It is Time to Ban WoW Addons

Community General Discussion
1

Addons have been a big part of WoW since the beginning. But it is time for us to look into its negative impacts.

  1. For hardcores

The recent WF races are no longer just a competition of game skills, but also a competition of which guild can write best codes and addons. RWF is in game and irl gold sink. It is working a full time job instead of a playing a game.

It is not surprising at all that more and more hardcore raiding guilds stopped or disbanded. And this trend will continue.

  1. For casuals

I have to agree some streamers have said already: raiding is too hard. It is already hard to find people, form a group and organize a raid for casuals. Then the raids are significantly harder and harder over the years. It is just not fun for casual raiding.

One of the big reason is the addon. Ion said in recently interview, Blizzard has to make the encounters harder and harder, because combat addons are more and more intelligent. This is just a vicious circle.

  1. For Blizzard

Players shall not be dependant on third party addons to play a game. Basic addons like UI customization, damage meter, coord, should be integrated in the game itself.

Blizzard’s decision to add voice chat, UI, mouse over, M+ rating, item level, etc. is a good direction. But it is not enough. We need more basic functions included in default settings.

And the removal of combat addons like DBM will certainly make encounter design more creative.

  1. For everyone

Nobody loves to download, upgrade, set their addons all the time on every computer he plays WoW. It is just a hassel and it shold not be necessary.

The recent Overwolf and WoWup issue shows again how messy third parties are, from curse to twitch to wowup to overwolf to whatever in the future. Players don’t deserve this.

  1. For addon developers

It is great that you make a career and money from making useful addons. But for the greater good of the game and players, this has to stop.

In sum, Blizzard, it is time to improve wow default settings and ban ALL addons.

59 Likes
2

Addons make up for things that WoW isn’t going to invest time into making.

Various things that have been addons have been incorporated into the game over time but they aren’t going to adopt every addon.

I don’t personally feel the game will benefit if all addons were just removed.

39 Likes
3

It is sure that Blizzard won’t adopt every addons into default in-game functions. But it is not necessary either.

I think addons bring more negatives than positives to wow right now.

16 Likes
4

I use more addons in Classic versions than retail but I still have quite a few which I wouldn’t want to be without.

Some are purely QoL things others are necessary. Like how do you know if you’re doing any good if you can’t use a dps meter. How would you ever improve etc. It’s tedious to have to combatlog everything and then upload it before you can see where you are going wrong/what you can improve on.

I have various addons I use to help me track collecting things like All the Things, Can I Mog It, Altoholic etc. Other addons mark your map with things and track them so you can see what you’ve got left to do or where to find them.

Without addons we’d all just be looking at all those things on other sites constantly. I don’t really think that’s of any benefit to the game.

Addons do lots of different things in the game. I think blanket banning all is just going to leave the game falling short.

14 Likes
5

The issues you mentioned are the shortcomings of default UI causing addons to be popular. e.g. the default bag UI is awful, so most people will use a bag addon.

That is why I think there are a lot of functions Blizzard can include in default UI, e.g. damage meter, coord, etc. It is best to make those addons abundant by making default functions better.

On the other hand, combat related addon like DBM is totally counterproductive. Why would Blizzard make a complicated fight, then a 3rd party make an addon to counter it?

The same goes for addons like mission manager, zm puzzle helper, etc. Why make a minigame when the addon does it for player?

As long as addons still exist, this design dilemma will remain. As for some other UI or info addons, players don’t really need them, they are just used to them.

3 Likes
6

Why ban them?

Use them if you wish
Don’t if you don’t

9 Likes
7

You assume that it would be possible to make a default UI that would satisfy most/all players. You haven’t demonstrated that, and I certainly don’t believe it.

8 Likes
8

Just NO. Anyone can get addons for free, so they do not give any advantage as they are free.

10 Likes
9

I used to role play even before TRP / MRP was a thing but these addons add a great deal to immersion. We don’t have to store character sheets in third party sites because we can have everything right there in-game. It is a convenience that the role playing community enjoys.

Same with Musician, a lot of role players use it. There are even in-game concerts organized around it.

GBRadio is an addon for buzz boxes. Sure, we have chats in-game but this addon adds a flavour to them.

10

If encounter design is what you are taking aim at here then, its not all addons that you need to ban. Simply combat related ones, such as DBM, bigwigs,etc. However weak auras is weird one as it does things beyond combat.

Thing is I like my UI, and its built on ElvUI. Unless blizz were to adopt ElvUI into their game and have ALL the function it does right now, I cannot see myself being happy at all with any other UI. I am a creature of habit.

I think banning them would simply penalise and alienate more people than it would help.

6 Likes
11

Or they could just lower the raid difficulty and we are all again good.

Removing DBM means also removing pro active abilities and even classes. It is not realistic.

1 Like
12

I totally agree that removing addons is a bold and risky move that will have a lot of backlash. I doubt Blizzard will ever have the will or courage to do so.

It is just my personal opinion that addons do more harm than good to this game gradually.

13

That is one way of thinking. And the other way is that, because of addons, Blizzard has no movitation to improve its default UI.

Just taking the bags for example, it has been the same horrible UI since day one, and Blizzard never changed it. If there is no 3rd party addon, I am sure players will rage and Blizzard has to improve it.

And I am sure Blizzard could do it better than a 3rd party, with a better and less buggy one. But the existence of addons remove Blizzard’s incentive to do so.

4 Likes
14

I agree…

Edit: Also, let us say for a moment Blizzard would ban all addons… If Total Roleplay 3 is also one of the Addons banned, then I am 100% going to quit WoW because I am only here for the Roleplay Realms. And I am not going to RP with basic chat functions only and having to look up every other characters characteristica outside of the game on stuff like Realm Discords or such :poop:

2 Likes
15

Apparently there’s going to be a huge UI overhaul in Dragonflight.

2 Likes
16

Exactly what blizz has announced for the new expansion. They are working heavily on the UI.

2 Likes
17

How about no?

Healing with the default ui is horrible.

3 Likes
18

If you want raids to become easier from a mechanical perspective while also banning addons like DBM then Blizzard will also have to, once again, redesign their classes again. One of the reasons why they reduces the mechanical difficulty of specs was to instead create more varied raid mechanics I feel.

WoW’s biggest problem is its lack of proper telegraphing. You get a large circle around you, but there is no indication on what you should do with said circle. Do you stack? Do you spread out? Do you use it to negate a second mechanic?

Streamers have been saying for a while now that raiding has become too hard, but most meant mythic difficulty. Beside this current tier the rest were fine difficulty-wise. I would go as far as to say that normal is way too easy and even heroic was easier then it should be, but that is of course just my opinion.

I do not know why people think that addons play the game for you. Even back before DBM was demonized it was your raid leader who called out mechanics for you, yet I never ever heard people complaining that raid leads should be forbidden to relay information to the raid.

What about people with disabilities, who rely on addons to help them raid and do dungeons?

So, addons that help you solve puzzles is not fine, I get that. What about the skip Blizzard added in ZM, so you do not have to do the puzzles at all? I assume that is fine, because Blizzard added it in?

1 Like
19

I agree on that.

btw, Blizzard recently added mouse-over function in default UI, works very similar to healbot. Have you tried it?

20

The mouse over they added includes all abilities. Not specific. You’re still better off making mouse over macros.