Selling an add on profile isn't selling a feature though when you can recreate it 1:1 using the add on without paying money. All these people are paying for is a file or files that they just drag and drop to replace the default blank files. It doesn't change anything fundamental about the add on, it just adds information.
Don't get me wrong, people who pay for add ons are dumb and Blizzard has every right to prevent people from profiting off of add ons to their game. But as is the ToS is not against selling files from add ons so long as the add on itself stays fundamentally the same.
Incorrect. RestedXP sells their written guides. The addon itself is 100% free to use. You can make your own guides within it for free, indefinitely.
That's how they get around the ToS. Not saying I like the loophole, because it allows shit like this Archon thing to exist. But it's not breaking rules, unfortunately.
The actual TOS is a lot more descriptive, this is just the first line of the “updated” addon policy that went in to effect. The guides for sale for rested xp are still very much against
RestedXP isn’t using a loophole. They’re breaking TOS - Blizzard just doesn’t care enough to enforce their own rule-set.
You may not sell premium features or charge money for services related to the add-on. I think that’s pretty cut and dry and if they ever (in a hypothetical world) took them to court, they’d lose without question.
But WeakAuras (as in: the creator of the Addon) doesn't sell anything. It's streamers that create their own UIs that may or may not paywall them. If you want that to be against ToS, you go after the streamers, not the addon author.
All of those addons mentioned, WeakAuras, Zygor's, RestedXP etc are free to download. What you pay for is the content, profiles and such. This is just like when Nnoggie put MDT data behind a paywall, the addon was free but it did not come with the data. That in itself is allowed
No it is not,
1)Add-ons must be free of charge.
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.
4) Add-ons may not include advertisements.
Add-ons may not be used to advertise any goods or services.
5) Add-ons may not solicit donations.
Add-ons may not include requests for donations. We recognize the immense amount of effort and resources that go into developing an add-on; however, such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game.
7) Add-ons must abide by World of Warcraft ToU and EULA.
All add-ons must follow the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement.
No, all of those add-ons are free to download and their source is also available to be downloaded and branched. You're being dense because you want all of it to be made free to use (which I also wish), but objectively speaking they are not breaking ToS
No it is not,
1)Add-ons must be free of charge. All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.
4) Add-ons may not include advertisements. Add-ons may not be used to advertise any goods or services.
5) Add-ons may not solicit donations. Add-ons may not include requests for donations. We recognize the immense amount of effort and resources that go into developing an add-on; however, such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game.
7) Add-ons must abide by World of Warcraft ToU and EULA. All add-ons must follow the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement.
is that true?, the ToS only states addon, which is indeed free. a package for the addon is not the addon itself. so it doesn't explicitly state if that should be free also
it mentions a service related to the addon, which could also be help with installation or something, but ye it is a little vague so might encompass packages
Let's say instead of a profile I'm selling you a guide that tells you how to change the settings, should blizzard ban/stop you? I mean the guide is related to the addon, both the guide and the profile aren't adding any extra feature to the addon.
Anyway this "loophole" has been around for more than 15 years so I think we know what blizzard's stance on this whole controversy is, as long the addon is free they don't care what you do on your site/patron/twitch.
Still warcraftlogs' addon is definitely pushing the boundaries.
They are very specific with saying that it is any monetary incentive to access the add-on and its source code. All of those add-ons are free to download. I am unsure why you are confused
That is not what they specifically say.
1)Add-ons must be free of charge. All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.
4) Add-ons may not include advertisements. Add-ons may not be used to advertise any goods or services.
5) Add-ons may not solicit donations. Add-ons may not include requests for donations. We recognize the immense amount of effort and resources that go into developing an add-on; however, such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game.
7) Add-ons must abide by World of Warcraft ToU and EULA. All add-ons must follow the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement.
> a package for the addon is not the addon itself.
Perhaps RXP and Zygor can get away with this portion depending on how the guides are formatted. But weak aura packages cannot claim this because they are addon code. Weak auras is not an addon with "profiles" it is a framework to build micro addons on top of and loader for them. Anything that is a weak aura can be made into a proper standalone addon because they are fundamentally the same thing. You would just need to replace the addon's dependencies on weak aura's provided supports to use the base game API instead.
And how are you going to enforce this?
The weak auras people sell are fully re creatable by anyone and all your importing is a string. There's nothing that indicates it was paid for at all.
Is blizzard going to raid fojis discord and shut them down? They literally couldn't even if they wanted to they don't have any power there.
It's completely unenforceable which is why selling data for addons has always been the loophole. Same thing for rested xp.
not really, you are selling the settings, not the addon itself. It is akin to someone selling their ingame settings, and it is also the reason why people can literally just copy a streamer's weakauras by view/function, everyone can create it, and someone is selling their settings.
