Blizzard hasn't managed to crush World of Warcraft addons yet, as Midnight pre-patch shows various mods still work

World of Warcraft Midnight is, in many ways, revolutionary. It finally adds the much-requested player housing feature, bringing it in line with rival MMOs like Final Fantasy 14 and Guild Wars 2. It also cracks down hard on WoW addons, which have largely been essential to playing the game. From Deadly Boss Mods to GTFO, I know I’ve relied on them perhaps a little too much over the years, but Blizzard wants to create a world where I won’t have to. Updating its own interface in an attempt to cut out the “competitive advantages” some of these mods grant, the iconic WeakAuras has bit the dust entirely, but some are still working, and now they really are giving players a leg up.

While World of Warcraft will now obscure most of the combat information that addons could give you (cooldowns, for example), some have slipped through the cracks and are causing havoc in-game. For example, reminder mods – which generate text pop ups that can appear mid-fight to, well, remind you of something – are still working, and while they don’t sound too damaging on paper, creative usage could start to cause issues.

Reminders can then be assigned to various boss fights, then in turn be set to trigger when your enemy performs a certain action. If there’s a huge AoE headed straight for your squishy healer, for example, WeakAuras used to generate a pop up that simply said ‘SOAK!,’ urging you to get in the way and tank the damage. While WeakAuras is no more, new addons are providing players with similar combat reminders which, in my opinion, feels like its skirting into unfair territory: you’re literally getting a game-changing callout when other players aren’t.

These tools can also be used to create custom popups and timers for individual bosses, granted you’ll have to already know the encounter inside out and datamine its actual script. This gets a little complicated for multi-phase bosses, but it’s still there nonetheless.

Similarly, some tools also let you see cooldowns the active components of items (Terror From Below’s Behemoth, for instance) and potions. When you use said item, some addons start a countdown, allowing you to track your next usage. This removes some of the strategy from having to juggle cooldowns to make sure you don’t die, or to ensure that you have the relevant ability at the ready.

Wowhead lists various other working mods, including addons that ping you when you’ve been targeted by a spell, allowing for easier removal, and colored nameplates to help differentiate between mobs. The TLDR, however, is that some believe these mods are giving players the “competitive advantage” Blizzard is hoping to squash.

It’s something that’s worth keeping an eye on. While the more combat information-focused mods are very much dead, the effectiveness of these smaller addons starts to add up. In most cases, they admittedly require a lot more effort than a simple download, but I suspect we’ll see cracks start to appear in the WoW machine. If Blizzard remains staunch in its commitment to booting addons, we’ll hopefully see a few of these workarounds disappear in the next few months. Only time will tell.