World of Warcraft add-ons have been a hot topic as of late. After many years of players using advanced combat add-on mods to play the MMORPG, tools like WeakAuras—an incredibly customisable UI mod—have been second nature to fans, but they’ve now been banned by Blizzard.
Over the past few months, Blizzard has been shifting back and forth on what addons can and can’t do within World of Warcraft. While Blizzard is adding new functions to the MMO’s core UI to make up for the loss of addons, game director Ion Hazzikostas admitted that the studio let addons “go father than we should have”.
Speaking to PC Gamer in two separate articles (here and here), the game director said they should have “done something sooner” to have a “less-jarring transition for the community”. The game director said “the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is today.”
“This was always the intent: to swing the pendulum to the other end and then creep it back in a measured way.”
WoW Game Director Ion Hazzikostas
Over the past few months, the restrictions on what official and unofficial add-ons are allowed to do has changed constantly with Blizzard inching the goalposts either way every few patches. This has led to some content creators online confusing players claiming that add-ons are back or add-ons are dead every few weeks.
Hazzikostas was keen to state that Blizzard is not “backpeddling” on its restrictions of add-ons within World of Warcraft. However, in the studio’s move to make add-ons official and fair, the team found that popular non-combat mods were broken beyond repair as some of the functions they were attempting to call were now blocked.
The game director said they were “surprised” at just how much broke which has caused the team to reevaluate what is restricted and what’s not. Hazzikostas says this was always the plan, saying “our goal was never to stamp out the add-on ecosystem. It was move away from it being something that feels like a required competitive aspect of the game.”
“I see discussion in the community to the effect of, ‘Blizzard’s backtracking on this. Blizzard’s walking back their plans.’ This was always the intent: to swing the pendulum to the other end and then creep it back in a measured way,” they said.
The World of Warcraft director explained that this also isn’t the end of figuring out what should and shouldn’t be allowed with unofficial add-ons for the MMO. Hazzikostas says that “players are numerous and creative, and there will doubtless be some loopholes, some workarounds, some clever solutions” as players attempt to find ways to gain a competitive advantage.
With this in mind, World of Warcraft will continue to “make adjustments to both encounters and to the add-on API as needed in close to real-time to keep things fair and to keep things fun”. However, while it may feel like Blizzard is continually backtracking on its plans, the game director is keen to note that experimentation is a natural part of actually making add-ons feel balanced. As for how players feel about that, well, that’s a completely different story.
With World of Warcraft: Midnight just around the corner, Blizzard is already looking towards its next expansion: The Last Titan. With the expansion returning to 2008’s Northrend from Wrath of the Lich King (got it right this time), players will return to an overhauled, expanded version of the city with a host of new content to experience.