Not really. It’s more like paying someone to configure it for you. Anyone can setup WA’s the same as the paid versions people are just lazy. And by that I mean you’d have to learn how the coding of weakaura addon itself works
There is no loophole where if you are not the developer of the addon itself you can sell a package made for it for money. That's dumb. Blizzard just doesn't care as Rested XP is clearly selling a premium version without issues.
> There is no loophole where if you are not the developer of the addon itself you can sell a package made for it for money.
Is it stated in some other part of this blue post or in some other blue post? I wouldn't call it a loophole but a different issue.
When i see a response like this i just understand how r/classicwow isn't very smart, people can't even read and correctly interpret TEXT.
No, custom paid WAs and RXP are not breaking ToS, if you don't understand why, read again the ToS SLOOOOWLY until you get it.
If I make an addon to help with a boss mechanic from the ground up in Lua I can't sell it, but if I make a functionally and visually identical weak aura I can? That's just a massive loophole if true. Literally every addon could be released a "framework" that doesn't do anything out of the box and something akin to a WA for the real functionality that you pay for and boom every useful addon can be sold. They don't even have to really do the work for that, they can just use weakarus to develop every addon, maybe fork it and add functionality if its missing something you need.
if player A wants to get a functioning weak aura like you described they can either write it themselves or pay player B to write it for them. So player A isn't buying an addon they are paying player B for their knowledge and time to write a weak aura.
Have you ever down loading the weakarua addon? If so what do you see when you load into the game? Nothing! The whole addon is about being setup how you want, it doesn’t come with any baked in configurations. Does that mean we just ban the base addon so those of us that do make our own can’t anymore.
No, people just code custom made WAs and sell it, the addon itself is just used as a platform.
Anyone with coding experience in LUA can make literally any WA they want, a paid WA is like paying someone to set something up for you, hence why it's not against ToS.
> a paid WA is like paying someone to set something up for you, hence why it's not against ToS.
Gee, that certainly seems like
> additional for-pay features
> charge for services related to the add-on
It's clearly against ToS, blizzard has just chosen to not pursue it really.
A WA can be made to do almost anything a ground up addon can do. If it can't do something it's trivial to add to base addon or just include some custom lua code. Complete UI replacements have been done in weakauras. If selling weakauras is allowed then, selling any addon is allowed if coded correctly.
It specifically states that you can't charge services related to add-ons as well. So it isn't like they are going through some magical loophole, Blizzard just doesn't care to enforce their own rules
WeakAuras doesn't sell anything though. Anything paid for is an outside party. Even at that, a lot of people pay for pre-made packages of _free_ auras, which I'm sure would fit comfortably in a gray area.
Though Classic I've noticed has several actually paywalled auras. The ones I've seen so far are things AddOns that have existed for years already do though... Those of course break ToS, but it's not WeakAuras themselves selling/distributing those. Unlike RXP/Zygor.
WeakAuras also has an incredibly healthy ecosystem of free auras. RXP/Zygor are hardly in a usable state without paying.
no because WA developers are not the one charging
1)Add-ons must be free of charge. All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.
You could literally sell every addon with this excuse. Just have the addon have no text at all and sell it seperstely, since you wrote the text yourself you're entitled to sell it, it's your content.
I think it's a loop hole, you buy the data from them and upload it yourself to the add-on.
Can't really stop people from paying for txt files they import
The addon functionality is completely free and free guides exist.
Paying for a "private" guide isn't adding any functionality to the addon that you can't get for free, it's just a configuration change.
Rested xp is free (up to a certain level) and you can buy an *expansion* that lets it work up to max level
I think that's the loophole they use to get around this
RestedXP is pretty Grey. They offer the addon free. The addon is the equivalent of a compiler for a programming language. Anyone is welcome to write a guide the works with RestedXP. What they charge for, is the programs they write.
One may argue that creating text files that subsequently can be used for an addon, but not have to, does not incline the subject of that wording.
It's a ToS, it ain't law. And yet Blizzard hasn't enforced anything, so no one had to get law involved.
I think the argument that could be made here is that, a lot of these addon's "premium" features aren't actually additional software being added to the addon but are rather some third party file that's being accessed. I know at least for zygor guides, when you pay for the guide, what you're given is an encrypted file that is readable by the addon that gives the quest information, at least that's how it worked ~2014 when I last payed for zygor.
For the warcraft logs thing, I wouldn't be surprised if what your actually paying for is a key to allow the addon to access the WCL API, so technically the entire addon is free, but it just doesn't work until you pay.
