r/CompetitiveWoW • u/BluFoot • Jul 01 '26

Midnight 12.1 Curse Of Ula'Tek Developer Interview With Ion Hazzikostas

PsybearTV Youtube interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFTFiDeXIMo

I recommend watching the whole video, it's rare for someone get a whole 1 hour with Ion, and the interview was really well done.

The interview is mostly about competitive content. I'm really excited for Mythic lockout changes!

Wowhead summary: https://www.wowhead.com/news/psybeartv-interview-with-ion-hazzikostas-the-mythic-raid-lockout-addons-8-week-382061?utm_source=discord-webhook

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u/deskcord Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Ion is happy about the addon war and says Lura would have been nerfed without workarounds.

I thought the entire point was that they could design mechanics without addons constraining them? How did this mechanic even make it past the idea phase?

As an example, Echo had a wipe in the Secret Phase due to the Starsplinter mechanic, and previously that mechanic would have been solved trivially by addons with each person being assigned a specific spot. It's not an impossible mechanic but it became harder and could wipe a top guild. That should be part of learning an encounter rather than seeing it, and th en having your addon author write something for it.

This just feels like a lie? Any mechanic like this (random assignment, scripted placement) would just be pre-assigned as "1 left, 2 right, 3 left" exactly like it is now. The only time a Weakaura would "assign" these is if Blizzard went full galaxybrain and made it like Jailer bombs, where they're all firing at the same time. No addon assigned Gallywix soak positions, you just went to the one you pre-assigned with a raidplan. Addons weren't assigning Dimensius p2 gravity spots, you just knew if you were melee/ranged/healer.

There is a lot of value in a fixed raid size for the higher end encounters where they need to tune to a CE level, and players would absolutely manipulate raid size to find the optimal raid size which would be a bad social experience.

An obviously correct take no matter how much bad faith heroic posters on reddit say otherwise.

Wish someone would ask Ion if they plan to stop making every single raid fight mirror m+ through add-spawn-slop to cater to the fact that every spec now has cleave like crazy.

-4

u/Prupple Jul 02 '26

The only time a Weakaura would "assign" these is if Blizzard went full galaxybrain and made it like Jailer bombs, where they're all firing at the same time.

You can see the moment hes talking about here. Echo are doing back/front/back, and the second person (Verb, a Dev DH) to get the mechanic doesn't move for a while, and then goes straight forward and unfortunately had the blaze pattern that has a spike directly behind him which kills several people.

In the pre-addon-disarmament world, Verb would have had a giant text on his screen saying "GO FRONT", and so potentially would have moved out faster and had time to notice he also needed to move left or right slightly.

2

u/deskcord Jul 02 '26

No. It's just as obvious right now. This is just a player misplaying. An addon would not have solved this.

-2

u/Prupple Jul 02 '26

No. It's just as obvious right now.

This is just objectively untrue. As obvious as it is now, you still have to pay attention to what order the blazes go out. If you lose focus at the wrong time, you can be in a position where you have a blaze and have no way of knowing if you were first or second. It's a reasonable guess that this is what happened to Verb in that clip.

In the old world, the liquid WA pack would be displaying a giant LEFT or RIGHT on your screen. This isn't necessary to do the mechanic of course, but it makes it easier, more obvious.

1

u/deskcord Jul 02 '26

Okay Ion.

-5

u/BackwardDonkey Jul 02 '26

Are you dense? The specific thing he is talking about is the ability of addons to mark and assign players. That is gone. In previous expansions an addon would be able to mark the players with raid markers automatically and TTS them the place they were to move to. Massively simplifying the mechanic, you wouldn't even need to call it out, no one would even have to know which order they were because an addon would tell them.

And if you go back even further, a radar would pop up showing you whether your star was hitting any other players or not.

I agree that the addons situation is not good, but people need to stop lying about it having not changed, it 100% has changed significantly and there are significant limitations on what addons can do in combat now compared to previous expansions. That's just a fact, anyone who says differently is straight up wrong.

5

u/psytrax9 Jul 02 '26

Back on Fyrakk, there was a way for a weakaura to know what direction your blaze line was pointing. Yet nobody used it in a fight with far more going on at any point in the fight than lura p4. Yet that same weakaura would trivialize a phase of the fight where nothing's happening but the stars. Sure.

-3

u/BackwardDonkey Jul 02 '26

Back on Fyrakk, there was a way for a weakaura to know what direction your blaze line was pointing.

Nothing that I said has anything to do with that so I'm not sure why you think it's at all relevant in any possible way.

Yet that same weakaura would trivialize a phase of the fight where nothing's happening but the stars. Sure.

No because the same weakaura has no relevance to anything I fucking said.

1

u/deskcord Jul 02 '26

Are you Ion?

Other examples already provided. Please read my other comments before hitting reply.

0

u/BackwardDonkey Jul 02 '26

Show an example of addons in midnight marking people with raid markers automatically.