I know there’s many posts about this already, and have heard that a guild named Undaunted with deaf players have voiced their opinions as well, but I feel the need to add my voice to theirs.
I am deaf. I started playing wow back in 2004 before I lost my hearing, which came in 2012. I have been a devoted WoW player for most of the 21 years (only taking a few years break during Cata and MoP to focus on my job and adapting to deaf life).
So it pains me to say that this is the most serious concern I’ve ever had with Blizzard’s direction with WoW.
After losing my hearing, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up with WoW anymore, but it is mostly because of addons that I have been able to continue to play at the level I used to.
Currently, I am able to obtain M+ title rankings. One of the most important addons that assists a deaf player like me in those high-level keys is OmniCD with their interrupt tracker and party member’s personal CD tracking. This has enabled me to know when to hold my kick to stagger them as needed or see when their defensives are down to prompt me to use party abilities like zephyr or mass barrier. But now Blizzard is taking away those kind of visual options from players to force their own ideal of “fun” by requiring voice communications to convey them. There are other examples as well, such as Plater nameplate debuff/buff tracking, and just simple BigWigs bar tracking that helps us deaf players keep up with what’s about to happen during a fight, since we can’t rely on hearing a raid leader’s shotcalls.
The argument is that Blizzard will give us replacements for all those kinds of things, but I have my doubts. I do not believe their small dev team will be able to provide us with adequate options for some of the addons I’ve stated above, not in a timely manner at least.
It is clear to me that players like us with disabilities are just not valued by Blizzard or given any thought, so I’m finding it hard to want to continue playing WoW for the first time ever until I see some decent options added in place of what we’re losing.
If Blizzard supplies a build in system that is as good as OmniCD, will that answer a lot of your concerns? Now, I don’t know the full ins and outs of what they are going to provide (I don’t think anyone does) but they have said, I believe, that they are going to provide a cooldown manager with features like visual alerts, that gives on-screen indicators that can be customized to track availability without relying on sound. That seems sort of positive if they do it.
It’s mostly for personal CD’s, It doesn’t visually tell you about other people’s CD’s and I believe Blizzard has no intention of doing that, which is why the addon discourse is so heavy because on one hand, people use that for malicious intent in PVP, but on the other, people also rely on it in raids to coordinate.
I don’t think they can provide a software for detection either because that system can false flag things like TomTom (I’m exaggerating) and then we end up with forum after forum of complaining.
It’s a hard slope to balance on, It really is. That’s why people want them to be lighter on the addons/WA’s instead of outright banning them from the API.
While it’s true no addon was created with solely disabilities in mind, some had the side effect of helping us greatly. Blizzard now wants to remove options and restrict their game with less options. I’m not trying to hide behind a curtain, I’m just bringing up my own concern and feedback with my unique situation. Some of us are likely going to be collateral damage from their new direction.
For curiosity sake, I want to ask, what would be the best thing they could do for deaf people? Like putting the addon visuals aside and all the things you’ve managed yourself around, how could they manage it around the deaf? (Idk if I’m making sense) I assume a ton of visuals is overwhelming so I’m curious what would be the best case of action to make the game “easier” for you?
A ton of visuals is how we play. I have trackers for many things. OmniCD as I stated above, Nameplates are big for me so I can customize cast colors, etc. instead of relying on someone shouting urgently that “XXX cast is going off” and it looks like no1 is covering it. I question if LittleWigs will have a good replacement, which gives me a timer of a nasty abilities that I should use defensives for ahead of time. Things like that.
Addons gave us many options to customize our UI and warnings the way we needed, to fill the holes for being unable to use voice comms. Now they are taking those kind of options away for some agenda that I’m not sure what the benefit is for.
I don’t think addons are why new players quit the game quickly. I think they just don’t have the drive to want to improve, so I doubt removing addons would retain players with that mentality anyway. That’s just my perspective though.
Hopefully blizzard will add something where you can track your teammates cooldowns and kicks. I’d personally like one built into the UI just so I can yell at my teammates for not using kicks or CDs in arena while I’m healing Lol.
That sounds like the sort of thing they want to remove since its a proactive thing. I could be wrong but if the idea is to stop players getting advance information, the addon may not work. Really, until we see what they have planned, its very hard to be sure.
Honestly: I don’t think they will.
And I understand why they will not.
They see the amount of addons and tracking etc as a huge wall preventing new players from starting wow.
That is what they believe.
And they will work towards it not being the case.
They don’t want you to have ElvUI. They want you to use stock UI so when you stream, people will recognize your UI and have the same.
They want streamers to stream with stock UI, so that is why they killed ElvUI by removing action bars and raid frames from ever working in their new revamped UI / APIs.
That’s why I am concerned about their direction. In title keys many of those abilities will 1-shot you. And some classes’ defensives are proactive in nature rather than a reactive heal
I guess my experience came from when I started playing many years ago and started trying out healing. My friends who got me into the game explained that there was proactive healing and reactive healing, and for doing dungeons and being proactive I had to learn which mobs and/or bosses needed proactive heals. I didn’t use any healing add ons, had no idea how to use them or set them up, nobody taught me and the only one for dungeons that I liked was Healium (yeah I know, a weird clicker add on but I used it and liked it and for the content I did it was fine).
Obviously you cant use it in raids and I never healed raids so that wasn’t really an issue for me. So my experience at such things is very limited.
I’m sorry man. Its the biggest L blizzard have currently taken. I would be lying if I didn’t say I’d take a certain amount of joy if their direction with addons ends up blowing up in blizzards face.