On Podcasts and AddOns
As I’m sure some of you have noticed, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted up a podcast or a video. I’ve been working on a new guide along with Saate and a few others using GoogleWave, but I’ve also been making raid videos for my current guild.
I’ve also been playing Tetris.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, often making a video can take several hours for only a few minutes’ worth of information, so I’ve been really trying to find a topic I feel passionate enough about to basically spend the entire day working on a presentation for.
Unfortunately, while I’ve had a few ideas to kick around, I haven’t really come up with much – part of the reason is that I feel somewhat obligated to make more and more impressive visuals, and I often just don’t quite feel up to the task. For example, I recorded a few flawless heroic Halls of Reflection runs that I’d done with PuGs as a holy priest, and was considering making a quick H HoR guide. But then I wondered if it was really something people would particularly care about – it might be mildly interesting, but is it something people would sit and watch for 15-20 minutes?
I’m going to be very upfront here and just let you guys know that I’m a feedback whore – I tend to be more enthusiastic about working on creative projects when I feel confident that I will get feedback about them. So I’d love to hear what you guys are interested in seeing.
Anyway, Saate brought up an interesting idea to me, and since I may still go with it, I’ll keep it a surprise for now, but suffice to say that one of the ideas I had to go with his suggestion was to basically poke fun at how reliant everybody has become on AddOns to play WoW.
I currently raid with a guild that wants to make it policy that in order to raid, you must have DeadlyBossMods installed, and if you’re capable of removing important debuffs, you must use Decursive. This isn’t an uncommon request from many guilds, and this kind of mindset that you can’t play WoW without certain AddOns is pretty prevalent.
In fact, if you go to the Shaman forums, almost every thread asking for advice on how to play the enhancement spec will have somebody telling the poster to get an AddOn called Shockandawe. If you go the druid forums, almost every thread asking for feral DPS advice will recommend getting Rawr. For shadow priests, it’s MFClip. For all healers, it’s healbot coupled with grid.
Someone demoing MFClip for shadow priests:
Now personally, I believe some AddOns can be genuinely useful to the game. Things that make repetitive tasks easier (Gatherer for example), or that change how things are displayed so that you more easily notice important information (various UI AddOns) are, I think, a good addition to the game. Blizzard tends to incorporate the more useful ones, like ScrollingCombatText. Most bosses even come with raid warnings on their “you’re all about to die” abilities, vis-a-vis DeadlyBossMods.
But something makes me feel very angry about AddOns that “play the game for you,” as it were. Many of you are probably familiar with the DBM feature that whenever you’re standing in fire, an alarm will sound and the big bad wolf will yell, “RUN AWAY, LITTLE GIRL! Run away…”
I think Blizzard has done a very good job of incorporating most of the “necessary” AddOns into the game by now, and I’ve yet to participate in a raid encounter that I was not able to hold up my end of the slack with just the default raid UI. In fact, I’ve often been asked “what AddOns I use” in some of the instructional videos I made, like this one (fair warning, it’s old and outdated!), even though I don’t use any:
It used to irritate me to no end when I’d be a raid leader for Naxx 25, and our tank on Maexxna would die because the poison debuff wasn’t getting removed. That wasn’t even what irritated me, though, it was that, when I’d ask why it wasn’t removed, the response would be, “My decursive isn’t working.”
I’m all for AddOns making the game more convenient to play, or perhaps making some aspect of your life easier, but it bugs me just how many players have become so reliant on AddOns that they actually are unable to perform without them. To me, it’s like someone never learning to do simple calculations because they could just have a calculator do it for them. “Sorry I couldn’t get out of the fire. DBM didn’t tell me to.” And yet, these AddOns are often accepted as so necessary that you can be kicked out of raids for not having them!
Don’t even get me started about AVR.
So what do you guys think? Is it a bad thing that people have become so dependent on AddOns? Is it important that people learn how to play without them before they start customizing with them?
Man, I made that Tetris video about a week ago, and I’m already bothered by how poorly I played, haha – I’m closer to rank 15 and 16 after most games now.
When I played my addon habit was kicked off by healing Molten Core in a time when the default UI made it a ridiculous prospect. That learning process saddled me with the permanent assumption that no matter how good blizzard made the default; chances were there was something else out there that did it better or did more.
