How can one guy implement a feature into WoW that Blizz failed on? (Oqueue)

[Triptych]

I haven't tried this add-on for myself, but it sounds like it randomly matches you up with strangers from other realms .. right?

Isn't that what LFR is for? Why would Blizzard want to make their new Flex raid mode an exact copy of LFR, just with slightly higher difficulty? And more to the point, why would the player community want to do this?

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding.

[Grubjuice]

I haven't tried this add-on for myself, but it sounds like it randomly matches you up with strangers from other realms .. right?

Isn't that what LFR is for? Why would Blizzard want to make their new Flex raid mode an exact copy of LFR, just with slightly higher difficulty? And more to the point, why would the player community want to do this?

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding.

it also has a built in preference for grouping vetted players from your friend's list so it actually assembles non-random groups. This is perhaps one the best selling points to those players who particularly dislike being randomly placed with players they can't stand to play with (such as players with horrible dispositions or players who are unskilled and unwilling to learn to play).

Blizzard i think like third party programmers to make addons for a lot of functionalities first, because it allows the community to experiment with various adaptations of concepts.

Some addons Blizzard copies into the game for themselves later, some addons die of their own accord and are forgotten, some are obviated by mechanical changes to the change. Some addons are so successful that Blizzard just lets the original creators continue to be the primary developers, since there is no point in recreating what already exists.

the addon system is symbiotic with WoW development.

[Chingylol]

I haven't tried this add-on for myself, but it sounds like it randomly matches you up with strangers from other realms .. right?

Isn't that what LFR is for? Why would Blizzard want to make their new Flex raid mode an exact copy of LFR, just with slightly higher difficulty? And more to the point, why would the player community want to do this?

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding.

It's not like that at all.

Say I wanted to do a flex raid. I would open the main menu and see lists of people that are looking for groups. You will be able to see how many tanks/healers/dps are in the group, what classes they're still looking for, who the group leader is, etc etc. Once you see a group that you would want to join, you would click on it. It sends a message to the leader that "525 ilv Mage from Bladefist server" wants to join. The leader, if he wanted a mage, would then click "accept" on his end, and it sends a friend request and invites you (It sends a friend request because you need to have someone xrealm on your friends list in order to invite). And that's it. What I like is that you can queue up for unlimited amounts of groups at a time. There's about 40 Flex raid groups going on at all times, so you could literally queue up for all of them to speed up the times of finding a group.

The great thing about Oqueue is that it doesn't have to be just for raids. Say you want to duel outside Stormwing on a different high pop server or want to find a quick 5's team for points. You can pretty much use it for anything. The amount of users on it is pretty high. I made a 5man group for Shao Rep and it filled in literally 3 minutes.

[Hyral]

Not really possible to do unless they open up another channel for communications behind the scene, and make it available to addon authors.

Asking oQueue to work without battle.net whispers atm and no other alternative is like asking a modern pc to turn on without a source of electricity.

That's exactly what I said. OQueue is not a cross server group finder tool because such thing is impossible with the current tech yet, what it is it's a friend finder with application to form groups. People don't seem to understand that and say asinine things like "some guy developed tech Blizzard couldn't" without fully understanding what the addon actually does, which is barely different than what people did before when making an alt in a heavy populated/popular server and asking in Trade for cross realm groups.

[Kraenen]

Makes plenty of sense. All the developers have their priorities to fulfill and that wasn't one of them. Of course, any employee could have made something like that in their off hours but...it comes down to what Blizzard believes it worth the investment and they felt it wasn't. There are tons of "easy" things I could add into any of the projects I work on but my company frequently says no because it's not worth the investment.

I disagree. It comes down to what the customer believes is worth investing in.

[Ronburggundy]

That's exactly what I said. OQueue is not a cross server group finder tool because such thing is impossible with the current tech yet, what it is it's a friend finder with application to form groups. People don't seem to understand that and say asinine things like "some guy developed tech Blizzard couldn't" without fully understanding what the addon actually does, which is barely different than what people did before when making an alt in a heavy populated/popular server and asking in Trade for cross realm groups.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a friend finder as the intention is not to remain friends with those people outside of the scope of the current content / occasion in which you are grouped with them. Although many people do stay connected after leaving a group.

