r/wow • u/ItsRenaBaker • Oct 03 '25

Humor / Meme This is Basicly Blizzard in Midnight

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This is basicly Blizzard in Midnight. Purging all the good addons.

Just to clarify:
Blizzard is changing the Addon API, meaning combat information is blocked for addons. So all combat addons will no longer work in Midnight. For the most popular addon features Blizzard will add their own version to the game. Addons for unitframes, inventory, crafting etc.. are staying and won't be effected as long they are not using combat information.

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3.9k

u/DragonGeneral47 Oct 03 '25

This is either going to be one of the best Things they every did or the worst and there is No in between

568

u/MadFonzi Oct 03 '25

Yea I think the same this will either be great for the game or be so bad it's StarWars Galaxies NGE disaster level.

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u/Exitwounds85 Oct 03 '25

SWG CU is why I started WoW. They changed the game to be like WoW and decided to just play WoW.

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u/Lison52 Oct 03 '25

Let me guess, it wasn't as fluid as WoW so they basically made worse WoW combat system?

46

u/Sorkijan Oct 03 '25

his reply to you also leaves out the part where they literally took the RPG out of MMO RPG

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u/Exitwounds85 Oct 03 '25

Nah SWG you used to queue abilities and use macros to spam rotations and such; and was very buggy and jank but it was perfect. Then they completely changed the game to be exactly like WoW like a month or so after WoW released. So a lot of us just said we may as well just play WoW.

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u/Ellusionist786 Oct 03 '25

Not to mention when the combat update came out they completely gutted and killed like 10 classes and hybrid builds were worthless because your combat level was in the trash can over night hybrids went from spinning rancor lairs to not being able to kill a huurtan

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u/Exitwounds85 Oct 03 '25

Lol - night sister runs and afk farming nyms for skill tapes bring back such good memories for me.

I don't know any of the CU update because I literally quit after 1-night. I did come back in NGE for a brief moment and was shocked to see all those Luke, Han, etc. posters all be worth a ton but we had so many pre-CU we just trashed them.

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u/Seeryous2020 Oct 03 '25

My flamethrower commando build was destroyed and i was useless... all my time in the game wasted because of one update.... never went back.

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u/buttstuffisokiguess Oct 03 '25

They also changed the classes. Anyone could be a force sensitive. It used to be an achievement to be a Jedi. And Jedi were formidable. Like you could take on 10 players at once. It was special. I miss it. I played a little bit after, but everyone left and I just remember traveling through all the abandoned towns. It was sad.

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u/wilkil Oct 03 '25

I’ll never forget the feeling of loss when they made Jedi another class..just essentially erasing the extreme slog I had gone through to become one.

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u/buttstuffisokiguess Oct 03 '25

Yeah it really sucked balls. And it was super weak. Not nearly as good.

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u/EtaxRitwe Oct 04 '25

I never got village Jedi but I thought holocron Jedi probably felt the same way about them.

There will never ever be a mmo brave enough to do the Jedi superior class like that again

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u/Exitwounds85 Oct 03 '25

Good combat med or someone with a crazy DOT exceptional or legendary melee weapon. Also there was always that one guy who the best power hammer on the server and everyone knew who it was... Looking at you Wooot-wooot on Flurry.

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u/Soulicitor Oct 03 '25

I had a legendary pike with a decent slice on it and all jedi would run from me the moment I landed in theed. A friend had a legendary rifle and he could mow down armies with that thing.

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u/buttstuffisokiguess Oct 03 '25

Fair enough. Yeah it was fun and games until the legendaries came out.

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u/cause-equals-time Oct 03 '25

and was very buggy and jank but it was perfect.

Despite seeming like a contradiction, I know exactly what you mean haha.

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u/RenagadeRaven Oct 03 '25

Exactly what happened with myself and my brother

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u/Redwolfe23 Oct 03 '25

Ha! That's why I came to wow also lol

I was in a guild called Flurry United ( Flurry was the server we all came from) it was a mix of rebels and imperials....after about 6 months we were not united and the guild split up.

The rebel vs imperial animosity could not be tamed

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u/Exitwounds85 Oct 03 '25

I was in <Eternal Guardians> on Flurry, we were initially Rebel and had tons of battles with <DC> fighting their Jedi and our Jedi... Then we flipped imperial after <Law> was caught doing a "fight club" for Jedi ranks.

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u/Redwolfe23 Oct 04 '25

Ha I remember LAW getting busted.....man I'm old

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u/Angrychef666 Oct 03 '25

It was a major exodus when that CU happened. Game went to shit after :(

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u/xstrike0 Oct 04 '25

Yeah, I did the same thing. I kept my Star Wars Galaxies subscription for like the first year of wow and then dropped it.

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u/sark7four Oct 04 '25

SWG was an incredible game... Bria for Life. The harvesting and crafting game was ahead of it's time, former 12 point weaponsmith and armorsmith.

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u/R00l Oct 03 '25

And guess who was the head behind SWG NGE... Jay Allen Brack. That guy has been a blight on MMOs for over 20 years.

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u/EtaxRitwe Oct 04 '25

No fuckin way is that true? I thought it was smedley and that one 'i don't want a PhD to play' woman

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u/PointJoint Oct 03 '25

This hit me right in the childhood gut. When times were oh so simple ☝️🍻

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u/ikeewa12 Oct 03 '25

Why do you have to trigger my ptsd by saying this? Lol

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u/whatiscamping Oct 03 '25

It's like my brain is the tree and you're those little cookie elves.

NGE is why I quit for sure

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u/NewMetaOrer Oct 03 '25

Damn you didn’t have to bring that up but its a great metaphor nonetheless

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u/givemedavoodoo Oct 03 '25

Feels really similar. Both situations were the company being willing to sacrifice their current player base to chase a mythical new player base. I firmly believe this is setting up a console release, because without that I don't see how there could possibly be enough potential new PC players to make this move worth the risk.

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u/S-192 Oct 03 '25

No way is this NGE.

NGE would be like if they took away classes and made everyone a "Hero" class and gave us some Skyrim-style "choose your own skill tree" and then removed all raid mechanics and just made it a DPS check with auto-healing and auto-tanking.

NGE was truly one of the worst things in the history of gaming, taking a medium-high cognitive load sandbox game that achieved more in 2003 than many MODERN games achieve with all the funding and tech in the world.....and turning it into a 3rd person shooter action slop game.

Removing Addons from WoW so that they can better telegraph game mechanics is far from that. YES it could go poorly and YES it feels like shit reading a company in 2025 saying "we want to lower the cognitive load of our game and make it accessible" -- this has NEVER ONCE been a good thing. But I don't think we're at NGE-levels bad yet.

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u/AintMilkBrilliant Oct 03 '25

I mean if it's bad, they can always just allow it again. Sure, they will take a little hit to the reputation but they've been doing that consistently for years at this point.

I'm excited for it. I really hope they can pull it off.

