Lead Classic Designer Tim Jones and Lead Encounter Designer Mike Nuthals discussed the decision in a post-BlizzCon interview with Kotaku. Blizzard has not yet explained exactly how every part of Forever’s addon API will work, but Nuthals confirmed that the company is bringing its in-combat “addon disarmament” philosophy across from Modern WoW. In practical terms, Forever will still support addons, but Blizzard does not want addons performing calculations during encounters and turning that information into automated marking or communication.
That is a surprisingly important decision for a game whose entire identity is built around returning to an earlier version of World of Warcraft.
Forever Is Not Going Back to the Old Addon Arms Race
WoW addons have always occupied a strange position between customization and automation. Nobody particularly objects to moving action bars, changing fonts or making an inventory less reminiscent of somebody emptying a toolbox onto the kitchen floor. The trouble begins when an addon understands enough live combat information to start solving encounters for the player.
That is exactly the line Blizzard has spent the Midnight era trying to redraw. Earlier this year, we covered Blizzard’s increasingly aggressive restrictions on combat and aura information, which were designed to let addons display information without necessarily understanding the underlying values. Blizzard later pushed the philosophy further in Patch 12.1, and the resulting addon crackdown made it increasingly clear that computational tools were the real target.
Forever will apparently begin life under the same basic philosophy rather than recreating the older environment where addon developers had considerably more freedom to interrogate combat data.
This Does Not Mean WeakAuras and DBM Simply Disappear
There is an important distinction here because “addon restrictions” inevitably becomes “Blizzard killed WeakAuras” approximately fourteen seconds after reaching social media.
Blizzard has not announced that Forever will ban WeakAuras, Deadly Boss Mods, BigWigs or general UI addons. The company has also not published the complete Forever API rules yet. What has been confirmed is that the restrictions preventing computational addons from automatically processing certain combat information will carry over.
Modern WoW already demonstrates what that distinction looks like. In Blizzard’s official explanation of Midnight’s addon disarmament philosophy, combat information can be treated as a “secret value.” An addon may be allowed to display the box containing that information, resize it or move it around, while being prevented from opening the box and using its contents to make decisions.
That sounds technical, because it is. But the design goal is simple: addons should help you see the game rather than play parts of it for you.
Classic Players Have Already Seen How Far Addons Can Go
The decision also makes sense because addon authors are extraordinarily good at finding new ways to extract useful information from WoW. Sometimes impressively so.
Only days ago, we looked at addons using minimap rotation to determine which direction players were facing, allowing tools to recreate directional assistance for difficult raid mechanics despite restrictions on positional data. It was clever, useful and also a perfect demonstration of the eternal arms race Blizzard is trying to escape.
Blizzard restricts one category of combat information.
Addon authors discover another way to infer it.
Encounter designers then have to assume serious raiders possess that information.
The encounters get more complicated.
The addons become more complicated.
Eventually your screen resembles an aircraft cockpit having an argument with Microsoft Excel.
Blizzard has already admitted that encounter design became increasingly shaped by this relationship. That is why the company has been building more encounter information directly into WoW’s default interface while simultaneously reducing what external tools can calculate.
Forever Could Be the Best Place to Start Fresh
The interesting question is what these restrictions allow Blizzard to do with Forever itself.
World of Warcraft: Forever is deliberately trying to make Azeroth feel unsolved again. More than 1,000 new quests, new dungeons, new raids, redesigned classes and unfamiliar zones mean players will not enter November with two decades of solved routes and boss strategies sitting beside the monitor.
Limiting computational addons supports that idea.
A new raid mechanic is considerably less mysterious if an addon immediately calculates the optimal response, assigns five players, marks three targets and politely informs everyone where to stand before the boss has finished shouting.
Forever can still have customizable interfaces. It can still have boss mods. It can still have addons that make bags, action bars and raid frames considerably less hostile to human eyesight.
What Blizzard appears unwilling to bring back is the idea that serious combat should gradually become a competition between encounter designers and Lua programmers.
Forever is supposed to make Azeroth unfamiliar again.
Apparently, that includes occasionally having to look at the boss.
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