With the Venomous Abyss raid a success in World of Warcraft 12.1, I asked Blizzard how it feels about add-ons and progression in the MMORPG.
World of Warcraft Midnight marked a major turning point for Blizzard in one specific, important way: the death of the combat add-on. Tools such as WeakAuras and Deadly Boss Mods have largely been synonymous with the MMORPG for the last two decades, helping players to solve fight mechanics and figure out what they should be doing during dungeons and raids. With the latest expansion, Blizzard decided these would no longer be allowed, in an attempt to halt the ever-escalating arms race between designers and mod makers. Now the dust has settled, I asked Game Director Ion Hazzikostas and Associate Game Director Paul Kubit how they're feeling about the decision.
For context, my online sit-down with the duo happened right at the climax of the recent Venomous Abyss Race to World First. With seven of the eight bosses defeated on Mythic difficulty, it was down to the wire to see whether Echo or Team Liquid would be the first to overcome Ula'tek and come out champions of World of Warcraft patch 12.1. At the time, Echo had a clear lead, and Hazzikostas was confident the competition would be over within 24 hours; he was right, although ultimately it was Team Liquid who snatched victory.
Kubit says the race played out "pretty close" to expectations. "You never really know 100% what to expect," he explains, "and some of the people participating at this level have strategies that boggle the mind." The two climactic fights, The Coiled Altar and Ula'tek, ended up "super challenging," he remarks, but he was satisfied by the variety of teams experimenting with different classes, loadouts, and strategies to try and squeeze those last few percentage points of DPS out.
Does the success of Midnight's raids prove the add-on changes were ultimately the right move? "I'm obviously biased, but I think so," Hazzikostas responds. He says it's been successful in resetting expectations "around a new norm," although acknowledges that there is still room to improve. "What we've tried to minimize and hopefully eventually eliminate is the competitive advantage, the computational stuff that add-ons do.
"Looking at how this tier is playing out so far, I think we're seeing largely what we'd hoped for. It's telling watching the race how much more vocal the raid leaders are than they were a year ago - actually calling things. Actually, frankly, raid leading. I'm curious to hear what folks like (Team Liquid raid leader) Max and (Echo raid leader) Scripe and others in these top guilds have to say about reflecting on that once this is all over."
Hazzikostas recalls that in past RWF tournaments, add-ons were automating a lot of that process. "At times, when they were really locked in, the raid leaders would almost be silent because it was the add-ons doing the work, having the audio alerts, telling players where to run, and so forth. That was stripping out part of what's been, you know, the core human co-operation of raiding since day one, right? 'More DOTs. Stop DOTs.' You don't want an add-on telling you that. You need your raid leader yelling that in your ear."
That doesn't mean Hazzikostas and his team won't budge on what's allowed. "One cool thing we were happy to do in Curse of Ula'tek was to provide add-on authors with a really robust framework to still cue off of specific spells for things like audio alerts, simple visuals, things that help with accessibility." He maintains that "addons remain a robust and vital part of the World of Warcraft ecosystem," just from a more presentational standpoint, rather than solving mechanics and puzzles for you.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/midnight-interview-venomous-abyss-raid-add-ons-rwf
