Blizzard Clarifies Commitment to World of Warcraft Addons: “We’re Not Eliminating the Mod Community”

As Blizzard gears up for the launch of the new expansion pack, Midnight, on March 2, players of World of Warcraft are still adjusting to the recent changes regarding combat add-ons.

For those who may have missed it, Blizzard announced last year that it would be removing combat mods to “level the playing field” in the long-standing MMO. The developers emphasized that this decision was made to “set ourselves up for being able to build content that will better serve all of our players.” Now, this process is officially in motion.

With the recent pre-patch for Midnight, the first phase of Blizzard’s overhaul of the World of Warcraft user interface has begun. Senior game director Ion Hazzikostas acknowledged that the team “probably should’ve done something sooner.” However, the removal of add-ons has sparked significant backlash from the community, and Hazzikostas has reassured players that this decision was not made lightly.

Interestingly, discussions about the add-on removal have shifted. Is Blizzard reconsidering its approach? Hazzikostas clarified that this was always part of the plan. During the alpha testing of Midnight, the team wanted to observe how the changes would impact gameplay and what would break.

“I was surprised, and I learned a lot about how many of our add-ons are written in the first few weeks of alpha,” he noted. “We quickly realized that many of these add-ons depended on functions we had now restricted.” He added, “I see discussions in the community suggesting that ‘Blizzard’s backtracking on this’ or ‘walking back their plans.'”

This was all part of the strategy. “The intent was always to swing the pendulum to the other end and then gradually adjust it.” Hazzikostas concluded, “Our goal was never to eliminate the add-on ecosystem but to shift away from it being a necessary competitive element of the game.” Whether the community agrees with this approach remains to be seen, as opinions vary widely.

Pleasing everyone in the MMO space is a tough challenge. This isn’t unique to World of Warcraft; just look at the ongoing debates among Final Fantasy 14 fans regarding “third-party tools.”

As expected, the World of Warcraft Midnight pre-patch has brought its share of bugs, filling the skies with dragons and transforming hills into squishy gray lumps. “I just expect them to try and do better for once.”