WoWCast - How World of Warcraft is Improving its UI

[Al Gorefiend]

lol no way

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God I got 6 minutes into it before I wanted to lick a gun barrel. Between all the over the top swinging back n forth in his chair overtaken by supposed shock over this mundane entry to the game, acting like it's going to take over raiding with the most brain dead takes that he thinks is gospel and everybody else is the idiot ugh that was cringe af man I used to like that guy back in the day wtf happened.

Ion explained it very well this is for people who don't care about the mechanics side of the game and collect pokemon or RP only or explore and whatnot I don't see what the big deal is this has nothing to do with competitive play what so ever.

You need to understand Asmongold's income is based on reacting negatively to Blizzards. Every. Decision.

He is a brand. If he made a video called "Blizzard is back! WoW is amazing!" He alienates his crowd of fans who subscribe KNOWING he is hateful, they don't discover his hate by surprise.

[DarkAmbient]

You need to understand Asmongold's income is based on reacting negatively to Blizzards. Every. Decision.

He is a brand. If he made a video called "Blizzard is back! WoW is amazing!" He alienates his crowd of fans who subscribe KNOWING he is hateful, they don't discover his hate by surprise.

This isn't true at all. He barely even talks about WoW anymore. Look at his YouTube channel. He could easily never talk about WoW again and there would be no consequence for him. Same if he made a video giving the next expansion a 10/10.

[baskev]

to a certain extent i am for it. They should look at what addons are used, why they are used. And see if they do it themselves in a correct way.

The new CD one is cool. but missing some stuff in it.

The one you hear people about, with suggested next spell should not be added.

[rrayy]

So why not make an AI mode then that plays the game for you??? What is the barrier at this point now?
Your buddy can then enjoy the story, world quests and hang out in chat without even pressing the 1 button....

Wghy do you care about how others play the game? You can still paly the game your way. Also, this isn't going to be optimal so you have no complaint anyway.

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You are the one seemingly confused. This game is played by literal millions of players and is played in countless different ways. There is nothing wrong with throwing a bone to the "bad casuals" of wow. The same people that usually like to complain about how complicated wow's rotations are what a coincidence!

If you do any sort of serious raiding, even at the AOTC level I would argue, this is a non issue for you and your world it may as well not even exist. Unless you want it to. Options are fun!

Exactly They literally had Max from Liquid talking with them and pretty much tells you it won't be used in guilds like his.

[ImAnALtOfYou]

They literally said it won't be optimal xd
Imagine being so butthurt about this.

Yeah and Iin games like eq2 you could make macros which had the same limitations due to spell queueing where it was sub optimal but you'd still probably go better using one than 90% of the player base because people just suck

[Ragedaug]

What Ian noted at the 20:30-20:53 minute mark, resonated with me. "Not easier, but less complex."

I play very casually these days, and getting invited by my friends to a mythic+ can get embarrassing. I may be logging into a toon I haven't been on in months, I may have to remind myself where certain abilities are, or I'm double checking my cooldowns, and in the second it too to look down at my bar, then glance back up, I already missed the window to run out of the new thing that spawned under me.


I love the idea of group content going back to being more cerebral, less twitch key spamming.

[exochaft]

Man, after going through that interview, it's crazy how out of touch they can be. To be fair, it's not entirely unexpected since this has been their MO for a while: identify a problem, create a system/solution to address the problem, said system/solution causes more problems, create more systems/solutions to deal with the problems created by the intitial system/solution, and the cycle repeats itself with the likihood of making the situation worse than it initially was. Furthermore, they'd rather create systems to address problems than try to fix the core issues... but considering who they're surrounding themselves with, it's basically an echo chamber.

The interview solidified that they either don't want to address the elephant in the room or they just can't see it. They talk about how the game is so difficult and complex that most people feel like they need addons in order to effectively play and/or enjoy the game. So the identified problem is that you shouldn't need to go to all these 3rd party websites or get addons externally, so their solution is to just bake them into the game. Alright, but it avoids the core problem: the game is too difficult and complex for most people toe effectively play and/or enjoy the game... their solution just masks the problem instead of fixing it. However, if you surround yourself with hardcore WoW players who play the game professionally, of course the solution is going to end up being the convoluted solution they've come up with because it's not a secret that the top end of the game is designed around these people, and everything has a trickle-down effect on the rest of the game; basically many issues with the game are directly or indirectly due to prioritizing game designs around the extremes. What they're doing is trying to treat an infected wound with a bandage: it makes things look better on the surface but the issue is still there and can potentially still get worse.

The obvious solution if they stepped back for a moment would be to make the game less difficult and complex so you wouldn't need addons in the first place. Would the RWF be a lot faster? Sure, but who cares as it would be a quality of life increase for the vast majority of other players in the game. Would still allowing combat addons trivialize the mechanics? Well, you can either forcefully disable them or just not give a toss if people want to spoiler their experience if it'll make most people's experience better. There are other solutions that would let everyone, even RWF people, have their cake and eat it too... but it's becoming increasingly clear Blizz would need a massive overhaul of leadership for such changes to occur.

When it comes to the one-button rotation addition they're adding... well, besides the irony that they've spent years trying to avoid a one-button rotation macro/addon only to make it themselves, I think it's going to have negative consequences. Despite what they claim, there will be raid leaders that tell some of their members to use the one-button rotation feature... I think people underestimate how poorly some people play the current game to where the one-button rotation wouldn't even have to be that effective to increase their DPS/effectiveness. Tuning of the one-button rotation will be tricky because either extreme will be negative: if it's too good, everyone will use it or feel forced to use it; if it's too bad, the stigma of using it will be super negative and it won't 'help' players as intended if even random button mashing would be more effective.