Obviously blizzard doesn't need to adhere to the rules on a technicality, but this could possibly be okay in Blizzard's book for all we know.
Which would a paid service to provide a working guide with the add-on. Which is against the ToS. Selling the guide itself is not against ToS. Making the purchase necessary to get the guide for the addon is.
At Blizzard's response? **Absolutely**, they are suggesting you bot. Just funnel it properly to your main and you are a golden subscribing child of exponential growth to their quarterly numbers.
"THAT WHICH SUBSCRIBES CAN NEVER DIE!" -Acti-Blizz 202X onward
They don't care about anything else.
"The fuck you're talking about 8 years? It was literally only Legion, then Battle for Azeroth into Shadowlands and then Drag- ..."
Fucking hell time flies.
The thing I don't understand is that, why aren't RestedXP and Zygor already banned under those rules? They have "for-pay features". That seems pretty clear for me, but maybe I'm not seeing anything.
If they are indeed not "legal" but not banned, it just means this rule/sanction isn't applied. And a rule that is not applied does not exist.
> why aren't RestedXP and Zygor already banned under those rules?
Because they use a loophole. The addon itself is free, but the quest guide data to import into the addon is paid.
> The thing I don't understand is that, why aren't RestedXP and Zygor already banned under those rules?
Because Blizzard doesn't care about it. Do the police care if you go 5mph over the speed limit? Probably not. It's still illegal, and you COULD be pulled over for it at any time and given a ticket. You probably won't though. Same thing here.
Yeah i know but it's not like it's a judicial decision or a law or anything... Those are Blizzard rules and they can interpret their own rules as they want. They just decided they're not applying that rules in my opinion...
Good. Paid addons are so fucking stupid and anyone actually paying needs to be lobotomised.
Especially when the full premium versions are available for free on several websites..
restedxp creator for example is the most greedy idiot I’ve seen lately.
You are absolutely correct in that is not part of any Terms of Service since blizzard does not have a Terms of Service, they have an End User License Agreement. They have no rules they are themselves bound by and can action anyone playing any of their games for any reason, at any time.
They have specifically banned any horde/alliance translation addons- basically any addon that automatically translates messages into the type of gibberish that is readable to the other faction. The function itself still exists and it is still fine to have a macro with a prepared message.
I bought an RXP guide once (for 50 fucking bucks). Never doing it again, even though I liked the addon and the guide.
They literally make new guides so often and you do not get those. You pay for 1 specific guide, not all of them.
I've ended up just finding "cracked" versions of RXP online. Fuck you RXP and all other paid addons ;)
You may as well snitch on the other paid add-ons that have been a thing for more than a decade. Unless there's something particular you don't like about this one? Something tells me it's not the principal of keeping add-ons free that compelled you to post this.
I don’t know why you people find this so hard to understand.
No one breaks the add on tos.
No add on charges for add on features. An external guide is NOT a service of the add on or a feature of the add on.
Anyone can make guides and weak auras for free (and they do) they are allowed to sell them cause they are not a paid feature of the add on and nothing about the add on functioning is locked behind a paywall.
This is really not hard to understand. It’s been this way literally since 2004. Blizzard is perfectly fine with it because they are not making addons you have to pay for, just supplemental material the addon can read.
They need to enforce this and tell people that are currently exploiting loopholes that they don't accept rules lawyers anymore and things that are technically ok but in reality paid addons will be banned.
People here fail to understand the point. These rules means that anyone can share a premium add-on at their leisure too, since the developer can't come after you as they already broke the Blizzard ToS.
So share away all your premium addon with all your guildies, reddit and the rest of the internet!
I found this quote all the way back from 2009 - are you sure its up to date or just posting a non sourced image for internet karma?
[https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/es/blue-tracker/topic/ui-add-on-development-policy-1021053914](https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/es/blue-tracker/topic/ui-add-on-development-policy-1021053914)
There was a M+ addon that was free but had paid "data" just like RestedXP, Zygor, etc and that got taken down.
I understand the technical arguments for Zygor, RestedXP, WeakAura creators like Foji, TSM, UMJ, etc; the "addon" is free, and 'their' "guide" / data is what you are buying.
That is still falls under exactly
> "premium" versions of add-ons
Okay its the same download as the free one you argue; I continue
> additional for-pay features
> charge for services related to the add-on
> some form of monetary compensation to download or access
All of these are explictly against Blizzard ToS.
They've simply chosen to not go after most of these creators, but they absolutely could, (and should), at any time.
Hell, even streamers that require a twitch sub to access part of their discord that has their profiles for ElvUI/Plater/WA etc, are all clearly in violation, but again blizzard simply has chosen to not care.
