Originally Posted by
lvlark
Not having played it yet, nor having looked alot into class/fight mechanics, I still doubt this. Notwithstanding the fact that people shouldn't flex their epeen with high dps, or really 'play the UI', responding to an addon calling out things instead of responding to something that happens in the game world. I guess there may still be a bunch of things to track (buffs/debuffs/cooldowns) and unless ANet provides a very strong way for tracking them (preferably rather customisable), people will feel the need to have addons help them focus on the important information. And if there isn't enough going on to need a smooth, informative UI, I guess it'd be rather boring.
And to the whole 'play the game, not the UI', I'd like to say this: A smooth, customised UI helps play the game. Different people have different tastes/strong points/weaknesses, different professions require different approaches, different screensizes need different setups. (Bigger screens need important things close to the center, smaller need their screens not be too cluttered and can better have such things at the sides.) The level of custamisation you can reach using addons is immense.
Now ofcourse, it's not impossible for any game developer to make a proper UI themselves.