World of Warcraft has begun the fight against addons. Many abilities in the next raid will be encrypted so that interface addons cannot recognize them.
In World of Warcraft, an eternal battle is taking place. No, not the conflict of Horde and Alliance; that has found an end by now. But the duel between the game’s developers and addon creators has flared up again in recent months. Blizzard is now rolling out new measures and is trying to hide more mechanics so that addon creators can no longer access them.
What is this conflict about? Boss fights in World of Warcraft have become increasingly extensive and complex since the game’s launch. To better defeat such bosses, fans are developing ever better addons – such as “Boss Mods” or “Weak Auras”. These allow many pieces of information to be displayed on the screen.
While Blizzard is largely okay with the use of such addons – after all, they allow them in the first place – addons have become increasingly efficient and smarter in recent years. Mechanics that are actually meant to be solved through attention are sometimes trivialized by addons.
Blizzard has found a solution here. Certain effects in the game are “hidden” so that addons cannot access them. In the last raid, Aberrus, there were only 3 abilities. However, in the upcoming raid “Amirdrassil,” there will be 20 abilities.
What does this mean? If an effect is “hidden”, it cannot be read by addons. For example, the duration of a debuff cannot be recognized or which player is affected by it. Thus, addons are not able to interact with this effect as they normally would. Complex addons, such as “Weak Auras”, cannot make predictions or calculations to specify exactly which character needs to be dispelled or what action needs to be taken.
This is how the community reacts: The reactions in the WoW subreddit are mixed. While many agree that the use of addons has gotten out of hand, others point out that these addons only exist because of the increasingly complex bosses.
Basically, most people agree that current Mythic bosses are practically unbeatable without addons. So if Blizzard begins to slowly exclude addons, then the bosses would have to become somewhat easier in return.
What are your thoughts on this whole topic?
We have the most important addons for World of Warcraft here.
