Quote Originally Posted by Tibian View Post
Addons are the reason why the WoW interface has been updated. If you have an entire community working on improving the game, the dev team can work on other things and just take the ideas and implement them later.

Addons are important and improve games.
That's an issue I'm really split on. WoW's UI wouldn't have half the options it does now without community-developed addons. oRA gave us raid management. Outfitter gave us the equipment manager. Omen gave us threat display. Grid was definitely what inspired the new raid frames.

But there is a dark side to addons. Recount made it so that party and raid leaders know exactly how much DPS/HPS their group members are putting out. Sometimes the numbers are all they're looking at, and they don't take other things into account (backup healing, dispels, etc). People get kicked if their numbers are low. And then there was Gearscore. The addon that calculated how accomplished and 'raid ready' you were based on gear item level, enchants, gems, and raid achievements. You didn't get invited to groups if your GS was too low. Blizzard let this run rampant before being forced to make it null and void by implementing an in-game gear check. If your item level was too low, the dungeon finder would not let you enter heroics.

Not to mention that raiding guilds make certain addons mandatory, or you cannot raid. And, yes, there are ways to know. Some addons have the functionality to check the version everyone else in your raid is using.

These experiences have made playing addon-free games feel like a breath of fresh air. I get tired of only being as good as the next guy's addons. But at the same time, I know that development in some games really benefit from them.

I have to begrudgingly admit that since SE is a little out of touch with the modern MMO market, they could learn a lot from community addons. BUT... I would like to see them more tightly controlled than WoW's.