Combat Philosophy and Addon Disarmament in Midnight
As we transition into the beta phase of Midnight testing, welcoming a broader player base to experience the expansion and offer feedback, I want to recap the planned changes to addon capabilities and the broader adjustments to combat and encounters. This will be a lengthy post, but bear with me; there's much to cover.
Over the past year, discussions about addon changes have been scattered across various videos, posts, interviews, and ongoing conversations with addon authors. This fragmentation has led to confusion and concern within the community. The primary goal of this article is to clarify these planned changes and provide reassurance to alleviate any confusion.
It's understandable that players who have spent countless hours experiencing Azeroth through their preferred addons might feel anxious about significant changes to that ecosystem. While some players may remain indifferent, for many others, this could be the most substantial alteration an expansion has brought to World of Warcraft. We take this matter very seriously.
Addon Disarmament: Why?
The question arises: why are we making this change if it's risky? For over two decades, the customizability of the World of Warcraft User Interface (UI) has been a cornerstone of the game, enabling players to use addons to customize the game's appearance and functionality according to their preferences. Numerous UI enhancements have been inspired and informed by these community efforts.
However, the power we grant to addon authors comes with the risk of tools that can distort the gameplay experience. This has led the development team to restrict addon capabilities multiple times over the years. In the past, we addressed issues by limiting addons' access to specific functionalities, such as automatically selecting abilities and targets in the early days of the game or using player positions and clever math to create 'radar' overlays a decade later.
This time, the concern is more subtle and pervasive. In recent expansions, the community has shifted focus from addons that display information in specific ways to addons that process that information to drive combat decisions and recommendations. As an RPG with cast times and cooldowns governing most actions, a significant portion of 'skill' in WoW has always relied on moment-to-moment decision-making. A computer with complete information about the current combat state (allies' and enemies' buffs and debuffs, active casts, cooldown states, health, and more) can make the correct decisions much faster and with unerring accuracy.
Such addons go beyond personal preference, offering an objective advantage in combat. Players are often advised to download specific addons to enhance their class performance or defeat particular encounters. Guilds and pickup groups frequently require the use of specific addons for mid-combat coordination. While we have never designed addons for specific encounters or class mechanics, we have inevitably had to design around them in recent expansions.
We acknowledge that even in non-cutting-edge content, a majority of players will seek any available tools to simplify tasks. For instance, when designing a boss in Normal or Heroic difficulty raids, we aim for a tuning target. While we risk causing frustration if we overshoot the mark, releasing an encounter with minimal resistance often leads to feedback that the boss was unsatisfying. Similarly, when designing class mechanics, we strive to express class fantasy while offering engaging gameplay. However, addons can instantly solve raid coordination challenges or simplify complex combat decisions, leading to feedback that our design feels flat.
As a result, we've added complexity to class mechanics or tightened encounter tuning to provide the expected level of challenge and engagement. This shift has put players who prefer not to use these addons at a disadvantage, making WoW less approachable. Therefore, we aim to level the playing field.
The guiding philosophy is straightforward: addons should no longer offer a competitive advantage in WoW combat. They should remain robust tools for aesthetic customization and personalized information presentation but should not enable players to succeed more in combat against encounters or other players. Some may question why a design shift regarding 'competitive advantage' should apply to them, but the consequences of addons' impact are felt across all game facets, affecting all players, regardless of their goals.
Addon Disarmament: What's Changing?
To achieve these goals, we've adopted a surgical approach, limiting addons' information processing capabilities while minimizing impact on their display functions. Our engineering team has been sharing API updates with addon authors, but here's a simplified explanation: Information about the current combat state is designated as a 'secret value' that addons can display but not 'know'. Combat events are in a black box; addons can modify the box's size, shape, and color but cannot inspect its contents.
In Midnight, addons can still adjust the location of buffs and debuffs, the size and shape of associated frames, and the size, shape, and texture of enemy nameplates and cast bars. However, they cannot determine with certainty whether a player or target has a specific debuff or the cooldown of a given ability.
We introduced the strictest version of this ruleset during our alpha test to avoid a frustrating cat-and-mouse situation with addon authors finding loopholes. This time, we invited addon developers to the initial test wave, allowing them to update their addons and provide early feedback on pain points. This input has been invaluable, leading us to loosen restrictions in areas causing unnecessary collateral damage.
