Why Addon Changes Are a Positive Step for World of Warcraft

Love or hate them, World of Warcraft's addons are up for changes. Game Director, Ion Hazzikostas, recently sat down with PC Gamer, announcing plans to limit combat addon functionality, which prompted mixed reception from both the PvE and PvP communities. If you’ve found your way to this article, you might be feeling excited, confused, sceptical, or convinced that this is a poor decision for WoW; that’s all valid, so let’s talk about it.

Do note: addons are still allowed and working as usual in WoW! These changes do not have a set date yet, and not all addons will be affected. Additionally, I’m approaching this mainly from a PvP healer lens. Arena and Battlegrounds are the main modes I log into WoW for, and I’m a frequent viewer of AWC (Arena World Championship). That said, the contents below also apply to PvE.

For the uninitiated, WoW’s proposed changes will stop addons from reading the combat log and aura hooks, which will affect many popular, “must-have” tools, such as Deadly Boss Mods, Bigwigs, and WeakAuras. These third-party addons succeed at giving players clear and customisable details on enemies and allies, which the baseline WoW experience heavily lacks.

Combat addons are all about accessing information easily. If you’ve ever tuned into a Race to World First stream or Solo Shuffle video, chances are you’ll witness a whole slew of visual cues or loud auditory alerts that are there just to make the game playable. For PvEers, players might be navigating extremely complicated Mythic fights, whereas PvPers might be wondering what on earth their opponent just popped or why the other team always knows when a defensive ability is back up.

“I need my addons” is a common statement I’ve seen across forums, streams, and comment sections. For some, they’ve always played with them, developing habits or muscle memory with that extra information available, and for others, these tools offer vital accessibility options. However, these changes are a positive step overall for three main reasons: beginner-friendliness, in-game clarity, and a more balanced playing field.

One of the reasons I have old games sitting in my backlog is the sheer amount of mods needed to make them stable. Now, WoW doesn’t have a crashing problem, but it does have a similar barrier with all the “essential” combat addons players suggest for newcomers. Aside from deciding on what to download and which manager/tracker you’ll use to do so, you’ll also need to spend extra time learning how to use those tools; WeakAuras is notorious for having a steep learning curve, for example, but so many players will tell you it’s necessary.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who felt like an overwhelmed noob just with learning classes while levelling for the first time in WoW — back when the cap was 120 in Battle for Azeroth — the idea of addons felt exhausting. It also seemed punishing, as it was clear other players were at an advantage in endgame content and in some sense, I could tell they were having more fun: addons made their lives so much easier.

This, ultimately, is a failure of game design, which Hazzikostas did address in the PC Gamer interview. It’s been a long time since WoW made sense; lately, it’s impossible to tell what’s going on in raids, dungeons, and PvP matches. Debuffs/buffs are difficult to track due to the large number of them happening all at once, for instance. Then, there’s Diminishing Returns, which is a nearly invisible feature that can make or break your ability to kill another player or survive yourself, as it indicates that certain abilities become less effective when used frequently.

In-game clarity is a vital goal for Blizzard at this point; limiting third-party tools only works if the team properly addresses why players need them in the first place. Hazzikostas’ interview touched on “lethal casts” in dungeons needing to be telegraphed better, and how incoming heals, buffs, and debuffs should be tracked via the default UI. Without these adjustments to in-game WoW, ditching combat addons won’t make the positive impact that it can; you can’t have one without the other.

Ideally, this all leads to the balanced playing field that I mentioned before. If you find addons overstimulating visually or auditorily (like I do), you shouldn’t have to worry that your arena opponents will know all of your cooldowns just because they have a tool that tells them. You should know the information your foe has because Blizzard made it clear with in-game features — if a Mage uses Icy Veins, their big offensive cooldown, that should be very explicit to all (at the moment, it’s one buff among many, simply lost in the crowd).

When players hear “addon changes” or, in some cases, “addon purge”, it induces panic; all you can think of is that Blizzard is taking something away, I get that. If you’re feeling particularly negative about this direction for World of Warcraft, I encourage you to imagine that this is giving something to the game: a more robust default UI, increased agency for players to beat a challenge based on their own skill, and better-made content that is actually readable. This could be a great step for the future of WoW, as long as the devs make good on their promises.