Weak Auras announces end of Services for Midnight

Community General Discussion
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This is Weak Aura Statement down below

Weakaura:
Blizzard has recently published the technical details of the planned API restrictions, granted us access to the alpha to test them out, and elaborated on their design philosophy. This has allowed us to evaluate the impact of these changes on WeakAuras. The changes are unfortunately much more extensive than expected.

It’s important to note that these changes are not final and will evolve over the course of the alpha. However, given Blizzard’s stated philosophy, it seems highly unlikely that the core restrictions will be meaningfully reversed.

As it stands, we do not expect to release a WeakAuras version for Midnight.

We will continue to support WeakAuras for Classic.

The restrictions are so severe that core functionality, such as Conditions or Actions, or having multiple triggers in one aura or a cloning trigger, would become impossible. Producing a stripped-down version of WeakAuras without these features would require several months of refactoring. The result would be a barely recognizable version. Given that, we have made the difficult decision not to create a WeakAuras version for Midnight.

These changes obviously do not affect just WeakAuras. While we can’t speak for other addon developers, we know that many combat-related addons, such as nameplates, damage meters and unit frames will face similar challenges and may take the same approach. Also these changes don’t just affect combat related addons, but also severely limit for example chat addons.

Regrettably, Blizzard has downplayed both the scope and timing of these changes in past statements. Back in April, these restrictions were supposed to come at “the end of the process” and would not affect “most add-ons.”

Ion Hazzikostas in that interview said:

“And I think that some of that gets back to us knowing that we need to really ease into this, that any world where we just kind of rip the band-aid off, and say alright have fun. We are in a new world. As opposed to, you know building up more built-in functionality, starting to have clearer visuals, simplify some mechanics.[…]”

Well, the plan now is to rip the band-aid off, so that does not leave us with much choice other than closing shop.

We would like to thank each and everyone of you for your continuous support over the many years. We would not be here without you.

We also want to thank the many other contributors we had over the years as well es our Discord crew that keeps helping our users around the clock.

This has been a very tough situation for us. We’re sad, we’re mad, a lot of feelings. We just hope Blizzard reconsiders a few things and we can keep this going.

The WeakAuras Team

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Imagine its 2004, a game was created. Along with the game, you can create all these amazing things to customize your experience! And as time goes on, it improves, making the game that much better and helpful in so many ways! And then 2025 is here, the game creators say “Yeah, we want full control over every aspect. I know we gave you the customizable experience that can help individuals play in different ways, but we want a cookie cutter experience”. Welcome to the corporate mind set. This game will be falling off starting now.

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without weakaura, unless the game difficulties is heavily tuned down, it is not possible to play well.

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Wait what??? First im hearing of this…

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Yeah idk how to feel about this one

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The news dumps have been like Christmas to me. So many fun and entertaining threads and the absolute BAWLING especially by tryhards is just glorious.

So many deluded themselves for so long thinking they had skill levels they’re going to demonstrably prove they don’t have if/once cheap auras, DBM, and any other combat/rotationa assistant addons like Hekili aren’t holding their hands and doing the bulk majority of the mental work.

The only sad part is the pruning and likely mechanical pullback will happen at the same time the addons will get neutered so we won’t see the full picture of just how mid certain players actually are and how they aren’t actually all that up to snuff. It would’ve been interesting to see harsh tuning and mechanical hell hole with addons disabled and let them get their teeth kicked in for awhile but ah well.

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Someone hurt you

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The long and short is that the devs behind WA want to use stuff like “IF-ELSE”, “AND”, “OR”, and so on functionalities to make their stuff work. But… that’s precisely the sort of stuff that Blizzard is looking to disable because of how it affects what can be designed.

Since the developers of WA don’t want to, in their words, create what they view as a “lesser” version of WA… they are shutting it down instead. Basically they are saying that the only way for them to reconsider their position is if Blizzard effectively reverses their position and allow addons to keep track on buffs, mobs, conditions, and more alongside with the type of logic-based statements that WA relies on.

The WA devs don’t see WA as something that has a place in WoW moving forward according to them. Not even out-of-combat either. That’s all there is to it.

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Nope. I’m going to be one of them ones impacted. I just never fooled myself into thinking I was a gaming god because I can do what DBM told me to do. I never have and at this point never will be using cheap auras but I know how powerful and “needed” they are to many people.

The onus should ALWAYS have been on the devs to make playing the game reasonably doable by the simple human and addons should have been QOL at most.

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i thought people wanted addons gone

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It makes sense. Good Bye.

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No people didn’t tourist did

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Microsoft wants WoW on XBox. So all addons must go.

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The reason they’re axxing add-ons is precisely for that reason.

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Exactly correct. Blizzard made a lot of encounters so hard to placate the “Leet” players. So they developed addons to help the push through content. And us peons, used those addons to actual see what happens in the raid for story purposes.

A whole ecosystem of developers was created over the last 20 years to help folks play the game. And in MANY cases, the reason for the addon was the woefully inadequate feedback and documentation from Blizzard.

And now, Blizzard has told the ecosystem to pound sand. And they are not happy about it.

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I don’t think Xbox will last much longer what with all the bad news Game pass price increase is getting. They might copy FFXIV and bring the game to Playstation or even Switch 2 :smiley:

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That’s a real bummer! I was looking forward to Midnight, but now I’m glad I didn’t buy it.

After 20 years, being able to customize the boring, basic UI has always been part of the fun for me. WA was bringing a wide array of unique functionalities for UI customization.

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I don’t know how to shoot WA a message to share feedback but I use WA for QOL not for combat. I’ll be really sad when I no longer have my WAs for my portals or for the cool leveling info I track when leveling alts. Sad day.

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It is better for the game.

I hope the game is super confident in their replacement for players who need some kind of replacement to play the game.

Good luck blizz !

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That’s literally the entire point of the change.