I don’t recall WoW itself stopping me to tell me i need to download an addon manager. Infact, i went years without one until sorta recently*.
Ya know whats even more unacceptable? Garbage UI. And Blizzard demostrated well that without Addons, we get things like this… (I’m linking because it’s the only way to link images without doing tidle keys. 
)
Counterpoint: Directed By ROBERT B. WEIDE. The world’s best Addon for when you die.
Also, restrict the WoW API so that no information on auction house, classes, specs, gear, or combat can be exported from the game.
Let’s go back to playing WoW inside WoW, not on some 3rd party website.
You can have a perfectly fine in-game experience without addons, I only got one when I started raiding to have dps numbers. Now I use more for making my UI much better, and for RP. Your first claim isn’t doing you any favors though. If you don’t want addons, cool, don’t use them. If you want them, cool, use them. If you can’t actually get them working, then… Quit while you are ahead. Or moderately behind, as is this case.
And solving this problem by deleting addons just creates a lot more problems. You don’t put out a housefire with dynamite, that’s what this “solution” entails. Yes the game is bloated, from an interfacing perspective, addons mitigate this issue. Take addons away now and you may as well just shutdown servers.
I would never trust this development team with the responsibility of managing a complete out of the box interface for this game when they screw up so many other things in the process. M+ IO not being calculated properly in season 4, being one of them.
Any mechanics where the move is similar in color to the background.
If you all don’t want Addons then don’t use them? why force others to play that way?
On one hand you have the “addons don’t really do much” takes and on the other the “might as well just delete raids if you ban addons” takes.
I vote we ban bad takes instead.
Addons are just a totem for their frustration at a game that they feel has left them behind.
Banning addons is just a fake thing they can advocate while safely knowing it will never happen and they don’t really want addons banned, because then they’ll have to find a new thing to be mad about.
This is kind of what happened with Classic WoW’s release. Prior to 2019 Classic, people would go on long screeds about Classic’s difficulty and how the modern game had been watered down greatly, and that “if we could only go back to how it was everything would be better”; it was an easy way to farm likes or “trues.” Of course Classic launches and we can see now that not only is the game a complete joke in terms of difficulty, but also the tools and expectations that developed in Retail were just ported over to Classic. It completely destroyed the fantasy.
Banning addons wouldn’t make the game better, or less gatekeepy, or less competitive, it would do the exact opposite.
There were pservers with vanilla that all used the original code and it was nothing like “classic.” And we all already know they nerfed the difficulty. Just look at all of the world buffs they added.
And many claim blizzard’s version is the original when it is in fact NOT. They tweaked it and added things for it to suit their current engine and social functions. The original clients were archived for a long time and downloadable. And they were all nearly identical to each other across several servers. You could just “plug n play” the game with only a tweak to the server list it connected to.
Just pointing out that claiming blizzard didn’t nerf vanilla for classic’s release is wrong and there is years of evidence from the old client archive and pservers.
I’m sorry, but this is massive cope. If we got a 1.02 version of Vanilla launched today, it would STILL get mulched by players.
People are better at games, internet connections are better, computers are better, and even base vanilla was a joke compared to the modern game.
Addons will be banned, 100%. It is just a matter of time.
Damn you’re huffing some premium hopium.
I’d rather 90% of players be happy we’re playing a game without added on stress, than worry about the 10% who no life this game to be upset.
You’re kind of forced to use many of them. If you don’t, you don’t get to play. What raid leader is going to tank a main tank that doesn’t use DBM or addons that call things out for them?
Exactly, it is unacceptable that vast majority of players need relying on so many 3rd party stuff to get an acceptable in-game experience.
I’d love watching streamers try to actually learn the game, honestly 
imaging World First live streaming without addons.
Healing without VuhDo sounds like a nightmare tbh. And my UI look phenomenal because of addons. I think I’m good with them sticking around.
I heal perfect without any, and PvP, and look good. You can too with a little try hard and less downloading short cuts <3
It’s so good that there are options available for everyone 
I can use them and you can chose not to. Everyone wins
As someone that uses a total of two addons, Details and Decursive, I’m absolutely in favor of removing them from the game.
For anyone arguing that you have to use addons because the design encounters aren’t intuitive enough to do without them, they’ve already stated that they purposefully do this BECAUSE people use addons. You using an addon makes them design the game to where it’s too hard for those that don’t.
I had a situation in Season 1 where my guildmates kept hounding me to get DBM, but I refused to because I want to play the game without all the annoying stuff that comes along with DBM. I was completely fine playing without it, and what should it matter to them if I don’t use it? It wasn’t until much later that I found out that me not having DBM affected THEIR gameplay since it didn’t put the X or Square above my head to tell them what charge I had (nevermind that it was designed to be easily discernable in-game). I realized then why I had to chase people down constantly.
People would be better players without addons, they’re nothing but crutches that make the devs have to react and design things to accommodate them. Which is a big negative to those who actually want to play the game for what it is.