Blizzard to begin throttling GearScore-like inspect requests
by Matthew Rossi 
Jun 25th 2010 at 9:00AM
NethaeraQuote:
According to WoWAce, Blizz is going to start throttling inspection requests, thus limiting addons like Gearscore's ability to generate on-the-fly GS of a player's equipment.
According to WoWAce, Blizz is going to start throttling inspection requests, thus limiting addons like Gearscore's ability to generate on-the-fly GS of a player's equipment.
It's important to understand that the throttling that is being done isn't intended to break any functionality of add-ons, but merely to control the amount of queries that are being sent to the server at any given time. (Thus throttling the queries.) The queries will still occur, it just won't happen as quickly as they currently seem to. You can read the statements that WoW Ace and WoW Interface have up for a bit more information on these changes. We wanted to give mod authors a heads-up prior to making the change so that they could make any adjustments they needed to on their mods.
http://wowinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33432
http://www.wowace.com/announcements/blizzard-to-start-throttling-inspect-requests/
Basically, the idea as presented is not to prevent addons from inspecting players but rather to prevent them from doing so as often as they currently do, reducing server lag by reducing the amount of inspect requests addons can flood them with. It's important to note that this is being implemented via rolling restarts; as a result addons that you have that currently make use of automated inspect requests might not function properly. Since this isn't aimed at crippling addons that use the inspect feature, it's likely most or all of them will be able to weather the change.
Filed under: News items, Add-Ons
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
zubbiefish Jun 25th 2010 9:04AM
Anything that reduces lag is good.
Dave Jun 25th 2010 9:31AM
Anything that reduces GearScore use is also good.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 2:57PM
This won't reduce GS use.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 9:04PM
Seems like somebody is afraid to admit it won't change a thing about the use of GS.
This is simply a throttle on querying the server, it does nothing to prevent GS, it does nothing to deter GS. It does nothing to stop Raid Leaders from asking you what your GS is before they invite you to a raid.
Gimp Jun 25th 2010 9:07AM
Anything to reduce server lag is good!
Cataca Jun 25th 2010 9:07AM
"addons that automate inspect requests will be limited via server-side implementation during rolling restarts"
Yes! The death of GearScore!
"Since this isn't aimed at crippling addons that use the inspect feature, it's likely most or all of them will be able to weather the change"
Nooooooo!
kingoomieiii Jun 25th 2010 9:19AM
Ugh. You know, you can replicate Gearscore's functionality with a macro? It just assigns weights to your gear based on slot and itemlevel and adds them up. You can't ban that.
Your problem is with the people who MISUSE gearscore. Banning it won't help and, frankly, it's stupid to try. They'll go back to demanding your achievement or directly inspecting you instead.
Pirim Jun 25th 2010 9:23AM
“Death of Gearscore” isn't something Blizzard can do. As long as you can inspect players, you can do that automatically (as long as developers are sane) and generate some numbers characterizing their gear.
Gearscore can be useful, everyone abusing it is a social problem. Killing this problem with inspect limitations is like killing racism by ordering everyone to wear masks.
Moeru Jun 25th 2010 10:42AM
The problem isn't that people abuse it. IT's that it's easier to exclude someone because of a generally accepted number system than it is to crunch down all those numbers or have a macro handy to do it for you. At least with achievements people quickly realize this person looking for people is an idiot, but with a universally understood and accepted ranking system, it's harder to ignore that someone who has a 3k gearscore isn't as good as a 5k gearscore person (though it's not always, and sometimes rarely, the case). If we went back to inspecting people and seeing their gear and spec choices when inviting them to a raid, things would be a lot less discriminatory I think.
But I'm glad people are starting to see it's useless. I deleted it the other day even though I love the gear comparison for master looters as a raid leader...made seeing if something's an upgrade faster without asking. But I was tired of continually seeing what people's gearscore was to compare to myself when I was sometimes better than someone 1k or more my own score on my toons. It's stressful and ruins the gearing game for me, since I always do things my own way.
Grovinofdarkhour Jun 25th 2010 10:54AM
What I'd really like is a super tiny little addon that simply lets you mouse over someone and see whether they're using Gearscore or not.
That way, I can help rehabilitate the people I care about, and avoid the people I don't.
Jack Spicer Jun 25th 2010 1:50PM
If they wanted to kill gear score, they would remove the item level from all gear.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 2:45PM
That wouldn't kill Gearscore, it'd just make the addon maker have to add an extra step in the process.
Cyanea Jun 25th 2010 9:08AM
And the comments from people who didn't read anything more than the title and think that Blizz is killing Gearscore begin in 3...2...
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 11:11AM
It didn't even take till the count of three.
lawters Jun 25th 2010 9:09AM
You got me excited for the death of gearscore. >.>
Storm Eagle [Planeteer | Power of Phoenix Wrights Colloquial Catch Phrase - OBJECTION! and Captain Planets Second in Command] Jun 25th 2010 9:13AM
Before patch 3.3.5 everything was fine. Well, not literally of course, but you know what I mean. Now, after an entire day of the server's being offline, the sudden uprising of the "out of memory" errors and random disconnect issues, it seems Blizz is hell bent at finding some sort of scapegoat for these issues. They'll kindly ask us to play the game at lower settings and delete our cache folder before the issue is resolved, but let's make sure we anesthetize gearscore first!
Cyanea Jun 25th 2010 9:18AM
Because rewriting a 32-bit game client to take advantage of improvements in a 64-bit environment can be done overnight, not to mention how easy it is the support an entirely new client on top of the current Windows and Mac ones.
I mean really Blizzard. What are you guys DOING over there?
Mike Jun 25th 2010 9:27AM
@Cyanea You've obviously never tried recompiling some messy code for 64-bit...
Wolftech Jun 25th 2010 9:28AM
@Cyanea - Its not that it 'can be done overnight' but the fact that it should have been done long before this. 64 bit has been around for a long while now and Blizzard should have been working on this since the Win7 Beta was released for public use (or before that). Base memory on systems has been trending upwards for years. Its not this patch that real issue, its Blizzards failure to work on what is necessary for their game to survive. If people have too many issues with the game actually functioning at levels that the hardware can handle (and considering that the game is 5 and half years old, even the low end video cards available today should be able to handle WoW at max settings), then people will start looking for another MMORPG to occupy their time. With LOTRO going free to play and FFXIV and ST:TOR on the horizon, they can not afford a misstep at this time. Because lets face it. Diablo and StarCraft are great IPs but their golden goose is WoW.
Cyanea Jun 25th 2010 9:37AM
Yet how many people USE 64-bit? I'm not going to pull numbers out of my ass, but I know it's only a FRACTION of the people who still use 32-bit.
I'm not saying that it's a good thing there's no 64-bit client out, just like it sucks that there's no official Linux client either. But I can't imagine it would make good business sense to start working on a brand new client and all the trouble associated with it such as troubleshooting and support when the technology is relatively under-utilized at the moment.
I'm sure Blizzard realizes, in all their good business sense, that 64-bit is going to be the big thing in the coming years, and I'm sure they're already taking steps to prepare for it. Maybe a 64-bit client's been under development all this time? Hopefully the issues that 3.3.5 are causing will step up the progress on it.