Addons and macros in World of Warcraft have become too powerful and even make “botting” easier. An ancient chat command must therefore now be adjusted.
Whether in World of Warcraft Classic or the current retail version – at some point everyone will meet multi-boxers who fly through the pampas with 10 druids at the same time or a boosting group that can apparently be pulled through dungeons fully automatically, to not 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, a kind of player advice, has led to a change.
What is the problem? The /follow command is just a nice convenience for most WoW veterans. You can use it to follow other characters for a while. That’s nice when the doorbell rings or the phone rings and you don’t want to miss the connection to the raid or a long flight.
But the addon functionality of World of Warcraft allows a whole lot more. For example, it is possible via various interface add-ons for the boosting provider to write a message which, thanks to an add-on, ensures that the boosting customer automatically goes to “/follow” – without the customer having to press any keys would have to execute.
The booster can use an addon to ensure that the “drawn” characters follow it out of the dungeon and back in fully automatically. The boosting customer no longer has to be at the PC at all and can go completely afk while the booster fulfills its end of the bargain.
Why not just get rid of /follow? The “/follow” command (“/follow”) 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 difficult to press a button for every movement. Even blind people often need the follow command to be able to play with their friends or acquaintances in WoW.
These people then rely on aids such as the “Follow” command to still be able to enjoy World of Warcraft. Any reduction in this functionality would reduce the game’s accessibility, as noted by Linaori on the Community Council forum:
Removing the following would render the game virtually unplayable for many who depend on such accessibility.
We should find a way [die Multiboxer und Botter] get rid of without reducing accessibility.
What does Blizzard want to do? The WoW developer “Pazorax” has reported in the forum and stated that they want to take care of this matter. Exactly it says:
I’ve reached out to our interface and accessibility teams and we’re investigating this.
In general, we agree that accessibility is important, but that doesn’t mean that any attempt to limit botting or automation is an attack on accessibility. There are many actions that the game just needs hardware input for and it makes sense that the /follow function would be added to this list based on what [weiter oben] was mentioned.
We are targeting this change for both Wrath of the Lich King Classic and the release of Dragonflight.
Before making such changes, we reach out to players with physical disabilities. To be clear, the change we are planning will continue to make it possible for people with disabilities to follow a guide, and this includes using macros or interface modifications that issue the follow command. The behavior this is intended to prevent is when interface addons are supposed to execute a follow command based on getting a message from some other source, such as another character.
How do multi-boxers see this? Above all, they sigh in exasperation, because they find this change annoying at best. This is what Leialoha writes in the forum, who claims to have been doing 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 put in place for it.
Regarding these changes, which will ‘destroy’ our /follow WeakAura – this won’t stop me (or anyone else) from multiboxing. All we have to do is modify our macros to include a /follow command. (…)
So multiboxing won’t stop the change – and probably shouldn’t, but at least fully automated boosting through dungeons should then require the customer to hook themselves to their booster and have to return to the PC every few minutes.
These are small steps – but at least something is happening.
What do you think of the customization?