Posts with tag avr

It is a rare occurence in the World of Warcraft that a player-made addon attains such great heights in effectiveness and popularity that it is essentially quashed. One of the most recent examples of an addon overstepping its bounds was AVR, the augmented reality mod that allowed players to "draw" on the game world. While the main purpose of the addon was to show players physical areas and locations to move to or be safe in during Icecrown boss encounters, the real treasure was buried in AVR's sharing feature.

What AVR did is not doable anymore, since Blizzard removed the ability for addons to do the type of "drawing" on the world that it showcased. Other addons like Antiarc's Poison Swapper were just too powerful and forced Blizzard's hand in changing the way rogue poisons work.

Addons have a rich history in World of Warcraft, with many of our favorites gone the way of the dinosaurs. Which addons, for better or worse, do you wish were still in game? Any addons that you miss from the early days like Cosmos and player-made minigames? Sound off in the comments.

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If you haven't already heard among the throngs of vuvuzela-esque cries of "Gearscore is dead," Blizzard has decided to add a throttling time limitation to inspect requests that some addons use to quickly check to see what a character has equipped and what class that character is. The most notorious addons that use these inspection requests are "mouseover" addons that pull data about a character into a tooltip and Gearscore.

There have been a lot of misconceptions about Blizzard's change, so it would be beneficial to clear those misconceptions up.

Ready Check focuses on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Icecrown Citadel or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses.

Blizzard announced last week that the mod known as Augmented Virtual Reality will be broken and non-functional as of the release of patch 3.3.5. We'll get into some of the details here in a second or three, but this officially means that if you're using AVR to work on Icecrown Citadel, you're officially using a mod or method in a way that Blizzard does not intend. It doesn't mean you're exploiting or cheating, necessarily, but it does mean that you're not quite straight-shooting the encounters the way the game is meant to be played. Your mileage may vary on whether you care.

If you're not familiar with AVR or AVR Encounters, it's probably fairly important for you to understand the mods for the context of this conversation. AVR, at its base, lets you draw stuff on the screen. These drawings will be seen by everyone else in the raid. Even more importantly, the combination of mods has the ability to draw stuff for you. If you're going to emanate a 10-yard circle of death around you in the next seven seconds, AVR will draw a 10-yard circle around you that everyone can see. Plenty of warning, ample visibility. Why does it matter?

Suffer, mortals, as your pathetic mod betrays you! Come patch 3.3.5, Blizzard is disabling the functionality of the ultra-useful Augmented Virtual Reality (AVR) addon. The popular mod allows three-dimensional images to be shared between party members in real time to aid in raid strategy and positioning. It is perhaps best known for making the Sindragosa encounter a snap during the ice blocking phase (and, of course, for sharing crudely drawn pictures of genitalia).

Blizzard poster Bashiok broke the news of AVR's impending demise, citing its invasive nature and the fact that it takes away from the need for on-the-spot decision making:

Bashiok -- AVR Mod Broken in 3.3.5

This is a notice that we're making changes in 3.3.5 in attempts to break the ability for the AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality) mod to continue functioning. For those unaware, this mod allows players to draw in the 3D space of the game world, which can then be shared with others who are also using the mod. In some cases this manifests itself through drawing/tagging/defacing the game world, but more popularly is used to give visual guides for dungeon and raid encounters.

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The full announcement after the break.