World of Warcraft’s next expansion, Midnight, is taking the nuclear option when it comes to eliminating combat add-ons, after years of Blizzard discussing how they posed problems for the health of the game. It’s a bold approach, but, unfortunately, one that has been communicated incredibly poorly and seems to be taking unnecessary risks that could potentially make the game worse, not better, in the short term.
Until the recent arrival of Midnight’s alpha build, it wasn’t exactly clear how far-reaching Blizzard’s approach would be. While non-combat add-ons (WoW’s version of player-made mods) aren’t being touched, it was known some major changes would be coming to how combat add-ons work in Midnight. Those changes would come in conjunction with Blizzard introducing its own version of popular add-on functions, like boss timers and damage meters, alongside improvements to recently implemented features like the cooldown manager and combat assistant. Blizzard also said it’s designing combat encounters going forward so that (hopefully) combat add-ons wouldn’t be as necessary as before.
That all sounded great on paper. Many assumed some of these changes would come over time, allowing for a period where both add-ons and Blizzard’s own UI updates could work in conjunction or until certain parts of the base-game UI meant to replicate add-on functionality was ready. Blizzard has instead opted to rip off the proverbial band-aid.
