Hey Tiny and Ron,

As a long term user of oQueue (and huge fan and supporter of it - I must have made dozens of Flex raids with oQueue) - I have to ask you, how do you feel about Blizz and especially Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas passing off the Premade Dungeon (oQueue basically) as "inovative" and their own.

Why the hell aren't you two working at Blizz right now? Your idea and programming is brilliant, and now Blizz is implementing it and it will have a PROFOUND impact on the game (as it has for the people lucky enough to get the add`on). I just wanted to know how you feel about them passing it off as more or less their own idea.

Right down to the god damn fact that you can't make a min ilvl higher than your own. I could link an interview with the Lead Designer flaunting the system... and when the interviewer mentiones oQueue he kind of side-stepps it.

i wondered that myself... but i think Blizzard promised that the new group finder will have a working in-game API for it to compensate for BattleNet no longer being allowed to pass messages in friend requests and i think oQueue can be adapted to work with that API.

Blizzard's implementation sucks A LOT. :(

They should have hired tiny and ron. Or given them compensation. OR AT THE VERY LEAST - immortalize them in-game like Tiny Dungeons. Or an NPC named tiny that explains the new system.

tiny MADE this system work years before Blizz even thought of it. He worked around their programming and not only made it work, but made it incredible.

Seriously.

they decided to build oQueue into the game two weeks before blizzcon, though I don't believe the core devs ever wanted to acknowledge it. it's kind of embarrassing to have developed the game and miss something so large.

and no. the group finder is not oQueue. oQueue allows you to see everything that's going on, anywhere in your region. it's live. the group finder will let you see 25 groups ... max (as I've been told... haven't seen any groups on the beta). it's very limited and offers just the general type selector to find a group. it's also very limited in that you cannot look for other groups while you're in one nor can you run a quick instance while waiting for your group to fill up. banning by battle.tag? nope. a karma concept or anything to ping ninja looters or 'bads'? nope. a refresh button? are you kidding me?? in the end, it's just their 'other raids' with lipstick.

additionally, why blizzard stepped over the concept of leadership in an expansion called 'warlords' is beyond me. the skill that is leadership should be recognized and encouraged with tracking, rank, and achievements visible to others in the group finder. it's also a great concept for kids to exercise, to help find their voice and hone the personality trait.

it's been a 2.5 year uphill battle with blizzard where they release patches that trip up oQueue and the premade community. especially annoying is the introduction of a queuing debuff if you don't accept a queue (I've been told). this effectively wipes out the premade pvp community and combined with the inability to advertise a group across all players, will effectively crush the publicvent. what they're doing is yet another kick to the gnads to oQueue and the community.

for now, I work on oQueue to help people set an expectation to hold blizzard to. take pictures and videos of its workability now... and when blizzard disables it, post the links and ask for similar functionality in game. all you'll have is each other. use it, don't let them silence you. use the voice of the community to speak up and demand they build certain capabilities into the game. the key to getting them to listen is consistent and on-going pressure... for months. anything less they consider noise and ignore it

as for credit, to be honest, I did expect more from the multi-billion dollar mega-corp whose products I've used for about 20 years, especially in the day and age where picture sharing sites get hundreds of millions. do they have to pay for it? no. could they have tossed a sizable tip in our direction? you'd think.

it's all fairly disappointing.

First of all thank you for replying tiny. me and tens of thousands others (much more I think but I have no idea) truly appreciate oQueue and will continue to support it.

Can I take a screenshot of your post for future reference?

screenshot? sure (not sure why not... I'd say the same things to blizz if we were sitting at a table together)

btw, there's at least 300-400k pinging the scorekeeper every week (the scorekeeper blew its data caps a long time ago). I'd estimate 10-20% of the active wow player base is using oQueue.

ill be in vent in a few if you'd like to stop by

Thanks, and holy crap. 400k people... Yeah.

I just went on your vent for the first time to see if you were there but I seriously cannot find my way around or find you in any way. Are you about?

Would love to stop by but have no idea where to find you. I'm guessing somewhere on the oQueue Skynet Rooms.

We are under the impression that some day, there might be a lua call we can make to retrieve a large list of all the current groups, or at least a larger number than the current 25. If thats available oQueue may be able to live on in more of a UI role which consumes and makes use of Blizzard's back end to facilitate the distribution of the groups. Im not sure were this would leave us, but it would be better than dead in the water, which is where we will be when 6.0.2 releases.

well.. Blizz has GetAll() for the Auction House to get the full list of auctions and a slow page-by-page at a time list mode (50 listings per page).. maybe they'll add a similar thing to the group finder API.

edit:
P.S. GetAll() has a 15 min cooldown and it's enforced server-side... use it too often and the server disconnects you.
http://www.wowwiki.com/API_QueryAuctionItems