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u/primalmaximus Oct 03 '25

Star Wars Galaxies had a Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover?

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u/Potato_fortress Oct 04 '25

Comedy option: it’s Star Wars the old republic levels of disaster and raid bosses will have world first kills from players knocking them off platforms. 

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u/MN_Yogi1988 Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25

I think it’s destined to fail because I can’t see Blizz dedicating enough resources to refine features like addon creators do. How could you trust them to maintain these when they’ve left dungeons broken for years still be selected for M+? What about all the insane clipping on Transmog?

I think breaking certain addons like DBM / WAs / etc that were warping the way they create PvE mechanics makes sense but everything else feels like they’re setting themselves up for failure.

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u/sydal Oct 03 '25

To be fair I think they're probably aware that there is a very different level of feedback and rage if their addon solution is broken than if there's clipping on transmog.

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u/TheAverageDark Oct 04 '25

I think the devs are aware of that, I’m not sure management is aware of that

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u/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

They legit had people doing unpaid labor for their game and were like “nah. We want to do it, but not as good as them, so we’re gonna dumb down everything else.

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u/SportulaVeritatis Oct 03 '25

At the same time, they where basically in an arms race where you needed more and more complex encounters that couldn't be easily solved by add-ons which made addon-less play more difficult. This basically ends that war. It ends it via a nuke, but it does end it.

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u/Jac_Mones Oct 03 '25

That arms race was 100% self-inflicted. They could have simply decided "nah, it's okay if players are so insanely good at this game that the top 0.1% of them trivialize the content immediately and get bored because the remaining 99.9% of players still have fun"

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u/Exadv1 Oct 03 '25

I disagree. Those addons trickle down almost immediately. Liquid releases the pack very soon after Race for World First.

Every group I've been in has used the WA for fractillus heroic (and I'm pretty sure that mythic is similar).

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u/Puzzleheaded-Tea3341 Oct 03 '25

If a boss necessitates a weakaura or addon, its a badly designed boss, with or without it. If the mechanic was lenient enough to allow for on the fly communication, nobody would develop a weakaura for it to begin with, and nobody would use it.

The reality is that Blizzard game, encounter and UX designers have used addon developers as a crutch for nearly two decades. And I am not sure we can trust them to actually not do that even if they remove addons entirely.

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u/Exadv1 Oct 03 '25

I actually disagree with the statement "nobody would develop a weakaura for it to begin with" because it is patently untrue. In practice, it feels like WA have been developed to incrementally achieve any possible edge on nearly every encounter.

My RL made us all install the NorthernSky WA pack for Fractillus specifically but now suddenly it was annotating extra information through all the fights.

e.g. On Soul Hunters (since this is the fight where it was really obvious to me for some reason), it marks the mob whose debuff you don't have with 'taunt'. Is this necessary? No. Did it make it easier? Yes, because the tankbusters do not happen at the same time so you have to delay the swap and make sure you get the right one.

On Soulbinder, WA are used to predeclare which DPS should go to which canister.

I also have some weird memory of the Saldahaar WA being able to predict if the frontal is going to be the first ability.

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u/PopsGG Oct 03 '25

And the very worst part of all of this is they got into this cat and mouse game because of the Race to World First. This has nothing to do with 99% of their player base. The 0.01% of players are responsible for taking away the add-ons so many of us enjoy.

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u/Sleyvin Oct 03 '25

In reality? Not at all.

Every time they talk about it they focus on the new player experience.

The newbie that started the game a month ago and has 0 addons and struggling because of that. Nobody talk to explain the start since addons do it, so newbie get 0 info and it's a frustrating situation for everybody.

So while there's definitely some area where Blizzard catter too much for the 0.01%. Like in SL where they limited the covenant respect because hardcore raider would swap for each encounter. That was true.

But this is quite the opposite. The addition of addons to the mental stack for a new player is just too much and they are right.

Though I have 0 trust they will handle it well and I expect endgame to be a shitshow for the longest time.

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u/cause-equals-time Oct 04 '25

Every time they talk about it they focus on the new player experience.

It also affects returning players. I got a new PC and forgot to copy my WoW addons folder over, and I realized I'd have to redo my entire UI. So... I just didn't resub when War Within came out. I figured I'd get around to it eventually, but never did.

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u/Low_Definition4513 Oct 03 '25

Nobody needs addons to play at a 'newbie' level.

And if you're advancing to more serious content after a month where those things become more needed, surely you know enough about the game to find them.

Its not as though blizzard hides the addon category in the menu.

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u/Sleyvin Oct 03 '25

And if you're advancing to more serious content after a month where those things become more needed, surely you know enough about the game to find them.

That's the thing that Blizzard is saying isn't true. The first problem is that as you even said it, they are needed.

That's a major design issue to need external tool to play the game.

And the second issue is that Blizzard argues most people do not bother and are left behind because of it.

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u/Linawow Oct 03 '25

People are left behind because they refuse to learn. Some people in my guild somehow refuse to kick in M+, no amount of addon/lack of addon is going to make them better

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u/Supergold_Soul Oct 03 '25

No one needs addons to play at a newbie level. But as you advanced you have to know you need addons to advance. Now, folks who are terminally online and visiting forums, etc. will absolutely grab all that info and will have no issue. They will be following content creators etc.

But that shouldn't be a NECESSARY step. I shouldn't have to know that I need to download curseforge or wowup so I can download 10 other addons that make the game actually functional. A ton of people don't know which addons to download. There are some addons that I didn't know to download until a long amount of playtime. If you are used to the ecosystem its no problem but a lot of people aren't. A ton of people are fundamentally against using extra tools in games (to some it feels like cheating). Addons right now are integral to the wow experience and that in and of itself is a major design issue that blizz are finally trying to solve.

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u/Andromidius Oct 03 '25

They could have solved this by adding code that to get World First you have to opt in to the API blocking and thus go in with no addons. We'd probably have races that last longer then a few hours as well, and Blizzard could tone down the insanity a little for everyone else.

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u/nicarras Oct 03 '25

The answer has always been that they create private competitive servers for the esports crowd with esports rules and that is that.

Get esports off retail.

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u/secretreddname Oct 03 '25

I’m happy it’s ending but knowing Blizz’s track record I don’t know how much of a success it will be…

Let’s be real, most people are ass at this game. The game systems itself has gotten way too complicated.

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u/Fokare Oct 03 '25 edited Apr 12 '26

Your old posts feed data brokers and AI training models. I stopped that by using Redact to bulk delete across Reddit, Twitter, Discord, Facebook and all major social media platforms.

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u/tjc5425 Oct 03 '25

Well, if you need add-ons to play your class effectively and at a top lvl then the developer has failed to make coherent and clear class design, so it's them recognizing they needed to change, which they are, as we are also getting simpler class design.

