redirecting back to normal forum channel

[Balgair]

I really don't get the point of breaking something that's been perfectly fine for over 14 years...

[1974ER]

@All: My understanding (, which may be entirely wrong) is that we are "collateral damage" and the primary target was actually the LFG idea for Classic...

On additional note... Sadly, trying to run CP now also breaks the standard /who until one logs out and back in... :(:(

@Bringoutyourdead: While horribly inefficient... Would it possible (and allowed) to manually edit character level (and other updates) into an existing .lua file and upload those?

Or to somehow allow us to capture data from manual applications of /who commands? So we could at least force updates on our own characters...

[BambisFaline]

I'm still getting guild spam, so there must be a way to scrape names somehow.

[bringoutyourdead]

Just disable CensusPlus and ClassicCensusPlus for now.
The who library will not work at all as it doesn't have direct access to Hardware Events (what ever those are)

I have been trying different ideas as how to work within the new rules.. and it hasn't been easy.
using a slash command to invoke the /who process works.. once.
apparently pressing a key is not a hardware event

I have been doing a lot of google searches trying to find anything that describes what Blizzard classifies as a Hardware Event in the game.. but I just haven't found anything useful.


It doesn't help that all of this is requiring me to relearn all the process rules and LUA programming all over again.. as I hadn't really needed them since the inception of cross-realms.

[bringoutyourdead]

my question on the guild spam is it for an existing character.. or have you just created a new character.

If old.. well the data was available then
if new.. they must have a new way to capture.. maybe a bot is sitting near the level 1 spawn places capturing names as the are first in world.

[BambisFaline]

my question on the guild spam is it for an existing character.. or have you just created a new character.

If old.. well the data was available then
if new.. they must have a new way to capture.. maybe a bot is sitting near the level 1 spawn places capturing names as the are first in world.

It was an old character. I can try it with a new one.

I also went over to Curse and looked up their guild spam addons. They continue to be updated and the comments section doesn't seem to indicate any problems of this nature as far as I could see. I may have missed something.

[adaz]

Going to miss having this data available. blah thanks for trying to get it to work and all the hard work over the years.

[bringoutyourdead]

You are welcome, I have (mostly) enjoyed working on the addons.
And while it is discouraging, don't give up hope.

I have spent the last few hours looking at the latest Guild spammer addons to see how they are attempting to work around the blockage.
And I see they came to the same conclusion that I have.

Using a macro to call a function within an addon to call the C_FriendsList.SendWho() function works for a single call.
Creating a screen button element to be click to do the same thing will also work.
But there are issues.

While their purpose for getting the data is player intrusive - Forcing whispers and Guild Invites on unknowning people.
And your purpose for getting the data is by design is as low an impact as possible for the game and invisible for anyone not running the addon.
I am not above returning the favor and leeching off of their work and problem solving.. after all they did it with our work.

This whole problem has cropped up at nearly the worst timing possible for me.. I currently have very limited time for play/programming, and might not get free of work loads until after the new year.

I will be working on this as I can but the final solution to this problem will be slow to come and tedious, both to develop and for users to use.

For now you must excuse me.,,
I need to find some strong soap, after the last few hours, I need to wash the slimy feeling from my body

[bringoutyourdead]

I have been getting info gathering help from the author side of CurseForge and I replied with the following after a suggestion.

This is the sort of thing I am investigating myself... but it is painfully slow to get data.


At best you can not do a request more frequently then once every five seconds.. or the server rejects the request.

And since you can only get a maximum of 50 characters in a single request reply... most requests will be marked incomplete.

This means you have to use finer and finer sub-setting until you get a complete flag.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that you get higher and higher percentage of character duplicate captures and your efficiency of new characters per query goes way down.


This also means that you get many repetitions in your results... so a busy realm could need hundreds of queries.


Let us say that for a MEDIUM realm ( in the upper half of that classification) requires 200 queries to process all levels to complete status.

At 12 queries/minute that runs to 16 and 2/3 minutes of doing nothing but staring at the screen and clicking on a screen button for that long.


That really is not viable for players.. a more reasonable situation would be having a button on the screen that they press, when they remember to, while they are actively playing the game. which would probably make a MEDIUM realm run take more then one hour.


When CensusPlus was working, I was getting regular reports that the highest populated realms were taking one to two hours for each census run.

