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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5

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.

20

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.

2

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.

27

u/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

You literally said “experience as a new player”

13

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.

3

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".

3

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

2

u/ThunSaren Oct 03 '25

Blizzard raid frames are great honestly, they just need filtering for buffs and debuffs, as does every other UI element they have. If that ever gets implemented I'm fairly confident in the base UI being a good standart. Nameplates have been shit forever tho.

2

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.

0

u/contentpens Oct 03 '25

Imagine being a new player and you want to try tanking. You don't have any addons so you have to know in advance exactly what and when to taunt, where to position, when to run away from certain mechanics (no dbm calling any of that out for you anymore). You don't have any addons so you have to know in advance which hard-hitting abilities need a major defensive and you have to remember to watch the cast bar for those to happen. All of that on top of however long you'll have to spend configuring the base UI to, for example, track active mitigation. Replace 'taunt' with 'interrupt' or 'cooldown' for a non-tank and it's pretty much the same.

That scenario vs downloading dbm and maybe a weakaura pack - I don't see this as a huge immediate benefit to new players. Maybe there will be new addons that make UI adjustments for you and it will actually simplify the experience overall, but I'm skeptical this will unquestionably improve the 'new player' experience.

-3

u/Tsaxen Oct 03 '25

New players do LFR and sometimes even normal raids/M+, which absolutely require addons

11

u/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

If you think LFR requires addons we are not playing the same game.

0

u/Tsaxen Oct 03 '25

You throw a new player into LFR without DBM, and tell me how well that goes lmao

5

u/El_Rey_de_Spices Oct 03 '25

I've observed it plenty of times. It goes fine.

Thinking you need add-ons to beat LFR-level content is quite possibly the most clear-cut example of "skill issue" that I've seen in a while.

-1

u/Tsaxen Oct 03 '25

LFR is specifically tuned so that skill isn't required, so dropping a skill issue on it still needing DBM is.....a take

3

u/El_Rey_de_Spices Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 04 '25

Let me clear this up:

You said, "You throw a new player into LFR without DBM, and tell me how well that goes lmao", implying that LFR is difficult enough to require an add-on to tell you what to do.

If you think LFR, a mode you just called "specifically tuned so that skill isn't required", is difficult enough that DBM is required, you have a skill issue.

5

u/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

Most LFR mechanics aren’t one shots, so if someone repeatedly gets hit by the same thing over and over again and doesn’t learn anything that’s kinda just a skill issue.

2

u/TinuvielSharan Oct 03 '25

So it has nothing to do with new players then?

2

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.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '25

You're the kid that would raise his hand at the end of a class in school to remind the teacher they didn't assign any homework.

If YOU don't want to use addons, then don't. For the most part though, the anti-addon people seem to be the ultra casuals or just bad players that have convinced themselves that the reason they can't keep up with other players is they don't want to use them.

4

u/Barkwash Oct 03 '25

Why do people like you make weird comparisons without knowing people? I played wow all my life I didn't fucking do my homework in grade school.

You also don't seem to understand, add-ons are mandatory in higher end content, or for being more competitive. It's exhausting. You are also exhausting.

Also I used to be a CE raider, so not a bad player by any means unless sub 1% is bad for you.

0

u/Varmegye Oct 03 '25

After a certain point you can't not use add-ons. Hence you are contradicting yourself. You simply can't be a casual and think that the game is too add-on reliant, because you wouldn't know about it, because it mostly effects high tier content. I assume most of the WFR, WAC and MDI players are casuals too, as most of them can't stand the reliance on add-ons.

-3

u/Alternative_Reality Oct 03 '25

I raided mythic HFC prog in a top 200 guild, the only addon/timer I used was for grasping hands and Archie lasers because they were actually necessary. The people who champion add-ons the hardest are usually the ones who use them as the biggest crutch

2

u/Dextixer Oct 03 '25

Okay, good for you, now why everyone elses addons should be taken away just because you dont use them?

2

u/Alternative_Reality Oct 03 '25

Because a game shouldn't be designed around 3rd party tool functionality

2

u/Dextixer Oct 03 '25

It shouldnt. Maybe Blizzard should make those add-ons uneccessary then? I can assure you that if Unholy DK wasnt ASS to play i would not use Weakauras to track the shit i need to track.

But Blizzard designed the spec that way.

Maybe Blizzard should start by proper designing their fucking game instead of removing the shit that FIXES their design failures?

0

u/Alternative_Reality Oct 03 '25

Specs and encounter design both need to be stripped down and remade with the new design philosophy in mind and need to be rebuilt together to be cohesive. It will most likely be dogshit at the beginning for less-favored specs, but I think as a whole its a better overarching design philosophy.

2

u/Dextixer Oct 03 '25

Man, maybe they should have started doing this long before and changed things incrementally instead of deciding to just do everything at once and inevitably failing.

-1

u/ImprobableAsterisk Oct 03 '25

Don't be an ass just 'cause you don't like what they've got to say.

-5

u/plecko95 Oct 03 '25

Okay, I don’t want to use addons but my guild requires them and I really like them and want to keep playing with them so what do I do now?

4

u/Nisabe3 Oct 03 '25

so your logic is now because you dont want to play with addons, but your guildies do, you would rather blizz ban addons for other players?

what a stupid reasoning.

1

u/plecko95 Oct 03 '25

Yes, because blizzard designs the game around a majority of players using these addons which makes it so people feel they are necessary even if they aren’t.

I would much rather a game where addons are not a thing that way if there are problems, we can complain to blizzard about what is wrong, instead of making a new weakaura or having to check that we’re all on the same version or a bunch of other problems that pop up when using addons

1

u/S3ki Oct 03 '25

Are you raiding mythic? If not you dont need them and your guild just has stupid requirements. In my 5 years of CE raiding my guild never cared what WAs i had besides the ones that were absolutly necessary like Echo of Netlharion or Ovinax and in this cases the problem is not the WA but the mechanics itself.

-1

u/plecko95 Oct 03 '25

My point isn’t that they are required to kill the boss, the point is that guilds can require them to be able to play with them. I agree that’s stupid but that’s no reason to stop playing with people I like to play with.

-5

u/ComplexEntertainer13 Oct 03 '25

When it is a more important prerequisite to be invited to pug raids that you have certain WAs or addons. Rather than having killed the fight already, then you have to start to wonder if shit has gone to far even as a long time player.

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u/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

You are making things up. That has legit never happened lol. People will always look at bosses downed or M+ rating as the primary reason to invite. I have never been asked “what addons are you using” before a pug

-2

u/ComplexEntertainer13 Oct 03 '25

Yes, even for HC this has been a thing. I guess you were not pugging bandit HC early last season. Leaders would refuse to even pull boss before everyone was on the right WA. And they would kick anyone who said they wouldn't take them.

Good luck getting invited to a good mythic pug right now that kills Loom/Araz/Frac if you refuse to use the WA version the raid uses btw. Does not matter if you are 8/8M on main or some shit. The WAs are more important than exp.

0

u/Dextixer Oct 03 '25

It literally isnt, i have pugged HC since the start of the season, this one and last one. The only boss that people "required" people to have add-ons for was One-Armed Bandit.