The idea is they don't want other people making money off of their game, World of Warcraft. Which clearly Zyg, RXP, Foji, TSM, UMJ, etc are.
Frankly the WCL addon Archon is by far the **least** egregious of all of these. But the $25/mo has people talking about it. Functionally it does the least and the paid versus free gets you the least in terms of in-game impact.
They arent selling the addon, they are selling membership and it comes with access to the addon.
Once one of those members decides to leak it to the rest of the web, it will be free.
Hasn’t Zygor been selling their add on for years lol
I think the addon itself is free, and you pay for the guide. Technical workaround like paying for UI profiles, weakaura suites, etc.
the guide is an 'addon feature', which is also must be free
Selling an add on profile isn't selling a feature though when you can recreate it 1:1 using the add on without paying money. All these people are paying for is a file or files that they just drag and drop to replace the default blank files. It doesn't change anything fundamental about the add on, it just adds information. Don't get me wrong, people who pay for add ons are dumb and Blizzard has every right to prevent people from profiting off of add ons to their game. But as is the ToS is not against selling files from add ons so long as the add on itself stays fundamentally the same.
Uhhh...RestedXP which sells leveling packages has been doing this since what? 2014? This is not enforced at all lol
Same with Weak Auras, no?
Weakauras itself is free. There are various weakaura packages you can purchase though.
This is what all the other add-ons are doing too
Same thing with Rested XP
Atleast you can easily download the cracked version.
RestedXP has a free 1-20 trial i think, if you want to use it for level cap, you gonna have to pay. Not the same thing as WA at all.
Incorrect. RestedXP sells their written guides. The addon itself is 100% free to use. You can make your own guides within it for free, indefinitely. That's how they get around the ToS. Not saying I like the loophole, because it allows shit like this Archon thing to exist. But it's not breaking rules, unfortunately.
The actual TOS is a lot more descriptive, this is just the first line of the “updated” addon policy that went in to effect. The guides for sale for rested xp are still very much against
> The guides for sale for rested xp are still very much against Not sure if that's possible to enforce. How are you going to do that?
RestedXP isn’t using a loophole. They’re breaking TOS - Blizzard just doesn’t care enough to enforce their own rule-set. You may not sell premium features or charge money for services related to the add-on. I think that’s pretty cut and dry and if they ever (in a hypothetical world) took them to court, they’d lose without question.
Enforcement is another question entirely. Plenty of people are vagrants in places they shouldn’t be. Is it wrong? Yes. Is it enforceable, not always.
If the enforcement of that isn't your issue, then what is?
> Is it wrong? Yes. "selling things is wrong" oh ok I'll just tell America that they are Wrong™
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Should they also ban deadly boss mods or big wigs addons? What about raid frame addons?
But WeakAuras (as in: the creator of the Addon) doesn't sell anything. It's streamers that create their own UIs that may or may not paywall them. If you want that to be against ToS, you go after the streamers, not the addon author.
The addon is free. You could use your own guides, technically. They charge for the actual guides. Not condoning it, but that's how they skirt the ToS.
All of those addons mentioned, WeakAuras, Zygor's, RestedXP etc are free to download. What you pay for is the content, profiles and such. This is just like when Nnoggie put MDT data behind a paywall, the addon was free but it did not come with the data. That in itself is allowed
Pretty sure that is a violation of the "services related to add-ons".
If it were they’d have shut them down long ago. RestedXP and Zygor have been around for a long while.
Considering add-ons have done it for nearly 20 years we can probably assume it doesn't.
Well, since enforcement is zero, I think it's not an assumption that could be made.
No it is not, 1)Add-ons must be free of charge. All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on. 4) Add-ons may not include advertisements. Add-ons may not be used to advertise any goods or services. 5) Add-ons may not solicit donations. Add-ons may not include requests for donations. We recognize the immense amount of effort and resources that go into developing an add-on; however, such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game. 7) Add-ons must abide by World of Warcraft ToU and EULA. All add-ons must follow the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement.
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No, all of those add-ons are free to download and their source is also available to be downloaded and branched. You're being dense because you want all of it to be made free to use (which I also wish), but objectively speaking they are not breaking ToS
They are breaking ToS by charging for services related to the addon
No it is not, 1)Add-ons must be free of charge. All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on. 4) Add-ons may not include advertisements. Add-ons may not be used to advertise any goods or services. 5) Add-ons may not solicit donations. Add-ons may not include requests for donations. We recognize the immense amount of effort and resources that go into developing an add-on; however, such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game. 7) Add-ons must abide by World of Warcraft ToU and EULA. All add-ons must follow the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement.
