Huge addon changes in the Burning Crusade
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 6th 2006 at 11:30PM
A reeeally interesting post has appeared on the UI and Addon forums. There's a little flattery in there to butter up the UI Addon community, but then the bombshell hits: in the Burning Crusade, UI addons will not be capable of casting spells or targeting units.Ummm yeah. Goodbye Decursive. So long Panza, Benecast, and CastParty. So long one-click heals of any kind. So long almost every UI addon that's required by most guilds for endgame raiding. According to the post, most of the addons you know and love won't be allowed after they run the patch on the expansion.
Now, there might be a little bit of leeway on this. Some "popular and benign UI mods" will be allowed to "take advantage of new functionality" being built into the expansion. So it's possible, depending on your reading, that mods like CT_raid (which really should have been built into the game in the first place, if you ask me) will be allowed to exist. But there's no telling at this point what this "new functionality" does. And since Blizzard doesn't elaborate on which mods cross the line-- is spamming Decursive their idea of cheating? How about clicking off debuffs person by person with CastParty?-- this little post doesn't really do much more than throw things up in the air.
And there's no telling where they will land. Expect an outcry from the UI community over the next week or so, or at least until they can figure out what's happening. If there's a way around it, this may not be as big as it seems. But if Blizzard is really serious about shutting down some of these addons, not only will raiding grow a whole lot harder overnight, but the addon community (which has done a lot of great, hard work for Blizzard, without pay) might be affected irrevocably.
[ Thanks, Owlboy! ]
Update: Blue is answering some questions in this official thread. Basically, any mod that lets you click one button to do different things (Decursive) is out. Whatever you're clicking is not allowed to choose a spell for you. Now, I have zero experience with UI coding, so if someone else can explain it better, please do. But the fact remains that Blizzard is cracking down on a segment of the UI community, and it's likely to change the way almost everybody operates, especially in a raiding environment.
Filed under: Fan stuff, Guilds, Blizzard, News items, Add-Ons, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Raein Oct 7th 2006 12:50AM
If this is their way of making 25 man raids "harder" then they need to pull their heads out of their proveribal asses.
TP Oct 7th 2006 1:09AM
Really, All of these mods blizzard is claiming to outlaw remind me of the patch when CT-raid wasnt going to work anymore. A working version was realeased BEFORE the patch. Also, Most of these mods like self-cast, cast-party, and decursive are HUGELY overrated. Basically, if you need a piece of code to make decisions and push a button for you, you dont belong in an end game guild.
Soldersa Oct 7th 2006 1:29AM
Its much more fun when u have to remmber which key is for a spell, then 1 UI that does it for you.
skuska Oct 7th 2006 1:43AM
Ugh. Thank you Blizzard. I play WoW on my laptop, and have become relient on using the keyboard, as opposed to the painful-to-use touchpad, to play. I use macros and custom addons to get all the functionality out of my keyboard that I can: toggling aspects with one button, toggling feral forms with one button, checking debuffs on target before casting corruption, etc. This change to the API has left me feeling a little sick. Hopefully, new ways of doing all the things I just mentioned will crop up, and I applaud Blizzard for trying to stop what they must have felt was rampant abuse of the game's mechanics. I just hope that everything works out for the best and I am not left trying to play WoW with a laptop touchpad, a slow and laborious process.
Kang Oct 7th 2006 10:31AM
@2 & 3:
Obviously we have some people here who've never played a mage in molten core. YOU try debuff removal on your entire 40-man person-by-person. There's nothing fun about it, and no skill involved in desperately mashing a key on your keyboard or mouse over and over again moving from one target to the next.
Soldersa, it's obvious you don't play a class with debuff removal as a raid priority, so I can excuse that on account of inexperience. TP, on the other hand, can go do some things I can't mention here.
As for myself, I play a mage and a druid primarily, two classes with established debuff removal positions in raids. From experience the primary advantage of Decursive or any similar add-ons is that it makes it easier to identify that a situation is occuring, much like the boss warnings in CT_RaidAssist(and the debuff/buff options in the same add-on), or arcanepartybars, or most any other addon that actually serves a combat purpose. TP, I don't know what kind of miraculous coordination and cat-like reflexes you've developed sitting in front of your computer, but I would suggest you try developing a respect for your support classes first.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.
Ikono Oct 10th 2006 1:40AM
Then just buy a mouse, skuska, sheesh... If your laptop is good enough to play wow, then it is good enough to have a USB port or 4...