Just because you *can* play without any addons, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. If using addons makes you a more effective player, do it. I rely heavily on Watcher for optimizing my shot priorities, BuffEnough for checking buffs and Grid for easier at-a-glance raid status. They’re just enhancing the UI that’s already there, but in a way that can make me a more effective player.
Then there are addons like Quartz, that give me important information that the default UI doesn’t (per shot latency).
I used AVR and it was a huge help in learning fights. For some encounters, like the Goos on PP, it adds important hints that should have been designed in from the start.
Mod-purists really bug me. If Blizzard didn’t want mods to be part of the game, they’d remove them (as they did with AVR). Does it matter if they make the game ‘too easy’? Too easy for who? Who decides it’s too easy? There are plenty of players (the majority of subscribers!) who have never killed a single boss in ICC.
My point wasn’t that they make the game “too easy,” it was an issue of laziness and general apathy at learning to play the game.
When there’s a gigantic fire surrounding your character, a debuff that pops up that’s a fire icon, and your health is rapidly diminishing, that’s plenty of warning that you’re probably standing where you shouldn’t. To rely on an AddOn screaming at you to move is poor management.
What particularly irks me isn’t that some people use AddOns, it’s that such a large portion of the WoW community thinks they’re absolutely necessary to play. For every person who thinks AddOns are a needless crutch, there’s a polar opposite who thinks someone who doesn’t use AddOns is a failure that couldn’t possibly perform as well as them.
Again, I’m not stressing that all AddOns are terrible – anything that makes things more convenient or customizes the display to your liking is fine. It’s the ones that really do just play the game for you by telling you exactly what to do. It’s like sitting in front of WoW with a walkthrough instead of exploring on your own.
I agree with Malevola on this one.
There’s a threshold of difficulty (scarcity of information) below which addons help to make the game more playable, and further down addons make the game more trivial, if you like.
From memory, the addons I first got were CT RaidAssist (more for the frames than the warnings) and ScrollingCombatText, which were both things sorely lacking (in my opinion) in the default UI. Chromaggus without raid frames = ugh.
I don’t mind their disabling addons that “break” by delimiting a certain amount of player interaction (e.g. Decursive, AVR) as long as fights are designed around being able to make decisions in without those information aids.
Example of Blizzard providing good visual info = bone spikes on Marrowgar
Example of not good visual info = Lady Deathwhisper’s death and decay.
I wouldn’t mind having to reach my own decisions as to not stand in the fire, as long as it’s clear where the fire isn’t.
There are only 3 addons that I use (as an rDPS). Auctioneer (because the default AH leaves more to be desired), Omen, and DBM. I used to be really big on Questhelper, but there isn’t a quest in game that I know of that I haven’t completed, so there’s no more reason for it anymore. If I was a healer though, I’d definitely use some sort of raid frames or something.
I personally don’t like using addons. I feel they are more trouble than they’re worth and I don’t find them to be all that helpful (other than the 4 above). I’ve used the default UI since I started playing in BC. Plus I hate waiting around for everyone to fix their fancy addon-ridden UI’s every patch.
I’m not saying it’s bad that people use addons. Some can be really helpful. However, I don’t like that they give bad players a crutch to stand on, nor do I like that they make it so that new players never REALLY learn how to play. I remember the first day that Koralon when live and DBM hadn’t been updated yet. I made a 25 man pug for VoA and we kept wiping over and over again on a boss that shouldn’t have been that difficult. I then noticed that people were dropping like flies from standing in the fire and every single persons excuse was that they didn’t notice the fire. Seriously? It’s a giant patch of flame that ticks your health away really quickly. What’s not to notice? Since then, DBM screams at you about burning to death. It’s great that it does that, but if you’re too oblivious to notice that you’re standing in fire without DBM, I seriously question your competence.
And don’t even get me started on AVR. I never used it and I’m glad I didn’t. Some of the people in our 10 man did and they said it made the fights a LOT easier. However, when AVR was finally disabled by Blizz, they were seriously handicapped, especially in the Plaugeworks and on LK. People say that seeing all those circles and whatnot help you learn the ranges of attacks and where not to stand. But you’re not really learning those things. You’re just learning not to stand in that circle AVR creates. With those circles gone, once again, you’re in the dark because you never really learned the fight the way it was meant to be.