Beyond that, what's the goal of this one-button option? They mentioned in the interview that it'll help people who don't want to learn their classes if they just want to do stuff like WQ's and stuff, but will it really be a good thing for the game? They mentioned that they want it to help ease people into their rotations, but if it's tuned to be bad will it really help them if it doesn't teach them a proper rotation? Again, the one-button rotation isn't going to solve the problem of needing to go to 3rd party websites or needing addons to effectively play your character, it's just masking the issue that the game is too difficult and/or complex for their main audience. So yes, Max saying the one-button rotation isn't really for his crowd, that's absolutely true... but it's being used to keep the game's same difficulty/complexity, something he and his professional WoW players want. In essence, the one-button rotation button is being added so WoW can continue to be a competitive eSport for the professional players while trying to keep the vast majority of their players from leaving (or returning) to the game because the game is too difficult/complex for them

I should mention that if you reduced the difficulty/complexity of the game, it's not going to sudden being so easy everyone would be bored. You don't have to reduce the difficulty/complexity of the game much at all to see positive benefits, especially if you remove/disable most of the combat addons and their obsession with insta-raid wipe and "one person screws up once, raid wipes or might as well wipe because it's faster" mechanics. I should also mention that it's not just random players who only do dailies/WQ's that have issues with the game's current difficult/complexity, it's also quite a bunch of the mythic raiding crowd too... but that's a discussion that'd take up pages, so I'll leave it at that.

[Hellfury]

One of the most fun tasks for me its picking a class and learning its rotation by experimentation on Dummies and working out what works in the talents and dont also whats more fun, I might not end with the most perfect spec at first.

If I then pick the class to do M+ Dungeon or Heroic Raiding, I will sim and compare to the ideal spec normaly I end with 1%-2% of diference sometimes 5% or more then I adjust here and there. I Dont do high keys or First server races on Mythic Raiding but I used to and ofc on the main I used the most optimized build.

Ofc blizzard is not taking this away from me so I dont really care but it saddens me the new go go go generation dont care about researching and experimenting its all about instant gratification.

[Stickiler]

The interview solidified that they either don't want to address the elephant in the room or they just can't see it. They talk about how the game is so difficult and complex that most people feel like they need addons in order to effectively play and/or enjoy the game. So the identified problem is that you shouldn't need to go to all these 3rd party websites or get addons externally, so their solution is to just bake them into the game. Alright, but it avoids the core problem: the game is too difficult and complex for most people toe effectively play and/or enjoy the game... their solution just masks the problem instead of fixing it. However, if you surround yourself with hardcore WoW players who play the game professionally, of course the solution is going to end up being the convoluted solution they've come up with because it's not a secret that the top end of the game is designed around these people, and everything has a trickle-down effect on the rest of the game; basically many issues with the game are directly or indirectly due to prioritizing game designs around the extremes. What they're doing is trying to treat an infected wound with a bandage: it makes things look better on the surface but the issue is still there and can potentially still get worse.

The obvious solution if they stepped back for a moment would be to make the game less difficult and complex so you wouldn't need addons in the first place. Would the RWF be a lot faster? Sure, but who cares as it would be a quality of life increase for the vast majority of other players in the game. Would still allowing combat addons trivialize the mechanics? Well, you can either forcefully disable them or just not give a toss if people want to spoiler their experience if it'll make most people's experience better. There are other solutions that would let everyone, even RWF people, have their cake and eat it too... but it's becoming increasingly clear Blizz would need a massive overhaul of leadership for such changes to occur.

I mean, this is exactly what Ion said. He explicitly said that there are a bunch of simpler mechanics which they can't use at the moment because addons just solve them instantly, and with moving the addons in to the game itself, that gives them the ability to design simpler and less complex encounters, because they know that most of the mechanics won't be solved instantly. He near directly said "You have a problem where you have mechanics, then people use addons to solve them, and give the feedback of 'This fight is too simple', because the addon is solving it, and so we add more mechanics to make the fights more complicated, and that's part of what we're trying to solve"

[Lahis]

Every patch we're getting close to a big single red button to play the game my god

With this patch we are there. The One Button Rotation will simply play the game for you.

[khazmodan]

I think retail is bleeding players like crazy. The game is just bloated with too many systems, too many complex specs that require rotation helpers even for better players. Almost every instance encounter requires some kind addon to be able to track what is going on. Every new player I introduce to the game either dies of boredom while leveling, since they gutted leveling for vet players that wanted to level to max in 4 hours, or they hit the endgame and get hit with a wall of toxic sweatlords attacking them for not knowing how to play the game.

The game is a mess and is not being designed for your average MMO player anymore. Asmon is right, the focus of most of the game these days is on people that play the game as a profession.

Well said, and the game is just not fun enough to justify the grind anymore.

[Relapses]

God I got 6 minutes into it before I wanted to lick a gun barrel. Between all the over the top swinging back n forth in his chair overtaken by supposed shock over this mundane entry to the game, acting like it's going to take over raiding with the most brain dead takes that he thinks is gospel and everybody else is the idiot ugh that was cringe af man I used to like that guy back in the day wtf happened.

Artist's representation of Asmonbald (2025, colorized, animated)

Ion explained it very well this is for people who don't care about the mechanics side of the game and collect pokemon or RP only or explore and whatnot I don't see what the big deal is this has nothing to do with competitive play what so ever.

Ironically, it's the people who'd benefit the most from a one-button rotation who seem to be most upset about it.