Frequently Asked Questions

• Can I rate players who do not have this add-on?
  Yes. Any player, including you, can be rated even if they do not have PlayRate installed. You can always view ratings for a player, but you can only rate people you have grouped with. To view how you, or others, are being rated you have to install the add-on. There is no obligation to rate anyone of course, you could just use the add-on to view the ratings that others make.
• If not everyone uploads his data won’t the rating database be incomplete?
  If you rate someone the game sends your rating to all other users of the mod. When one of the other PlayRate users synchronises his mod, he will also upload ratings of all others he has received while playing. This ensures the site’s database stays up to date even if not everyone uploads their data. So your ratings can appear at the site even if you haven’t synchronised. However, you will still need to synchronise to receive other people’s ratings which were transmitted while you were not playing.
• How can my ratings be on this site if I never uploaded them?
  Also see the answer to the previous question. If you rate someone the game sends your rating to all other users of the mod via a hidden ingame chat channel, so someone else could have uploaded it. The database will track where the ratings are coming from to ensure that if you changed your own ratings those changes take preference over older ratings uploaded by others.
• Why should I care about rating?
  If a player is rated several times with an average of 2 you should probably think twice before joining a group with him. However, the philosophy behind this add-on is not to “punish” badly behaving players but to prevent anti-social behaviour from happening in the first place. If you know your deeds will not go unnoticed my hope is you will think twice before leaving a group half way through a dungeon (You know who you are!).
• Can I rate anonymously?
  No, the ratings are not anonymous, although players may not find out that you rated them if they are not using PlayRate or if they are off-line. You can find out if they are using PlayRate by typing "/rate -info". Your name is stored with the ratings you make in the database; this is a conscious design decision to be able to allow you to revise your ratings later and it allows the program to prevent people from rating more than once.
• I seem to have different scores than my friend, is this a bug?
  Ratings are retrieved from the central database when you synchronise the mod with the site and are further adjusted with ratings you receive while playing. If your friend logged in later than you he may have missed a few ratings that have not yet been submitted to the central site. He will receive them the next time he synchronizes. Other differences can occur if people are briefly offline while a rating change occurs. However, the logic in the web site knows how to reconcile the differences so after everyone has synchronised all ratings should be identical again.
• Can’t hackers change the ratings?
  Several defences are in place against players trying to “game” the system to try and heighten their rating or lower someone else’s. Note that going into your local database and changing ratings will just change the ratings shown for yourself, but not for anyone else. Ratings are authenticated by the message header that is used in the Blizzard in-game chat system, hacking this would be hard and in any case will likely get you kicked from the game.
• Can I avoid being rated?
  People can only rate you after you have been in a group with them. Avoiding groups would take a lot of the fun out of WoW but you could try finding a group or guild that agrees not use ratings. If you install the add-on it will tell you which other players in your realm have the add-on installed (type “/rate -info”) and you get a pop-up when people are rating you. So you could install it even if you have no intention to use ratings yourself.
• Can I change or erase a rating I gave?
  Yes, when you are in game just rate that player again and your new rating will be transmitted and the old one will be erased. To erase a rating without entering a new while in game one type “/rate player=0”. Alternatively, you can edit your ratings on this site after you’ve uploaded them and then download them back into the mod.
• Can I change a rating given to me?
  No, the whole point of PlayRate is that you will have to live with your reputation. But if you feel a rating is unfair you can try to convince the person who rated you to change or erase his rating of you. In any case, one bad rating shouldn’t worry you too much since most people will just look at your averages.
• Is this add-on allowed by Blizzard?
  I’ve made sure to stay within the guidelines made by Blizzard. And I haven’t been told that I couldn’t use it so my mage is still merrily running around Azeroth.
• Where can I send bug reports?
  Thanks for helping improve the mod and the site. Send them please.

Advanced Options

Command line options:

/rate -- Show a list of players you grouped with recently as well as your average score
/rate <player> -- Show the player's current score (or show a rating dialog box if you are allowed to rate this player)
/rate <player> = 0 -- Erase your rating of a player
/rate -info -- Show who else is using PlayRate and the current size of the database
/rate -show -- Show the players you have grouped with recently
/rate -resend -- Resend your recent ratings via in-game chat

Note that if you want to share your ratings with a friend who was off-line while you rated but don’t want to log out to synchronise with the PlayRate site, you can type “/rate -resend” or you can retransmit just one rating by giving players the same rating once more. As long as the ratings are identical no additional rating messages will show up with other players.