Add-Ons Shutting Down Due To New Blizzard Policy
Posted by 
iTZKooPA on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 - 81 Comments Tags: Addons, Addons, add-ons, blizzard policy, carbonite, eula, mods, outfitter, questhelper, rights, strike, tos
iTZKooPA on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 - 81 Comments Tags: Addons, Addons, add-ons, blizzard policy, carbonite, eula, mods, outfitter, questhelper, rights, strike, tos 
Last Friday Blizzard put the kibosh on charging for any and all World of Warcraft add-ons. In an update to their World of Warcraft UI Add-On Development Policy, the company's lawyers added three points to tackle monetary gain by LUA creators. To sum up the associated points, developers can no longer charge for their add-ons, or premium content. Nor can they ask for donations or display advertisements inside the game client. The Add-On creators can still make ends meet through donations and ads via their website, but that may not cut it.It took a few days, but the weight of the changes have begun trickling down to us end users. According to Zorba, "Questhelper's dead." The author's decision to end QH's run after upcoming v1.0 is not due to Blizzard's addition of some of its functionality, but because donations via the webpage do not compare to the in-game nag. Outfitter has also been killed by the change. Blizzard is creating its own equipment manager to support its Dual Spec feature, so that won't hurt much.
It appears that there are three key things Blizzard had an issue with:
Blizzard doesn't want other people making money directly off their work.
Blizzard is trying to stop end users from getting harassed by advertisements, pop-ups and donations.
- Authors have few - and easily adjustable - rights because without WoW, their creations are worthless.
The last point, is probably the most troublesome. QuestHelper has been downloaded millions of times. If even a fraction of those people use the mod, that means Zorba is providing a service to more people than most MMORPGs can count as subscribers. With such a huge base, shouldn't an author have some rights? I am going to put my neck on the chopping block and say that they do, just not as much freedom as they previously did.
Since day one Blizzard has been playing with the add-on community. During the Molten Core days, add-ons were used as automated decursing utilities, and macros were far more powerful than they are now. Blizzard nerfed both because they felt that gameplay was being compromised, and as unfortunate as it is for the authors, that is what they did here. Blizzard saw add-ons like Carbonite - the mod that reportedly kicked this off - adversely affecting a users experience due to the ads. And if it wasn't the ad-based flavor, then they directly made money off Blizzard.
Blizzard has laid down the law and there is little we can do to stop them. Striking is a possibility, but could easily backfire on many authors by driving users to mods that serve the same purpose. A general strike would be required, and I just can't see that happening. The changes and incoming losses are just something that we will have to live with. These hardworking Add-On developers do deserve our money, but they are going to have to come up with more creative ways to shake it out of us. Although I believe I could easily live without any of my mods, I have and will continue to support the more complex ones (Auctioneer is the love of my life).
Unfortunately, I don't have a golden suggestion for the developers to keep the green coming. That being said, one way to guarantee more revenue for your work would be to host your own website, and attempt to create a community for the creations. This will drive traffic directly to you, your advertisers and your donation button, rather than allowing sites like Curse or ZAM to reap those benefits.
As personal as it may seem, Blizzard has removed an important part of your freedom, not your rights. You can still pour your heart and soul into the add-on. You can still make a living off it, you just have to do it by their new rules. It won't be easy, but don't be like the RIAA and demand that the old standard remain in place through hell or high-water. Come up with creative ways to draw income and attention to your creations. Give those casual users yet another reason to feel guilty about ignoring the donation button. Please, don't just throw your hands in the air and give up. You owe it to yourself, your contributors and the add-on to at least try some new techniques before walking away.
We will likely see more big name add-ons shutting down in the short term, so be prepared. Which mods could you not live without? I could manage to live without all of them, but my Auction House days would be far less profitable without my beloved Auctioneer.
Reader Comments (81)
NOOOOO FUCK IM GUNNA QUIT WOW IF THEY TAKE OUT QH NO FUCKING JK IT TOOK ME 3 MONTHS TO GET TO 30 WITHOUT QH IN THE LAST TOO MONTHS WITH QH I GOT TO 74
-ASSTRE REALM DUROTAN
geez just do the old school thing and make addons your self with the /macro, all of them are based on that, ofc things like QH and some others are more complex but they are useless anyway, will just have to find a way to make addons our self like the old days or play without them, for me this new rules are cool it will bring more challange to the game like it was in the good old days.
Yeah I wouldn't have been able to remain sane while leveling without questhelper and I would be extremely ill prepared for raids without Deadly Boss Mods. I don't mind if they ask for donations when I sign in! I also use omen and recount but don't depend on them. Hopefully the new rules for addons won't be so strict as to piss off their casual users.
Damn .... loosing auctioneer would be really nasty ... it would collapse maybe half the servers economy, prices will go through the roof or sink to the bottom of the ocean ... total chaos will be installed.... I think blizz is trying to put even Azeroth in an economic crisis :) On a side note yes some addons will be regretably missed but the community will get through it...as it always has :D
I probably could live without all of them also. I only use QH for alts mostly, and to quest on my main quickly for the money, but meh... back to the beginning fun :P Other than that.. Omen w/o will make raiding harder. Recount barely is accurate for me right now anyways. Grid will make healing difficult, not to mention the nerf on the mana regen.
The rest of my addons are for estetics and random reasons ._.