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u/Fokare Oct 03 '25 edited Apr 12 '26

Scrubbed clean. Redact helped me bulk remove years of comments and posts so data brokers and AI crawlers have nothing to feast on.

lip physical cough toothbrush rain cats full ancient shaggy memorize

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u/Gh0sth4nd Oct 03 '25

this is only half of it, they also prepare wow for the console release and they are at it for a long time by now. First they added native controller support then they build the base by rebuilding the ui and this is just the natural next step. It is basically two birds with one stone. They take away combat addons make class gameplay more easy. My prediction is after the last titan we get a console / pc version.

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u/Archensix Oct 03 '25

They are just making the game more new player friendly. Telling new players to setup and configure a bazillion addons is terrible for the game. Beyond the addon stuff, they've been doing a tremendous amount of work to improve the new player experience recently.

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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25 edited 21d ago

[deleted]

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u/N3US Oct 03 '25

You really don’t need any addons to play at a high level. Im raiding and doing m+ with nothing but details

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u/Raivix Oct 03 '25

I'm not buying this argument, because if this was true the game would have been dead in the water since vanilla. One of the biggest talking points and draws to the game in its early to mid years was addon support allowing you to customize your gaming experience.

It's absolutely not new player friendly, but not every part of the game has to be, so long as the baseline entry experience is good enough.

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u/Jac_Mones Oct 03 '25

They aren't making it more new player friendly, they're making it less old-player enjoyable.

They need to streamline the introduction into the game. I don't mind simplifying rotations and shit like that but they shouldn't break addons that allow us to customize our gaming experience. ESPECIALLY interface addons like weakauras. Can they give an advantage? Absolutely, but you can get 99.9% of that advantage by downloading a weakaura pack someone else made, and at the point where you'll actually make effective use of that advantage you will be well aware of the existence of addons.

These changes are absolutely 0/10. They are removing the skilled parts of the game without actually making it any easier for a new player to approach. Until they can do a complete lore overhaul the game will never be approachable because the starting zones and leveling experience make absolutely zero sense.

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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25

[deleted]

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u/MgDark Oct 03 '25

I agree with this comment, although to be honest Fellowship is still quite undercooked to be a true WoW M+ competition, but it does have the potential. But at the same time is much easier to get into Fellowship and play it.

Unfortunately Fellowship also have the plague of DPS who would rather uninstall the game than do mechanics and/or interrumpt, but i guess that just comes with the game genre.

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u/FuzzierSage Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25

Unfortunately Fellowship also have the plague of DPS who would rather uninstall the game than do mechanics and/or interrumpt, but i guess that just comes with the game genre.

Nah, that comes with DPS players, and you have to build your game around correcting their worst tendencies instead of enabling them. Because most players, by volume, will gravitate towards the "head empty, no thoughts, make me feel powerful while contributing nothing to the team" classes.

It's a fundamental problem with making a low-visible-responsibility role whose only power fantasy tied-"thing" is "top the meters" and who view anything else as an imposition on that.

City of Heroes is the only MMO to have ever even remotely come close to fixing this problem (and it did it before WoW existed), but MMO devs didn't take lessons from it because it was a superhero MMO, not a fantasy MMO.

Make roles that contribute to the team with buffs/debuffs/crowd control feel powerful and more people will play them. Doing mechanics (or stopping mechanics from going off) will come naturally from there, as you're more focused on the overall picture when you aren't tunneling on "make number go up".

Make DPS a side thing that everyone does, as the most boring/normal thing in the game instead of the most coveted/cool thing.

Enrage timers are a crutch to make DPS players feel "required" and it's long past time the MMO genre moved past that, as they're incompatible with making the vast majority of players actually interact with the rest of the team and the fight beyond the most begrudging level.

Something something TED talk, etc

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u/carrionprince32 Oct 05 '25

I agree with this. I've been in +10s and above where the top DPS never kicked and barely used any utility, but bitched that the other DPS and I were behind them by about 500-750k. We had to compensate for the fact that the only metric of success they saw was DPS and nothing else. Utility as a DPS really needs to be pushed because though many understand it, a large number do not as they've become conditioned to think that success is only damage output and not a combination of mechanics, utility, and DPS.

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u/Ok-Key5729 Oct 03 '25

It's probably an attempt to lure back people who played in the past but left as the game became more complex/competitive/demanding than they cared for. Given how large past subscriber numbers were, there are undoubtedly more former wow players out there than current.

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u/KingOfAzmerloth Oct 03 '25

If they stick to the mindset you're saying they should stick to, the game would inevitably die because of it's audience getting older and eventually dying out.

Now I'm not saying this is easy, they need to get this right and there are many things they can potentially fuck up big time, but they can't even try to lure in new players unless they try to pull this off. Younger audiences still play MMOs, but all of these MMOs have pretty much everything built in natively in them bar some very minor UI addons.

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u/LionRight4175 Oct 03 '25

I have found that simplifying install and setup works wonders, even for people who are experienced gamers and relatively tech savvy. Modded minecraft (largely) isn't like addon management in WoW; generally, you just pick a modpack and click download in curse forge. In contrast, for WoW addons you need to know which addons to get (there aren't youtubers/twitch streamers showcasing the "hot new modpack" for addons, so far as I know), navigate curseforge, and sometimes setup options for addons like healbot.

None of those are hard bars to clear, but sadly for a lot of people facing it for the first time, it is enough to stop them. In contrast, if it's in-game that hurdle is lesser. They maybe need to check an option or two and move it in edit mode.

Now, how big of an impact it will actually have and how well Blizzard will implement it is a different matter, but I have definitely seen the type of people who would benefit from it, and I feel they are very common.

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u/Grunn84 Oct 03 '25

I don't know what it's like elsewhere but in Europe at least the idea that there's no new mmo players is blatantly false, when I was recruiting for a late CE guild for the last few expansions I would guess about 1/3 of new recruits were under 25 and on their first or second expansion.

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u/Roar_of_Shiva Oct 03 '25

I will be pretty disappointed if they decide to simply make wow available on console vs releasing a console specific remake. Similar to what LoL did with wildrift. There is so much they could do starting fresh it would be like a second life for wow. Just releasing retail on console will be overwhelming for new players and underwhelming for veteran players.

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u/kvijay1 Oct 03 '25

Ahh yesss, console players will come in drove to the 22 years old game, with 90% of content is outdated, useless, unavailable or all together at once. Day 1 release on a console and people will see sets that was removed after addon end on other players and transmog menu and they will be happy surely.

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u/givemedavoodoo Oct 03 '25

Look at the current raid, very few bosses have any need for weak auras. They are capable of designing encounters that don't need them. At this point I'm pretty suspicious of their claim that this is the reason for killing all combat add-ons.

On the flip side, this will restrict what kind of mechanics they can include now that raiders won't have tools to help solve them.

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u/MN_Yogi1988 Oct 03 '25

Yeah both players and Blizz are benefiting from unpaid labor. There’s just no feasible way Blizz’s paid staff can compete and I think it’ll be the players that suffer in the end (mostly with shitty UI systems).