Medivak Oct 7th 2006 9:47AM
People who are dependent on most of those addons probably shouldn't be raiding endgame in the first place.
gomntep Oct 7th 2006 4:41AM
They seem to remove only the click casting ability. Su you now need to push 2 Buttons instaed of 1. OFMG NO, what a pain. You click once on the CT raid panel to select a player with a curse, wich you still can easily see, or don't anybody know wich icon is for wich curse? And then u press the curse or posion or magic removal spell. Btw, there may be an Addon thats only for Targeting and then its up to you jus tto write some macro using the first and then an cleansing spell. Guys this cant be that hard.
foip Oct 7th 2006 6:44AM
As long as Necrosis keeps working I'll be fine.
Antari Oct 7th 2006 7:12AM
Some of you really dont see the point....
the ability for a mod to use a spell at any point doesnt just mess up their ability to help the so-called lazy players who are generally stopping debuffs stacking a mile high on your asses, it pretty much scraps the last few years of mod development regarding everything exept your ui modifications and other features blizz should have put in years ago but were too lazy..
YouveBeenNerfed Oct 7th 2006 7:57AM
ROFLMAO. I've been wondering when Blizzard is going to come down with the big fat shaft! In every MMO's lifetime, when their subscriber base reach a certain point, the publisher's head will swell big enough for them to make some radical change (i.e. get back on their high horse). This had been long time coming!
In the end, Blizzard is just as evil as Verant/SOE -- probably more so since they have more followers.
Maybe it's time to head back to CoH where NCSoft is still "paying" people (with in-game items and mysterious weekend reactivation of accounts) to play their game.
Ian Oct 7th 2006 10:50AM
Hooray.
As a priest with some raiding experience, all I can say is, "Great." Part of playing the game is knowing your spells and knowing when to cast what. I always gave an evil eye to those who used automatic scripts to cast their spells for them.
I don't think it's a coincidence that this is going in at the same time that the priests are getting an AoE dispell magic. Now if other debuff-removing classes could get the same, maybe they'd stop whining. Maybe.
nea Oct 8th 2006 2:42AM
"There's nothing fun about it, and no skill involved in desperately mashing a key on your keyboard or mouse over and over again moving from one target to the next."
You can still have a mod to target cursed guy and cast decurse, you will just need n buttons to push for n different debuff types as the mod can't choose for you which spell curses what debuff.
Scott Oct 7th 2006 11:11AM
wtf
Asir Oct 7th 2006 12:10PM
Thank heavens!! Now people will actually have to play their class instead of relying on a mod to do it for them. And for all of you who say "obviously you've never played a cleanse class" I play a pally in MC without the decursive crap cause I pay attention and stay on top of things. And come on be serious who's not tired of seeing n00b pallys in full epics who do nothing other than mash single keys to heal/cleanse without actually having to think about it.
Argent Oct 7th 2006 1:22PM
you don't need decursive for any fights in MC, BWL or AQ40, so it's pointless to even roll those out as comparison points.
in naxx, however, you are pretty much boning your entire raid on certian fights without it. i really didn't like that particular aspect about some fights in there and if blizz in turn tones down some of their fights so as to not make stuff like decursive almost mandatory, i don't have a problem with these changes per se.
also, let me not that click to cast mods like castparty will still work according to posts on the CP forums. the basic functionality of said mods are ok, but stuff like the 'do the right thig' feature will have to be removed. you'll still be able to bind a spell to a mouse click/kb+mouse click combo and cast it on someone as needed -- which is also fine by me.
TP Oct 7th 2006 5:54PM
btw kang....I play a pally. LOL
Argent Oct 7th 2006 6:59PM
again, until you get to naxx, decursive isn't even needed. even a fight like chromaggus is pretty easy to deal with via manual means.
noth, otoh...
kG Oct 7th 2006 7:00PM
Hmmm.. What about something like SpellScaler? It's the only mod I use like this, so far. It lets me (level 60) cast Mark of the Wild on a level 37 friend without having to open my spellbook or keep 5 different versions of it in a hotbar. A friend wrote a script for his druid to do the same. I wonder if they will break that functionality as well?
kG Oct 7th 2006 7:02PM
Hmmm.. What about something like SpellScaler? It's the only mod I use like this, so far. It lets me (60) cast Mark of the Wild on a level 37 friend without having to open my spellbook or keep 5 different versions of it in a hotbar. It's not really choosing the spell for me, but it is choosing the appropriate level (could seem the same, as far as the game knows). A friend wrote a macro/script for his druid to do the same. I wonder if they will break that functionality as well?