As World of Warcraft developer Blizzard prepares its decades-old MMO for new expansion pack Midnight, fans continue to grapple with the news that handy combat add-ons are no longer going to work next year – but the decision to disable them didn't come lightly.
For anyone out of the loop regarding add-ons' removal, Blizzard previously admitted its plan to remove World of Warcraft combat mods – downloads that have been a part of the beloved MMO for years now – and begin phasing them out when Midnight, the game's upcoming expansion, releases. Although the developers stated that this removal will happen to "level the playing field," players are split in how they feel.
According to game director Ion Hazzikostas in an interview with Game Informer, add-ons' removal comes after much deliberation from Blizzard. Put simply, the team couldn't find a way to comfortably introduce content for both players who employ the use of combat add-ons and those who don't. It was a struggle to consider instances that were "going to be adequately challenging, adequately stimulating, adequately understandable" for all fans.
"If we design something that just ignores the existence of add-ons, people who use those add-ons will trivialize a lot of what we've designed and say either, 'well, this is boring, this was dull, there wasn't anything for me to pay attention to or do,' or just, 'this was too easy.'" On the other end, players without combat add-ons might "feel overwhelmed." It's almost a lose-lose situation, where someone always misses out.
As Hazzikostas puts it, "our goal here is to level the playing field and to set ourselves up for being able to build content that will better serve all of our players." Understandably, though, the change will come as a bit of a shock to fans of combat add-ons. He addresses this with an assurance that things won't be too different. Blizzard is working to ensure as much, but it obviously won't all be the same in the coming post-Midnight world.
"We are trying to do everything possible to preserve the aesthetic customization, the choices of where you want information displayed on your screen, the convenience and organizational tools people use to track their collections or questing or professions or whatever," explains the dev. "We want to disrupt basically none of those." There will be a bit of "collateral damage," of course, but it'll hopefully be minimal.
Addressing concerns regarding whether the disabling of add-ons was rushed, Hazzikostas says Blizzard has actually been planning it for "two to three years" now – and it came about from fans' feedback: "What we heard from a lot of players was, 'Yeah, I shouldn't have to download these third-party tools in order to feel like I'm playing the game correctly." As a Final Fantasy 14 stan myself, I know that feeling all too well.
"They feel like the game should be playable out of the box without needing to turn to external assistance," he later reiterates. As for whether Blizzard will be able to pull the changes off well, Hazzikostas seems confident that the devs know what they're doing, especially "with all the attention that we've had focused on this – this has been the number one priority for every one of our user interface engineers and UX designers over the last year plus."
Should things go wrong at all, Blizzard will pick up the pieces. "And where we are falling short, we're going to react and prioritize quick action and quick response based on what we're hearing from our community that they need most," to quote Hazzikostas. "This is going to be an ongoing effort." It sounds, judging by everything the game director reveals, like Midnight and World of Warcraft's subsequent disabling of add-ons should go smoothly.
It's never a simple matter, taking tools away from players who have had them for years, but devs clearly think it's in the community's best interest ultimately – and Hazzikostas' responses to fans' worries certainly help ease any stress, too.
