Beating a boss with the default UI. Crazysauce, I know.

Here we were, running through a fresh dungeon that only beta testers had seen before, and already we were voting to kick people. WoW's addon culture ensures that this kind of crap happens all the time, but unique circumstances caused this incident to stand out. This wasn't some sleepy run through old dungeons during WoW's content drought a couple of months ago; no, this was my first dungeon run during the live release of Mists of Pandaria, only moments after the expansion went live after midnight on September 25th. Here we were, running through a fresh dungeon that only beta testers had seen before, and already we were voting to kick people based on an addon's testimony. After the weeks I'd spent in Guild Wars 2's add-on free environment and warm-and-fuzzy helpful community, the culture shock of coming back to World of Warcraft and experiencing this brand of pettiness was like using an electric chair for a car seat.



Sleeping with the Enemy



Mind you, I won't say I'm completely against addons. My main enjoyment from PvE raids and dungeon runs comes from staying on top of the Recount damage meters with my warrior these days, and I refuse to use the auction house without Auctionator, a handy tool that automatically undercuts everyone so I don't have to spend an hour comparing prices. I then use Postal to open all my sold auctions at once at my mailbox, and I use Gatherer to keep track of mineral and herb spawns when I'm building up supplies for my next auction house dump. A recent favorite is SellJunk, which automatically sells all the "trash" items in my inventory so I don't have to spend an eternity sorting through it. That chore didn't bother me in the past, but I've built up an intolerance for it after experiencing so many MMORPGs that have this feature already built in.



When 1.6 million people download an addon in one month, is it still optional?

I believe mods have had a hand in all the complaints about WoW's alleged slide into casual-friendly easiness. Someday, I imagine, WoW will work something like SellJunk into the native client based on its history with its flourishing addon community. Indeed, another downside to addons is that I believe they've had a hand in all the complaints about WoW's alleged slide into casual-friendly easiness, particularly since the most popular ones eventually find their way into the design. The old joke about everyone asking about Mankrik's Wife in the Horde chat channel for the Barrens zone, for instance, became an anachronism once the ideas behind addons like QuestHelper became native (thereby pointing out quest objectives on the map so you don't have to ask). Addons like Deadly Boss Mods and Big Wigs made raid and dungeons infinitely more manageable by including countdowns for raid mechanics or triggering alarms when a player's standing in the dreaded fire, and they've become common enough that Blizzard's started working elements of them into the native warnings for boss fights. Still, the mods retain the upper hand by calling out alarms that Blizzard thought were too obvious to bother with, rendering many of World of Warcraft's already-easy dungeon encounters even easier.



Yeah, If Only



I know what you're saying: "If you don't like these conveniences, Leif, then don't use them." That might work if you just planned on leveling to the cap and doing nothing in the endgame. Apply for almost any guild that has higher ambitions than queuing together through the Raid Finder tool, however, and there's a good chance that they'll require add-ons like DBM or BigWigs for raiding these days. Performance-based addons like Recount remain important as well, since they point a big red arrow at the weak links and allow you to adjust your strategy or raid composition accordingly. At their best, addons like DBM and Recount enable smoother raids because the raid leader doesn't have to call out every single new mechanic on their encounter; at their worst, they encourages spite over encouragement in random groups, thereby shattering any sense of community.



Do you really need an addon to tell you to avoid that?

Take my second Temple of the Jade Serpent run, which I also joined through the random dungeon finder. On this occasion, one of the players almost died after he stood in the nasty water that bubbled up after an elemental was defeated. Rather than just offering a helpful "Stay out of the water," one of my random so-called comrades unleashed this gem: "If you'd learn how to f***ing play and download DBM, you'd know when you're in that shit." As if you couldn't tell by looking at it. The hapless player joked that he didn't think water would could be dangerous, and sure enough, we didn't have any problems with it for the rest of the run, thus proving that he didn't need an addon telling him what to do in order to "learn to play."



Not a Name, But a Number



In today's WoW, unfortunately, addons increasingly dehumanize players. In fact, in a simpler time, dealing with these little bouts of trial and error was how we learned. Helping other players wasn't seen as an obstacle, and the true triumph of overcoming a difficult boss encounter arose from the knowledge that we'd worked well together as a team. In today's WoW, unfortunately, addons increasingly dehumanize players. We saw it most prominently a couple of years ago with the GearScore addon that judged players solely by the numerical values of their gear, and then Blizzard essentially institutionalized it with the new item level requirements. Instead of using Recount as a tool to give advice to underperforming group members who may just be new to the game, jerks like my grumpy Tank use it as a tool to simply kick players who aren't playing according to their standards. DBM, too, takes a lot of skill out of the equation for some players, and boss fights thus devolve into listening for prompts rather than watching the action for yourself.



Ah, sweet simplicity!

The absence of similar addons works in a game like Guild Wars 2 because its entire design centers on helping other players directly. That's why, at least for folks like me, it's hard not to fall for MMORPGs like Guild Wars 2 (and even Star Wars: The Old Republic) that have the guts to dump addons altogether. It wasn't too long ago that such austerity seemed unthinkable; at the time, WoW sat firmly on its throne and its open policy toward addons seem to encourage innovation. These days alternatives exist, and it's possible to find in them a ghost of that random camaraderie that so many of us enjoyed in the genre's early years. And yet, to my horror, I find that I can't devote myself to these idealistic projects completely. The absence of similar addons works in a game like Guild Wars 2 because its entire design centers on helping other players directly and because ArenaNet stubbornly refuses to include anything like a traditional PvE raid, but I find myself looking for concrete evidence that I'm doing as well as I think I am in a dungeon or battleground. I applaud BioWare's decision to open limited damage meters for Star Wars: The Old Republic for guilds who want it, but the endgame as a whole feels too similar to World of Warcraft's to forsake my old guild.



We Can Work It Out



I thus find that these contrasting philosophies toward addons push me in two different directions. World of Warcraft remains the MMORPG I play when I want to feel a clear sense of progression while raiding with my guild, and for better or for worse addons help me achieve that sense of progress. Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, has become the game I play when I want to relax and enjoy myself in an MMORPG, and I think a lot of that comfort arises from the knowledge that players have no way to judge me or others aside from my combat decisions in a dungeon or a PvP instance. For now, Guild Wars 2's lack of a subscription plan makes it easy for these two to coexist on my limited schedule, but I won't deny that I worry that WoW will still win out in the end.



At this point, I just can't decide. Maybe there's an addon for that?



Even mods have a dark side -- in a way, mods that give you extra information that a game's designers never intended you to have are kind of sort of cheating, even if they don't actually enable god mode. Have you ever felt like a UI mod made a game worse rather than better, but you used it anyway?

The evidence was irrefutable -- according to Recount, a popular addon that tracks combat information for World of Warcraft, the Rogue in our group wasn't pulling his weight. We'd already defeated three bosses in the Temple of the Jade Serpent in which the Rogue had dealt far less damage than the two other DPS classes in the party, and now the Tank was in a fit of rage, even though we'd never come close to wiping. And so, perhaps inevitably, the voting screen to kick the roguish fellow from the group popped up. The vote failed -- everyone except the Tank voted no -- and the angry tank abandoned us in a huff, effectively ending the dungeon run.