Blizzard throws World of Warcraft healers and tanks a bone as Midnight's UI falls short

Blizzard's decision to rip out combat mods in World of Warcraft Midnight is still very much in the middle of a grand excavation, and it'll likely be a long while after the expansion's full launch before the dust truly settles. As one of the best MMORPGs for more than two decades now, players have had a long time to get used to addons and tools, with many considered to be core pieces of the kit for anyone looking to raid. Yet in tearing off the band-aid and finally de-escalating the years-long arms race between fight designers and modders, Blizzard has a lot of work to do to replace what's being taken away, and it's not there yet.

Reflecting on the first month of the World of Warcraft Midnight alpha, Blizzard says it chose to begin the test "with the most restrictive version of our logic in place, ensuring that we were fully addressing addons' ability to provide an in-combat competitive advantage." It's already pulled back on some of the most severe elements, such as lifting limitations on mods accessing chat during encounters that were impeding some of the best WoW addons. There's much more to come; Blizzard notes that we will "continue to see major changes and iteration throughout Midnight beta testing."

Next on the cards are fixes for the look of the group UI, primarily aimed at healer specs although with some additional benefits bleeding over to tanks. "We have heard clear feedback from healers about limitations in our default raid frames," Blizzard remarks. "While addons will still be able to significantly customize the look and feel of these frames in Midnight, we are working on improvements to address some of the issues players have been relying on addons to solve." Keep in mind that it's also just removed healer interrupts to limit mid-combat stress.

The layout seen below will continue to be the default (name top left, buffs bottom right, debuffs bottom left, dispels top right), but Blizzard will also offer "two additional configurations inspired by popular addon offerings." It's also making effects that can be dispelled more visible with bolder icons and colored borders. Additionally, role-specific debuffs such as tank swaps will be made bigger "so players who are playing that role can know they need to pay special attention to them."

"The main goal of the changes coming with Midnight is straightforward: addons should not be able to automate combat decisions for the player," Blizzard explains, although they "should retain their ability to customize how information is presented to the player." It points to the new 'boss warning' timeline: "Addons will be able to take the information provided and choose a different way of displaying it, such as a stack of countdown bars." They can also add custom events such as break timers to the timeline.

Enemy cast bars in Midnight highlight important spell casts with a brighter, flashier animation. "Addons will be able to adjust the appearance of that 'important cast' state, such as making the cast bar larger or giving it a different animation." Blizzard adds that it's also working on TTS alerts for "various important combat events," such as announcing your life and resource totals at regular intervals, or the health and name of your target, and playing sounds when you gain or lose secondary resources like combo points.

There's no perfectly clean way to go about such a dramatic change, so hopefully Blizzard is able to strike a balance players are satisfied with by the time Midnight launches. While we wait, take a look through the best new MMOs and the best co-op games on PC.

Are these adjustments a step in the right direction, or is Blizzard still being too strict in its limitations? Join the PCGamesN Discord and share your thoughts on Midnight's latest details.