Despite this focused approach, we recognized that limiting addons' real-time combat event parsing would significantly impact popular and benign addons, such as damage meters, boss ability timers, and accessibility tools. Therefore, alongside the 'secret values' project, our team has been developing native solutions and creating new API hooks to enable addon authors to access protected information without compromising competitive integrity.
We've been rolling out base UI features throughout the year, and this will continue during the Midnight beta:
- The Legacy of Arathor content update (11.1.7) introduced Assisted Highlight and One-Button Rotation tools for improved accessibility and specialization learning.
- We implemented an early Cooldown Manager version in the 11.1.5 content update, refined in Midnight, to ensure we gather necessary feedback in a live environment.
- Midnight includes a new Boss Warnings system, allowing players to anticipate boss mechanics while maintaining control over their handling.
- We're adding native accessibility improvements, such as a Combat Audio Alerts system, for players with disabilities.
- We'll release enhanced raid frames for healers, a built-in Damage Meters tool with server-side validation, and more during the beta.
While we work on limiting addons' high-end performance advantage, we aim to ensure the baseline WoW experience remains approachable and accessible.
Why Are Some Cosmetic Addons Breaking?
Some players have expressed confusion about reports of popular cosmetic addons no longer functioning as expected in Midnight. If we're solely focusing on combat calculations, why are we seemingly breaking an addon that only changes the appearance of player and target frames? This is not our intention, but there are reasons for this in Midnight test builds.
Addon authors have chosen various approaches to structuring their code over the years, leading to dissimilar implementations under the hood, even for addons providing similar player-facing functionality. Some addons will work in Midnight but require updates from their authors, who may need more time. Every expansion has required addon tweaks, and other addons rely on implementations that rebuild WoW UI elements from scratch using raw combat state data, which has limitations under our new 'secret values' system.
We're committed to working with addon developers and the community to provide robust customization support within this new framework.
Addon Disarmament: Why Now?
A common question is: why implement this now? Why not wait until all built-in functionality is polished and has received multiple rounds of feedback?
When I first discussed our concerns about addons' impact on the modern game nearly a year ago, we were still evaluating solutions and the right timeframe. We also wanted to gauge community sentiment. WoW's history shows the dev team trying to solve perceived 'problems' that most players weren't concerned about, and we wanted to ensure we weren't heading down that path. We were pleased with the positive reactions to the discussion, though not unanimous support.
Convinced we were on the right track, we shifted to building a roadmap for this transformation. The team found that UI engineering progress was faster than expected, both in terms of the 'secret values' system and implementing necessary replacements. This made Midnight's launch a real possibility.
These changes must be made at the expansion boundary, allowing us to build content and systems for a post-addon-disarmament world. Asking players to relearn content mid-expansion without their tools would be a recipe for unhappiness. No matter how much we improve our native UI, we can't expect players to avoid using tools that trivially solve addon-solvable mechanics.
Ultimately, we faced a decision: continue designing content around powerful addons, making it impossible to serve our entire community, or move forward now and find solutions within this new paradigm. Thus, addon disarmament is coming with Midnight, and the team is committed to providing community support, tweaking logic, and creating new access points for addon developers to ensure a successful transition.
What's Next?
As we launch the beta, we're excited to see new players access Midnight content, but we're particularly eager to see structured testing of the endgame. The addon changes are not in isolation; they are complemented by a new approach to building raid encounters, dungeon pulls, combat mechanics, and more.
We look forward to players experiencing this holistic gameplay and seek feedback on endgame combat aspects that might feel unclear or unfair without the tools they're accustomed to using.
We'll closely monitor and listen to feedback throughout the beta. The 'Beta' designation means we have the game's content ready for testing, but it's far from the endpoint of Midnight development. We'll be agile and adaptive, partnering closely with our community as we roll out regular updates, improving the base UI, adjusting mechanics, and adding new functionality for addon developers.
Thank you for reading this. I understand the fear and worry about the long-term benefits not outweighing short-term disruptions. We'll do everything possible to ensure a great Midnight experience, maintaining customization and self-expression as hallmarks of WoW's UI and making the game more approachable than ever.
Ion Hazzikostas
Game Director
For additional insights, read our previous article: How Midnight’s Upcoming Game Changes Will Impact Combat Addons (https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/news/24244638)
