World of Warcraft’s unique addon system and framework is one of the major pillars of the game. Being able to customize your UI just how you like it is something that players have gotten used to, and it has become part of how people identify with the game, and it has given players the ability to convey information in the way best suited to them. Taking away any single part of this customizability, no matter how small it might seem, has to be done with the utmost care as you risk alienating and disenfranchising significant portions of the long-term veteran player base.
At the same time, everyone agrees that the game’s base UI needs to have way more customizable functions to help prevent players, new and old, from feeling like certain addons are mandatory to perform on par with their peers. Compared to addons, the base UI functions such as Raid/party Frames, Nameplates, Debuff and buff tracking, Cooldown tracking, and the ability to add sound cues to all these things, is either completely non-existent or is so bare bones that it might as well not exist.
The goal to make the base UI functions closer in customizability to what addons can provide is fantastic and noble, but so far, none of the functions Blizzard have introduced with their focus on making the base UI better over the last couple of years have had anywhere near the customizability that even basic Addons provide. Personally, I am extremely sceptical of Blizzard’s ability to provide a suitable alternative to Addons.
Disabling core addon functions such as fully custom debuff and buff tracking on Raid Frames and Nameplates without providing a complete, functioning, and totally customizable baseline alternative would be disastrous for how healers parse information on their UI. In fact, I don’t even think it makes sense to disable the function for addons to begin with. Why can’t we just have both a functioning base UI and functioning Addons? One does not have to exclude the other.
Chicken or the Egg?
The notion that the perceived arms race between addons and boss/dungeon design is somehow a good excuse to disable core UI functions, such as custom buff and debuff tracking or the ability to track other players cooldowns, is in my opinion tantamount to attempted gaslighting by Blizzard.
If they wanted to simplify raid and dungeon design, they have always been able to do that without having to disable core addon functions that people rely on to properly interpret and react to what is going on in the game.
Make no mistake; the “arms race” that has led to players feeling that addons and WeakAuras are mandatory, rests entirely with Blizzard. According to themself, they have been forced into more and more complicated and fast paced fight design by the very existence of addons, but they seem to forget that it takes two to tango. Addons existing and being able to customize debuffs and buffs tracking, isn’t what made mechanics like Jailer Bombs, Ovinax Egg Breaks, or Sprocketmonger Mines require assignment WeakAuras. Those mechanics only require WeakAuras because Blizzard made them that way. They would simply be impossible, or the very least frustrating and deeply unfun, without a WeakAura telling you where to go.
You simply cannot blame addons, and by extension, the playerbase for your own bad boss and dungeon design.
Alas, let’s move on and talk about how the base UI elements fall short, and what needs to happen before they are comparable to addons, because it very much seems like we are moving towards a world where combat addons will be made useless.
Action Bars
This is properly the most basic part of the UI, but even here the UI rework we got in Dragonflight is nowhere near to replacing what addons like Bartender or Dominos does. The fact you still can’t have the action bars fade in and out when you mouse over them, or that you can’t actually hide Bar 1 more than three years after its introduction does not bode well for future additions to the base UI. I was personally looking forward to using the base Action Bars going into Dragonflight, but these basic issues just make them unusable for me
Cooldown Manager
The cooldown manager is a fantastic addition to the base UI in theory, but in practice the total lack of customization makes it utterly useless as an alternative to WeakAura packs. Blizzard suggests that they are going to fully replace certain addon functions with their own base version, so if the Cooldown Manager is indicative of anything, it is looking very bleak for the future.
Sure, some people say, “but the Cooldown Manager will probably be good in a year or two!” to which I say, WeakAura packs are good right now and have been good for years and years at this point! The current version of the Cooldown Manager is so far from providing what WeakAuras provide that it seems like a pipe dream that it could ever come close to on par with WeakAuras.
To ever replace WeakAura packs the Cooldown Manager needs to:
- Give the player the ability to decide which spells and buffs to track, including buffs gained from other players like Innervate and Power Infusion or Externals.
