CastParty Description

CastParty is an addon for Blizzards game World of Warcraft. The default party frame, the area of the screen that shows you info about your current party members, health, mana, icon etc is quite large and in many peoples opinions cumbersome. Also beyond giving you a bar for their health/mana and showing you their portrait etc they do nothing. In other words you really can't use them for anything other than giving you info about your partymates.

CastParty can replace, or leave the default party frame is place, the default party frame with it's on my smaller frame giving you all the same info with the added benefit of much greater functionality. You can assign spells or functions to mouse clicks so that when you click on someone's health bar it will cast a heal spell on them for example. CastParty also supports 5 button mice and key/mouse button combinations (ie. shift-left click or ALT-Mouse button 5) All of this makes being a healer in WoW much easier with simple point and click healing.

Features

Smaller concise party frame
Multiple mouse button support including meta-key mouse support (ie. ALT-MB5)
Intelligent healing. CP will use lower rank heals when higher rank heals aren't needed. (ie no casting a 2K heal when the target only has 200hp damage)
Mana conservation. CP will cancel the heal if the target has been healed while casting to a users specified threshold. (ie. you start a 2k heal and another healer heals your target before your spell goes off, CP will cancel the heal saving you from waiting the mana)
User customization. You can set everything from the size of the bars to their colors to what info is displayed on each bar.
Integration with other Addons. Many other WoW addons are adding support for CP including CT_RaidAssist and MiniGroup

But are these Addon's legal?

Below is a quote taken off the offical Blizzard boards by slouken concerning what Addons are and there valid use within WoW.

Q u o t e:
Q u o t e:
UI mods fall into two categories:
Macros - these aren't really mods at all, but they can use LUA code to do neat things in game. These are found ENTIRELY inside the game, and the code is run by blizzard's interpreter, so they make the rules on what macros can an cannot do. Therefore, blizzard won't ban someone from using any macros.

AddOns - These are extra files, put into the WoW Interface directory on your hard drive which supplement the existing LUA and XML code that blizzard created that makes up the user interface that everyone uses.
Addons are made up of LUA files, and XML files, both of which are also run by blizzard's interpreter. Therefore, blizzard won't ban someone from using any addons.

3rd party programs are actual programs that get loaded into memory and executed using their own code. They run separate from the game similar to how ICQ or MSN Messenger runs in the background. The difference is that 3rd party hacks try to read, or change data coming into or out of the WOW game client(to the network card), or they try to read or write to memory space used by the Wow Game client.

Speed hacks, for example, often interfere with data flowing from the game client to the network card by intercepting the "i am here" signal that he game client sends to the server and making it seem that the player is moving faster than they should be. The server accepts this as truth because blizzard left it up to the game client to limit how fast you can go. (oops blizzard?) This strange design is caused by a need to let the game client do some of the work because the server is too busy to be expected to do everything.

Anyway, the distinction in 3rd party hacks is usually the fact that hacks run as their own programs and interfere with the game client.

Mods aren't anything more than REALLY extravagant macros.

(Note: Cosmos is known to have an external EXE file that gets run as it's own code - however, it doesn't interfere with the game client - in fact, all it does is download LUA and XML files, puts them in the right places, then QUITS long before the WoW game client even starts.)

This is a very good explanation of things as I understand them. However, I am not involved in policy and I'm not a lawyer.

While we've done our best not to penalize people who use the scripting interface, even in ways that aren't intended, it's conceivable that at some point someone will find a way to use them that is against the terms of use (e.g. is hurting other people's play experience), and is something we can't disable. In that case it's possible that we might warn people that using the addon is against the terms of use, and if they continue to do so, some action would be taken.

If you haven't been explicitly warned by a GM, or seen an official blizzard response about an addon or UI modification, then don't worry about it.