Nyx

I will not be on for a week and probably longer (camping and then RL stuff). Take care and I will be back soon ; )

Here is another topic that has caused me to think lately - I am curious what my fellow Nyxers think. Are some add-ons cheating? (in that they violate the spirit of the game). Does Healbot unbalance raid healers? Does AV enabler promote fair pvp competition? etc. I know its a game and i shouldnt worry and just shut up and have fun...lol

Let me preface my thoughts by saying I have an inate aversion to add-ons. It just feels wrong - despite knowing they fill a serious gap in Blizz programming for many parts of the game. Of course, I use add-ons required for raids and such, but if they are not required, I turn them off. Are they a necessary evil to enjoy the whole of WoW? Why can't blizz program these things in (realizing they have in many cases after the fact), or are they waiting for their player community to give them ideas?

Take threatmeters for example. Why shouldn't blizzard have an in-game threatmeter? Threat is a critical parameter to instances and raids. Or does the idea of not having one add an extra dimension of strategy to the game? Could high end raids even be successful without threatmeters? (personally, i haven't found them very useful until reaching Gruul / The Eye on my toons)

Thoughts?

I totally understand where you are coming from regarding mods. I myself avoided them for most of 3 years and only started using them in my time in Nyx for Raiding. Realistically one can justify the use of most mods in an RP standpoint very easily (Healbot because healers have a hieghtened sensitivity to the life force of others yada-yada). Threatmeters seem justifiable because threat is a part of the game that is directly affcting the players but is not somehting Blizzard provided but should be able to detect. However, there are definitely some mods that are against the spirit of the game. One in particular that comes to mind is Paranoia.

This is an add on that scans the unprotected combat logs of people of either faction and gives the player notice if a member of the opposite faction has taken an action. i.e. a human rogue applies poison to his blades while stealthed. Paranoia identifies the name, race class and faction of the other player and the minimum level required to do the action they are doing.

I initially picked it up as a DEWS (distant early warning system) for gankers but I opted to uninstall it. It just felt like cheating.

It seems like some addons make the game "easier," but some just make it different and more customizable. Making your character more fun to play with a button organizer (such as Bartender or Bongos) doesn't seem like "cheating" in any way, to me - it just lets me set up each character's abilities exactly as I like them.

There are many aspects of the game (such as threat management) that are important, but that Blizzard hasn't implemented directly. In my opinion, they've provided the mechanics for players to handle this by making addons so easy to add - Blizzard encourages the use of addons!

Now, Preform AV enabler is a different story... it does seem to directly go against a mechanic that Blizzard put in place. However, since it isn't banned, lots of people use this, which means that using it doesn't give you an unfair advantage over your opponents. For me, most Battlegrounds are just painful... I've encountered low level of maturity, offensive prattle, and complete lack of organization or teamwork. When I went to some Battlegrounds with people from Nyx, I had a lot of fun, even though we still lost most of the games! So to me, the only unfair advantage that premade addons give is the ability to... have a good time?

Probably worth noting that Blizz intend to add a threat meter with WotLK, and that the AV Preform Enabler is now redundant, since you can do AV preforms as standard now anyway.

The only rule that Blizzard has about mods is that you can't fully automate your play. I see mods as aids to play. As for AV: You can join as a party (not more than 5 players), but the enabler allows for a full raid.

On a side note: We should to premades as a guild, which is one of the things last night's meeting addressed.

It took me quite some time to use mods... I first started when I was a lvl 49 human paladin waaaaaay before BC.


But the only time I really installed them was for raiding ZG, under the command of my raid leader.

Some mods can create those kind fo feelings, but most Official Wow Additions were based on real mods, example:

Cenemycastbar = natur bar = Blizzard introduced a way for you to see what your enemy is casting IN GAME.

AV premade enable = Blizzard had that option in the past for AV, they took it out (they only took the button in your screem but the mechanis was still there, that is why that mod could work) and now they took it back.

Everything that our raids does:

In the past, you could only "mark a target", click and drag a player screen in a raid, mark MT, MA, and some many other things, including raid annouces by using CTraid. Now that mod rests in peace, only used by guilds that can't let go of the past (and prolly believe that only warriors can tank).

Quartz: In the past, you had to have to make a macro /cast Shadowbolt /stopcasting For it to work... blizzard seeing that, placed Quartz inside the game system, and now quartz only helps ypou see better your lag in your casting, but if you dont use that add on, you can still pre cast.

SCTd/SCT: It has an option for it now.

And so on.



That being put, I can't see how it is cheating, specially because Blizzard allows and incentivate their use. (As stated in a Blizz conference, when a player asked a Dev why not have some sort of "outfitter mod" pre loaded into game.
The excuse for not having most current mods on defaults was not to "overload" the game and make it too heavy for poor people with crappy computers running it.