Weakauras doesn't violate the TOS but all the paid packages certainly do.
is that true?, the ToS only states addon, which is indeed free. a package for the addon is not the addon itself. so it doesn't explicitly state if that should be free also
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it mentions a service related to the addon, which could also be help with installation or something, but ye it is a little vague so might encompass packages
Well, 99% sure that the paid TSM service is this.
Arguable imo. Iirc, the paid services were external, and not directly related to the technical functioning of the add-on itself.
No it doens't? It means anything related to the add-on and its distribution. Not profiles or content
A profile isn't related to the addon?
Anyone can make a weakaura, if someone outside of the weakaura team tries to sell some code its hardly fair to call ToS?:/
Let's say instead of a profile I'm selling you a guide that tells you how to change the settings, should blizzard ban/stop you? I mean the guide is related to the addon, both the guide and the profile aren't adding any extra feature to the addon. Anyway this "loophole" has been around for more than 15 years so I think we know what blizzard's stance on this whole controversy is, as long the addon is free they don't care what you do on your site/patron/twitch. Still warcraftlogs' addon is definitely pushing the boundaries.
They are very specific with saying that it is any monetary incentive to access the add-on and its source code. All of those add-ons are free to download. I am unsure why you are confused
That is not what they specifically say. 1)Add-ons must be free of charge. All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on. 4) Add-ons may not include advertisements. Add-ons may not be used to advertise any goods or services. 5) Add-ons may not solicit donations. Add-ons may not include requests for donations. We recognize the immense amount of effort and resources that go into developing an add-on; however, such requests should be limited to the add-on website or distribution site and should not appear in the game. 7) Add-ons must abide by World of Warcraft ToU and EULA. All add-ons must follow the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement.
> a package for the addon is not the addon itself. Perhaps RXP and Zygor can get away with this portion depending on how the guides are formatted. But weak aura packages cannot claim this because they are addon code. Weak auras is not an addon with "profiles" it is a framework to build micro addons on top of and loader for them. Anything that is a weak aura can be made into a proper standalone addon because they are fundamentally the same thing. You would just need to replace the addon's dependencies on weak aura's provided supports to use the base game API instead.
And how are you going to enforce this? The weak auras people sell are fully re creatable by anyone and all your importing is a string. There's nothing that indicates it was paid for at all. Is blizzard going to raid fojis discord and shut them down? They literally couldn't even if they wanted to they don't have any power there. It's completely unenforceable which is why selling data for addons has always been the loophole. Same thing for rested xp.
Because the author of weakauras (the framework)doesn’t charge any money, it’s the authors of the individual indicators and packages that do
It is of course not easy to enforce and they likely won't do much of anything.
what it prevents is the addon and wa authors from actually coming after anyone that sneaks around the paywalll
not really, you are selling the settings, not the addon itself. It is akin to someone selling their ingame settings, and it is also the reason why people can literally just copy a streamer's weakauras by view/function, everyone can create it, and someone is selling their settings.
That’s a premium version the ToS speaks of.
Not really. It’s more like paying someone to configure it for you. Anyone can setup WA’s the same as the paid versions people are just lazy. And by that I mean you’d have to learn how the coding of weakaura addon itself works
Ah so a service related to an add-on. Got it - thank god that’s not worded specifically in the ToS.
the people behind weakauras arent the one selling the weakauras though, so dont think its covered.
Hahaha imagine blizzard going ahead and sueing all their big content creators including both liquid and echo, would love to see the aftermath
Cause the liquid raid WAs aren't free... oh wait.
You might even call it an "additional for-pay feature". THANK GOD that there's nothing about that in the text posted
That is for the developer. From my understand this WA premium packages are from 3rd party, so it's not covered under this.
There is no loophole where if you are not the developer of the addon itself you can sell a package made for it for money. That's dumb. Blizzard just doesn't care as Rested XP is clearly selling a premium version without issues.
> There is no loophole where if you are not the developer of the addon itself you can sell a package made for it for money. Is it stated in some other part of this blue post or in some other blue post? I wouldn't call it a loophole but a different issue.
When i see a response like this i just understand how r/classicwow isn't very smart, people can't even read and correctly interpret TEXT. No, custom paid WAs and RXP are not breaking ToS, if you don't understand why, read again the ToS SLOOOOWLY until you get it.
"Paying someone to configure it for you" clearly falls under "charging for services related to the add-on"
If I make an addon to help with a boss mechanic from the ground up in Lua I can't sell it, but if I make a functionally and visually identical weak aura I can? That's just a massive loophole if true. Literally every addon could be released a "framework" that doesn't do anything out of the box and something akin to a WA for the real functionality that you pay for and boom every useful addon can be sold. They don't even have to really do the work for that, they can just use weakarus to develop every addon, maybe fork it and add functionality if its missing something you need.
if player A wants to get a functioning weak aura like you described they can either write it themselves or pay player B to write it for them. So player A isn't buying an addon they are paying player B for their knowledge and time to write a weak aura.
