With addons going away in the far future, the game will obviously change. How good of a job will they do? Can’t say for sure, but let’s just have suggestions and or a wishlist or something.
I think that several things need to happen. (Also just my opinion)
I. Mechanics
Since there was an arms race of Blizzard making dungeon/raid mechanics and designing classes WITH addons in mind, mechanics will definitely be changed.
- Mechanics will probably be telegraphed a hell of a lot slower since something won’t tell us what to do. BUT I believe it’s very important for them to start adding custom animations for boss abilities (and making them nice).
Mug’Zee in Undermine has a few new animations than the typical ogre ones, and it’s a good start, but I think they can be improved. Mueh’Zala in De Other Side is also clearly telegraphing where he’s gonna do the arm blast attacks. - Hot take: In M+, sometimes there are just too many mobs if you want those big pulls. It really gets hard to see mobs actually doing stuff. At that point, I’m just watching health bars and cast bars, and I don’t like playing World of UIcraft. It would be nice to cut down on enemies and also have them have animations so I can watch animations vs cast bars.
- Side note: big mobs are awkward fighting against (since the camera doesn’t lock on to the enemy like in Monster Hunter), especially in melee, and the animations will need to be noticeable for melee players
II. Class Design and UI
The class design needs to be changed because some specs are pretty weird to play without tracking properly. (Like all the rogues)
- Buffs and debuffs should be more customizable (or grouped better), to better see what’s important and what isn’t. I honestly don’t need to see crippling poison or some trinket debuff when I just need rupture, garrote, and crimson blades.
- Cut down the things that need to be tracked.
- Have dedicated UI elements for things that need to be tracked (I like bars over icons in weakauras). I personally would also like customized assets for things to be tracked like FFXIV (though some suck and for some jobs I use the simplified versions)
- Audio cues are SO useful, and they should use them for certain things. In my WA, to make Shadowcraft easier to play around, I use an audio cue (looking for suggestions for replacing mine, I use the Naruto jutsu sound).
- The personal resource bar needs to be more customizable to show certain buffs.
- Spell effect size customization? Some of the spell effects on my character for example kind of lag my computer (the giant ones where it glows from inside the model) because they’re so big. I play zoomed in like in classic sometimes.
- Hot take: The pacing of the game is fast because of their arms race with addons, and I think the pacing of all specs can be slowed down. That way, we have time to see our own animations (which also need to be improved. Why does rogue have a 3 part attack in Coup De Grace? In our Shadow Dance window, it’s so tight and we have to cut the animation short which is awkward), to watch mechanics, and of course watch enemy animations (because I don’t want to watch timers or have dbm tell me a mechanic is happening).
III. Ping System
This can probably be expanded to better communicate with people that aren’t in your voice chat.
Final Side Notes:
I like playing zoomed in when doing outdoor content. I don’t like weakauras that are so close to the center of the screen, as it takes me out of immersion (and they’re honestly so ugly. But probably wouldn’t be there if the game wasn’t so fast). In dungeons and raids, I try to zoom out as little as possible and try not to view from the top. I think the addon and game design change will probably be painful but worth it in the end. I hope my dream for WoW to be less World of UICraft will come (and be good)
I’ll probably have more thoughts later on, I am cooking rn. But what do you think would be great for them to do? (even though they might not exactly pull it off)