I’m reaching out to this forum with a few questions regarding the role of Game Masters (GMs) and their powers in World of Warcraft. In these somewhat unusual times, I’ve observed some unusual events in the game that might be related to GM activity, and I’d like to better understand their role and capabilities.
GM Role and Powers: I would be interested in information about the basic roles and powers of GMs in the game. Are they able to modify player interface settings? Can they make changes to the UI, mouse and keyboard bindings, or other modifications that could affect gameplay?
GM Activity Monitoring: I have suspicions that adjustments were made to my interface during my gameplay, impacting my experience. I’d like to request an examination of GM activity logs to determine if any modifications to my gaming environment were made by them and if they were in accordance with the rules.
Fair Play: What is the procedure for reporting similar situations and suspicions of unethical conduct by GMs if it turns out their actions were inappropriate or unfair?
Additionally, I want to mention that I have maybe video footage of these events as I was live streaming at the time. EDIT: “Twitch: All other broadcast stations will have their past broadcasts stored for 14 days before they are deleted.” So I havent, the material.
Furthermore, I was struck by one aspect regarding the Battle.net account settings, specifically that this feature does not allow for immediate revocation and states that processing the deactivation of this feature may take up to 30 days. This has led me to question whether it might imply that our privacy is being sold to third parties without our knowledge, potentially causing stress and disruption to our gaming experience. Could someone please clarify this situation?
I want to emphasize that my goal is to gather information and clarify rules and processes. I want the game to remain fair and enjoyable for all players, and that’s why this matters to me.
Thank you for your responses and for your attention.
This is not a conspiracy; it was visible in real-time. Additionally, I did ask ChatGPT to translate my information into English, as I am not proficient enough to express myself effectively in a language other than my native one.
I would like to start by saying that we appreciate your efforts. I know that it can sometimes be a tough battle, but we don’t want to stress each other out. In my case, it was sheer frustration. I had to reinstall Windows multiple times, update drivers, and even delve into BIOS and EFI shell. I almost learned how to navigate Linux via the command line. I installed a firewall and configured it extensively to allow network access only for wow.exe while blocking everything else. All of this took me perhaps three weeks of time.
In the end, I want to express that I’ve been frustrated and stressed for a long time due to these interventions in my game. These included reconfigurations of keys, changes in mouse sensitivity, adjustments to graphics settings, spell overlays, and more. It seems strange to me to pay for something that ultimately doesn’t allow me to enjoy it peacefully. My main concern is tranquility, which is why I moved away from RIOT, not to be intentionally stressed.
For example, I wanted to click on “spell,” which was working fine until then, and it didn’t work. I opened the HUD edit mode and found out that I have spell bar was overlapped by a different bar, probably a stance bar, and surprisingly, it covered the spell bars. I removed it, and after 10 minutes, it turned into a huge vertical noodle that again covered the areas I needed to use, beyond the scope of the classic settings. Furthermore, I have some settings in options, and suddenly they are changed. Or I use spells through a keybind, and I am already a bit angry because it’s clicking on completely different spells. I quickly click into the chat messenger and realize that clicking on the keys doesn’t correspond to their labels. That means, I click on “w,” and it types something else, and so in all cases. Sometimes, it was just the mouse, but I can feel a change under my hand. Other times it was the graphical interface. I keep my computer within good settings and monitor its functions. That means I had the graphics balanced wonderfully, and then suddenly it was absolutely dysfunctional with the same settings… Or suddenly, the HP bar appears below the character, or I only see the HP bar for some friendly targets at battlegrounds… Now suddenly everything works as it should. Most importantly, I wanted to point out this option in the Battle.net settings so that they don’t do stressful live experiments on you:
battle.net → Account setting → Privacy & Communication → GAME DATA AND PROFILE PRIVACY: GAME DATA AND PROFILE PRIVACY Share Game Data Allow Battle.net to share game data with external developers to enable game related services such as leaderboards, statistic trackers, and more.
