Over the last week, a kerfluffle has been kicked up regarding Blizzard going after combat addons in full force. You may recall that during the recent WoWCast in April, Ian Hazzikostas discussed their plan for implementing tools into World of Warcraft to lessen the need for players to turn to addons for combat-related help.
This discourse was kicked into a higher gear after PCGamer recently published an interview with him. Hazzikostas went into further details about their plans and indicated changes might be coming much more quickly than most of us thought after that WoWCast. I’ve been mulling it over a bit, and let’s go through how these changes might affect World of Warcraft.
What will change?
One thing that was very clear after reading the PCGamer interview is that although Blizzard is looking to build in alternatives to some addons into WoW as a baseline, they also don’t want to recreate everything; otherwise, the underlying problem still won’t be fixed. This point wasn’t as clearly made during the April WoWCast; I’m sure most people went away from that with the expectation that most addons they’d turn off would be built in. However, since one of the goals is “disarmament” in the arms race between devs and addon makers, this makes sense.
For example, in 11.1.7 they plan on implementing a rotation helper that implements the basic function of the Hekili addon. The rotation helper will highlight the next best ability to use, taking in various information about your character and the fight you are currently in. Having never used this addon, I’m curious to try the feature and see what it recommends versus how I am used to playing. I’ll also be interested in hearing thoughts from players who currently use rotation helpers and how close they are to being effective.
One type of functionality they aren’t looking to replace with a built-in solution is the ability to see the cooldowns of your teammates. Hazzikostas indicated that this is something they plan to remove entirely. This comes in two primary flavors: being able to know when a player’s interrupt has been used, and the ability to see your group’s major cooldown use. Losing the ability to see cooldowns won’t substantially affect how I play in raids, but it will significantly impact how I function in M+. Something as simple as looking to see what people have available when considering a large pull will be gone. Sure, I can ask, but that’s way less efficient than just glancing at something on my screen. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I will definitely miss it.
This also makes me concerned about the future of Plater. Hopefully, this falls more into the category of things Blizzard plans to improve in their UI before they turn it off. I originally started using Plater because it organized all the nameplates nicely, and the default UI didn’t even come close to doing that. Now I’ve also gotten used to seeing the nameplates of important mobs in a different color, getting information regarding aggro so I know if I or my co-tank has something, seeing who interrupted, and a bunch of other info. Most of which I could live without, but the nameplates stacking neatly and being able to set up different colors for aggro info are two things I don’t want to live without.
Hazzikostas has indicated that they plan to augment their design, explicitly mentioning the number of interrupts needed in M+. I’m curious about this because I have often felt the number of interrupts in packs has been used as a deterrent against pulling too large of packs. I’ve always felt like it was a bad way of handling things, and pulling large can be a ton of fun. I don’t want dungeons to be similar to Final Fantasy XIV, where tanks pull wall to wall (though that can also be a ton of fun). It has often seemed as if Blizzard thinks there is a problem in M+ when groups pull “too many” large packs. There’s got to be some kind of middle ground, though.
Lowering the number of mobs in a dungeon that do important things that must be taken care of will reduce the need for addons showing all this information and reduce the mental burden of learning dungeons every season. The question will be how long it will take to find the balance between what Blizzard thinks is a good level and what the community (in all their differing levels of difficulty) thinks is a good balance. One option that could be interesting is to have a lower level of interrupts and busters in the lower key levels, and then increase them as the key level is increased. It could be interesting, but it’d have to be done thoughtfully because that could also create the weird breakpoints in key difficulty again.
Unintended Consequences
I have two significant concerns regarding the new direction with addons, the most important one is that it could create accessibility issues for players who have been enjoying WoW for years. In 11.1.7 they are adding a one-button rotation tool that mimics some functionality from a couple of current addons. Unfortunately, the Blizzard solution adds an extra GCD in there to ensure it isn’t the optimal option, which isn’t something players who currently use the addons for this have to deal with. So it is quite possible that when they lose access to those addons, they’ll also lose access to raiding, M+, or whatever content they enjoy.
I know some players are concerned about players doing “top parses” with one button click, and I’m sorry, but that is nonsense. If classes still functioned on a strict rotation system rather than priority, there’d be more of a point to that line of thinking. The reality is that no matter how much time you put into programming the logic on a one-button system, it still wouldn’t equal a top player. If the concern is more “someone can do better than me wth one button,” then it’s probably time for you to do some self-reflection and what that means. Players who need these tools for accessibility shouldn’t be punished to sate other players’ egos.
My lesser concern about cutting back on the combat addons is that we’ll never know what we’ll lose. Sure, for everything we have now, we’ll see the loss when they get shut off, but I’m looking to the future. I’ve lost count of the number of things that weren’t originally part of WoW but were added after an addon created the feature, and the community loved it. With so much addon functionality being cut off, things could stagnate. I hope I’m wrong on that point, but it is a concern.
After Patch 11.2?
During the PCGamer interview, Hazzikostas said that these changes wouldn’t happen in the next two patches, which threw me a bit of a loop. After the WoWCast episode in April, I had the impression that the shutting off of addons wouldn’t start happening until the next expansion at the earliest. However, the door is now open for the band-aid to be ripped off at the end of this expansion.
If I had to guess, I’d say maybe 11.2.7 would be a good time to do it. By that point, most players would be done with progression in the raid, and many would be finished pushing in M+. It’d allow players to ease in and experiment with things in a lower-stakes environment. However, it wouldn’t allow for the design adjustments to compensate for these changes. Ideally, I’d implement something like this in an end of the expansion, Season 4, where the stakes are very low and players can easily compare before and after. However, there is no Season 4 in TWW, so it isn’t an option here.
There is also the possibility this won’t happen until Midnight (or pre-patch) hits, and honestly, out of all options, that’s the best one. New expansions are always a time of resetting things, and classes often change drastically, so changing combat addons would fit right in. Then players would be able to ease in during leveling and the few weeks before the first season starts. Plus, the devs could plan and balance everything from the beginning with these changes in mind.
Regardless of what they decide on this, I hope they give us a lot of heads up on when exactly combat addon functionality will be shut down (and if it is all or just the ones they don’t plan on recreating in WoW). There’s still a lot of variability with all of this, and I think it will be an improvement in the long run. The question is how much pain we will have to go through to get there, and what collateral damage will be caused in the process.
