Blizzard's never done this before, but World of Warcraft devs say they ditched combat addons to make raids harder strategically – not to "shoot more bullets at you"

Before World of Warcraft devs at Blizzard release the hugely anticipated Midnight expansion introducing customizable houses, they had to do some housekeeping. They severed the MMORPG's compatibility with players' dear addons in a pre-patch that totally redesigned classes, and, devs now say, the way raids work.

WoW lead encounter designer Dylan Barke tells our friends at PC Gamer in a new interview, that, without addons, there are raid mechanics "that are possible in Midnight that might not have been possible in the recent past, and we're able to challenge players [via] puzzle and communication and coordination and strategy more."

Before World of Warcaft abandoned them, addons like streamer Fojji's gold-standard WeakAuras have been integral to the raid experience for over a decade – though you were only in the best position to take advantage of them if you were fluent in their code, which helped sort raid mechanics on a perhaps overcomplicated level.

This high barrier to entry influenced how Blizzard approached designing for its own game, as Barke says the developer had to trim "what we would call 'dexterity mechanics' in bosses, especially raids, in favor of mechanics that can challenge players' coordination and their strategic abilities." But Blizzard has more control in its arsenal now that players will no longer be able to code monkey their way out of problems. Barke gives an example with one of Midnight's opening raids: "The way that gets harder from Normal to Heroic to Mythic is not 'we shoot more bullets at you,' he says, "It is harder on a communication axis, on a coordination axis."

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