Addon ban when raiding in World of Warcraft? A developer did it and from then on everything went better.
If you want to visit raids in World of Warcraft and not only see them on the “LFR” difficulty, you have to find a group or guild. There are often certain requirements for such groups, such as the use of certain add-ons to make battles easier.
But not everyone has had good experiences with the add-ons. In some cases, add-ons make bad players even worse.
WoW: The War Within – Shadows beneath the surface
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Who is Pirate Software? The streamer “Pirate Software” is actually called Jason Thor Hall. In the past, he has worked for companies such as Amazon Games and Blizzard, where he was mostly responsible for security – such as the security of players’ accounts or tracking down bots and fraudsters. On YouTube, he is best known for his numerous short videos in which he talks about the peculiarities of the gaming industry or game development.
What did he say about addons? In one of his last streams, Hall talked about the current pre-event for the new expansion The War Within and how much he enjoyed it. He then talked about his WoW past and various experiences in the game’s raids. He had a particularly strong opinion on interface add-ons:
One thing I did as a raid leader, because I was a raid leader forever, is this:
The thing that I found quite funny was: A lot of people use addons because they see the big streamers and the endgame raiders who also use addons. And then they use [diese Spieler] they are wrong.
Many raiders who play at the top end use addons as a bonus, as an addition to their already high level of understanding of the video game. They know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. So they use an addon to strengthen themselves. It is a bonus effect.
Many new players do not have the understanding of the game that is necessary. So they use addons as a crutch instead. The addon tells you how to play instead of [sie] understand that the addon is meant to have an additional effect. They use it to beat the whole game.
What I found out is that players who used addons in this way were really bad.
The consequence he drew as raid leader was quite drastic. But it also helped him to succeed:
I banned addons in the raid. And you know what happened then? We started defeating bosses that we couldn’t defeat before because “the addon didn’t tell me to get out of the fire”.
That was the biggest thing I learned from raiding and being a raid leader: you have to make sure the players have the basic skills to use the addons effectively.
Cortyn says: I can certainly understand the view of “Pirate Software”. Every now and then you come across players who have installed a whole series of add-ons because “the pros have them too”, but who are then overwhelmed with the correct use of these add-ons. For example, they cannot properly classify the warning sounds of boss mods or have even installed several add-ons for the same thing.
This leads to confusion and a lack of clarity. In my opinion, a handful of add-ons are indispensable for some game content, but they only help if you understand the basic mechanics they are supposed to help with. Even the best WoW add-ons are of little help in that case. Or how do you see it all?