The new concept screenshot is a real-time in-game render!

[Aradon]

A lot has been said about concerns over add-ons, and there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what they mean for the game. Incoming wall of text, unfortunately, but I tried to segment it a bit. There's a short summary of my points at the bottom, support is in the post.

First off, add-ons that allow people to check gear level will have very little impact on group formation. Anyone that would care about ilvl would just as easily look at your gear and make a decision based on that. Fact is, most people don't really care about gear level. It's a useful number that gives people a quick impression of the level of your gear. People will only be cut from groups based on gear level in two situations:
1. The people in the group are only interested in the highest level of gear and players. These people are probably mostly in the same linkshell/company for the most part, and they would kick you after looking at your gear anyways. The addition of the ability to get a simple number isn't going to change their exclusivity.
2. Your gear is too low to be capable of truly participating in the event. This is low enough gear that your 'skill' isn't going to cover. You simply should not be doing that content, and your group is simply carrying you. In this instance, the rest of your group kind of deserves to know this fact. Lots of people are still willing to help you out, but if it becomes a problem, they'll know right away who isn't pulling their weight.

In BOTH cases though, there is a problem, and having an add-on that tells you ilvl doesn't cause that problem. It's just a number that describes something they can already see. The groups everyone worries about that will kick you for having 'not the best ilvl' will kick you when they see you have 'not the best gear' too, and groups that kick you for having an inexcusably low ilvl can just inspect you anyways and see that for themselves.

It's also worth noting that I play WoW, and have had no ilvl issue. It's not a problem because people don't go looking for raid members for a level 359 raid and demand that everyone has 359 gear already. They'll take 350 and even lower, up to the discretion of the raid leader. Guild groups usually enter raids significantly lower than the ilvl of gear that drops because you simply can't get that gear without going in below ilvl. The thing is, the use of ilvl gives you a quick gauge to see if someone is inappropriately equipped for any given content. There is a point where skill cannot make up the difference, and you'll find that people tend to ask for ilvl just a bit above that. Groups just ask for reasonable gear, not the best. Some groups will, of course, demand the highest gear level, but those groups would kick you for having subpar gear anyways. At least this way you don't end up getting invited, then kicked shortly after.


As for the extreme amount of information and interaction, and addons 'playing the game for you,' there's a serious point that needs to be made here. The game, and it's interface, is a tool. The UI is a tool that players use to defeat challenges in the game. The more unresponsive, uninformative, and difficult to use the UI is, the worse of a tool it is. The worse the tool, the less fun it is to play the game. A simple (default) UI presents a reasonable amount of information, estimating about what the average player would want to see. If the player wants more, this is where addons are useful.

-Superficial addons are ones that reskin the UI. I haven't really seen any complaints about these customizations, so I won't really go into detail here. They're nice and handy, make the UI a cleaner, more friendly tool, and good all around.

-Informative UI addons give extra data that more hardcore players desperately want. This category includes things like cooldowns on pertinent spells, which spells are about to wear off, and things like damage meters. Damage meters provide information that people are already getting outside of the game, it just makes it a lot more accessable. These tools help players experiment more freely and with much better feedback. It's hardly a crutch to use these things, as they help you improve your gameplay mechanics and understanding of the game and class. Without damage meters, it's a lot more difficult to even identify that you need to improve an aspect of your class, since you can't compare data easily to anyone else's. For the record, I've never been asked how much dps I pull when lfg in WoW.

-Active addons that perform tasks for you are essentially UI elements that shorten actions down to a single click. Rather than clicking the target and then clicking decurse, you just click the target. These are more important for the hardcore players because it cuts down on things like "mouse travel time." I think even these forums would agree that "mouse travel time" should not be a limiting factor on someone's effectiveness. A curse-heavy fight should be focused on the healers realizing and reacting, not moving their mouse faster. This family of addons reduces mundane tasks into simpler actions, cutting out elements of the game that are really superficial UI shortcomings. By this I mean, the interface exists for us to tell their servers what we want our characters to do. The better we can do that, the better the interface is. These addons shorten the gap between our intentions and what we convey to the server via an improved interface.

-The final category of addons are ones that essentially provide cues. These addons give you reminders of all sorts of things, and some can go as far as telling you what to cast next. These are actually a pretty small minority of addons, and aren't the massive plague everyone here believes they are. The line between a reminder that a 3-minute spell is about to expire/cooldown (informative) and an addon telling you to recast it (playing your game for you) is pretty vague. In any event, these addons are useful for people picking up a new class to and even those looking to fine tune their reactions. They're like tutorials or practice engines, and eventually you can play without them. I don't think any WoW player ever would agree that their addons are playing the game for them. They still have to make all the judgment calls, and they have be prepared for their rotations and cues, otherwise all the addon-interfaces in the world won't help them play efficiently. These addons are interface aids that help you learn and efficiently play your class. Subpar addons will help players and then get disabled, but the best ones will stay active. Believe me, the top tier of WoW players are not idiots incapable of playing their classes, and they are the ones using these addons.

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In short, addons are not the evil people here feel they are. They help enhance an interface that in turn makes the game more enjoyable and more playable. The interface exists to translate your intent to the servers, and the better the interface accomplishes this, the better. Addons that assist gameplay may help players learn their classes, but exist to make veterans of their classes hone their skills even further. Addons that actually play classes for people are called bots and aren't actually allowed.