Sastank08: All the addon solutions you've introduced are major downgrades in every aspect and it's not looking good

johnmoore8938: "Some people say this is rushed" "Well we've been thinking about this for 2-3 years"

Yeah I've also been "thinking" about writing a book and hitting the lottery for 2-3 years. Guess how much work I've completed on both of those fronts during that time? The same as you, nothing. You waited until a few months ago to start working on these changes and it shows when you go on Beta and see that these changes are in bare minimum states.

psoto2485: Ive got no problem with most of the changes. I just really liked having absolute control over my UI and healing frames. Specifically, the size and style. As dumb as that sounds hahaha.

Grisildor: I've played WoW for 20 years. I unsubbed after the addon "band-aid" got ripped off and they killed the APIs for addon makers. Playing beta and doing a few dungeons has only solidified the decision to quit playing.

They continue to make the argument that they don't want people playing the UI, they want people to play the game. It's a great platitude that falls flat on it's face in. Where I could have a couple simple, non-computational weakauras to make rotational information simple and digestible, now you're forced to look at your bars, and your frames, and your cooldown manager, and your buffs bar, and the mass of nameplates, and your resource bar, all of which have substantially more information than is necessary. Every single change they've made to the UI forces you to play the UI so much more

Orinthe: Look. We all know this needs to happen, but how did we go from "we want to make sure our in house features work before removing access to these tools." To "Fuck it, we ball."?

Draenal: The really big question that I've really not heard anyone ask is why they choose to rip the bandaid off all at once. A lot of people interpreted from their early communications that they would be using the next several years to enhance their baseline UI offering and simultaneously pairing back addon capabilities.

The reality of what happened is they're fully restricting computational addon capabilities at once whilst simultaneously trying to deliver a baseline UI that meets the needs that every player has developed over the last 25 years. I have my idea of why they did this (and it's not malicious), but I would really like to hear from the team on why they chose this strategy.

dononononon: The classic Ion double down disconnect (when he gets reasonably criticized for bad decision making and reasoning, ie SL: covenants) of trying to put down players/content creators by thinking he’s so smart and hyper aware is hilarious. Hitting the community with “I’m such a genius that I can tell what content you ingest by the words you use in feedback!” And then hitting us with the “cognitive load” term in this interview is very off putting.

PlukeMaps: This game lacks any basic learning information as journal/codex ingame. Every time Some new player asks how professions work or how to distinguish soak from dodge circles or any other basic mechanics, all you can do now is send them to google and other 3rd party websites. There are small bits ingame information but its either scattered through various separate windows or in some legacy content quests.

ivey77426: "director's" pHiLoSoPhY ┌П┐(ಠ_ಠ)

kyurann78: Damage meter is a huge downgrade imo.

- no quick ilvl look on hover

- no individual spell damages to improve yourself (only global so now even new comers can shit on people)

- no dmg /second to estimate the gap between burst and normal rotation

- no segment breakdown etc

This feature shouldnt replace third party for now imo.

linaori: Still nothing about nameplate colors and names being atrocious and anti-accessibility...

onkek: Ion has his head so far up his ass. Talking about it how they walked back and listened to player feedback back in Shadowlands. IT TOOK THEM OVER A YEAR to make it not dog shit. Ion should have been fired During shadowlands.

TheD1rtyRider: Flying was a mistake btw. But you can’t put that back in the bag haha

lnoah95: Man seeing the ui customization makes me seethe... its just so bad compared to what was already available

lnoah95: You made content that requires these solutions.. if your game design wasn't so shit, addons wouldnt have been needed

jedikelly82: you know what? I said it on wowhead and I will say it here. Your UX designers can't even make it where all windows are movable, so my confidence in your team to do something more complicated is low.

CrimsonTide001: How do you know when a lawyer is lying? When his lips are moving!!

Seriously this should be titled Ion lies again!!

obsfireguard9909: I feel like he dances around the Heal bot question. Sir the reason heal bot is a thing now is because you in game version sucks.

GameNewsClub: Been playing since vanilla... Add-ons occurred in the first place because it has never been challenging for the right reasons when doing combat in dungeons and raids. The strategy aspects have always been cool, but the combat mechanics of WoW have always been clunky and hard to deal with when you get into the more difficult instances and boss encounters, especially when large groups are involved. Even being able to see what's going on so you can act accordingly is a challenge.

I think they should approach this issue from a combat design viewpoint, and figure out how to make combat in the game smoother and more accessible, and then design or tweak instances accordingly. Make it so people don't feel like they NEED Add-ons. They'll stop using them.

rubiconforrest: The total gas lighting this jerk spews out is amazing. The default UI on beta is TERRIBLE. The first thing I had to do was go download addons to make it even remotely usable. GIVE US FULL CONTROL OVER THE COOLDOWN MANAGER AND OUR BUFFS, it's that easy to make 90% of the people pissed off happy.

Gelfling66: This is needed and is good for the health of the game. There is no perfect way to do it, there would have always been people who moan about it. This will be looked back upon as one of the best steps forward blizzard had ever made

NightfallSentinel: I'm going to say it. On top of everything detrimental to the game, there is datamining. It's the number one thing sucking life out of the in-game WoW experience, by far. It takes all the mystery out of the world.

JoeyZaZa1012: alex i love that cheez it hat bro

buggirlexpres: can they please say what they are doing for players who are deaf or rely on addons to communicate

Centias: "Accessibility was one of our primary areas of focus. Even if it's a minority of players who are using these tools for those reasons, we couldn't go ahead with those changes if it was going to force those players out of the game.

jasongates6894: Ion said a lot of words to say nothing of meaning.

Nov 20 2025

Buy WOW Classic Gold (lvl60)