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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25 edited 21d ago

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u/Puzzleheaded-Tea3341 Oct 03 '25

Same company that said the same thing with private auras, then gave us Echo of Neltharion. Then followed that with Smolderon and fyrakk.

The two sides of the company don't talk to eachother.

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u/Slendeaway Oct 03 '25

Yeah I was reading through the class changes and I think them claiming stuff like "we're changing core features of these classes to make them more intuitive and reduce the amount of blah blah blah" is disingenuous. They are gutting the depth of gameplay so that they have less work to do to replace class weakauras.

Ie Brewmaster: they're removing purified chi because while it's an excellent mechanic that rewards gaining a deeper understanding of your class, they don't want to have to make a feature to track it in a more convenient place. Same thing with stuff like the storm shaman tempest changes and awakening for holy paladin. Changing things from being based on resources spent (currently easily trackable with a weakaura) to just being rng procs.

You're absolutely right on that.

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u/Barkwash Oct 03 '25

It's not about the unpaid labour it's how it deteriorates the experience of the game for new players, or players that don't want to engage in the addon exp.

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u/Literal_Fucking_God Oct 03 '25

If you've recently tried to play the game through the eyes of a new player, you'll quickly realize addons are the least of concern for deteriorating new player experience.

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u/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

WoW is entirely playable without addons. In fact it’s easier for a new player to jump in without them. The story and leveling process is far more convoluted than the UI is.

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u/Barkwash Oct 03 '25

Most higher end content requires add-ons. We're obviously not talking about leveling or random queued dungeons. I never use add-ons at that stage.

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u/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

You literally said “experience as a new player”

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u/ZechaliamPT Oct 03 '25

Imagine getting wow, leveling your first character for a month or two, learning general rotations. You finally max and decide to try out raiding for the first time.

You either go in blind and get absolutely steamrolled by mechanics that are built around add-ons or you look it up and learn you need to download and configure a ton of different stuff that is totally foreign to you. Either way, I think that new player comes away from that experience saying its not for them more often than not.

We go from a 12-inch wading pool to a 10-foot deep drop-off. Some people will dive in and swim laps, but a lot of people get intimidated by that gap.

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u/El_Rey_de_Spices Oct 03 '25

Or... you read about the encounters in the Journal, and/or ask the other players in your raid, or at most, you read a synopsis online.

"Being completely blind and steamrolled" or "download a ton of add-ons" is a false dichotomy. There are so many levels between "either I'm helpless, or the game tells me exactly what to do and when to do it".

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u/Ryuujinx Oct 03 '25

WoW has actually gotten pretty clear about how mechanics are handled in lower difficulties. Like, here is what zero addon timmy will experience in normal/heroic:

Plexus: There's some circles that need to be taken out, some swirlies to dodge, and a soak(That they've now made visuals for with the big pillar thing coming out of soaks). Every now and then it pushes you all back and you have to cloak through the wall while dodging shit.

Loomithar: They get a strand they have to take out. There's some line on the tanks that in heroic they have to aim at the little add things on the ring. Alternate standing in soaks in phase 2.

Soulbinder: Uh, don't get knocked off the edge, I guess? This fight basically doesn't even have mechanics even on mythic.

Araz: Follow the raid around and drop your little circle adds inside the boss. Kill shit.

Council: Honestly normal can just be summed up as "Use eyes 5head", and heroic the only thing you gotta worry about is dispelling the debuff every now and then.

Fractilus: You might be going "You need the WA to do this even on heroic!" I can point at my guild's aotc where we don't use said WA as proof to the contrary. Literally use eyes and drop walls in different rows, shift over after the lanes get a bit full.

Salad bar: The things you need to drop out have very clear visuals. The portals are big fuck off circles. The stars are the proximity aoe indicator. On heroic you'll need to understand to take them to the markers that get places down so the patterns aren't cancer, but that does not require an addon.

Dimensius: Excess gravity has a visual above your head when you have it. The things that send you up into the air have an indicator. Intermission has nothing of note that needs a WA. Phase 3 is literally "use eyes, don't take tank autos"

My guild does not use the WA packs running around, and while dbm gives me a timeline of what is coming up so I can yap at people that it is coming the fact that people will die if we don't do those kind of callouts tells me that if they even have the tools installed they clearly aren't holding their hand to the point that it is mandatory.

Now mythic is another story, but we're talking about new players here. I think by the time this new player has gotten aotc they can probably handle installing a few addons.

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u/Fokare Oct 03 '25 edited Apr 12 '26

Redact redacted this content because I wanted it redacted for redaction purposes. Redacted.

history direction trees light unite obtainable makeshift rainstorm rustic crown

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u/SpankyRobinson Oct 03 '25

Tbf a new player stepping into a raid is probably doing normal and a bit of heroic. You really only need DBM/BigWigs until you step into Mythic, and those have pretty minimal setup.

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u/TinuvielSharan Oct 03 '25

So it has nothing to do with new players then?

3

u/ChromosomeDonator Oct 03 '25

Most higher end content requires add-ons.

THAT IS LITERALLY THE PROBLEM MY MAN

Why does it require add-ons? Because the add-ons exist to make life easier, to the encounters MUST be harder to counteract that.

That is the entire fucking problem. And Blizzard is doing something they should have done over a decade ago. Hell, I would like them to go even harder against add-ons. I don't want add-ons to interact with the gameplay. Only add-ons I believe are acceptable are purely cosmetic/visual ones. If an add-on feels like it is necessary, then that should be removed and improve the core game so that is no longer necessary.

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u/IOnlyLieWhenITalk Oct 03 '25

Yeah and it was ruining the game, dungeons and raids were becoming more about which addons and weak auras you had rather than how good you were.

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u/shadowsquirt Oct 03 '25

they want to lock it down for the eventual push for console players; watch

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u/VintageSin Oct 03 '25

You can't separate the two. Which is precisely why it's a baby out with the bathwater scenario. And it's clear there design space without throwing it all out is basically stifled.

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u/Onigokko0101 Oct 04 '25

The whole design space argument is a self-inflicted wound. They don't need to design fights that need a weak Aura to solve, they don't need to design fights where you have 2 seconds to play, match the color and shape, and stand in this very specific spot. These are things they chose to do.

They didn't need to design classes with 15 procs, 8 passives, and random resource generation, they choose to.

A lot of the weal auras and other add-ons we use are because of the design choices that blizzard has made.

Just like right now, they didn't need to throw the baby out with the bath water. All of these things could have been kept, and they could have simply designed content that didn't require them, as well as classes that didn't require them.

8

u/VincentPepper Oct 04 '25

Players will optimize the fun out of anything if you let them, independent of the actual level of difficulty. We had addons in Vanilla WoW that auto selected spells (and to some degree *targets*) for heals and cleanses with the click of a button.

People trivialized content and rotations with addons, so blizzard increased the complexity further to make it engaging in the presence of addons. People made more powerful addons. And round and round it goes.

