Should they just break addons?

[LordVargK]

Addons are the best thing about WoW and gives it a huge edge over any competitors. The amount of Customization offered is unparalled. Every game is better with mods. No exceptions.

[Mendzia]

Yes. They should break them for mythic raiding. Who cares about casual shit.

OR

Make challenging encounters that cannot be trivialized by WA strings.

[Advent]

If they nuked addons, and then nuked encounters to compensate, they'd have to prune a TON of wow classes (AGAIN) so that players can't break encounters with them. Who in their right mind wants that? I know I don't. Classic/TBC wow is boring as all hell.

[Mardux]

I would be happy if they did. It is so time consuming to install this thing. Especially when it comes to updating UI and weakauras. I understand that you can have a few add-ons like damage meter or big wigs. The rest should be provided by the game interface itself.

You're actually complaining about it being "time consuming" to spend 5 seconds after hitting update all before (or after) loading the game?

- - - Updated - - -

Yes. They should break them for mythic raiding. Who cares about casual shit.

OR

Make challenging encounters that cannot be trivialized by WA strings.

Your elitism is showing.

[White Mage]

You'll just get the "I don't want flying!!!!" response. "If flying IS in the game and I DON'T use it, I am limiting myself, so I will complain about it, but still use it!"

Which is a totally reasonable response. Blizzard needs to limit what we can and can't do. Otherwise they could give us an "I win button" and tell everyone to just not use it, if they think that goes too far.

[Zankai27]

No way dude; addons are a part of the WoW experience and are an important way for the community to contribute to the growth of the game. Just don't install them if you don't like em, plenty of people play without them

[bloodmoth13]

There is a ton of addon functionality which should be baked into core wow already. Wow UI is pretty rigid, giving more ways to tune things without needing to rely on addons would be a huge help.

Boss mods are more a symptom of raid mechanics not being explained well enough on the battlefield, i shouldnt need an addon to give me information that the game should be giving me, like if the floor is about to crack and i fall through the floor i should be able to tell at a glance at the actual game world to be able to know that, but some visual elements simply arent conveyed well enough.

Players should be able to learn raid mechanics outside of the raid, its a great opportunity for the patch content to help familiarize players with the new raid mechanics to help players recognize visuals and positioning, for instance a boss has an aoe that you need to soak have the trash leading up to that boss use that mechanic and have some minibosses in the patch content also use that mechanic so players understand what is being convyed before. Also zone bosses or rarespawns would be great places to introduce players to mechanics too. everything before the final boss should help prepare you for what is coming, players shouldnt have to read up mechanics online to understand what is happening.

Looking at most players UIs with addons the game looks bloody awful, the game world is an absolute mess and doesnt convey info well enough.

[Mendzia]

Your elitism is showing.

I do not find myself elitist as i do not raid seriously since Cata.
This is just my opinion.

[Spicymemer]

Weakauras is the current, most significant problem.
It far surpasses AVR Encounters which existed during ICC and was banned within weeks.

That said, the OP's earliest point of reference is WoD, their opinion is not relevent.

[Ielenia]

See, now you yourself are saying that people who play without add-ons have to be good enough to do so otherwise they're negatively affecting others. That's quite a different mood to:

I'm saying that because I'm assuming you want to be competitive and push decent M+ keys or participate in raid progression fights, where knowledge of the mechanics is most needed.

But if you don't care about either of those... go nuts. Play without addons if you wish.

[Seasz]

No. They should remove/break/unallow macros though

[Irian]

Yes they should, but they won't and they really can't. It's a Pandora's Box that can't be closed easily without pissing off what's left of the playerbase. Better to just accept it as a part of WoW and have other games learn from the experience.

Personally though I think they should try their hardest to break any serious combat-related raiding or PvP addons though and work on making the game intuitive enough that they aren't needed. Weakauras and boss addons should not exist, they should either be incorporated into the game's interface or removed entirely.

[MoanaLisa]

The game would be better for it if they did, especially the ones for instanced combat. Some of the QOL stuff, i.e. for managing bags and alts, are fine. They will not though because addons are a kind of drug, and everyone is now addicted. That's on Blizzard for making the content in such a way that it's difficult to deal with it without them. It's far too late to do it now.

Frankly, relying on addon developers to cover player reactions to content just allows Blizzard to be lazy about how they structure that and they can largely ignore their weak and bad UI.

