I wish addons were banned!

#1 - Oct. 25, 2011, 7:16 p.m.

What is ruining the WoW experience for me, are guess what, not pandas, not raid restrictions and not imbalanced pvp, but the most outdated part of the game - User Interface.

Seriously, compared to other MMOs in the market, UI is simply primitive. WoW development team keeps saying that they want give players freedom of customization. But it is a poor excuse for not changing UI looks and functionality for years.

Because there is no option to open all mail at once I have to use Postal.

Because there is no proper boss timers, raid warnings and pvp timers(pvp timers especially give tactical advantage in BGs) functionality I am forced to use Deadly Boss Mods, or else I will be "blind" about what is happening around me.

Because Blizzard is doing a poor(if none) job to block trade gold spam advertisements, I have to use Badboy Automatic Reporter, to keep my sanity.

Because there are no simple and organized tools to tell the performance of the raid members on boss encounters, I must use Recount/Skada. This is no mandatory, but every serious raiding group will demand a high dps/hps from you.

Because on my realm AH people post materials, such as lets say Hypnotic Dust, 1500x with 1x stack, it is virtually impossible and takes a long time to run through AH listings and pick the best deal(good luck going through 30+ pages) I am forced to use Auctionator. Needless to say, Auctionator ability to autoscan your auctions for undercuts in a less than a minute and having simplified interface to really quickly cancel(and post) them, puts you in a HUGE advantage over those who don't use it.

Even such a small feature as a mob/boss/player health display in percentages requires unit frames addon. Some of the warlock spells trigger or are important to use when target is below 25%. I cannot tell if it's 25% just by looking on the health bar >.<

Bag addons. Why Blizzard cannot merge or give us an option to merge all bags/bank bags into one big bag? This would be SO MUCH more comfortable to manage your stuff, without using bag addons which been around for years.

Small things like autorepair option or a simple chat url copy and item links copy functionality would be great, so I won't need to use chat addons.

The most annoying thing about addons is that you need to update them after every major patch, and most often they cause errors/latency issues/performance drops, and are not updated quickly enough or abandoned and not usable. I can completely understand addon authors who abandon their addons, you work hard to create a decent addon and then after patches you have to troubleshoot what is breaking it/rewrite, it's like developing a program and having Windows Vista every 3 months.

So my message to Blizzard is: Don't put the UI changes on community shoulders, but improve it yourselves, you can always start by improving AH, giving us boss/pvp timers and one of the oldest and highly requested features - damage/healing meters.

Or simply ban addons to make everyone equal. Thx.

#19 - Oct. 28, 2011, 11:05 a.m.

Hi guys,

The feedback everyone has posted in this thread so far is all very useful. It is important to keep in mind though, that when it comes to add-ons, there is generally a lot of disagreement about what is required or even beneficial. The importance of add-ons is a highly subjective topic, and there are just as many different opinions on this topic as there are different people playing the game. There are even many players who prefer the standard UI and happily play without using any add-ons at all.

It should also be said that we don’t just “take add-ons”. We observe what add-ons people use and what features people want, and with this information we try to develop new features that fit within the game.

Additionally, our add-on system does not offer backwards compatibility, which was a deliberate decision on our part. The reason for this is that we want to be able to make changes when we feel that they are necessary, and maintaining backwards compatibility would require resources that would be better spent adding new features to the game. The downside to this decision is that add-ons sometimes break and need to be updated after each major patch.

We have developers who play World of Warcraft without add-ons, and others who play with many add-ons. We are fully aware of what players use (and don’t use), and most of the time it comes down to personal preferences. Add-ons can be truly great, because they allow players that want a different look, a specific functionality, or a feature or quality to re-arrange their UI to fit their needs. Using add-ons is a very personal decision, and it’s impossible for the World of Warcraft UI to be all things to all people.