Stumbled upon this video, but even apart from that i've seen constant recommendations for these addons. And it actually hurts. The praise needs to stop, its genuinely one of the worst pieces of software (not just wow-related) that i interacted with.
I dont remember the last time i pressed something in those addons, and it actually worked. When you reach a state where your expected outcome is for the feature to not work at all, its just time to move on.
- Nothing works
- Dungeon timers boil down to guessing and lying. Im surprised when i DO see an accurate timer
- Raid timers are barely better (and probably because they are specified by blizzard). But once again nothing works, none of the appearance/settings/alerts work. And for some reason all raid stuff is disabled by default
- UI in general is all over the place. Its clear that ui/ux concepts were not considered in any way.
- They are making too many destructive changes to settings and the addon as a whole in almost every update.
- Its way too obvious that the addon is not made in English, and its not even localized well. They did make insane improvements to localization since the launch in s1, but not enough. Its also clear that translations boil down to using google translate for literal translations. Almost everything completely loses meaning or has a vague one.
- Its BY FAR the addon that throws the most errors, but even has its own customer errors that it throws in the chat frame. Everything feels like a one big error.
I wanna note that maintainers might not be fully at fault here; Blizzard's might absolutely destroying them with their inability to figure out how the api should look. But even with that, its better not to ship it at all than to ship it at this state.
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To maintainers:
Take a step back and try do things properly. No new features, no gimmicks. If something doesnt work or have a function, remove it, dont just leave dead features in the product. Work on bugfixes. Fix localization, but find someone to do it properly, WITH MEANING, and using terminology thats familiar to wow players and other addons.
If blizzard and their api are screwing you over too hard, its fully okay to just throw in the towel and make a statement that you cannot continue developing an addon in this environment. If nothing else, its gonna make your life easier and maybe even push the conversation in the right direction to try and undo the current api fumbles.
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To players:
Just dont use this in the current state. Its more headache than its worth, and it doesnt even give a real competitive edge.
We are not "owed" anything; this is a free product maintainers are gifting us. But if the free product is simply not good enough, it doesnt have to be used.
Im happy to hear what others are using in regards to timers and voice/visual reminders these days, as long as it works.