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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 4 of 6)
uncaringbear Jun 25th 2010 10:13AM
I'm guessing a lot of people weren't around in the old days when you couldn't even inspect the gear of opposite faction players. If it means better overall performance for everyone, I'm totally for these changes. I would even support it if it meant we could only carry out an inspection on another player once every few minutes. Heck, if it also had the side effect of crippling a certain addon beyond any semblance of usability, I wouldn't shed one single tear.
Mij Jun 25th 2010 10:55AM
Oh Bear, you're so uncaring.
gn33101 Jun 25th 2010 10:22AM
lol! You are so right Groth! :-D
geex Jun 25th 2010 10:24AM
If only there was a way to get the server to send an electric shock to people who use gearscore
traptinacivicsi Jun 25th 2010 10:32AM
I'd like one that shocks people who lie about knowing an encounter and doing something SO stupid that they seem to have never played the game before today.
"Yeah guys I know how to do Ahune, I did it last year I'm good."
Tank proceeds to run blindly at Ahune the WHOLE TIME, getting knocked back and running in, over and over again.
Not even responding to the dps and healer crying out:
"Hey we need a tank!"
"Hey man get the adds" and the always heartwarming
"DUDE WTF!? GET OFF THE BOSS AND GET THESE F^$&*%ING ADDS!!!!!1!!"
On the other hand, why would you shock people for using such a handy tool?
Oh you mean those who ABUSE it, easy mistake..
JustinM Jun 25th 2010 10:42AM
The line between abuse and use is so infinitesimal at this point that the two are essentially synonymous.
My main is basically locked out of PUG raids outside of the occasional VOA because he's sitting at ~4850 GS, in part because he's got a Greatness card (ilvl 200, of course) that has no good, analogous replacement until ICC 25. All the raids on my server seem to want at least 5k minimum even for TOC, plus achievements, which, naturally, I don't have.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 11:30AM
Only if we can get a way to stab GS haters with a sharp needle. It doesn't have to be hot...though that'd be nice.
vanye111 Jun 25th 2010 11:57AM
Justin, thats called "equip your best iLevel gear, then put on your best effective gear once you're going"
Believe me, as an arcane mage with terrible trinket luck, I'm still using the i200 Abyssal Rune because it's far superior to everything else I've gotten for my spec.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 2:48PM
So many downvotes, so little responses.
Keveline Jun 25th 2010 10:30AM
Even if it did break GearScore, that wouldn't be a bad thing.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 11:17AM
Yes it would. The only way to break Gearscore is to so cripple the functionality available in the game that we'd all be the worse off.
rhorle Jun 25th 2010 10:44AM
It is sad to see wow.com trolling its visitors. The change impacts addon's that are nothing like gear score. Any addon that uses inspects in some way are impacted, which gearscore-like is only a sub section. This trolling was likely done because the crazies that come out of the woodwork to bash Gearscore and generate page hits.
Heck the article in "related from our partners" is a article linking directly back to this one.
Hyzenthlay Jun 25th 2010 11:08AM
What's the point in them being coy about it? GS is mentioned in the quote in the blue post, and is the only one that is.
It doesn't matter how wow.com phrased it, it wouldn't have been long before someone said "so what add-ons does this affect?" and the first answer would have been gearscore, and everything would have been pretty similar to how they are now. It's the site's job to present their articles in a manner that is relevant to as many people or possible, and like it or not, pretty much everyone as an opinion on GS, no matter how they feel about add-ons in general.
ken_thomas61 Jun 25th 2010 10:51AM
Screw throttling, they should make it so those mods don't work altogether. They serve no neccessary game purpose yet they DO create server lag. The downside of creating a game to be moddable is that sometimes people will create stupid high maintenance mods like this.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 11:34AM
Necessary purpose? No, I wouldn't say that Gearscore serves a necessary purpose. But desirable? Yes. Just like vanity pets. Or HUD frames. Or Guild Banks. Or...even GUILDS!
Yeah, there's a lot of things that aren't necessary in the game. But they can be desirable, even useful.
Gearscore is one of them. Don't agree? Well, thousands of people are using GS quite happily so...
Prove us wrong.
Don't try to come up with examples like "I saw this one guy at 6K GS who couldn't do 1k DPS" or whatever counter-arguments you think will do so. Because I'll tell you this...Gearscore is useful to give you a way to evaluate a person to see if they're measuring up without being unfair and demanding EVERYBODY do the same DPS.
Hoggersbud Jun 25th 2010 2:46PM
Can't argue so you hide behind the downvote.
Grovinofdarkhour Jun 25th 2010 10:50AM
We generally ask everybody to turn off Gearscore, as well as putting away all vanity pets, at the beginning of a raid in order to not make the lag worse for your fellow raiders. And we still get the "aw c'mons", but as soon as we ask them to explain why they need to have Gearscore running during a raid, or why they need to have another pretty picture of a birdie flapping its wings that everyone else's machines have to generate, they cannot produce a good answer.
Seriously people, turn off Gearscore and vanity pets at the door. It's just common f#$%^&@ courtesy.
(cutaia) Jun 25th 2010 11:03AM
How dare you mock my pretty flapping birdie?
BlackTiger™ Jun 25th 2010 10:50AM
HURRAY! AT LAST!
Even in BLZ people got sick and tired of GS. Blizzard, what took so long?
GS' ability to "inspect on mouse-over" can kill any server. It's like to increase number of player in Dalaran by 100.
Actually, server's lags have started when GS become too popular.
mconnor0511 Jun 25th 2010 10:59AM
@rhorle
Other add-ons provide a use, whereas GS gives partial information. Stupid morons take that partial information, and treat it as it is all of the information. Because of that, it is needlessly contributing to latency, compared to other add-ons that provide a practical use.
I think I was clearly stating that GS does not mean skill by saying what I have seen in game. Yes, it was based on using it to see what the big stink was about. I removed it out of disgust and abuse by stupid moron raid organizers. They solely base their group makeup by GS. traptinacivicsi, it's more than just a few bad examples.