Is CensusPlus Banned by Terms of Service?

[KitDragon]

With the update to 1.5, I looked through the terms of service from May 5th, and one thing caught my attention:
"13, Paragraph 3,
While ... otherwise using World of Warcraft, you may not:
(vi) Use bots or other automated techniques to collect information from World of Warcraft..."

Does CensusPlus count as an automated technique, and thus prohibited?

[Alanthus]

Hrm, yes it would be against the ToS, I would expect that what they are after with the wording is automatically logging on and gathering information but anything saved to file would really fall under their wording. Gatherer, various auction tools, Cosmos etc. are other things that would be against the ToS now...

What disturbs me is that I have a strong feeling that Blizzard will start banning people before informing the player base about which mods are against teh ToS.

[Rollie]

It all boils down to interpretation. I'll try to contact someone at Blizzard and get some clarification on if Census+ falls into this category.

I'm really afraid however that they will say yes it does violate the TOS as they haven't particularly liked the data provided here from the get go.

Here's to hoping =)

[Alanthus]

Rollie, that's exactly what I'm afraid of too, especially considering overall subscriptions in the US are dropping (not surprising, a *LOT* of people new to MMPORGS bought the game). We can always hope that the recent rise in concurrent players make them hold off (summer holidays, the drop that will come when schools start will be hard on low pop servers).

A more benign interpretation would be that they are after the auction house plugins that basically let people "farm" the AH but to be honest judging from what Blizzard has done before and their attitude towards keeping the user base informed (CIA comes to mind as a more open organization...) I expect the worst.

[KitFox]

Any reply yet on whether it's a problem?

[Rollie]

Still waiting....

[Bravefart]

I believe Blizz added that in order to cover all tracks.

What could potentially damage Blizzard are mods that gather information about items, drops, mobs, locations, and Census+ isn't one.

Census+ really serves the community, and in fact, affirms the numbers of players that they advertize they have.

Further, it doesn't give you any unfair advantage -- some other mods that don't gather information at all do in fact give a player advantage -- easier buffing, spellcasting etc. These would have to be targetted before Census+. (note, core idea for allowing UI mods is to change how the game looks, not how the game can be played. They further expanded into explaining that mod shouldn't let you see stuff that people without the mod can't see by built-in game mechanics. As such, anyone can run /who a few times, write down results, and publish them on the web. Therefore census+ doesn't violate any of the rules).

Main decider about 'legallity' of a mod (approved or disapproved, see http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/? ... 1716p#utps ), is determining wether such add-on hampers other paying customers' online experience.

Overall, Census+ would be one of the 'safest' mods

[Haeral]

Still waiting....

Any feedback from Bliz on this?

[Rollie]

None, guess I'll fire off a follow up email.

[streborahp]

None, guess I'll fire off a follow up email.

Was there ever any "official" response on this from Blizz?

[xpolockx]

Considering its now 3 years later, and we have yet to hear from anyone claiming to have been banned for running Census Plus, I'd be inclined to say that alone is evidence enough that Blizzard isn't concerned about it.

Which isn't to mention that the transition to WoW 2.0 would have been a prime time for them to break CensusPlus if they'd wanted to(like they did with Decursive)... They didn't.

Agreed.

[Rollie]

I never heard anything and just don't worry about it at this point =)