Do you remember when You didn’t know about TSM?
You had no idea it existed, then you learned about it & now you use it.
A new player would do exactly the same thing.
While I do believe that some of the more innocuous features from addons could be included into the base game (e.g. writing a bio for you character), I think we’re in a good place in general when it comes to addons, and not much needs to change, imho. For a few reasons.
- We’ve seen Blizzard bring addon features into the game and limit addons when they felt they had a negative impact on the game, so it’s not like the devs are unaware and aren’t acting on these issues.
- The impact of addons varies greatly, and it’s probably less heavy than some would have us believe: the game is perfectly playable without them and I know a lot of people who don’t even use damage metres. Addons can be very important of course, even vital in some cases (usually at the very top end of a playstyle), but I’m willing to bet a lot of people in the lower spectrum only use them because they feel like they’re expected to, not because they really need them, or most importantly because…
- …they enjoy customising their experience. Given the opportunity to give our experience a personal touch, a lot of us jump on the opportunity for the mere pleasure of creativity and customisation. It’s nice being able to put things where we want them to be, to make information we deem more important (or struggle with) more readable and nice to look at. When talking about addons the discourse often focuses on how they risk disrupting the experience, but first and foremost they enhance it, allowing the game to adapt to different players on a level Blizzard would never be able to achieve on its own.
- They’re proof of how “open” WoW still is. Most new MMORPGs nowadays do not even contemplate the idea of letting players tinker with the UI on the level WoW does. To me the preminence of addons and addon culture shows WoW’s age, in a good way: it’s not just a game we play, it’s a game we make. WoW’s responsiveness to the emergent culture built by players is one of the things that set it apart for me. And while of course this can also mean occasional conflict between the devs’ game and the players’ game, I think overall addons are a huge plus and they’re worth keeping them as they are, even if this brings some compromises on the game’s design.
If they stopped the support for addons I’d straight up quit because the original blizzard ui is straight up horrible.
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IMO Addons are great, they allow us to see or track what the current UI does not. A lot of standard features of WoW were addons in the past.
I can easily see at a glance what activities I have done on alts for example using a weak aura. Or I can emphasize a certain ability that is coming in, that isn’t shows very clearly in game. I can easy remove all listings of work orders with no materials etc.
Just look at the Treasure Goblin for this event. First nothing was known then some clever people put together a spreadsheet and then a WA appeared with a timer and next location. The community is great at putting useful things together.
If they could write an addon that blocks calendar invites from strangers I would be over the moon. Even better if WoW just add the function themselves. I suspect it’s simply not possible atm.
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No, they actually base their raids around addons.
Dan Olsen aka Folding Ideas have a fantastic video explaining the whole addon dilemma.
And at this point it’s like the U.S and guns. They’re too intertwined to be split apart or banned.
I’m sure the Devs could lock down their API much more and start banning people using them.
But that would be a good way to kill the game.
I did the raid on normal mode, and I thought everything was completely intuitive except the last boss. I did use an addon called “bigwigs”, but it didn’t really help outside of giving me noises to stay alert. I think if I turned it off, nothing would change, but idk how much this affects higher difficulties. I wanna add though that the difficulty jump from the echo of neltharion to sarkareth is completely insane on normal mode.
Man remember all those WA for Stuff like Ra’den or Xanesh and people still managed to completly F it up? Yeah, i remember and because of this, i will say, that Addons don’t do Sh*t. All they do is overload people with all there beeping and other BS.
Unless he’s a dev at blizzard I have no interest in someone who can only summ up his opinion in a 1.5 hour video.
There’s no addon dilemma, just players who think forcing everyone to use blizzard’s horrible, limited UI will somehow make the game better.
Addons don’t increase efficiency by some shady, back alley hack that shows you info directly from blizzard’s database. They’re quality of life improvements that display information in a way that doesn’t overload the attention of the player. They make the game less draining and more enjoyable.
If devs used the default UI to design a mythic boss (they could barely beat), and people can faceroll it with a weakaura then it’s not the fault of weakauras but blizzard’s UI/encounter design.
Without addons some specs would be straight up unplayable.
If they remove them, they need to make things like weak auras baseline in the game.
If you disagree, you honestly have no idea wtf you are talking about.
Incorrect.
Not entirely correct either.
You don’t need addons to beat Raids.
You also don’t need by default addons for PvP. You only need them to even out the information disadvantage your opponents have by using them.
If addons were banned in total, nothing much would change in case of game difficulty. It would just shift to different playstyles and information sources.
If addons were banned in total a lot of healers would leave the game because the normal UI is horrible for healing.
I use the default UI and it is not that bad to heal.
As an example of it being horrible as a healer: The default UI can track 3 hots for resto druids and that’s it. 3 hots. 3.
Well, I might should add the default UI is enough to heal as Holy Paladin. Especially if you run completely Holy-based healing like me.
As another example: It doesn’t show who your trail of light target is, so you have to keep the targets in mind as a mental reminder to not just throw away trail of light healing.
As yet another example: Debuffs are way too hard to spot in the normal UI.
And as yet another example: You don’t know if your guardian spirit has procced or not when running the normal UI unless you’re scanning the combat log vigorously to see if it procced or not, you’ll be surprised with a 3 min cd on guardian spirit when it ends with the normal UI if it procs, unless you’re checking the combat log for procs.
And another example: You can’t see what CDs your party have and can’t plan accordingly.
Blizzard would definitely have to start rework how information are given to the players then.
My stance on addons is simple and clear: ALL addons (combat & non combat) shall be banned.
- Basic info from addons like damage meter should be integrated into default UI
- Combat info provide by addons like DBM, should simply be more clear in game itself.
- Other info from profession or collection addons should be more available in game itself.
The poor and incomplete default UI is not an excuse to push players further to get essential info from addons, instead of the game itself.
Improve default UI and ban ALL addons.
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Oh yeah, great idea. Why not just close roleplay realms entirely then?
I am playing on a RP server. It has absolutely 0 to do with RP.
If people can’t role play without addons, then they have bigger problem…
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