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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard 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 2 of 6)
toddcore Jun 25th 2010 9:50AM
"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. "
Overnight? I'm not sure if you genuinely just aren't familiar with the topic you're offering your opinion on or if you're intentionally understating it in an attempt to blindly defend them, but this has been a problem for MANY users for a very long time now. The problem certainly didn't just start with the release of 3.3.5, and 64-bit operating systems are nothing new either. Even XP had a 64-bit release. New computers being built and sold now come with a 64-bit OS by default, usually W7, and often don't even offer 32-bit as an option.
The fact is that none of this is shocking, front page news. It's been a trend since 64-bit Vista sales starting doubling 32-bit Vista sales back in early 2009. Keeping up with this kind of change in the technology their customers are using is something Blizzard needs to do a much better job of, and defending them out of ignorance doesn't help you, the people affected, or Blizzard.
Groth Jun 25th 2010 9:59AM
the quantity of people who don't get sarcasm is scary.
toddcore Jun 25th 2010 10:06AM
"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."
Oh, okay. So it IS just that you have no idea what you're talking about. Head over to steampowered.com, Valve makes their hardware survey results public and you can see the operating systems that are in use by their player base.
I'll do it for you - 39.97% of people playing games on Steam are using some sort of 64-bit OS for their gaming. More than *twice* as many people gaming on Windows 7 are using 64-bit as opposed to 32-bit.
traptinacivicsi Jun 25th 2010 10:07AM
^ I was thinking same thing, but he was putting on a pretty good show :P
TR Jun 26th 2010 11:34AM
And it's not like adding additional layers of complexity to a chat system might cause extra traffic for the system to parse or anything....
As far as decrying GearScore goes... um, this is pretty much the method the dungeon finder uses to lock you out of certain instances (e.g. HoR) at level 80 when it tells you need better gear. Granted it's abused by people with low self-esteem issues IRL to now do it others (Revenge of the Nerds, indeed), but I've yet to see anyone screaming "But I have the skillz!1!" at Blizzard for preventing them from running heroics or the ICC instances.
Teo Jun 25th 2010 9:18AM
Now now let's be precise here...anything that reduces server lag AND fucks up gearscore is good. Thanks blizz
kingoomieiii Jun 25th 2010 9:22AM
REALLY tired of gearscore hate. People misuse it. What's next, removing the Inspect window and hiding achievements to make sure no pug leader can deny players slots in his own raid?
jrizutko Jun 25th 2010 9:26AM
They're not closing the road, just adding traffic lights.
traptinacivicsi Jun 25th 2010 9:40AM
"REALLY tired of gearscore hate. People misuse it. What's next, removing the Inspect window and hiding achievements to make sure no pug leader can deny players slots in his own raid?"
This is what they want.. "This way I can hit 80, do two heroics, and sneak into ICC!!!"
catharsis80 Jun 25th 2010 11:30AM
Alt-tabbing to check gearscore on the web is serious business.
Desmentia Jun 26th 2010 12:16PM
@kingoomieiii,
That's how it's done in D&D Online. Very scary place, you have no guarantee that anyone is preforming the role they signed up for, or even at all; there's no combat log, thus no damage meters, no inspect gear, no achieves, etc. Raids are an utter crap shoot, and they really only work because everything is severely under-tuned. While Gearscore itself might not be ideal, it's a damn sight better than the opposite extreme, so I definitely agree with you that targeting Gearscore when lag rears its ugly head isn't the best precedent to set.
Kasila Jun 25th 2010 9:24AM
GS does create lag on some level- that many people hammering the server with that many requests constantly can't entirely be a good thing. By the same token it's Blizzard's server- if want to add new functionality that increases the amount of memory requests THEIR game makes to THEIR server then they are totally within their power to limit how many requests external add-ons make. The onus is then on the add-on makers to compensate for this change. Such is life.
Mike Jun 25th 2010 9:26AM
I would say the conversation at Blizz went something like
Blue: "Man, I hate GearScore. If only there was some way to get rid of it."
Red: "Yeah, we can't go changing any terms of use for it, it's not cheating, it doesn't break the game, it just lets assholes get away with being assholes."
Green: "Umm, guys? Take a look at this. Look at all the client inspect requests coming in on these logs. The servers were never designed to handle that."
Blue: "Wow, seriously? Weird that we never noticed this before."
Red: "I'd say that's causing a lot of the lag issues with players that we don't see on our internal testing servers."
Blue: "Well, I guess it's gotta go!"
jrizutko Jun 25th 2010 9:49AM
I'd say it was more like
Manager: We need to look at ways to lighten the load on the servers, can you do an analysis on server activities and suggest some ways to reduce the load without affecting user experience.
Employee (later): it looks like we can throttle back inspect request response time significantly with minimal impact on common usage.
Manager:great, lets do it.
traptinacivicsi Jun 25th 2010 9:51AM
Probably more like...
Blue: "Hmm, check out GearScore. It seems to quickly add item levels up and give an average idea of the total gear."
Red: "Huh, that's kind of neat. Though it seems some people are complaining about getting into raids now."
Blue: "Do they have gear high enough to be in there?"
Red: "Well... yes and no. Some do, but the ones running the raid ask for higher than necessary requirements. And the others are fresh out of a week or so of heroics."
Blue: "You mean they haven't even run any raids yet? Not even ToC?"
Red: "Well they complain people have high requirements for that too.."
Blue "If they are so upset why do they not start their own raids then?"
Red: "Well, it seems players are getting lazier all the time so we could try to adjust the game somehow.. we can't go changing any terms of use for it, it's not cheating, it doesn't break the game, it does however keep low geared players from sneaking in and wiping the raids though."
Blue: "Yeah, what about the guys with a high score, and low performance?"
Red: "That's just it, without any other means to verify skill people are resorting to using it primarily. As long as they still use an in game inspection tool, it should be okay."
Blue: "Oh you mean like ElitistGroup?"
Red: "Actually if you have gearscore and type /gs while targeting a player it actually inspects them, and gives you what spec their gear is for and..."
Green: "Umm, guys? Take a look at this. Look at all the client inspect requests coming in on these logs. The servers were never designed to handle that."
Blue: "Wow, seriously? Weird that we never noticed this before."
Red: "I'd say that's causing a lot of the lag issues with players that we don't see on our internal testing servers."
Blue: "Well, time to throttle it, shouldn't kill gearscore though! Not that people can't still read off their own anyway."
Red: "Right on!"
traptinacivicsi Jun 25th 2010 10:22AM
ITCS(Comments Section): People down ranking anyone who doesn't blindly hate GS. :P
I thought it was a pretty accurate description of an employee's discussion, I spent a while formatting it too, lol.
Sure jrizutko's reply was more realistic, but it lacked the humor that the OP was trying to provide.
And: "it just lets assholes get away with being assholes." Is cool? This guy seems like quite an asshole IMO, to be generalizing as such, but let's down vote me I guess..
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 11:25AM
Well I voted you up.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 2:55PM
Can't even stand that...hmm.
Hard Dominator Jun 25th 2010 9:27AM
does this mean functions like /ah getall and some others i use will work a lot slower? that's going to be a pain with posting 300 different glyphs quickly
catharsis80 Jun 25th 2010 12:18PM
See? You're already doing more scanning then you need to. If you're just posting glyphs (as do I) why in the WORLD are you scanning the entire auction house? You only need to scan glyphs. All the other things you've scanned are completely useless, and add to server requests.