These conspiracies are golden. "Blizzard doesn't want their investors to know that Classic is TOO popular! It's making TOO much money, and the investors can't know!"Maybe the reason they're breaking it is because the community obsesses over it to an unhealthy, nonsensical degree, and did so even when Blizzard themselves put out the subscription numbers. All throughout Wrath I saw posts about how they were inflating the subscription numbers, or that they were all Chinese and didn't count because of the way their payment model worked, or any number of other dramatic plots they could dream up.
Weird really, people make a load of fuss, get Blizzard to re-issue a specific version of the game.....and then try to change it with add-ons. I think I smell the sweet stench of hypocrisy, and Blizzard are upwind this time.
The reality is, despite opinions, that numbers for retail and classic are both down overall, and it isn't in Bliztivision's best interests for the public to know this.
If this stops all the gold spammers from inviting me to their communities then I am very happy for it.
I use /who ALL the time. Blizzard has no actual reason to do this except, they're trying to block an add-on, OR, they don't wanna reveal numbers. I suspect the first one is far more true than the second.
The hotfix makes sense from a legal perspective. At least in Europe, character information, even under a pseudonym, could constitute personal data, being (in short) information relating to an identifiable person. Entities processing Personal Data need to have legal grounds to do so. Blizzard and players have a contractual agreement that allows Blizzard to do so. Add-ons created by third parties that automatically use the /who function and use the results process this information without consent of the players involved. This way, Personal Data is processed without legal grounds. It makes sense that Blizzard, providing the platform on which said Add-ons function, will want to prevent breaches of such legal requirements and/or prevent legal exposure themselves.
WIM addon also broken, thanks Blizzard. 😞