The head of WoW has announced that Blizzard will effectively ban various add-ons for the MMORPG. The MMORPG will be designed in such a way that popular add-ons will simply no longer function. They will not be able to read combat events or auras. This has caused an uproar in the community, as add-ons are part of the daily life of players in the MMORPG. Especially one announcement is explosive: the “one-button” control.
This is the current situation: Those who play WoW at a higher level join organized groups and engage in content that is challenging and requires players to fulfill specific mechanics. Players need to reach certain points at a given time, move out of zones, or perform actions.
Normally, players would need to recognize through effects in the MMORPG itself what they need to do and “learn” the challenges. If they fail, their raid group fails as well, leading to a wipe and requiring the fight to be restarted.
However, for years there have been add-ons made by others that signal to the player with extremely clear messages in the game what they need to do. One add-on literally yells at the player: “You have the bomb! Run!”
Famous add-ons that take over this function are “WeakAuras” or “Northern Sky”.
To outsiders like the LoL player Tyler1, this seemed absurd: From their perspective, a game played this way requires no skill because you no longer have to think independently. Players become externally controlled sheep, and that’s actually ridiculous. Blizzard seems to see it similarly now.
Blizzard wants to end the arms race with add-ons in WoW
This is what Blizzard says now: The head of WoW, Ion Hazzikostas, stated in a presentation on April 30 (via youtube.com):
- Because the developers know that players use these add-ons, the game developers have to make the fights increasingly complex so that the battles remain challenging.
- This leads to an arms race between Blizzard and the developers of the add-ons.
- This arms race, in turn, leads to players using more and more mods and battles being unnecessarily bloated with mechanics.
The various mechanics in fights are listed in the dungeon diaries. Players can read them there. But Hazzikostas says:
If you look at the dungeon diary, you scroll and scroll and scroll, and maybe half of it is not even important because the add-ons take care of that for you. That’s not a good place for things.
Blizzard wants to give players the necessary information themselves
This is Blizzard’s goal: The declared goal of Blizzard now is to provide players with the information they need themselves.
Blizzard itself will offer damage meters and various UI enhancements.
Once that is achieved, they want to deprive add-ons of the possibility to continue functioning by removing their access to combat logs and events.
When will this happen? Blizzard has not yet specified a date for this. But initial UI improvements will come with the current patches.
When mods will be banned is still unclear.
Hazzikostas says:
We need to take it slow. The team will implement the new features, listen to the players, and when the developers are confident that what remains largely consists of unwanted automation or the functionalities they want to return to players – problem solving, combat, communication – then they will turn off access to the combat log/aura for everything else.
WoW will be playable with just one button, but you will be worse
Which add-ons does Blizzard want to provide itself? There have been a number of information on that. Blizzard will provide tools that take over tasks like:
- A damage meter and also a heal meter
- There will be a kind of cooldown manager
- A function that helps players with their rotation by always highlighting the optimal next skill
Blizzard also wants to allow mods to continue functioning that do not affect fights, such as quest helpers, roleplay tools, and others.
This is the most controversial change: As part of the help with the rotation, Blizzard wants to introduce a “one-button rotation”.
When you press this button, it will always trigger the most meaningful next ability:
- Currently, you need 4 or more keys for a rotation to trigger different abilities that harmonize with each other. It then involves maintaining certain effects on a target or having one ability enhance another: You press something like 3-2-1-4-2-1-3-2-1-3.
- If you then only pressed one button, it would trigger a different ability depending on the situation: 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1.
However, it is said that this function carries a “small penalty” and does not utilize the global cooldown perfectly. It is not meant to lead to raid leaders telling people: Stop pressing manually and use the one-button feature.
The “single-button” assistant is there for players who want to try a new class and are not interested in mastering their abilities, but simply want to experience the story.
When is this coming? The rotation helper and the “one-button” feature are expected to come with patch 11.1.7 for WoW. The patch is expected in June 2025.
How will this affect battles? Hazzikostas hints that if add-ons no longer function, Blizzard would streamline some fights and perhaps remove some mechanics.
They do not want to make the fights easier, but less complex.
Is this an April Fool’s joke?
How is this being discussed? The information is very fresh. It came out last night. In discussions, players appear skeptical. The “one-button rotation” is especially seen as a new April Fool’s joke.
Certainly, this is a topic that will still fuel intense discussions in the coming days. We will cover the topic extensively on MeinMMO: “I’ve been crying for days” – Man finds out after years that a deceased friend is immortalized in WoW
