World of Warcraft wanted to defeat addons with Midnight. Meanwhile, we know: It didn’t really work out.
WoW Midnight wanted to renew many game systems and in particular win the “fight against addons”. A noble goal, which unfortunately was not quite achieved. One of the main addon developers, MysticalOS, the creator of “Deadly Boss Mods”, has nothing good to say about the implementation of Blizzard’s plans.
He describes the approach as a “complete failure” and sees very few successes.
What was Blizzard’s goal? Blizzard wanted to decide the fight against addons with the expansion Midnight. Addons should not be completely banned, but all those that provide a clear advantage should be restricted or completely disabled. In many cases, they wanted to offer their own solutions, such as for boss mods or a damage meter.
The goal: Everyone should have the same chances and tools in WoW and not rely on addons.
What is the result? After about 4 months, one must say that Blizzard’s plans have largely failed. Many players are still using addons that sometimes even need to correct the errors of Blizzard’s own systems. There is dissatisfaction from all sides. Because most functions of addons are still present, just much harder to access. Often, several additional addons are now needed to restore old functionalities – it cannot be said that these functions have disappeared.
However, there have been successes in eliminating “WeakAuras”. The functions of this addon were the biggest problem, as they could often solve boss mechanics on their own. Such features no longer work and are – except for a few exceptions – almost gone from World of Warcraft.
Blizzard addons are full of bugs, the community has to fix it
What errors are there? In a roughly 20-minute analysis video, the creator of Deadly Boss Mods explains how Blizzard failed to provide their own boss mods. Because there is now the possibility in the game to display custom bars and timers for abilities. However, these are often faulty. Some examples MysticalOS mentions:
- Many abilities are not displayed correctly and their timers do not start at all because they are immediately canceled internally.
- There is no way to choose which abilities one wants to see. So there would be no need for a DPS player to see the “Tank Buster”, yet they cannot hide this.
- Abilities are listed that will never trigger – for example, because the boss fight is guaranteed to change phases by then.
- Sometimes multiple identical abilities are listed that come at fixed intervals. Then, for example, you see not only the “Breath of Fire” in 20 seconds, but also one in 60 and one in 100 seconds. This is unnecessary and just wastes space on the screen.
These and other problems are currently being solved by addons like Deadly Boss Mods. Something Blizzard should actually handle themselves.
Cortyn says: Even if I can understand MysticalOS’s criticism and also believe that the in-house features need much more polishing, at least for me the “abolition of addons” has largely worked. I no longer have any raid addons active and found – except for L’ura – all bosses in heroic manageable and quite straightforward.
Sure, there are still some problems here and there, such as the fact that one still can’t perfectly recognize frontals after months. But the general goal that no addons are needed anymore has been achieved for me.
But one must also acknowledge that this does not apply to the pros. In the top guilds, many addons are still mandatory and can still do much more than WoW actually wanted to allow. At this level, it has only gotten worse with addons, as now multiple programs are needed to achieve the old goals. Blizzard will have to work on this again.
What about you and the addons? Do you still use many interface addons? Or have you also parted ways with most of the interface adjustments with Midnight and are now experiencing the MMORPG in a puristic form?
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