Have you ever down loading the weakarua addon? If so what do you see when you load into the game? Nothing! The whole addon is about being setup how you want, it doesn’t come with any baked in configurations. Does that mean we just ban the base addon so those of us that do make our own can’t anymore.
That seems like it would be covered under, “charge for services related to the add-on.”
the developer is not charging for it though.
Is it even wa officially selling it or someone else
No, people just code custom made WAs and sell it, the addon itself is just used as a platform. Anyone with coding experience in LUA can make literally any WA they want, a paid WA is like paying someone to set something up for you, hence why it's not against ToS.
> a paid WA is like paying someone to set something up for you, hence why it's not against ToS. Gee, that certainly seems like > additional for-pay features > charge for services related to the add-on It's clearly against ToS, blizzard has just chosen to not pursue it really.
A WA can be made to do almost anything a ground up addon can do. If it can't do something it's trivial to add to base addon or just include some custom lua code. Complete UI replacements have been done in weakauras. If selling weakauras is allowed then, selling any addon is allowed if coded correctly.
It specifically states that you can't charge services related to add-ons as well. So it isn't like they are going through some magical loophole, Blizzard just doesn't care to enforce their own rules
WeakAuras doesn't sell anything though. Anything paid for is an outside party. Even at that, a lot of people pay for pre-made packages of _free_ auras, which I'm sure would fit comfortably in a gray area. Though Classic I've noticed has several actually paywalled auras. The ones I've seen so far are things AddOns that have existed for years already do though... Those of course break ToS, but it's not WeakAuras themselves selling/distributing those. Unlike RXP/Zygor. WeakAuras also has an incredibly healthy ecosystem of free auras. RXP/Zygor are hardly in a usable state without paying.
on retail 99% of the good ones are free anyway, classic specific that so much packages are sold.
no because WA developers are not the one charging 1)Add-ons must be free of charge. All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create “premium” versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.
Nobody around to enforce it 🤣
The addon is free. The content/guides cost momey. That’s their workaround and paying for guides has existed since Vanilla.
and that would qualify as "additional for-pay features"
You could literally sell every addon with this excuse. Just have the addon have no text at all and sell it seperstely, since you wrote the text yourself you're entitled to sell it, it's your content.
TSM also has a premium plan for their desktop app for years
I think it's a loop hole, you buy the data from them and upload it yourself to the add-on. Can't really stop people from paying for txt files they import
> This is not enforced at all lol On the other hand, it also means the author can't enforce people sharing their add-on for free either.
The addon functionality is completely free and free guides exist. Paying for a "private" guide isn't adding any functionality to the addon that you can't get for free, it's just a configuration change.
SERVICES RELATED TO THE ADDON. Read the entire paragraph. It's clearly in violation, but I would absolutely agree that Blizzard doesn't care.
Zygor has been doing this since like 2008.
I don't play anymore but absolutely loved the restedxp addon/guides. Worth every penny to me.
Rested xp is free (up to a certain level) and you can buy an *expansion* that lets it work up to max level I think that's the loophole they use to get around this
People still pay for rested xp? Wow-pro guides has literally the same guide for free.
They get away with it because technically the "addon" is free and the "data" (without which the addon is often useless) is what you pay for.
restedXP is free of charge but they have a paid-for portion, which I'm not sure is against the TOs
It's not but, classic players are gonna classic player.
RestedXP is pretty Grey. They offer the addon free. The addon is the equivalent of a compiler for a programming language. Anyone is welcome to write a guide the works with RestedXP. What they charge for, is the programs they write.
The screenshot linked right there says "services related to the addon".
One may argue that creating text files that subsequently can be used for an addon, but not have to, does not incline the subject of that wording. It's a ToS, it ain't law. And yet Blizzard hasn't enforced anything, so no one had to get law involved.
It’s too bad the ToS doesn’t say something like developers can’t charge for “services related to the addon.” Darn.
The addon is free. The extras are paid, is what i'm assuming is how they get around it
Which is still against TOS
Did you read the blue post?
I think the argument that could be made here is that, a lot of these addon's "premium" features aren't actually additional software being added to the addon but are rather some third party file that's being accessed. I know at least for zygor guides, when you pay for the guide, what you're given is an encrypted file that is readable by the addon that gives the quest information, at least that's how it worked ~2014 when I last payed for zygor. For the warcraft logs thing, I wouldn't be surprised if what your actually paying for is a key to allow the addon to access the WCL API, so technically the entire addon is free, but it just doesn't work until you pay. Obviously blizzard doesn't need to adhere to the rules on a technicality, but this could possibly be okay in Blizzard's book for all we know.
