WoW developers step in to try and calm tensions between themselves and the UI addon community: 'We are embarking on this project with the aim of leveling the playing field'

Blizzard is planning on shaking things up—alright, 'shaking things up' might be an understatement. For twenty-odd years now, World of Warcraft has existed with an ecosystem of UI addons that facilitate a bunch of stuff: Profiles for roleplayers, accessibility features for disabled gamers and, obviously, combat addons.

It's the very latter that Blizzard is taking aim at, and while PCG contributor Heather Newman interviewed game director Ion Hazzikostas about the changes, it seems the studio's encountered enough resistance to extend an olive branch to the addon community directly.

As spotted by WoWHead, World of Warcraft developers spoke with the WoWUIDev Discord about their intentions for reductions to the utility of the game's API when it comes to combat—in simpler terms, what the game tells you upfront and in real-time.

"Reading through your feedback so far it is clear that there's a lot of confusion about the timing, goals and nature of these changes," the statement begins, before reassuring players Blizzard'll be "giving many months of advance notice before we flip the switch.

"We want to allow addon devs as much time as possible to test the changes, report issues and provide feedback. We will be announcing the landing place for these changes well ahead of time and taking steps to maximize the amount of hands-on feedback from addon developers before the changes go live."

What follows are a lot of similar promises we've heard before—that Blizzard's aiming for the "least amount of collateral damage possible", and that it'll be aiming "to minimize the impact on accessibility addons … Functionality in this space which is no longer possible after these changes are things we will aim to incorporate into our base game."

I don't envy Blizzard's 20-year arms race with addon creators, but I'll repeat what I said back in May—the best way to stop modders is to let your alternatives win out. WoW's historically lagged far behind in the UI department. Heck, it wasn't even until Dragonflight that the default WoW UI was customisable without addons.

Even then, Blizzard is keen to insist that they aren't just doing it for the sweatiest of sweats:

"While it is true that Mythic raiding has become increasingly reliant on addons, that is not the primary goal of this project. We are embarking on this project with the aim of leveling the playing field and making the game more approachable for all players.

"Currently, addons are able to analyze and 'solve' combat and coordination mechanics perfectly, and faster than would be possible for an unassisted human player. While many players will naturally seek out any advantage, this also means that players who don't use these addons are at a huge disadvantage."

This isn't an unreasonable assessment of the situation—but Blizzard has made targeted changes to the API before via "private auras", which help obfuscate the most encounter-simplifying info for players. I feel like Blizzard's committing to a much higher degree of shutdown than it strictly needs to.

I'm not particularly taken by the argument Blizzard makes here that "Many players end up feeling excluded from competitive content unless they install, set up, and maintain a number of addons. This is a significant barrier to entry, and we have heard growing feedback over the years from players who resent feeling like they need addons to play the game properly."

As a long-time MMO player, I do find it a little annoying to have to download a bunch of addons—but that's because I'm not that interested in competitive content. I broadly agree with the statement that needing addons to play a game properly isn't healthy, but I'll say it again: Simply offer better homegrown options, and you solve that issue.

"This project is about doing everything we can to shrink that gap, by building up the baseline functionality of the default UI, while also reining in the 'optimal problem-solving' capabilities of the addon API. We will also be making substantial changes to how we design our combat and encounters to accompany these addon changes. Removing the ability for addons to 'solve' most encounter mechanics means that we can also take a different approach to the design of our encounters going forward. The same goes for certain class mechanics.

"If everything goes to plan, WoW will remain challenging, but the nature of that challenge will be less about managing subtleties of class mechanics and more about collaborating with allies and interacting with encounters."

Maybe this is just perspective—perspective, I might say, obtained under the yoke of a developer team that hasn't shown a shining understanding of how its illicit mods actually work—but in FF14, forbidden UI mods haven't stopped people using them anyway. In fact, World First raids have been scuffed by cheaters three times in a row. You can practically set your watch to the time between a world first accolade and one of its team members being busted.

I dunno, man. Maybe Blizzard is simply going to be more competent about it, but I have this eerie sense it's putting a ton on its plate without thinking the consequences through. Here's hoping I'm wrong—or that a middle ground is reached between scorched earth and new boundaries.