3.3.5 Inspect Issue

[Cladhaire]

An update from Zarhym, with a bit more info:

We're starting by capping the number of Inspects that can be sent in a 10-second time frame. It'll likely be 5 Inspects, but that could change in either direction.

Keep in mind that this change is intended to help those using addons which are sending a lot of these requests from lagging or disconnecting. If you're not actually using such addons, and therefore not sending a large number of queries to our database, the change won't affect you either way. You're not lagging or disconnecting because someone else in a raid or major city is unknowingly spamming such requests.

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A post by Zarhym, providing some explanation of their reasoning:

It's important to understand that this wasn't really the fault of addon authors. This needed to be fixed because we were allowing something we really shouldn't have. Many addons pull Inspect data when mousing over characters and there was nothing on our end to throttle the rate at which that data could be pulled. So if you're standing in Dalaran with one of these mods and slide your mouse across the screen and over several characters within a very small amount of time, your client is spamming the database with Inspect queries. We're correcting that issue on our end.

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After the next set of rolling restarts, Blizzard will be implementing server-side throttling of inspection requests from addons. This may cause any addon that uses player inspection to not function properly after the restarts.

This throttle is being activated in order to reduce server load from some addons that use the inspection system. Currently any addon can request inspection data from the server as often as they want, and this problem seems to have gotten worse with the new patch.

Most addons will continue to function properly, however keep this in mind as you play with your addons. If you are an addon developer, you may want to restructure your addon so that it no longer expects an event reply for an inspection request. With most throttled API calls, a throttled request will simply disappear into the void with no response.

UPDATE: It appears that the rolling restarts may be delayed until the next maintenance window, but the next set of restarts should activate the throttle mechanism.

Updated information is available in the official WoW forums:

[ricks322]

I see the end of GearScore comming.....

[ffcloud2000]

dum dum dummmmmmmmmm

[Cladhaire]

Before there's too much speculation, I should specify that although there is an issue with server traffic at the moment and Blizzard are taking action to resolve it on their end, GearScore and addons like it that use the inspection API will continue to function, but they may need to be a bit more conservative about the number of inspect calls they are making.

[ChaosInc]

It's not the end of GearScore and the like. The problem is that so many players use it as a staple of who's "good" nowadays that it's bogging down the process. As Cladhaire said, they'll just have to throttle their checks now to reasonable levels. I think everyone will notice a drastic improvement in performance while in Dalaran as well.

GearScore will still be a requirement to play WoW, sorry to say.

[Chimaine]

Originally Posted by ChaosInc GearScore will still be a requirement to play WoW, sorry to say.

Well now, that would be some news to me

[ricks322]

Originally Posted by ChaosInc GearScore will still be a requirement to play WoW, sorry to say.

Wow that is really a shame, I guess I will have to quit playing then.

The whole concept of an addon that tells you that a player is good depending on what number he has, a number that is determined by ???

Who decides that one piece of gear is better than another? You could just as easy say that the ilevel is the way to pick good gear.