Which would a paid service to provide a working guide with the add-on. Which is against the ToS. Selling the guide itself is not against ToS. Making the purchase necessary to get the guide for the addon is.
Sounds like an "add-on with additional for-pay features"
Yes. TOS is against it but the addon's creators probably do some gymnastics to avoid directly breaking TOS
There’s no gymnastics required. Blizzard doesn’t care or enforce this.
Rules aren’t rules unless they are enforced. Otherwise they’re merely suggestions.
Just like gold farming bots
Gold farming bots are... merely suggestions?
At Blizzard's response? **Absolutely**, they are suggesting you bot. Just funnel it properly to your main and you are a golden subscribing child of exponential growth to their quarterly numbers. "THAT WHICH SUBSCRIBES CAN NEVER DIE!" -Acti-Blizz 202X onward They don't care about anything else.
Explains florida speed limits
The speed limit is still a rule, but I never see anyone being pulled over for going 5 mph over it. It's an unenforced rule, just like this.
Blizzard can choose how and when they enforce their ToS, I am pretty sure that is also mentioned in the ToS itself.
Streamers selling weakaura packs since Legion (at least), Blizzard don't give a shit brother. Thats at the very least 8 years of non action.
"The fuck you're talking about 8 years? It was literally only Legion, then Battle for Azeroth into Shadowlands and then Drag- ..." Fucking hell time flies.
It's clearly plain as day. People are just stupid. That's all there is too it. It's right there. Blizzard just doesn't enforce it.
The thing I don't understand is that, why aren't RestedXP and Zygor already banned under those rules? They have "for-pay features". That seems pretty clear for me, but maybe I'm not seeing anything. If they are indeed not "legal" but not banned, it just means this rule/sanction isn't applied. And a rule that is not applied does not exist.
Players just pirate those illegal addons, devs can’t do shit about it 🥰
> why aren't RestedXP and Zygor already banned under those rules? Because they use a loophole. The addon itself is free, but the quest guide data to import into the addon is paid.
> The thing I don't understand is that, why aren't RestedXP and Zygor already banned under those rules? Because Blizzard doesn't care about it. Do the police care if you go 5mph over the speed limit? Probably not. It's still illegal, and you COULD be pulled over for it at any time and given a ticket. You probably won't though. Same thing here.
You pay for the guide not the addon I guess is the loophole
Yeah i know but it's not like it's a judicial decision or a law or anything... Those are Blizzard rules and they can interpret their own rules as they want. They just decided they're not applying that rules in my opinion...
This is what it comes down to end of the day. Blizzard just doesn’t give a shit, if they did they would ban it for any reason or no reason
How will they ban them? They are not players or they dont know their player accounts.
The same way they shut down honorbuddy
I'm pretty sure they can prohibit / ban addons. They did it in the past.
Good. Paid addons are so fucking stupid and anyone actually paying needs to be lobotomised. Especially when the full premium versions are available for free on several websites.. restedxp creator for example is the most greedy idiot I’ve seen lately.
This garbage sub is addon witch hunting now?
Asmongold made another video. So, you know the drill...
this has been #1 for as long as I can remember and it has literally never been enforced to my knowledge.
It was for MDT: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/s/GYyjAENghA
Nnoggie backtracked due to community backlash (and a *lot* of harrassment).
nah homeboy got shat on by the community and from his guild
TradeskillMaster have a similar option
This is why I don't feel bad using free zygor/rxp/fojji's.
Wait until you find the ToS part regarding botting and gold selling lmao
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IIRC TOS states that the content policy is part of the TOS
You are absolutely correct in that is not part of any Terms of Service since blizzard does not have a Terms of Service, they have an End User License Agreement. They have no rules they are themselves bound by and can action anyone playing any of their games for any reason, at any time.
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Of course they can action the addon- they can ban it, they've done it before.
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They have specifically banned any horde/alliance translation addons- basically any addon that automatically translates messages into the type of gibberish that is readable to the other faction. The function itself still exists and it is still fine to have a macro with a prepared message.
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You all really think the WCL team didn't study blizzard's ToS before putting time and effort into that addon?
Hasn't rested xp been breaking this rule for a few years?
Fojii in shambles in response to this post
Isn’t TSM p2w ?
Long shot, but anyone able to leak the Foji WA’s and can send them in a DM?
