[Myrroddin]

Congratulations on derailing the thread from what makes a good MMO to a debate about AddOns.

Originally Posted by vasdrakken Yes UI addons helped WOW but they also had a lot of issues. When an addon becomes required for play

There is no such thing as a required AddOn, not in WoW, not in TESO, not in Rift, not in any other game. If you believe that, I have some great swampland I'd love to sell you. If some guilds prefer their members to use an AddOn to make their lives easier, that's one thing, but nobody can force you to install an AddOn. I don't recall reading in the news about guild leaders going to people's houses and requiring you to install AddOnX via threat of violence. I'm sure I would have heard about such news if it existed.

Originally Posted by vasdrakken their is either an issue with the game, ie it is feature that should already be there

There has been several AddOns that were so good they became part of the game.

• Raid frames. Yep, when WoW launched, and EQ before that, you got party frames, but not raid frames. Those came from AddOns.
• The RAID_WARNING chat channel originated in AddOns.
• If you are an AddOn author, be thankful that Iriel's debug AddOn tools got rolled into the game.
• Filtering buffs on targets and debuffs on players to indicate what you could dispel. Guess where that idea came from?
• WoW now has simple boss mechanic warnings and the Encounter Journal has tactics. Neither can help you if you do not pay attention and stand in the fire or don't switch to kill adds. But originally, there was Deadly Boss Mods and BigWigs, and a few tactics AddOns.
• Threat and damage meters. There was a lot of guesswork before Blizzard revealed how to get exact numbers, but amazingly, your game client knew perfectly well what the numbers were even it did not display them. Now it does.

There are several others I am not mentioning.

Originally Posted by vasdrakken or the addon unbalances the game so bad if you don't have it you are at a major disadvantage.

There have been exactly two, TWO such AddOns in Warcraft's history. Decursive in its original form, and Augmented Virtual Reality (AVR).

The original code for Decursive allowed you to press one key, and without knowing what debuff was on which player, automatically cleared it. Molten Core became trivial for some boss fights, so Blizzard changed things. Now you have to know if your class can clear a debuff (remember the game has filtering, see above), and use a hardware interaction (mouse or keyboard click) and actively click on the correct unit frame. Far cry from being mindless. Original version killed in or around patch 1.10, while the rewrite that follows the rules exists to this day.

AVR allowed people to quite literally draw shapes on the game world view, and enterprising players coded up modules that told you where to stand and when using a 3D map of the encounter. The AddOn community could see the problem, and AVR was more of a proof-of-concept. Blizzard agreed with the community and outright killed being able to draw on the game world in patch 3.3.5.

Originally Posted by vasdrakken The addon that let you see enemy stats would fall into this.

Are you for real? Granted, displaying a boss' level was an idea born from AddOns, but it wasn't hard to figure out. You are in a level 55 dungeon, and you know that elites are equal to the difficulty +3 while a boss was difficulty +5. Even Blizzard told us that, even if all we saw was skulls instead of numbers. Today, In order to adjust for Hit and Expertise, Elite and Boss levels are YOUR level plus 3 or 5.

Enemy health and energy levels were also in the game, again, not visible. How else would your client know how to display the decreasing size of the bars? Somewhere along the way, the game allowed a setting to display the numbers if you want to see them.

Same goes with enemy cast bars. The player needs to know if a spell can or should be interrupted.

Originally Posted by vasdrakken developers never intended to players to have

See above. The developers obviously do not agree with you; they simply did not know or realize how or when we want information displayed.

I am not going to address Gearscore to the level that Vuelhering has answered, since that answer is perfect. Just three fast things to recap:

• The idea of Gearscore can now be found in WoW's average item level (iLevel) score, and when used properly, is a great indicator of gear confidence whether or not you are capable of accomplishing certain dungeons or raids. iLevel came in Cataclysm, but Gearscore is older. Duh.
• Players are human, and make human judgments. When my character's iLevel says I can go into raidX but PUG groups want a much higher iLevel, it is a conceit. They don't know you, don't know if you are a good or bad player, and err on the side of bigger gear. That makes complete sense. Friends and guilds are far more lenient, as they should be.
• iLevel is not going away in Warlords of Draenor, but there will be a new qualifier. A skill check, enforced by Blizzard. You must be able to beat the Proving Grounds with every class and spec you want to raid with, if you want to raid with those classes and specs. Most likely, that qualifier will not apply to friends and guilds, but you never know.