WoW: What if – Addons were banned in World of Warcraft?
Virtually all WoW players know they exist and most of the heroes of Azeroth use them regularly. This refers to addons, little helpers that are intended to either help us on our adventures in the dungeons and raids or simplify our lives and save time. But as useful as addons are, there are always voices that demand that Blizzard ban and ban any form of such add-ons from the game. The arguments given cannot be dismissed out of hand: equality for all and everything becomes less complex and easier to understand. This is known to work extremely well in other MMORPGs. So could it be a way for WoW?
So far, Blizzard has always emphasized that addons are part of WoW and that there is no reason to change anything. But now that even Horde and Alliance are allowed to play together, as we all know, anything can happen. We therefore asked ourselves what effects such a ban would have on WoW as we know it.
Comfort vs Performance
First of all, we should basically divide the addons into two categories: comfort addons and those that have an influence on the “performance” of our character. Because the effects if you take DBM out of the game, for example, are completely different than if Soulshape Journal suddenly stopped working.
Comfort addons are primarily intended to save us time. Relevant information no longer has to be laboriously searched somewhere, but we can see it at a glance in the game – from the collected mounts to the contents of the twinks’ bags. “Performance add-ons”, on the other hand, are intended to help us fight better. The palette ranges from classic BossMods to rotation helpers to WeakAuras and damage meters.
Addons like BtW Quest give us clarity.
Source: buffed
Convenience addons – annoying, but bearable
Since convenience addons usually only save time, you could certainly get over their disappearance – even if it hurts. It would be annoying if you had to look up which rare mobs you have already killed and which you haven’t. But it gets really annoying when you log through three twinks in search of an item and have to look into all banks individually.
Banning such convenience addons would mean we would have to spend more time in-game for the same things. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, searching through any menus isn’t game time that we’d find satisfying. We also don’t see how such a ban would make the game any better. The result would be many frustrated players and few players for whom little or nothing changes.
Performance Addons – I see your point there
Most of the time, the call for an addon ban also refers to BigWigs, WeakAuras and Co. Because these have two noticeable effects on the game due to their powerful abilities. On the one hand, the classes have now become so complex that some of them can hardly be played at the upper limit without the right tools. Keeping tabs on multiple buffs, DoTs, and effects without proper gauges demands extreme attention.
Such complete interfaces show you much more and much more clearly than the standard interface can.
Source: buffed
On the other hand, the WoW developers feel increasingly forced to design the bosses more and more complicated and complex. Because the devs know exactly what the players can do and trivialize with the right tools. The result is often bosses that are mechanically so demanding that they can no longer be defeated without the tools that the developers had in mind when designing them. This creates a vicious circle that can no longer be stopped: powerful addons → more complex bosses → more powerful addons → even more complex bosses.
A ban on such addons would certainly break this vicious circle and would result in some changes. The developers would have to adapt both the classes and upcoming bosses to it. Therefore, such a step would only make sense at the start of a new expansion. In addition, there would need to be another adjustment that – coincidentally or not – with WoW (buy now ) Dragonflight is addressed.
Let’s continue on page 2 with our conclusion
Reference-www.buffed.de
