Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

Since whining about neutral AH snipers is at an all time high I thought it would be a good time to finally release this, after having cleaned it up a little.

The controls are quite simple; there are two in game commands: /snipe with a name parameter will start a scan for the target set with that name and /snipe without parameter will stop a running scan. Of course you need to actually be at an AH for scanning to work.

While it's scanning it will keep refreshing the last page of the AH and automatically buy any auction that matches a target in the specified target list. You can watch the pages it requests in the browse tab of the AH.

Target sets are defined in the "targets.lua" file which comes with the addOn. By default two target sets are defined, "pvp" and "pve", for the PvP and PvE Nost realms respectively. You may alter them and create other sets as you please.

The format of the file should be fairly obvious from looking at the predefined sets. Everything after a double dash (--) in a line is ignored. Some of the targets are disabled like that.

Individual targets look like this:

Code: Select all

{ g=20, "scouting gloves of the monkey", "+4 agility", "+4 stamina" }

Enclosed in braces they can contain, in arbitrary order, comma separated strings (text in quotes) and the special terms g=x, s=y and c=z for arbitrary numbers x, y and z. A target matches an auction if and only if every string of the target is in the tooltip of the auction (order irrelevant) and the price of the auction is less or equal to x * 10'000 + y * 100 + z copper per unit.

It kind of goes without saying but: be extremely careful when defining the targets!


Repository: https://github.com/shirsig/snipe

Not sure if I should download this and use the crap out of it or stay the hell away from it due to this line in the ToS:

B. Bots; including, but not limited to, any code, hardware and/or software that allows the automated control of the Game, or any feature or component thereof.

Destillia wrote:Not sure if I should download this and use the crap out of it or stay the hell away from it due to this line in the ToS:

B. Bots; including, but not limited to, any code, hardware and/or software that allows the automated control of the Game, or any feature or component thereof.

This could apply to every single addOn though. I would assume that anything that can be done through the Lua API alone is allowed but I can't give any guarantees of course. Better ask a GM to be safe.

Another thing: I noticed a while ago while testing something that new auctions don't necessarily show up on the last page. Don't know if that's a bug or some sort of preventative measure or if it's even still that way.

Destillia wrote:Not sure if I should download this and use the crap out of it or stay the hell away from it due to this line in the ToS:

B. Bots; including, but not limited to, any code, hardware and/or software that allows the automated control of the Game, or any feature or component thereof.

every addon is a bot according to the rules.

addon to open/send several mails at once? botting.
addon to announce that you resisted a taunt, botting.
addon to single click buy stuff on AH, botting.
addon to autoprogress dialog, auto accept/turnin quests, auto queue bg, botting.
addon to give x stacks of water and food to trader, botting.
addon to announce whenever a boss is performing an ability, botting.
the list goes on forever

These addons use the same kind of scripting as this addon. anything that is automated, is botting according to the rules. and with that, I'm 100% sure that you're breaking the rules already by using essentially any addon.

Yeah, no.

Several of the things you mentioned (in fact everything except the original addon in this list and auto-trade in a very loose sense)
doesn't allow unattended actions.

Several of those you don't even understand what they do so you can't really have an opinion.
Announcing Taunt Resists takes feedback that is already shown by the client (in the combatlog) and puts it in a different place.

If we applied that "logic" of yours then skinning your interface or moving your actionbars are also botting.

There's a very clear indication that this addon is on or crossing the line, and that is that it's "fire and forget".

Apart from that it's also irresponsible and exploitative in nature.
It relies on a steady supply of victims to have any kind of use.

Q: What would happen if everyone on the server was using it? (or was even simply aware of it)
A: No one would ever do item transfers cross-faction.

Edit:
For others following the discussion this is like debating FishingBuddy (a Lua addon that offers convenience) but requires the player to take action for each and every cast is the same as a FishingBot that you can park near water in the evening and leave unattended to fish for you overnight.
The fact that some botting is possible through Lua in vanilla changes not one iota for the subject.

Roadblock wrote:Yeah, no.

Several of the things you mentioned (in fact everything except the original addon in this list and auto-trade in a very loose sense)
doesn't allow unattended actions.

Several of those you don't even understand what they do so you can't really have an opinion.
Announcing Taunt Resists takes feedback that is already shown by the client (in the combatlog) and puts it in a different place.

If we applied that "logic" of yours then skinning your interface or moving your actionbars are also botting.

There's a very clear indication that this addon is on or crossing the line, and that is that it's "fire and forget".

but the things i mentioned are "fire and forget". what people seem to define "botting" is how long it keeps going on. they all complete x amount of steps, 1 to infinity, automatically for the user without interception.

take the mail addon as an example for short amount of steps, put in the stuff that you want to send away, press send and let go. it will only end when it has cycled through all the items you want to send, but it did it automatically for you. this addon has a point where it ends, if that what matters, then let's look att bossmode addons.

A bossmode addon is on always, unless you toggle it off yourself, but it only starts working when you engage a boss, it automatically announces events that happens during the fight, so you don't have to do it yourself. this goes on forever, even though the boss is dead, idling in the background, waiting for the next boss to start working again. aka fire and forget. unattended actions.

all addons are just taking information and putting it somewhere else.

EDIT: what im trying to get at with this, if the admins really want us to stop doing certain things in addons, they have to specifically define them. We shouldn't have to play russian roulette, it's the admins responsibility to have clear rules if they want people to follow them correctly. else they might as well delete everything and just write "don't do stuff we don't like"

imo:
every action that is not a protected function is allowed to automate - abuse bugs to use protected functions without a user input (like the old ping "trick") are forbidden!

An official answer on that one could be really usefull...

Now for a similar matter, but different subject : i always do repetitives (and boring) tasks in AH : buying X item if it's below Z price, bid on Y item if it's below W price AND less than 2h TTL.
Is there an addon that could to that for me ?

I remember a thing in Auctionner that scan the whole AH (which was bad, because too long, the good items tend to be allready bought when the scan was over), and present you with a list of things to buy, because they were severely underpriced. That was awesome (if you don't blindly believe what addons said, and can configure things to not appear, or whitelist stuff who do real money, like items put below vendor price - no risk to buy here).

Edit : i think the name of that Auctioneer function was "snatch".

This addon doesn't really do anything that you cannot set up auctioneer to do if you have the time.

If the GMs don't follow Blizzards principle that the limited automation that addons can do is ok, then they need to be super clear about exactly what they are prohibiting. That is, what API functions are we not allowed to use. They should also release their own client with that API function removed or modified.

If this addon is considered a bot then setting auctioneer to buy Black Lotus for X gold or lower if it happens to see it while scanning is also botting. A function at least some vanilla versions of auctioneer has. The number of players using auctioneer is big and I don't think many of them expect that they can be banned if they activate the wrong functions in it.