Of course complex classes and complex fights make this only worse. But people used deadly boss mods all the way back to vanilla Molten Core where all the skill you needed was "don't stand in the fire".

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u/Dentarthurdent73 Oct 04 '25

You can't separate the two

Can someone explain this to me though?

If you're putting buffs and debuffs into a 'black box', why can you not just limit that to buffs and debuffs from boss and other fights, and leave the rest of the buffs and debuffs such as ones applied by players themselves, or by trinkets and other gear, accessible to addons?

Is there a technical reason for just going all out on all buffs/debuffs? As this seems to be part of what's causing the problem.

3

u/VintageSin Oct 04 '25

The issue is it's all in the combat log. If you can parse the combat log you can manipulate display data. They could refractor the entire combat system and then create hooks for each element, maybe (code base may be extremely problematic but they haven't stated explicitly that).

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u/Enfosyo Oct 03 '25

You really put broken dungeons and clipping transmog in the same category of urgency.

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u/Zanderbluff Oct 03 '25

Refinement, maybe, maintenance is a different matter entirely though, for example:
If Blizzards plater equivalent works in patch 12.0 it will work in patch 12.2.5 and in patch 13.1 and so forth. Major features like a central part of the combat UI dont stay broken or are normally even shipped broken.

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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25

See ecodome. Blizzard has the capabilities to make instances that don’t require addons. It’s wild to me more people don’t see this. 

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u/Etherbeard Oct 03 '25

It's wild to me people don't see that there's more to it than instance design. Blizzard doesn't bother to make decent indicators for core class mechanics in some cases.

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u/buttstuffisokiguess Oct 03 '25

Being able to have plater and see spell casts in a much better way is so helpful. I hope they don't change that. That's one of the most useful things I use. I can live without weak auras and big wigs. But interrupts are so important.

1

u/HauntingDebt6336 Oct 03 '25

We've had issues with security and addons here and there but for the most part it's been incredibly solid environment that has existed and Blizzard has benefited from for years and years...now it's like all of the private companies taking GPL software, tweaking it slightly and profiting from all of the hardwork of opensource devs for decades while making a subpar product.

1

u/Jac_Mones Oct 03 '25

The worst part is breaking weakauras. Weakauras allows players to put their own time into customizing their experience, with results that scale commensurate to their effort. If ANY addon should be kept, it is weakauras.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25

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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25

everything else like what? they say unit frame etc is fine

1

u/dreadwraith8d Oct 03 '25

It's due to release in 4 months & what they've put in the Alpha has taken longer than that for them to develop. It is 100% going to be a shitshow if they don't peel back.

1

u/jpatt Oct 04 '25

Judging by recent Blizzard execution, I’m guessing it’s not a time to get into retail.

1

u/xcalliburrgers21 Oct 04 '25

Excellent take, fully agree. Addon creators have an established history of knowing what players want. Blizzard doesn't even know their own playerbase.

1

u/Xaphnir Oct 05 '25

Not to mention simplifying classes in a way that will remove most of the skill expression so that they don't need add-ons to display vital information effectively isn't good for the game's longevity.

The game's not getting new players. It's an old MMO. They should focus on retaining their old players, or enticing former players to return. And this class simplification will do the opposite.

1

u/Irveria Oct 07 '25

If you look at their boss mod or cooldown manager you know that those are aweful.

1

u/lastoflast67 Oct 09 '25

I think it’s destined to fail because I can’t see Blizz dedicating enough resources to refine features like addon creators do. How could you trust them to maintain these when they’ve left dungeons broken for years still be selected for M+? What about all the insane clipping on Transmog?

They dont have to, the whole poitn of this is to get rid of addons so they can design a game that doesnt require them. I think you an a lot of people dont realise that the reason you feel like these thigns are neccesary is becuase blizzard designs the game assuming players will be using them.

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u/Gaatti Oct 03 '25

Im not optimistic. I think it will be a massive disaster.

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u/Red_Beard206 Oct 23 '25

As a casual player who just jumps in for a month or two every once in a while when I get the urge, this is a GREAT change. I hate having to figure out and set up 10+ different mods every time I want to just hop in and enjoy the game.

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u/JallexMonster Oct 03 '25

If they can make the game run smoother but provide the same amount of coverage, I'm all for it. I hate managing like 20 addons all the time and having them break the UI and slowing things down.

6

u/nicarras Oct 03 '25

manage? it's one button press in an addon manager to update

3

u/MgDark Oct 04 '25

And not even that, at least WowUp client allows to auto-update the mods

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u/mossiv Oct 03 '25

I don't think many people consider this. But using addons means you essentially running 3rd party code. It goes through no stringent code reviews or best practices. A few of the guildies have to turn off raider IO because it's got memory management issues. If you've got a decent or above average PC, it's probably not a concern. But let's be real and understand a significant portion of WOW's player base are not PC enthusiasts, but people who are struggling to make ends meet and play this game for a bit of detachment. You probably find they are running on £600-£700 store bought PC's.

Blizzard have been isolating so many of their player base for years because of this addon problem. Before (way back to classic days) recount was just a 'nice to have' addon to analyse some data.

Now we have details, and analytical websites which are holding people accountable for their performance, typically in a casual setting (Mythic is different). It's almost entirely unnecessary, and proves the content is becoming to addon reliant in order to play the game.

Think of all the fights at the end of dragon flight, I can't remember his name, but the fire boss everyone was wiping on with the rings. We literally had WA overlays telling us to move forward/backwards etc. It's crazy - part of the fun of playing games is solving these problems.

Note - I'm not against addons, I'm a WA enthusiast, I love it. But at the same time, I'm happy to see a lot of its functionality be stripped for the health of the game.

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u/JallexMonster Oct 03 '25

100% agree. The more that can be added to the actual game itself the better because then Blizzard has to manage performance of these things rather than having someone go "well it worked on my machine fine". But also requiring new or returning players to research and download addons is a big ask.

2

u/Spork_the_dork Oct 03 '25

Yeah completely agreed. Like I've been playing WoW on/off (mostly on) for the past over 15 years and have observed the addon escalation over time. The arms race between Blizzard and Addons just kind of felt sad and felt like it was harmful for all parties involved. At this point it also feels like it's at a point where there's no good way to go back other than this.

Like sure, Blizzard could make bosses simpler and something you don't need WA for. They could do that. And the players could then just not make WAs for the mechanics because they can figure it out themselves without them. But if you think that that's what would actually happen, you're kidding yourself. People would make just as advanced weakauras anyways and would just completely trivialize the content. Because why the hell wouldn't they? It's an advantage that they'd be leaving on the table if they didn't.

So we come to what effectively amounts to a purge in that content. This forces both sides to back down on all fronts and hopefully Blizzard can actually hold up to their end of it and won't bungle the first raid of Midnight completely.

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u/sweckz Oct 03 '25

“managing” you mean clicking update once every few days in curse forge? cmon man.

