’t /follow just abolished? The “/follow” command is not only used by honest players to follow a colleague in the raid during a short afk break, but also has other uses.
There are many WoW fans with physical disabilities who find it hard to perform a key press for every movement. Blind players also often require the follow command to play with their friends or acquaintances in WoW.
These people rely on aids, such as the “follow” command, to still enjoy World of Warcraft. Any restriction of this functionality would reduce the game’s accessibility, as Linaori notes in the “Community Council” forum:
Removing the follow command would make the game practically unplayable for many who rely on such accessibility.
We should find a way to get rid of [the multiboxers and botters] without restricting accessibility.
What does Blizzard want to do? The WoW developer “Pazorax” has commented in the forum and explained that they want to address this issue. It is stated:
I have reached out to our interface and accessibility teams and we are currently investigating this.
In principle, we agree that accessibility is important, but that doesn’t mean that every attempt to limit botting or automation is an attack on accessibility. There are many actions for which the game currently requires hardware input and it makes sense that the /follow function be added to that list, based on what has been mentioned [above].
We are targeting this change for both Wrath of the Lich King Classic and the release of Dragonflight.
Before we implement such changes, we will reach out to players with physical disabilities. To be clear, the change we are planning will still allow people with disabilities to follow a leader and this includes the use of macros or interface modifications that issue the follow command. The behavior we want to prevent is when interface addons are meant to execute a follow command based on a message received from another source, like from another character.
How do multiboxers see this? From them comes mainly an exasperated sigh, as they find this change at most annoying. As Leialoha says in the forum, who claims to have been multiboxing since the release of the original Burning Crusade:
As long as Blizzard doesn’t clearly prohibit multiboxing, I will continue to multibox with the restrictions that have been imposed.
Regarding these changes that will ‘destroy’ our “/follow” WeakAura – this will not prevent me (or anyone else) from multiboxing. All we need to do is modify our macros to include a /follow command. (…)
Multiboxing will therefore not stop the change – and it probably shouldn’t, but at least fully automated boosting through dungeons will then likely require the customer to attach themselves to their booster and return to their PC every few minutes.
These are small steps – but at least something is happening.
What do you think of the adjustment?