The higher the realm population the more targeted the query requests have to be crafted, and the higher the likelihood the data captured will have duplicates.

Using this manual approach means these top population realms will probably take six, twelve or maybe even more hours to complete one census run.

and then I remembered another delay issue.

Oh and to throw in one more delay factor...

You can not make that who request if your character is 'In Combat'

So if you are playing the game, even if you were trying to maximize the speed of census gathering.. you are going to hit speed bumps.

This is even more likely if you are on a PVP realm.

[BambisFaline]

I have to admit that I am disinclined to spend an hour sitting in SW pressing a button to get a census.

Sure, with this method I can be out playing, but having a button sit on my screen isn't something that I would want either.

It's sad that Blizz did this. It didn't stop the guild spammers, who are desperate enough to hit that button for an hour or so.

I'd rather they spent the effort to stop the guild spammers than people who were just trying to get an LFG-type thing working in Classic. But "muh community."

Do you think it's time to just retire the census. I mean, Bringoutthedead hasn't played WoW in how long? He's taking time to keep this addon and site running for a game he doesn't play anymore. Kudos to him, certainly.

But maybe it's time to say good-bye to the census since Blizz is making it so hard to run?

[Poisonenvy]

I think it's up to the guys who are putting in all the hard work on this site and the addon to decide whether or not it is reasonable for them to spend the time and effort on it.

From a purely personal point of view, I'd be VERY sad to see this site go because it will just be another thing that responsible guild leaders lose, whilst trying to run and maintain their guilds. We've already lost a lot due to Blizzard's "improvements" both in-game and out, and it just feels almost like they're deliberately trying to kill off guilds (or at least, guilds who have some cohesion and longevity to them, as opposed to pop-up "community" type guilds).

[bringoutyourdead]

I am by definition tip toeing on top of that fence which seems to be very poorly supported and ready to collapse under me at any moment.

I fall to oblivion on one side,
If I can not make the code work to a level that people will be willing to use it.. it isn't worth the time.
There will always be die hards.. but even they will give up once we our obviously below critical mass.

On the other hand as things stand.. I do not blame anyone for giving up hope.. but do try to be patient.

There are a number of coding groups who are trying to recover lost functionality by pushing the code up the limits that Blizzard has set.
Blizzard will not tell us what those limits really are.. which allows them to change the limits in the future as they please without having to explain why.
It is a game of cat and mouse (sigh).

Looking to the other side of the fence all I is see is the void.
CensusPlus (and ClassicC+) really only make sense if WarcraftRealms can accept and process the census data.
If the site can not handle the data... well the fork when it gets to final mostly working stage will get the data you see in game, so why should I bother.
Sadly I have not been able to get Metalbeast to show me progress on the site after the first initial incomplete push with Classic going active.

So what happens from here? shrug.

I will keep working on the addon code for a time at least.
Either until it becomes obvious that no one can figure out a way to make the code reasonable for users.
Or I blow up and Metalbeast tells me he won't have time to update the site until (hell freezes over???)

[BambisFaline]

I always posted the census in Trade and LookingForGroup. I've done it so long I'm known for it now. ("Current Moon Guard online population: 1859 Alliance")

So there is interest out there. I don't know about the cost and stress of running a site for it, especially since they are adding two new races.

But I would love to see the addon continue...if we could make it automated again.

Strange. If the whole point of killing it was to prevent the Classic people from running their on LFG, why break it on Retail?

[bringoutyourdead]

Just watched Ian on YouTube.
Need to get CensusPlus ready for one new race on each side before Blizzcon, so I will add the visual spaces with my current rework.

I have also chatted in zone chat results of latest Census run.. but have never gotten any response back.

Why is the question and we will probably never know.


There is a light at the end of the tunnel and while we will not have automation again.. it should be mostly seamless in regards to your normal play style.
No more running multiple instances of your client just to sit somewhere and have a census run churning away.. sorry Padanfain and others.. unless you perfect cloning technology
Or maybe you already have?........

[Poisonenvy]

oh that does sound like good news I wonder - have you ever tried raising a ticket and asking direct about the census addon?

[bringoutyourdead]

In the past over other things.. yes.. and you get a pre-built response pointing to a generic blah on the support part of the website.

On this specific. not I but others have and gotten nothing but the above.