I believe the notion of "ooh look what he did and they couldnt do it", comes from is that without the behind the scenes addon channel of communication we both have noted at in previous posts, the functionality of the feature / addon is extremely more complex, as a rather large amount of data must be passed back in forth in "packet" like battle.net messages.

Hence, blizzard having acess to these kinds of things, as it being their game and they can do whatever they want essentially, it would have been rather simple for them to implement it. Yet, the author, even while presented with this "monumental" and ever complex task was able to accomplish the task with little to no background, tools, or assistance.

*The notion that blizzard could easily accomplish this does not take into consideration any sort of monetary, time, or human resource restrictions or factors.

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There does seem to be an issue with "Friend request sent" and "Friend request received" popping up alot when I've not done anything. It really does make me edgy because I keep thinking I'm spamming friend request to people.

Those friend requests only take place between oQueue users, and other oQueue users.

There is really no spam, as any actions caused by the addon are between to oQueue users, who are passively agreeing to communicate with each other and allow for the action to occur.

Short informational videos will soon be available to explain all of this information more readily.

[Norjak]

How can Blizz, a company that profited 1.1 billion dollars in 2012, say "we don't have the resources" when ONE 27 year old guy from Florida who moonlights as a rapper/dj can make an addon and can successfully pull it off? Makes zero sense.

Because the Blue poster is making impulsive posts which serve to display their own childishness & lack of knowledge.

[FiveOneTwo]

i cant tinker around with this mod atm but looking at its page on curse, the bulk of this mod is VERY similar to Blizzards own LFG tool that existed in the game years ago (at least through BC, cant recall for wrath). obviously it lacked cross realm functionality since cross realm grouping was not an option at the time.

it was removed when LFD was added because nobody used it. the LFD tool replaced it in the UI to reduce interface clutter.

so that's probably the main reason right there, not enough people used it. and unlike interface mods which the individual user can choose how few or many they would like, Blizzard has somewhat more of an obligation to keep their own default user interface as user friendly as possible (ie: not weighed down with features that aren't used enough to warrant the space)

its not just a matter of time or money, but also the fact that even overall good tools will crowd the interface if you add too many. this same thread could be made for almost any of the top addons, which those that use them would probably agree are an improvement over the default.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Because they're lazy. There's so many ADDONS that should be BASELINE. Can't they just buy it from the authors and polish them up? Quartz, Bagnon, MSBT, Bartender4(but with some good artwork), OmniCC... the list goes on. Their excuse is probably that there's no need since there's an addon for it...

Why would they bother buying them, they would then also have to maintain them. Makes more sense to just leave that work to the players.

[deathonabun]

I would agree, but Blizz did try to implement the old raid finder a few years ago that noone used since it wasn't user friendly. So they definitely did attempt to do it. I'm sure Blizz hires developers with prior industry experience and at least a four year degree. So how come this one guy can pull it off while Blizz couldn't?

I respectfully disagree. The old raid finder worked great on my realm prior to LFD in Wotlk. After LFD was introduced, there was little incentive to do pug raids because LFD made it super convenient to get your badges through random dungeons. Add to that, they moved the raid finder from the micro menu and buried it under social > raids tab > other raids. (yeah... it's still there, too.)

The way it worked isn't all that different from how OQueue works. The main difference is it required individual players to list themselves for whatever raid instances they were interested in, select a role, add a note, etc. and then a raid leader could browse the list and invite whoever they wanted. OQueue simply reverses the process, allowing raid leaders to list their raid group, and individuals to browse the available groups and then solicit invites.

Personally, I think it makes more sense the way Blizzard did it. It put more onus for building the group on the raid leader. As an individual, I'd prefer to just add my name to a list and go about my day until a raid leader decides to pick me from the crowd. And then as a raid leader, I can see all my potential raid members listed ahead of time which allows me to cherry pick the group I want.

