Been playing a bit of hardcore so cool. What I have been discussing with my friend about wow how it use to be hardcore back in the vanilla days, is that THERE WERE NO ADDONS if there were you prolly didnt know how to get them or youd ask the pros on how to do it. If someone could put thought in to this way of playing just think of it no instant quest trackers, you have to read it yourself the quest that is. Playing wow without addons is hardcore to me im sure the old school players could agree with me.
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Then don’t play with addons.
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yeh but everyone has to aswell so they on the same playing field no good not playing it and others are having them come out their ears gallore
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IMO addons should be entirely forbidden.
Base UI needs a built in version of Tidy plates and Druid / Rogue need a way to watch energy tic. A better presentation of stats in the character page would help too.
All other addonds, detections and timers should be eliminated from the possibility of use…
Doing so would would be a net positive force.
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The problem is without the addons all your changing is a quick google search, which we didn’t have back in Vanilla since the content was actually new! Very few people had knowledge on Macros, oh what a world it was. 
I don’t ever use any addons. I have not ever since Curse got bought out by Twitch. It sucks now. And so many people have reported and even confirmed that the current version now gives malware/spyware and also gives out bloatware as well.
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There were plenty of addons back then. Some are still used today in retail WoW (recount).
But you can play the game completely w/o addons if you like. It’s not a difficult game. Back in the day I only ran some very simple addons that I could’ve done without.
Only big thing are UI addons. I guess now it doesnt matter, but back in the day those original raid frames were awful.
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i said this before on reddit too. hardcore is just hardcore in name, the spirit of hardcore classic is speedleveling with addons made by goldsellers
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Good grief, not even true. Doomerism is boring.
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I would be so happy to be able to play totally without addons. BUT this would require some work from Blizz as the addons I use are solely there to hide the things not in Vanilla added by Blizz.
And as soon as new Classic UI addons are out - which I sincerely hope, I’m going to grasp at them with both hands.
In short Blizz should make Classic look 100% like Vanilla. Then addons would not be a must for me any more.
I suspect that for most people playing HC (or Era in general) with no addons would just be more annoying, not more hardcore.
Want to see the vendor price of items in your bag? Addon
Want to see the health of a rare you’re thinking about attacking? Addon
Want to see your quest log not crammed into a tiny box? Addon
Want to see a countdown timer on your cooldown spells? Addon
Want a AH UI that isn’t awful? Addon
Want to look up dungeon loot tables without (dangerously!) switching out to a web browser? Addon
People here seem to have selective memory about Vanilla because we totally used addons (and macros!) back then. Threat meters were important to make sure you didn’t pull off the tank in groups, for example. Also the fetishization of inconvenience in this thread is… strange.
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I only have two add-ons in Classic: Questie (because Blizzard didn’t mark quests on the map in Vanilla) and AtlastLoot (because there’s no dungeon guide to figure out what boss drops which loot).
There were tons of addons and macros in actual Vanilla back in the day and people knew how to use them. People had raid mods (CT Raid), unit farmes, action bars, threat meters, damage meters, all kinds of stuff.
Probably the biggest difference then to now is that a lot of people were clickers.
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People used tons of add-ons in vanilla, you just don’t know what you’re talking about.
Limiting add-ons doesn’t make the game harder, it makes it more annoying with a cluttered poorly optimized UI.
If you want to not use add-ons you’re welcome not to.
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I love the 2004 version of the game world and content, but it doesn’t mean I love the 2004 version of the UI. Addons let me change that. This is something I’m ok with. If you don’t like them, don’t use them?
As for addons like questie… 
When Classic came out in 2019 I leveled my first character without Questie just to say I did, but after that I always run it. It’s just more convenient. I understand what you’re getting at here but you’re fighting a losing battle. If you disable addons people are just going to have wowhead open on their second monitor. You’re not really accomplishing anything.
Instead of focusing on how you want others to play the game, focus on how you want to play the game. Other people using addons doesn’t diminish your fun, especially in HC.
It depends. Most addons are harmless QoL optimizations. Every now and then they’ll tap into territory that should rightfully be restricted. The early iterations of the Spy addon are examples of it happening in Classic.
Wait till you see the pandoras box that WCL just came up with…
An entirely new kind of cheating for the every man is born.
The amount of untruth written here is baffling.
I think this is overkill.
The API just needs to be heavily restricted.
If I lost the functionality of tullaRange, I’d be hard pressed to overcome it.
There are a bunch of addons that provide just a small QOL fix that feels great to have.
I think it would be amazing if boss assistance addons were entirely restricted.
Been playing classic Era (raids also) without any form of any addon that can supply information that the default client does not as an test to see how it would be; this over the last few months.
The one addon that I am using is Tidy Plates. I even turned off the threat monitoring just to see how that might play out.
With only a little practice its just like playing normally. The UI visibility that Tidy Plates provides is something the default UI needs.
The rest of the core default UI turns out to be just fine. Also turns out the human brain is good at memorizing the patterns and feel of CC DR’s and all that stuff we kept timers for.
Also been healing on my Pala using nothing but Tidy Plates… Its actually fine, wven in PvE.