The SBA has proven to be very popular. While some will claim it’s because lazy players just want an “I win” button, I think it shows wider design failures and lack of care with the game.
It is becoming too bloated.
I will explain.
Wow historically had extremely simple encounter designs, and simple rotations. Sometimes you didn’t even have a rotation. An encounter like Patchwerk would never happen today. I am not saying these are good or bad things, just how things were.
If you want variety, you need complexity, so more complex encounters is itself not a bad thing.
Every expansion more class abilities get piled in because the expansion needs something new and shiny. Those abilities then need to be justifiably added because it’s a waste of resources otherwise, so you get ever increasing complexity. In other words, classes need to use the shiny new thing. Case in point is Hero Talents.
The game does not do a good job of teaching players how to play it, for years it has been “go outside the game and read 3rd party articles or watch 3rd party videos”. Features like the explanation of class rotation and key abilities introduced in Cataclysm were taken out years ago.
Spamming a single button is not that interesting for many players. A button which casts things for you is not much different from having a single ability like Frostbolt and hitting that over and over. It’s a slightly different visual flair.
SBA is good for casual players or those with accessibility issues, but I think the popularity is a symptom of a problem: bloat and overload. Game systems are built around ever more addons, ever more class abilities, more complex encounter design.