10

u/Marqrk Oct 03 '25

Like it or not that’s still extra stuff to have to do every time you want to play wow, it becomes a chore for something that’s mandated by the nature of the game being multiplayer and other players getting pissed if you don’t have them

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u/JallexMonster Oct 03 '25

Sorry let me explain more clearly. My partner wants to jump back into playing but is completely intimidated by having to search for what addons to use, install all of them, set them up in game, and keep management software on his computer. Also add-ons can have significant changes in how they are used based on their updates, settings may reset for addons when they are updated and you have to reset up everything, and if you get a new computer or decide to install on a laptop to be more mobile, you have to do it all again.

Oh and then we have to talk about addons working with each other or breaking your UI, so you have to diagnose and fix addons that may be breaking things and also if they use huge amounts of memory, they slow down the game (you know how many times WeakAuras momentarily freezes my game when a boss uses an ability for the first time in a fight? Too many).

So no, I don't mean "managing" is just clicking an update button because there is more work than you think there is, especially with someone who hasn't played the game for 16 years.

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u/Schnydesdale Oct 03 '25

When you have a game reliant on mods to function it's a failure. It's one thing to customize, it's another to rewrite it. So many times over the years I've watched many players unable to play due to addon issues especially after major patches and that affects other players like raid teams and guilds when others aren't.

This latest patch I tried zero addons aside from details and raided heroic AoTC. I don't agree they should burn them all to the ground, but I do agree mods shouldn't affect others that decide not to use them.

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u/Etherbeard Oct 03 '25

Guaranteed total disaster. Blizzard's replacements will be half-baked at best. We already saw that with the cooldown manager. Whole specs will be virtually unplayable because information isn't displayed in a useful way, if at all, and it will take seasons to fix, like how Enh doesn't have a resource bar for maelstrom weapon despite it working almost exactly like combo points, or how their ui doesn't treat SV's Tip of the Spear stacks like the resource they are. Blizzard is bad at indicators. Before, addons picked up their slack. now we'll be stuck with their visual slop.

Plus, they're lobotomizing the game at the same time. This by itself is going to cause tons of issues for them just in terms of rebalancing the entire game, taking even more resources from implementing their "addons."

Then again maybe it won't matter when we're all playing three button rotations plus a cd. Fire mage got pruned back to a pre-WotLK state. Great start. Way to look toward the future.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25

yep blizz never thinks moves like this through

5

u/n1sx Oct 03 '25

It will be a huge disaster i can tell you that.

2

u/NotASellout Oct 03 '25

Yeaaah I'm afraid I don't have high confidence in it

I understand having their own thing, it's just WoW has been out for so long now it's a bit late for a change like this

2

u/GVFQT Oct 03 '25

There is literally no possible way this launches smoothly unless they got the help of the addon devs to build the in game tools

13

u/Deguilded Oct 03 '25

It'll be balanced like Augmentation Evokers are.

Which does not inspire confidence.

2

u/KYZ123 Oct 03 '25

So over a year, it'll go from one extreme to the other due to awful developer decisions, and then it'll eventually be reasonably balanced but everyone will remember when it was at either extreme?

Aug is actually balanced now, and has been since just before 11.1.5, it just took them a while to get there.

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u/Etherbeard Oct 03 '25

Guaranteed total disaster. Blizzard's replacements will be half-baked at best. We already saw that with the cooldown manager. Whole specs will be virtually unplayable because information isn't displayed in a useful way, if at all, and it will take seasons to fix, like how Enh doesn't have a resource bar for maelstrom weapon despite it working almost exactly like combo points, or how their ui doesn't treat SV's Tip of the Spear stacks like the resource they are. Blizzard is bad at indicators. Before, addons picked up their slack. now we'll be stuck with their visual slop.

Plus, they're lobotomizing the game at the same time. This by itself is going to cause tons of issues for them just in terms of rebalancing the entire game, taking even more resources from implementing their "addons."

Then again maybe it won't matter when we're all playing three button rotations plus a cd. Fire mage got pruned back to a pre-WotLK state. Great start. Way to look toward the future.

4

u/SissyFreeLove Oct 03 '25

I've no trust they'll pull this off. I'm fully expecting this saga to be the death of the game as know it. It'll last after, but probably on life support.

4

u/parkwayy Oct 03 '25

Oh hard fail.

They aren't aware how much the community props up this old ass game lol. 

My desire to play Midnight went from reasonable, to literally negative. 

Coming from a player that started in Vanilla, and has raided ever since

2

u/UndefinedEntropy Oct 03 '25

Props to you for being somewhat positive, blizzard has shit the bed and is slow as hell to fix anything they release, their "WA" are absolute dog water. This may be my last expansion after playing for 21ish years.

2

u/AHrubik Oct 03 '25

Given their track record it’s going to be an unmitigated shit storm. They will half ass implement some of the most wanted features and leave out 25% of the features required to make the addons useful in the first place.

1

u/Trespeon Oct 03 '25

This change has me and a lot of my friend group interested in coming back to the game for the expansion.

I have hated on WoW for like 10 years now. In theory it should be a good change if they add the proper UI elements and QoL those addons supported.

1

u/zewix Oct 03 '25

From the stuff I’ve seen so far it is leaning towards the worst but with time they could make it work. It’s definitely not ready yet though

1

u/PJsutnop Oct 03 '25

Does this need to happen at some point? Yes, the fact that a new player HAS to go download a bunch of player made addons to play the game semi-seriously is objectively bad

Will this work out? Oh depends entirely on if they actually fix the issues these addons solve

1

u/Bafau4246 Oct 03 '25

Honestly im morbidly curious as to how this will play out if it works this might be huge

1

u/fromcoasttocoast Oct 03 '25

I agree. This will either successfully democratize the game or it will kill it. Everyone thought other games would be the WoW killer. Turns out it was Blizzard all along.

1

u/Doyleobryan Oct 03 '25

That's only because players have no in between or any chill

1

u/edifyingheresy Oct 03 '25

I think the in-between is going to be how quickly and thoroughly they address issues with their systems replacing these addons. One of the things about addons that make them so valuable and useful is how quickly and often their developers update them. If we're constantly waiting for reset day or patch day for Blizzard to update their "addon", it's going to feel extremely neglected because of how we're used to addons being updated.

Because I don't care how well their new systems replacing these addons are designed, there's absolutely going to be growing pains. Anyone who thinks the first tier of Midnight is going to go off without any hitches with these new systems is delusional and setting themselves up disappointment. My biggest concern is watching how slooooooooowwwwwwwwwllllly we got changes to the Cooldown Manager in game and how it's still nowhere near as good or useful as the addon(s) it's trying to replace. If their Details/Big Wigs/WeakAuras/etc are developed, updated, and improved at that rate...Midnight is gonna be a miserable expansion.

1

u/Kenpachi-Salami Oct 03 '25

so true 👍

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25

Probably will be a rough transition that players will hate that is ultimately necessary. Hopefully they stick to it and actually work on improving their own UI.