Battle.net allows external developers to build applications and experiences for our players using game data including gameplay details and your BattleTag. Disabling this setting will prevent these services from working. This setting does not allow the sharing of your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, or other similar information without your specific consent.
Disabling this feature may take up to 30 days to process.
I’m afraid I cannot help you BUT, this thing specifically happens to me as well every now and then, but it’s a bug (or one of my addons messing up something) that usually goes back to normal after relogging or after a while on its own. Might be just something like that, addons, or perhaps some of your files are corrupted. It could be wise to try and run an auto repair and see if something changes, or disable addons and the usual stuff.
As I wrote above, my main aim was to highlight the mentioned setting item in the Battle.net menu. I mean it in a good way. Thank you for helping me understand the matter from a different perspective; it certainly is as you write
This enables sites such as raider.io and check-pvp.fr to function. Basically, you will show up in the battle.net and world of warcraft API’s.
If you do not want this, you can uncheck that box.
As for why the UI is messing around? Heck if I know. Sounds weird. Then again my computer just randomly deleted a whole slew of files from my Skyrim modlist for no reason and now I’ve spent the last 5 hours reinstalling everything. Isn’t that fun?
Sometimes I think Windows is just a buggy mess. Or, well, I know it is, but sometimes I think that’s just the reason.
I used to work in video game customer support, the crazies are the worst.
Nobody has the time nor interest to interfere with you and even if they did, as much fun as it’d be to mess with players, it is against any sensible company policy.
I’ve had a few times that mouse sensitivity settings would suddenly have changed but I highly doubt it was mischievous gm’s at play. I’m guessing it’s just your pc or drivers or addons or Windows being a butt, it happens
I can say that simply and with high confidence, because all of the settings for those things are on your own personal PC. No Blizzard employee can change them. Macros are the one thing specific to your gameplay interface that is held on Blizzard’s servers.
You can verify this quite easily by checking out the files in your Interface and WTF directory, where all these settings are stored.
I can also say from experience that sometimes things get borked on your PC, and they do on mine.
Ususlly, the problem is a misbehaving addon, or a conflict between two addons.
You seem to be using Edit Mode. It wouldn’t surprise me if this is your main problem. I looked at it quickly when it was introduced, and decided to go back to using my usual addons. I’m sure it can be used, but it was confusing me.
Bad closedown can also mess you up. Thw WoW client reads in ALL the variable data it needs for history and settings when you start, and then it writes it ALL back when you Exit Game. If you crash out of the game, having started to write out that data, but without a full closedown, then the data can be partially written, which will mess up everything about your interface and settings. This is why you should always keep a backup of at least your WTF folder, where most of this information is held.
This has nothing at all to do with your gameplay. It just allows or disallows third party websites like Wowhead or Raider.io to access your statistics, achievements, list of quests, mounts, pets and so on for display. They access those by asking questions from a server Blizzard keeps for that purpose, not from your PC.
The first is buggy software. The second is that a company that is notoriously short staffed has the time and ability to make micro changes to your UI in real time to mess with you.
Also, how do you know twitch is a real and honest view of what happened, it could also be manipulated? I’d use a camera to record the stream, and maybe a backup camera to record the camera, just to make sure twitch aren’t in on it too.
I would suggest that, firstly, you reset your UI - https://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/7549
and then you use either the ingame tool or an add-on like Bartender to sort out your screen and make sure things don’t overlap. Then save what you’ve done and it should be just the same when you reopen the game.
GMs do not alter anything on your system or in your game without telling you (eg if it’s necessary to fix something).
I play with only one bar at the bottom (old school) but sometimes a second bar appears over that one and I have to go into the Options Menu and turn off Action Bar 2.
I think there must be some keybind that turns this on that I’m accidentally pressing or else it’s just a bug that it sometimes turns on.
I don’t see how anyone else could impact on your UI settings as those are all local to your pc.
I can imagine that some kind of command could be sent from the server to Reset all to Default maybe (but that’s just speculation).