I'm not knocking OQueue btw, it does a great job in the absence of something better on Blizzard's end.

I think in a perfect world, Blizzard would have released an updated version of the old Raid Finder tool (with battletag support for cross-realm raids) together with a pug-friendly third difficulty level way back when Dragonsoul came out (instead of giving us the abomination that is LFR.)

[tinystomper]

Since the addon author is in the thread I figured I'd post it here.
I just learned about oqueue and am trying to use it to get a group for Ordos. I joined a premade but didn't get changed into the leader's realm. My guess it is because I'm on a brazilian realm, so I can't xrealm with US servers even through the btag firends list and it's a server limitation thing. Is this really the case ? Ordos is prety much the only reason I got the addon, since it's pretty hard to get groups for him if you don't kill him on tuesday.

that's a blizz issue. nothing i can do to address this. if the groups aren't working for you, create your own and only invite those people that wait list from your battlegroup (or the battlegroups that work with you x-realm)

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I mean... who knows how long the addon dev has been working on the addon.

i'd be the one that knows. started in fed/mar 2012... beta in jun/jul... public release in dec 2012. lots of continued testing and evolution while working with the rath strat vent. in all, 2000+ hours easily for dev & testing

[potis]

No please, up to now my Oqueue experiences have been great.

Implemented into WoW it will just mean massive retards in it also.

Keep it as it is, dont even mention its existence often so the retards wont know about it.

[Halicia]

it was removed when LFD was added because nobody used it. the LFD tool replaced it in the UI to reduce interface clutter.

it wasn't removed. blizzard chose to break it by refusing to allow players to list themselves while queued for LFD. I'm sure not every server was like this, but on the 2 servers I was on, it was fairly common to see pugs form ahead of time, and ask people to list their info into it to facilitate group formation. This ended when LFG was added.

oQueue also works backwards compared to the ingame functionality... while there was group-listing (i believe?) the core of the blizzard functionality was the player's ability to list individual raids and activities they wanted to do, and the group would pick up those players.

I think there's a *huge* potential for an addon similar to oQueue that shares this info across realms.

[Ronburggundy]

oQueue also works backwards compared to the ingame functionality... while there was group-listing (i believe?) the core of the blizzard functionality was the player's ability to list individual raids and activities they wanted to do, and the group would pick up those players.

I think there's a *huge* potential for an addon similar to oQueue that shares this info across realms.

oQueue already works in a way very similar to that.

With oQueue: as a leader you create a group, and then prospective members waitlist for the group and the group leader is able to look over a series of stats on the character and invite those people he or she feels is most needed.

As a prospective member: You can use a series of filters or searches to find a group that is already actively looking for people, and waitlist for their groups, letting that leader know you are interested in joining their group. The leader then will invite you if they feel you are a good match.

Edit: Sorry i mis read your post. oQueue already works very similar to that. Yet instead of people stating which content they are interested in doing, they just waitlist for groups that are already doing those activities or looking for people to start those activities.

[tinystomper]

One of the real killer features is the karma / blacklist stuff. Blizzard could never implement that properly in their queue finder as that would eventually cause all the trolls/haters/morons to get left out in the cold with nobody to carry them.

Blizzard would never implement this - list like they've refused to implement account-wide ignores.

the karma system allows people to give a nudge.. slight negative feedback. the personal ban list is a more blunt feedback. if you make a group, and have banned them in the past, they will get the ban notification if they try to wait list... letting them know they've been a raging turd. hopefully they will think about it... and maybe it could help nudge them away from that behavior.

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I think oQueue-like functionality will make it into the game eventually. It's basically a b.net hackjob that tens of thousands are already using to get extremely beneficial functionality that other games already have.

actually, the number of active unique btags using oQueue in the last 30 days is around 225k and growing

i've reached out to blizz (and have for over a year) to try to get some support as the number of ppl is going to explode. i get all positive feedback from all the blizz types i've talked to, but no devs yet.