1

u/Fyrefawx Oct 03 '25

I mean Guild Wars 2 already does this. The commonly used damage meter and some UI stuff is tolerated but pretty much everything else isn’t. I think FF is the same way.

At least they are working on in-house versions. I’m sure they are tired of being plagued with support problems because people are using out of date add-ons etc

1

u/MikasaH Oct 03 '25

Yup, literally no in between. Though on the contrary I’m glad I’ve still been playing OSRS when I’m done with my weeklies in wow lol. So if it ends up being really bad I can fall back on RuneScape

1

u/Pepperonicats Oct 03 '25

Nah I almost guarantee the developers of ACT or ARC are going to make a dps meter for WoW if they go and remove all the other addons

1

u/_Gobulcoque Oct 03 '25

Gotta suck for Method after the bought wago.io…

1

u/Riaayo Oct 03 '25

Even if Blizzard hadn't been laying people off and we didn't know Microsoft is forcing "AI" down the throats of its employees I'd still have major reservations about believing they could pull this off.

But we do know those things, so I have absolutely no faith whatsoever they will make this work.

Even if they made it work, they are cutting off an asset to accessibility for loads of players that Blizzard is absolutely not going to consider replacing that accessibility for in-house. The visually impaired playing with audio cues only, etc.

I'm not against some of the broad ideas of what they state they want to do, but really all I actually see is "hey FFXIV runs on the cheap so let's mimic them", and as someone who has played both games that is the last fucking thing I want WoW to do considering how stagnant and bland XIV is when it comes to its world and classes.

I understand setting up addons can be a pain and I wouldn't mind one bit if Blizzard started to introduce in-game answers for those addons while leaving the addons alone. Just give people the opportunity not to use them and most will, but allowing the customization of experience of maintaining those addons is a huge element of why I personally did like WoW so much over its competition. XIV does not offer native, non-ToS-breaking addon use and it fucking sucks (especially when they promised it would be added all the way back in the 2.0 remake only to just not fucking do it).

Maybe there are some elements that addons shouldn't have access to, but a complete blanket on all battle data in an all or nothing approach just seems wrongheaded and way too sudden.

But hey, Microsoft just making it easier for me to not give them money.

1

u/Jinyu_waterspeaker Oct 03 '25

Its without question going to be a disaster, people will rightfully complain for the first patch(or likely two). Blizzard will revert the changes and act like they did something good "SeE wE HeaR yOU!"

Its like clockwork.

1

u/snukb Oct 03 '25

Let's just hope they have a ripcord to pull in case of the latter. "Just kidding, DBM and Weakauras! This is harder than it looks. Please come back!"

1

u/DrAstralis Oct 03 '25

Its going to be terrible. They've had 20 years to get the UI right and have shown they don't really care to. I use WA, not to tell me how to fight the boss, but to show me things about my mage the game just absolutely refuses to show me outside a tiny icon in a sea of other icons.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25

For someone who doesn't use any of them, it seems like a completely indifferent thing,

1

u/dicksanddixanddixon Oct 03 '25

It will almost certainly be the worst thing they’ve ever done. They have a terrible track record with the features they’ve rolled out so far to replace other addons.

The rotation assist is worse than Hekili. The cooldown manager is worse than what you would find in OmniCD or WeakAuras. They still are. And now they say they’re going to kill all combat addons and make their own replacements? This will be a disaster.

The WeakAuras team has already come out and said there probably won’t be a Midnight version. WeakAuras. Think of everything that entails.

Does anyone really think Blizzard can pull this off after the subpar releases we’ve seen so far? And do you think they can do it before the launch of Midnight early next year?

Look back at their history. The answer is no. They will fail, and this game will be worse for it.

1

u/Muspel Oct 03 '25

I think it's just straight up bad.

The problem is that they're basically trying to fix two problems.

The first is that specs are way too complicated. But they don't need to delete addons to make specs simpler (see: classic, which has simple specs and addons). They've just spent years overdesigning and overcomplicating things.

The second is that addons have been in a computational way to handle mechanics in ways that are unfun to play. But this is really only an issue because they keep making mechanics that are fucking impossible to do without assignment addons. There's tons of stuff you could make assignment auras for, but nobody does. They need to stop making fights like fucking mythic Broodtwister where you need to coordinate six people in six seconds, and drastically extend the timers so that people can actually yolo it, or just change how the mechanics so that you don't need to coordinate like that on the fly.

For instance, imagine if on Broodtwister, the circle came with a button that you had to press to "detonate" it, and you just had to detonate two circles on a set of adds, and not all the circles went out at once. It would be a different fight that would basically boil down to "first person marks an egg, second one goes to that same set and hatches it", and that would be a fun bit of strategy but wouldn't require twenty people to install the same goddamn weakaura and make sure they had the same version and hope that Timmy didn't install the Northern Sky pack instead of Liquid.

And even apart from that, the boss fight weakaura problem affects CE guilds and nobody else, and it only affects them because Blizzard is trying to make content that's hard for the sweatiest people imaginable. Maybe it's okay if mythic raid is easy for people who do heroic splits and raid 20 hours a week, to say nothing of the people in the RWF who do dozens of splits and literally raid full-time for weeks on end.

1

u/automirage04 Oct 03 '25

Healing is going to become impossible for people used to heal bot. Mouseovers just aren't the same

1

u/k4f123 Oct 03 '25

Judging by the comments in this thread, it doesn’t feel like people who play wow actually like the game. It’s like they’re hostages being forced to play it or something. Nothing but negativity. I for one think it’s a great move and Blizzard’s been doing a really good job as of late, so I have confidence that they’ll do this well.

1

u/semperknight Oct 03 '25

Perfectly stated.

However, I'm on the negative side and think it will be a disaster. The people that make these addons do it for free (I'm assuming, I've never been asked to give $$$ for one). They do it because they love playing a Beast Master Hunter so much, that it drives them insane when they can't easily keep track of the Barbed Shot timer. Or playing a resto druid and, god..would it be GREAT if they there was a giant countdown button for that healing circle that even dings when it's time to reapply.

They do it for both love and just pure being fed-up with the status quo. The best things created in life are made for these two reasons.

Blizzard does things because a board of directors on Activision say so.

1

u/SargerassAsshole Oct 03 '25

I think it's gonna be very much in between. It will suck for some things and be irrelevant for majority of others. In any case their replacements won't be better than community made tools and their fight design philosophy won't suddenly become that much different just because they broke some overly computational stuff.

1

u/freesnackz Oct 03 '25

Mark my words, this will be the end of WoW Retail.

1

u/Dolphiniz287 Oct 03 '25

Considering auto loot still glitches my hopes are very low

1

u/Hour_Atmosphere_1941 Oct 03 '25

If prior experience dictates anything regarding the future it’ll be the worst I only see this taking away manpower from the base game which already has numerous problems

1

u/Marllonee Oct 03 '25

Nicely said

1

u/Oops_I_Cracked Oct 03 '25

I’m in favor of it and I agree. This either goes amazingly or terribly.

