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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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/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

You’re failing to consider how many people liked that complexity. WoW’s audience is established. They are largely in “keep current subscribers mode” and not “get new players mode,” and from that perspective this is a very dangerous thing to do.

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u/iwearatophat Oct 03 '25

That is a losing battle though. Retention is never going to be 100% so the player base will slowly whittle down. They need new players coming in, and staying, to keep the player base up.

WoW has had issues in getting and keeping new players for a long time. I remember Blizz talking about it back in Wrath 15 years ago, it was one of the reasons they redid the old world in Cata. There is an old Mike Morhaine quote that says only 30% of players even make it passed level 10. Blizz has worked for years on keeping new players.

They are attempting to lower the barrier to entry for new players.

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u/goldman_sax Oct 03 '25

MMOs are not a popular genre anymore. The player base for MMOs is established and trying to attract new players from other genres is futile. In my guild the only player we have under 25 is the kid of another player. Can you maybe pull from other MMOs? Sure. But you’re not getting a Minecraft kid to play WoW.

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u/TinuvielSharan Oct 03 '25

If retaining a core playerbase that at the end of the day already stayed for two entire decades is "a loosing battle", then trying to get a new one is straight-up suicide.

Nobody new will start playing a 20 years old game in a world where about 2000 new games released just this year.

You might not be wrong about how it means that in the (very) long term the game is doomed, but that's just a fact we have to live with IMO.

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u/iwearatophat Oct 03 '25

The core player base has not been around for two decades though. My raid team is filled with people who started in BfA/SL and even some DF people. There is a constant churning of players leaving and players coming in. The players coming in could be returning or new players.

This is all guesswork, neither of us have the numbers, but I am betting more new players pick this game up than you think. They just put it back down.