When were macros added into the game?

[Nihility]

ah interesting so what did they change about them to make them more useful for combat?

they don't queue up like skills do so you always lose a little bit of gcd when you use macros. Pretty sure that's still not changed

They can still be useful for some stuff like /ac "Shirk" <2> is guaranteed to be the other tank in an 8 man group(unless you resort it differently) and it's ogc so it doesn't really affect much