Anyway, thanks for the info. Really sucks that they're getting more strict.
a few addons they should not take out: Omen,QH,Auctioneer,DBM,recount,x-perl,titanpanels, and many others.
I admit, I am a fan of Auctioneer, Omen, QH, ext. But I really didn't even find out about addons until my third year of WoW, MY THIRD YEAR, lately all I use is Omen and QH if I feel really lazy on my alts (I like figuring it out) odds are a few high-community addons will take over. GL to you all!
Surely the answer to the problem will just be solved by another addon maker. If someone sees that Quest helper is stopping then maybe someone will just say, "oh i''ll make that for free". Anyway as much as i love Questhelper i can live without it. It's buggy and crashes my game, even the newest version. Plus blizzard are adding the parts of the stuff that Quest helper does into the new patch.
I would have a problem tho without grid. i think that would make the healer shortage even worse than it is.
Auctionator, Omen, X-Pearl, DBM, Pali Power, Decursive, and Atlas Loot are the only addons I use. The only ones I could not live with out is Omen and X-pearl. Everything else is icing on the cake. Addons are a service, but something to recognize is that you are making money off of someone else's game enviorment. Until the laws change so one could "advertise" and offer "services" like we do in RL this progression makes sense to me.
I wonder how this might effect curse.com. any thoughts on that from anyone? Great topic.
God DAMN without QuestHelper my life will become a real nightmare!! Blizzard what have you done?? NOOOOOOO!
The internet and /macro are the only addons I use, the only addons I ever used, and the only addons I ever will use. I made it to kingpin of the deviate fish market on my server without auctioneer, I've leveled easily without quest helper, and I don't see the point of taking away from the game's experience. For me, the fun of the game is the time spent in the game. Whether it's changing hotkeys so you can make your reactions as fast as possible, finding the Tauren village at the southwest corner of the world after hearing so much about it, or combing the Barrens until you finally find Mankrik's wife (sorry if I spelled that wrong), the game is incredibly fun. Having your hand held and being told what to do every second just takes away from the experience, especially when they just do things the game does already, like the threat meter that my friends think is pathetic just because they never tried it. I have more fun in the game than any of my friends who use addons do, and I know a lot more about the history of it because of the time I take to read quest text. I'm sorry that was so long, but I don't like people saying the game isn't fun without addons *looks up at james's post*. Well, that was my rant. Have fun playing the game the way it was meant to be played
--Felaryn
P.S. To anyone from Project Lore reading this, I think it would be really fun if you did a "special" episode where you tried to do an instance without addons. I'm guessing that by the first boss, you'll be doing just as well as if you had addons up.
Addons I couldn't live without:
Bartender
Xperl
Lightheaded
Tomtom
Cartographer
I've never paid ANYTHING to use an add-on - I just use a few to enhance the information I get from the game.
If Blizzard had access to any kind of useage stats., surely they would implement their own, similar functionality, as seems to be the case with a few of the patch updates, recently.
**additional**
If there was a way to centralise the discussion of code between authors, then more of the add-ons available might actually WORK together - too many have looked useful, but have ended up conflicting with bigger, more useful 'pieces of code', so have ended up being canned...
i just hope that QH is not shut down
i start using it at lvl 28 and if think its the best addon ever
and i find it so hard to lvl went did not have it
I myself tried questhelper once but (like feralyn expertly explained) i hated being told what to do. I dont care if its more efficient to do 230 thousand kill quests, i want to finish the awesome chain and jump off a cliff into what i thought was deep water because its fun. The only add-on that i would deem sensible is omen because it is helpful without simplifying anything. recount could also be justified among the DPS'ers because they want to compare efficiency.
well about QH, i heard awhile back (and idk if its still true or anyhting) but i heard Blizzard was gonna make there own adaption of a QH, like they did to with the threat meter.
but idk that was awhile ago XD
No more quest helper???????? wtb replacement... pretty please???? this probably means I will no longer be leveling any alts.... and as I dont enjoy my death knight any more(80) I may be quiting the game..... this is BS
Way to kill the AddOn community, Carbonite. (Y)
Just great, without my Zygor's Guide, I have little reason to play. I suck at raids and anything involving an instance so without the guide to get my alts up to a decent level... My main bores me unless there's new content. Guess I'll take a long break. Ah, Auctioneer, I knew thee well...
Well like I've said before I don't have any addons, so this change does absolutely nothing to me :P
is it just me or am i the only person who actually doesnt care much? i didnt use addons until well into BC..i mean some of them really are very useful but WoW wouldnt stop if they just suddenly went away...it would definitly take some getting used to though...
and also am i the only person who levels from 1 to 80 without quest helper? And i got loremaster without it =P
Same here Littleraven, don't give a crap about this change at all. I actually feel sorry for people who MUST HAVE addons and rely on them to play. Get some skill people. And don't go yelling at Blizzard, if you made a product, and someone else is making money off of your product that depends on that product to work, you would want a cut too, don't lie.
Only stuff I use is SliceCommander and Hear Kitty for rogues, and when im leveling my shammy carb, quest. I really don't mind addons, I used to have a whole big Ui pack so yeah :P!
I'm guessing that 80% of the ppl qq'ing here, are the same ppl that were qq'ing 5 blogs ago that the game has gotten so easy. Maybe if you loose all the add-ons, you will stop complaining how easy the game, because you have to figure everything out by yourself again. Personally i refuse to use add-ons even after the rants in guild chat. As stated by Feralyn internet, together with friends, are my questhelpers.