[Aresk]

i think it would be a good idea, but only for instanced content. Addons offer far too good QoL for things like AH i would not like to part with.

I feel the opposite. Add-ons for instanced content are useful. Add-ons that allow people to basically game the AH with an AFK alt on another account makes the AH basically useless for selling stuff, since they'll just relist all their stuff over one's own.

[Neuroticaine]

By shifting that goalpost you at least show an understanding that 'just don't use the god-mode addon' would a piss-poor response as well. People would expect Blizzard to do something about it. And once you then concede that Blizzard is in a position to break one add-on giving players an advantage, they are also in a position to break any and every add-on while they're at it. A much more robust response than 'just don't play with add-ons'.



I wouldn't consider using it in a multiplayer, would you? I'm sure you see where this is going, it creates an arms-race where people are either confronted with using something that everyone else is using, or play at a disadvantage. Could be a small disadvantage or it could be an insurmountable disadvantage, the principle stands.

You're always going to be at a disadvantage if you choose not to play with addons, but comparing the use of addons to playing a game in God Mode is absolutely beyond ridiculous. There are so many things that the game's default UI just does so terribly, that militantly desiring to play without addons is akin to intentionally shooting yourself in the foot.

In my opinion, any MMO that does NOT allow addons has a few points taken off. With games as information-heavy as MMOs, there's ALWAYS a better way to do SOMETHING the game's default UI does better.

[Kralljin]

Boss mods are more a symptom of raid mechanics not being explained well enough on the battlefield, i shouldnt need an addon to give me information that the game should be giving me, like if the floor is about to crack and i fall through the floor i should be able to tell at a glance at the actual game world to be able to know that, but some visual elements simply arent conveyed well enough.

Boss mods rarely feed you more information unless you play at a cutting edge level where sometimes WA really are able to trivialize mechanics (Mythic Azshara being a prime example).

Most times, Addons / Weakauras tell you:
1. Timers (which have existed for more than 15 years at this point)
2. You're standing in bad shit

At best, Bossmods put an extra emphasis with a audio warning onto something, but that's it.

The general issue in my opinion is not the absence of information but rather the increasing complexity makes it difficult to process all incoming information.

[bloodmoth13]

Boss mods rarely feed you more information unless you play at a cutting edge level where sometimes WA really are able to trivialize mechanics (Mythic Azshara being a prime example).

Most times, Addons / Weakauras tell you:
1. Timers (which have existed for more than 15 years at this point)
2. You're standing in bad shit

At best, Bossmods put an extra emphasis with a audio warning onto something, but that's it.

The general issue in my opinion is not the absence of information but rather the increasing complexity makes it difficult to process all incoming information.

That isnt the game giving you information, nobody is ever going to count 2 minutes in their head to remember when the bosses ability is up, there could be a visual indicator on the bosses model for example like they slowly start glowing orange as an extreme one. Its how just about every other game in other genres communicates info. Also if i dont know im standing in bad shit when my character is in the middle of the screen right in front of me then there is clearly something else wrong there. Perhaps a 'wounded' noise could play in game that replaces the DBM noise, like most games that give audio cues when you are taking damage.

The information is there but there is already so much happening all at once that its hard to keep track of anything and the game really isnt designed to help players keep track of things themselves.

[Cracked]

They certainly have the ability to do mechanics that cannot be automated. Hell, they did it in CATACLYSM (over 10 years ago), where the orbs on Sinestra would chase a person and there would be no debuff or any other way to know it's you except a beam going from the orb to your character.

The thing is that it doesn't work that well in a game with this many spell effects and this many characters on the same spot with these camera angles. It's more frustrating than engaging. For the most part, people have accepted that playing WoW means 99% playing the UI, 1% playing the 3D game. It's unlikely to change without a huge shift in player mindset too.

[Sinte]

Rolf thats ur choice to use them or not. Im could play easly without most of content. Anythin MUST is just DBM for me.

You will not clear mythic without addons and weakauras. You're very much full of shit. The encounters are designed around DBM , for fucks sakes. Its not a choice to use them.

[Kaykay]

They can have addons, for UI, nameplates, debuffs etc.

But block the raid and chat apis, bossmods really shouldn't be a thing.

And weakauras that counter a super hard coordination mechanic (like dreadlords) should never have existed.