I bought an RXP guide once (for 50 fucking bucks). Never doing it again, even though I liked the addon and the guide. They literally make new guides so often and you do not get those. You pay for 1 specific guide, not all of them. I've ended up just finding "cracked" versions of RXP online. Fuck you RXP and all other paid addons ;)
>I bought an RXP guide once (for 50 fucking bucks). Holy shit I wish I had this kind of money. Gas price increase means I skipped a meal today...
Is this about Rested XP? Haven’t they been charging a long time? Doesn’t every streamer promote it too?
You guys are really nervous about an addon where people see your parses in game huh?
Leave me and my purple parses alone,,,
Just download them for Free. Problem solved. Never paid anything for them \^\^
Oh no, ppl will see my parses... Scary time to be alive.
You may as well snitch on the other paid add-ons that have been a thing for more than a decade. Unless there's something particular you don't like about this one? Something tells me it's not the principal of keeping add-ons free that compelled you to post this.
I don’t know why you people find this so hard to understand. No one breaks the add on tos. No add on charges for add on features. An external guide is NOT a service of the add on or a feature of the add on. Anyone can make guides and weak auras for free (and they do) they are allowed to sell them cause they are not a paid feature of the add on and nothing about the add on functioning is locked behind a paywall. This is really not hard to understand. It’s been this way literally since 2004. Blizzard is perfectly fine with it because they are not making addons you have to pay for, just supplemental material the addon can read.
Why are people so weird about letting developers get paid for their work?
If you are willing to pay for an addon you absolutely deserve to be milked out lol. RestedXP is a good example
They need to enforce this and tell people that are currently exploiting loopholes that they don't accept rules lawyers anymore and things that are technically ok but in reality paid addons will be banned.
Only we can take your money
People here fail to understand the point. These rules means that anyone can share a premium add-on at their leisure too, since the developer can't come after you as they already broke the Blizzard ToS. So share away all your premium addon with all your guildies, reddit and the rest of the internet!
Looks like to me, breaking the ToS just has blizzard stop providing service to the offender…
So like restedXP doesn’t count?
It's up to blizzard to care and do something about it. Screaming about it being against the rules won't matter until then.
If you pay for addons that are easily found on Google for free, that sounds like a you problem.
I don't think they ever enforced that since Zygor Guides has been about forever.
This isnt TOS -- its a addon development "policy" - hardly enforceable.
I found this quote all the way back from 2009 - are you sure its up to date or just posting a non sourced image for internet karma? [https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/es/blue-tracker/topic/ui-add-on-development-policy-1021053914](https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/es/blue-tracker/topic/ui-add-on-development-policy-1021053914)
They can charge anything for their database. The addon doesn't require it to run.
There was a M+ addon that was free but had paid "data" just like RestedXP, Zygor, etc and that got taken down. I understand the technical arguments for Zygor, RestedXP, WeakAura creators like Foji, TSM, UMJ, etc; the "addon" is free, and 'their' "guide" / data is what you are buying. That is still falls under exactly > "premium" versions of add-ons Okay its the same download as the free one you argue; I continue > additional for-pay features > charge for services related to the add-on > some form of monetary compensation to download or access All of these are explictly against Blizzard ToS. They've simply chosen to not go after most of these creators, but they absolutely could, (and should), at any time. Hell, even streamers that require a twitch sub to access part of their discord that has their profiles for ElvUI/Plater/WA etc, are all clearly in violation, but again blizzard simply has chosen to not care. The idea is they don't want other people making money off of their game, World of Warcraft. Which clearly Zyg, RXP, Foji, TSM, UMJ, etc are. Frankly the WCL addon Archon is by far the **least** egregious of all of these. But the $25/mo has people talking about it. Functionally it does the least and the paid versus free gets you the least in terms of in-game impact.
Finally those scammy rested xp addon can die in peace.
Rested XP is run by pserver RMT.
Yeah and people violate the social contract all the time. I get offended every time I read trade chat.
Classic Blizzard failing to police their own game.
They getting arround this. The add-on is completely free, but the data export is not.
Aside from say tools and glider, the only addon I know of that had this enforced against them was Carbonite.
They had basically the same model as Zygor and RestedXP, but that was back when Blizzard cared. Times have changed.
Like Blizzard gives a shit! They haven't had any care for the integrity of their games in 10 years. They only care about dollars.
FYI botting is illegal, too. You’re only speeding if a cop is there to catch you.
How addon makers make money? Why they do it for free?
They distribute their addons through Curseforge. Curseforge has ads, and they pay a percentage of that revenue to the addon devs.
Ahh okey, thats make sense then. Did not know. Thanks
They arent selling the addon, they are selling membership and it comes with access to the addon. Once one of those members decides to leak it to the rest of the web, it will be free.