This was going to be a long, winding narrative, but I’ll be as brief as possible.
I run with a group of people I’ve known for as long as WoW has been “alive”. A lot of us started WoW as 20-, 30-, and even 40-somethings and we’ve stuck together for nearly two decades. We’ve all grown older, reflexes have slowed down, vision’s gotten blurrier, etc., but addons like Weakauras and rotation helpers help bridge that widening accessibility gap.
Blizzard taking away those tools and substituting them with what I guarantee are inferior alternatives will likely destroy my WoW friends group and end their time in this game.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s no big deal. We’ll find another game to enjoy and we’re all substantially wealthy enough to continue our two-decade-long annual reunions in some country or another. But losing them in Azeroth will hurt, considering the time we spent together raiding and running dungeons.
Reconsider your stance, Blizz. Include your tools in Midnight, revamp your specs, and restrict access to certain combat data, but don’t remove third-party addons altogether.
I dunno man, ive played since 2004 and its always been an issue where people are just going to simply have to learn how to play the game instead of having addons tell them what to do, or find other ways to divide themselves from other players than sitting and watching a dps meter. It doesnt matter if its always been this way or that, it has always been wrong. Addons ruined how the playerbase thinks and interacts with the game, they traded fun for numbers and flashing bars.
Really cool that you guys get together IRL though.
WeakAuras and rotation helpers don’t fix complexity, they just patch over it. They work because WoW has historically been bloated with too many abilities, procs, and tracking requirements. Needing external scripts to tell you how to play isn’t accessibility, it’s proof of poor design. Blizzard reducing button bloat and simplifying specs is directly meant to help aging players, casual groups, and those with slower reflexes. The entire redesign is for players like you.
The entire point is so that you don’t need to download 20 addons and 10 weakaura packs and can just play for fun with your friends.
Weakauras lets you create functions that make it easier to track things, including your mouse cursor, for example, or make UI elements more intuitive/visible for players with poor eyesight. Rotation helpers assist older or disabled players by letting them remain somewhat competitive enough to run most endgame content.
If it’s simply a matter of (re)learning how to play, fine. But it’s also easier said than done if you’re a player in your 50s or 60s or have some sort of condition. My vision, reflexes, and mind are still sharp enough to adapt, but I can’t say the same for some, if not most, of my friends.
And while I’m sure they could muddle along with Blizzard’s stock UI and toolsets, I also don’t think the replacements will be functional enough to meet their diverse needs.
If you think wow is made more accessible to the vast majority by forcing people to download 50 addons and 20 weakaura packs then your genuinely lost in the sauce and nothing anyone says will get through to you.
This has got to be the most intelligible answer I have ever read on these horrific forums. My old bum came to the forums in a desperate attempt to find an answer as to why this is being done and poof…I feel I owe this person an alchoholic beverage.
The way the next expansion is being designed, there will be nothing to “nerf”. The changes go deep and are incompatible with what went before. It took Blizzard many months of denial and a year to fix some of what, by that time, had resulted in a disastrous number of SLs players leaving.
By the time an expansion is in the alpha, it is already too late to change it.
I’ve played since 2007, and I see this as nothing short of an absolute win. Just because a person has played for a long time does not mean they enjoy having to use addons.
They make changes on the fly all the time. Take raids, for example. Sometimes the RWF teams run into a wall and the raid gets nurfed overnight. After RWF they nurf it for HOF. Then for CE.
The idea that everything can be changed in the blink of an eye is wishful thinking. Specific raid mechanics are easy to change, while it took Blizzard a year and a half to change some of the basic structure Shadowlands was built on.
I don’t feel alienated due to my age, I think the problem is having used a thing for 20 + years without issue, to then be told it’s an issue and such radical change is needed to correct it.
Just a bunch of lawyer speak is what we 're getting from Blizz.
It’s odd behavior to me, and like ancient astronaut theorists suggest, it’s probably cus the game is getting ported and they can’t reveal that yet.
Beyond cleaning up class abilities and talents, Blizzard wants to lower the actions-per-minute (APM) required for many builds. This is consistent with what they’ve said about boss addons where they want to move away from having all of the game’s difficulty revolve around twitch reflexes. It’s also a frequently-cited accessibility concern which they have already made efforts to address with through the Single-Button Assist feature.
The top 1% they’re catering too won’t feel the impact at all. It’s the average player with whatever disability who will really suffer.
What Blizzard has put out is hot garbage. It’s not just about pressing buttons, but the poor way Blizzard displays information in game. They’ve had twenty years to make the UI user friendly, and they’re breaking not just combat addons, but accessibility addons as well.