Blizzard’s decision to remove addons is coming with sweeping class changes, but the collateral damage feels far too high.
Some specs, like Outlaw Rogue and Mage, are indeed complex—but they make up a very small subset of the overall classes. Flattening everything into a simple 3-button rotation might make design easier, but it’s boring in the long run. Mastering a complex class to squeeze out marginal gains has always been a rewarding gameplay loop, and it shouldn’t be erased.
Even worse, removing defensive cooldowns from DPS and stripping healers of their major cooldowns only shifts the burden onto encounter design. If every toolkit is gutted, the only way to keep fights “challenging” will be more one-shot mechanics—and that isn’t fun.
Simplification may solve addon reliance, but homogenizing classes and gutting cooldowns risks removing the depth that keeps WoW interesting for players who enjoy mastering their spec.
So something like jumpstart, which requires pre-planning, knowledge of it coming, and preparation by having a cooldown ready, is something they want to remove.
I’m going on record…once combat Addons are removed and you can play your class without all modifiers Alt+/CNTRL+/Shift+ key bound, new player retention is going to climb exponentially.
What new players? The only way this works is if they port to console, and even then it’s a pipedream. The thought is they want to target a younger audience, but what young person wants to play a more boring version of the game their parents played?
This is also true. I remember when OnlyFangs came around the first time, and even the second time, a bunch of content creators who had never really touched WoW before but enjoyed Classic decided to try retail.
The overwhelming majority of the ones I saw were saying that retail can be fun, but there’s just so MUCH involved. So many buttons, so many systems, so many unknowable variables which the game doesn’t adequately prepare new players for. Addons are often mentioned as an additional barrier to entry as well.
People who’ve played the game for 10+ years probably don’t think about how awful the new player experience is, but it’s pretty bad.
I don’t agree that console ports are the only way to access new players. Also of note, “younger audience” is essentially anyone under 50 years of age. WoWs original core player base is in their late 40s early 50s…
If you haven’t noticed younger generations like drop in games that don’t require massive time investment and research to engage… WoW cutting down on access barriers is going to open up new player access and new player retention.
Also of note…Since the original WOW player base is aging they either do this or start losing their core base to essentially mortality…
Alienating the dedicated userbase with the purpose of appealing to a hypothetical new stream of users has been a death sentence for nearly every game, even real life company, that has tried it.
WoW is the most successful MMO in history and they have been courting new players since their first expansion… Lets not conflate removing things some players are essentially dependent on with a coffin nail for the game.
Ironically Outlaw Rogue will still be very complex due to excessive passive modifiers and the existence of RTB. Without addons it will be hard to play still IMO.
That is why pruning doesn’t solve class issue complexity across the board.
I’m not doing this to be obnoxious. I’m doing it because I love the word knell, and I thought you should know.
It’s not used often, and you don’t generally get to see it in modern speech/books outside of this particular idiom anymore (which is why so many people don’t know how to spell it or realize that it’s not “nail,” because you never see it written, only spoken). Anyway, it’s a great word.
I’m thinking that we have to see all of the upcoming changes in context. We have to see the engagements and, I assume, dungeon and raid design will reflect the changes that we play with, maybe, some really fun encounters.
I’m not a designer but maybe the “speed” part of the encounter is doing all of the mechanics – some with extra action buttons, and we learn and progress this way. But reducing the need for high-end dps with all of the heat that goes with it and changing over to a different playstyle might be interesting. So, the event itself is central to the experience and not high dps or numbering interrupts. I don’t know, I really don’t but we keep thinking of the changes and applying our thoughts to how we are playing right now with current content (that was designed for high dps and so on).
Maybe they are changing the way that we measure our success.
We really don’t. Blizzard has had 20 years to create a UI that addons didn’t have to fix and make better. Blizzard has had 20 years to create combat encounters that didn’t require addons to immediately solve. Blizzard has had 20 years to design classes that had complexity but didn’t require addons to keep track of interactions.
They have failed to do so for 20 years, so why should we expect them to do this correctly in a matter of months?