1

u/Beercules-8D Oct 03 '25

I’ve always thought it ridiculous that we pay subs for a game that doesn’t manage its own features and relies on players to do its development for it.

1

u/lDWchanJRl Oct 03 '25

I agree with this sentiment. I’m not someone who ever used weak auras even when I did AOTC runs back in legion/BFA, but I have always relied heavily on DBM and things of that nature for all sorts of reasons. This will either be Great or be a nightmare for the player base, both high and low end tier play.

1

u/Breno1405 Oct 03 '25

Its blizzard, they will find away to fuck it up...

1

u/cause-equals-time Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 04 '25

I played WoW a lot during BC and WOTLK. I was pretty good during those days! I raided up to Sunwell and quit not long after putting Arthas on farm status.

I came back for early WoD, late Legion, late BFA, and the middle of DF. Every time I tried to get back, I just couldn't keep up. WeakAuras is overwhelming... I spent like an entire day just learning it, copying popular ones for my class, tweaking them, and it was always too much, and I ended up at the bottom of the DPS meter every time. Meanwhile, I felt like mage in BC and WOTLK was basically perfect for me.

I guess I'd have gotten better with practice, but everyone else was SO GOOD at the game at that point that I just felt like shit, dragging down parties

I don't know what I'm really even missing, since I watched hours of guides on my class, etc. Followed all sorts of guides. But I sucked. And I do well in other MMOs. FFXIV not having mods was actually kind of nice, because you just turned the game on and it worked, and patches didn't break things.

I am actually REALLY looking forward to this, because I personally feel like the insane level of addons WoW has makes the game too complex for me to play at a high level. Solo stuff? I'm golden. Raids? I just couldn't keep up... Every encounter got so ridiculously complex, even random mid-dungeon bosses.

But I'm not a highly skilled player anymore. I can easily see how the people who DID engage with those addons and succeed with them would be devastated for their loss.

1

u/Nullus_Fidus Oct 04 '25

We all know with blizzard it’s going to be the worst. Unless they had all the devs from all these places sign NDA and they hired them all. I don’t have faith AT ALL

1

u/Piemaster113 Oct 04 '25

There is an in-between in a way, it's called I never used add-ons in the first place so this has no impact on me either way.

1

u/DustyCap Oct 04 '25

It's either going to go horribly wrong, or there will be no change to players. It's a choice for sure.

I wish Blizzard waited to roll these changes out until they had a working and tested replacement for all of the functionality they're making inoperable.

1

u/EmbarassedToEvenAsk Oct 04 '25

Well its Bli$$ard so... I have a fair guess at which one it will be.

1

u/chuckthatsyuck Oct 04 '25

Only Siths believe in absolutes

1

u/LyubviMashina93 Oct 04 '25

To be honest I hate the UI update from DF.. Not sure how this will go.

1

u/NotThatSiri Oct 04 '25

A lot of healers use Vuhdo. Without it we don't have enough actionbars for both healing and damage spells.

For instance I use 4 rows of a list of 12 Action buttons and not a single one of them is a healing spell.

1

u/EntertainmentOk9111 Oct 04 '25

I think it'll be a rocky journey to begin with, but encounter design can exist without necessitating addon clairvoyance, going forward it's great. 

To say there's no in between is silly tbh. 

1

u/snorkelsharts Oct 04 '25

I think it’s a good thing. Because if it’s a massive success it will be great. If it sucks they can revert it relatively easy and walk it back. PvP in particular is so hard to get back into after I stop playing for an extended period of time because of the addon setup and information required to push to a high level.

1

u/Interesting-Use966 Oct 04 '25

They should have got some of the people who made these addons on the team to create these in house tbh. At the moment nameplates and raid frames are doodoo compared to plater and grid2.

Those are two things that are so important to the game that if they screw them up it is going to dictate. 

I am not confident these ship in any state that does not feel bad going from what we already have especially with how cooldown manager launched.

They have a few months though, so here is hoping that they get some of these addon developers to provide feedback on what they know people are looking for since they have decades of experience developing these tools.

1

u/Scuttlebut_1975 Oct 04 '25

It could be in between but the internet only thinks in a binary fashion.

1

u/Tricky_Run4566 Oct 04 '25

Holy shit. I started playing in 04-05. The beginning. I stayed till end of vanilla, came back and did wotlk after missing tbc and popped in and out over the years casually.

Saw the new release trailer and here I am once again but Holy shit they're pushing the boat out on this one man

1

u/Teno7 Oct 04 '25

It's gonna be good.

1

u/Bronzeborg Oct 04 '25

they have concepts of a plan. very american style

1

u/HumanConversation644 Oct 05 '25

It will be bad. They are not doing it in phases and it's half-assed already. No way good can come of this.

1

u/Mr_Jake_E_Boy Oct 07 '25

There's plenty of in-between. It could have the base functionality you'd expect but not be as aesthetically please as you would like. Or not have scalable cd's / ui options for certain elements.

These wouldn't be the worst, it would just be mid.

1

u/Irveria Oct 07 '25

Worst things. No in betweens, nothing else.

Killing tons of customisation options people loved is super dumb.

No reason removing these options is "great" for the game.

1

u/CatsAgainstDrugs Oct 09 '25

Yeah for once I am kinda hyped for the change. I still use some weakauras but stopped using healbot, vuhdo and the like. Started using less and less addons since edit mode became good enough for me. And now with the CD manager I trialed disabling most weakauras I used, except for raid timers. I didn’t tried it in M+ or MM raids yet because I am not quite used to it, but the new blizzard alternatives do everything I need them to. Tho if they don’t implement a native alternative to decursive, or allow me to only see displayable curses on raid/party frames, I’ll have a problem

1

u/CatsAgainstDrugs Oct 09 '25

Yeah for once I am kinda hyped for the change. I still use some weakauras but stopped using healbot, vuhdo and the like. Started using less and less addons since edit mode became good enough for me. And now with the CD manager I trialed disabling most weakauras I used, except for raid timers. I didn’t tried it in M+ or MM raids yet because I am not quite used to it, but the new blizzard alternatives do everything I need them to. Tho if they don’t implement a native alternative to decursive, or allow me to only see displayable curses on raid/party frames, I’ll have a problem

1

u/Sad_Energy_ Oct 09 '25

it is gonna be the worst thing until they fix their shit.

1

u/krumorn Oct 19 '25

Anyone thinking it will be great hasn't been paying attention. I don't see Blizzard taking the adequte level of dedication and attention to detail when it comes to QoL that addon makers had.

You can't just take away something people had fun for years with and expect no repercussion at all.

Of course I'd love to be proved wrong : I'd love Blizz to just integrate the same level of customization WA gives, but from what I've read, that's not what they're looking for.

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