Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsHuge 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 2 of 2)
rhys Oct 7th 2006 11:18PM
kG,
This functionality is actually being built into the default UI from the expansion, so you won't need the addon.
AcceptableRisk Oct 8th 2006 8:19PM
They must be taking buff status functions out of the macro scripting as well. If not, this means pretty much nothing. Decursive could easily be written in a macro.
Hoola Oct 9th 2006 7:21AM
It seems clear to me that they will have to remove the ability to use macro scripts to select spells otherwise there would be no point.
Personally I just use decursive. The person who claimed it's easy to tell who has what debuff on them and cast the appropriate spell is crazy. Luckily it seems that decursive will still be able to list all the affected players so you will now have to look at the list, manually target the player, manually cast the correct spell. I can live with that.
Before I got hold of decursive I found it quite hard to keep track of who had what debuffs on them. I got a lot of whining from tanks about their diseases. Since I was generally busy keeping them alive and the low level diseases are not exactly life threatening I used to tell them so suck it up and deal. No doubt they thought I sucked but they quite sensibly kept their mouths shut.
I consider all the comment along the line of "if you to use these addon you don't belong in an end game raid" to be meaningless blather. These addons, when correctly used, make things go smoother. Those comments make about as much sense as me saying if you play with a big monitor you don't belong in end game, or if you use more than one toolbar you don't belong in end game. The addons were there, if you didn't want to use them that was your choice, kinda like those who choose to run a marathon wearing a monkey suit. If Blizzard decided the addon made life too easy they could get rid of the functions it used and it looks like they have. This will make life harder for everyone but so what really?
For the person who said he'd be fine so long as Necrosis still worked.... Necrosis has about 8 buttons, they all cast spells. From what has been said here it seems that Necrosis just became a pretty way to keep track of how many shards you have.
Staron Nurofen Oct 17th 2006 9:50AM
If they go ahead with that, they will encourage EXTERNAL addons to be made to do pretty much the same thing. What BOTs are made out of. Bliz will be shooting themselves in the foot.
mageftw Oct 17th 2006 9:18PM
ok i agree to a certain point but. decursive is a very handy to classes like mages in situations where there are multiple npcs spawning they have to be aware of and poly one dps one and keep the other npcs off the healer and decurse all at the same time its cool that it sticks the cursed party member right in your face and lets you get on top of it asap. ok pallys and priests and druids may say you dont need it. thats because you are there sitting in the raid continiously watching ctraid healing so yes you dont actually have your eyes on the action as much as mages. also keep in mind that you yourself may not be using decursive but other members in your party may be and may be curing 5 debuffs to your 1. i for one use decursive to pop an alert up on my screen in front of my main vision. i would quite happily make a second click if i had to. but i can tell you now if i have to watch multiple targets polying one killing one and watch to make sure a healer class isnt pulling aggro and go save their ass then yeah i am sorta too busy to be looking at ctraid for curses i big warning in my face is definately needed.
thepig Nov 11th 2006 7:01PM
4 words. cry me a river. Be thankfull blizz supports a development community for their mmo. take FFXI for example. they support absolutely NO addons or mods, and they do perfectly fine in 20-50 member against end game mobs.
Storm Jan 31st 2007 3:28PM
Personally I allways use Panza for the heal/cure duties and it rocked!
I play this game for fighting, but since my main is a pally I won't neglect my obligations..
Panza lets me heal and cure will in the middle of dps-ing the bosses. I can fully concentrate on keeping the right judgements on the bad-guys.
How in heaven's name can I select the buffed raid-member when I'm facing the boss? The standard raid-menu/group thing wont even show me the buffs.. so how?
Then another point... Panza hela for me with the needed rank of heal.. this saves somuch mana, you wont believe. What does Blizz want me to do.. Allways heal with the most expensive one? And even when they implement it like the lower rank buff on lower level players, will I get sliders to choose howmuch overhelin I'd like to compensate the difference between casting and landing the heal? Don't think so... Without Panza this pally will only heal 5/10 man.. and not like it..
Faeryl Dec 7th 2006 7:09PM
I honestly am very glad things like EZheal and one-end of Cast Party is dieing, it's about time the pathetic fools who are too stupid to know which heal to choose are going to be shown for the pathetic players they are. Learn to heal correctly or go roll a DPS class. One the other hand...I became heavily reliant on the heals I bound to my mouse buttons to the point that I am no longer able to effectively heal with a bar. ...It just doesn't work! This isn't too bad as I can just set us bars and bind all these keys anyway...but...it was much nicer with CastParty because I could have offensive spells on my bar and have all my heals on my mouse. Fear the losers and SW:P something with 2 and 3 then Shield the FC with my Right-Click and cast FH rank 1 with Alt+Left-Click and renew with Shift+Middle-Mouse...It was nice. I just want my castparty back because all the arrangement of the bars will blow more then Racquel Darrian.
Also, the Priest "Geadum" in the linked post cracked me up. "Hw kan i mek dis nt hrd?!" LEARN2#@$%INGHEAL!