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I haven't tried this add-on for myself, but it sounds like it randomly matches you up with strangers from other realms .. right?

no. there is a big difference...

you have the ability to create a premade group, set certain requirements, and select it's general type (regular bgs, rated bgs, dungeons, scenarios, arena, raid, etc). once created, everyone on the mesh network will see your premade group... and can choose to wait list for it. you then have the ability to review the person that wait listed and decide whether or not to invite them. with LFR/LFD you have no such capability... you are forced into a match with the people they choose.

the difference is significant and goes a long way to reducing user frustration

[Flaks]

Makes plenty of sense. All the developers have their priorities to fulfill and that wasn't one of them.

Few would argue that Oqueue shouldn't be somewhere near the top of their priority list considering how they've been able to add Flex raids, LFR and LFG and Oqueue would be a far FAR simpler implementation than any of those.

[tinystomper]

OQueue is not a cross server group finder tool because such thing is impossible with the current tech yet, what it is it's a friend finder with application to form groups. People don't seem to understand that and say asinine things like "some guy developed tech Blizzard couldn't" without fully understanding what the addon actually does, which is barely different than what people did before when making an alt in a heavy populated/popular server and asking in Trade for cross realm groups.

you're wrong... and i'm pretty certain i know what the addon does.

oQueue is a x-realm group finder tool... implemented using b.net to communicate, in real-time, the desire to join the listed group. you don't have to be friended with the group leaders to see their groups. actually, in many cases, you don't have to get any new friends to receive the premade group list... but you will need to friend to the person running the group in order to be invited into that group.

try it... wait list for a few groups... run a few games... jump into vent and talk with people. you'll get the idea

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Why would they bother buying them, they would then also have to maintain them. Makes more sense to just leave that work to the players.

actually, in the case of oQueue it's a bit different. the vast majority of addons (if not all) are just client side ui tweaks that do not impact other users. oQueue implements a mesh network to push the data across all realms. as the number of people grow, it would only make sense for the functionality be implemented at the server level, as a mesh would not be needed.

i've considered how they would generally implement the needed components... it would just take a sit down the their server devs to hammer it out.

[Deleted]

Hey, really impressed by your addon.
Since you're here i would like to ask what purpose the "book" button that opens a window with all player actions serves?
Also from the technical side: how do you create the first nodes. I mean you obviously can't connect betwen people who don't know of each other so how does the addon build the first connection between 2 servers? Do you have some basic names in it of players that serve as a start point to search for further nodes? D you make use of people playing on mutliple servers to serve as nodes to connect between servers? Meaning they gather on one server in oqueue chat all players with the addon and post them when he enters another server to act as a bridge?

[tinystomper]

The way it worked isn't all that different from how OQueue works. The main difference is it required individual players to list themselves for whatever raid instances they were interested in, select a role, add a note, etc. and then a raid leader could browse the list and invite whoever they wanted. OQueue simply reverses the process, allowing raid leaders to list their raid group, and individuals to browse the available groups and then solicit invites.

Personally, I think it makes more sense the way Blizzard did it. It put more onus for building the group on the raid leader. As an individual, I'd prefer to just add my name to a list and go about my day until a raid leader decides to pick me from the crowd. And then as a raid leader, I can see all my potential raid members listed ahead of time which allows me to cherry pick the group I want.

this approach is why their system failed. LFG doesn't work.

currently, oQueue has about 225k active users.. about 70k active US users in the last 7 days. imagine if just 10,000 of them logged on in the evening and wanted to do something. this is very likely... and would result in a list of 10,000 people that a group leader would be forced to trudge through. even after the filters, the leader would have a list of 500 people to choose from... and when he does, there's no guarantee the selected user is available and/or willing to join. with such a task, many leaders would give up and the group would never form.

that's the key difference between LFG and LFM. oQueue is strictly LFM

[Peachy]

let's be honest blizz is just gonna try and hire this guy if they really want this feature in game. They've hired addon devs before, whats stopping them now?