- Ability to change where and how any single spell or buff is tracked without relation to other spells. Allow players to not be constrained by a single box of “essential spells” and let them freely choose where they want a given spell to be.
- Font and time format customization.
- Ability to change the look of the icons, specifically the border. The rounded corners are frankly just ugly as hell.
- Conditional tracking of buffs and procs. For example, having a buff only show on X number of stacks, or show if it is missing or below a given duration or cooldown remaining threshold.
- Ability to disable/enable and customize spell highlights.
- Ability to change dimensions of any icon. For example, slightly rectangular icons instead of only having fully square icons
Name Plates
Obviously, we haven’t seen Blizzard take on what updated base Nameplates would look like and it goes without saying that the current baseline Nameplates are utter trash, so I will just list the some of the customizable functions that those Nameplates would absolutely need to have to ever be viable as a replacement for Plater.
- Custom Debuff / buff tracking including ability to white- or blacklist spells at the player’s own discretion, and the ability to customize how and where you want to show those debuffs.
- Full colour customization, including depending on mob ID or name, threat level, certain debuff/buffs, and casts.
In a recent interview, Ion talked about how this function likely won’t be possible going forward, which I find to be utterly dumb. In no way does disabling this function help with simplifying dungeon and raid design, that notion is just horse crap. - Ability to show which player is targeted by casts.
- Font customization, how and where health text is displayed, how and where the name of the mob is displayed. Ability to change position and size of target icons, skull, cross etc.
- Ability to have certain casts highlighted or castbar colour changed at the player’s full discretion.
- Texture customization.
Raid Frames
This is probably where I’m the most worried about what’s to come. Raid Frames is a super personal thing for healers, and it is the only tool we use to interpret and react to what we need to do and who we need to heal. Being able to see debuffs in the way you personally think fits you best, being able to track other players’ defensives, and being able to see who a given mob is casting that Lightning Bolt on, are all extremely important things that you simply cannot live without.
Private Auras have shown us how terrible a system can be when it messes with how you are able to track debuffs. With Private Auras the only thing you can customize is the size and placement of the debuff (which you ironically usually need a WeakAura to do) but you are not able to change the players frame colour if they have that specific debuff or give the frame a highlight or anything, you are not able to disable tooltips when mousing over the Private Aura debuff, and you cannot click through it, which is all just super frustrating and annoying to deal with. Private Auras as a whole have been an abject failure with no redeeming qualities.
We don’t know Blizzards plans entirely, and we don’t know if they are going to overhaul their baseline raid frames. The current version lacks any sort of customization, and in order to be a viable alternative to addons they would at the very least need:
- Colour customization. The current baseline version only has Class Colours or Bright Green with a Black Background. This obviously needs to be fully customizable.
- Font Customization, including size, colour, and positioning.
- Texture customization.
- Opacity sliders for “out of range” players, and background and foreground of the raid frame
- Custom buff and debuff tracking wherever on the frame you want, and ability to white- or blacklist buffs and debuffs at the player’s own discretion
- Customizable size and dimensions of the buff or debuff.
- Colour changing and highlighting of the frame depending on debuffs or buffs at the players full discretion.
- Colour changing of the frame depending on Magic/Curse/Poison/Disease debuffs.
- Nickname changer. Allow players to change given players nickname on their own frames for better visual parsing when other players are on their weirdly named alts.
- Customizability of how Absorbs and Healing Absorbs are shown.
- Ability to change between vertical and horizontal orientation of health bars.
- Ability to change ordering of groups and players. Alphabetical, Role based, up down, left right, etc.
- Ability to always have yourself in the same spot regardless of ordering or which group you are in.
Final Words
There are way more things that should be added to the baseline UI, such as Boss Mods, better buff and debuff tracking, better cast bars, better player / target / boss frames, Damage/healing meter, etc. And they have talked about doing most of these things thankfully which is fantastic.
However, the whole premise behind disabling addon functions simply doesn’t make any sense to me. I fail to see why a better base UI and Addons cannot coexist, and I do not buy the idea that disabling those addon functions is needed to stop the imaginary “arms race” because Blizzard could stop that race at any time by simply not participating in it.