It had been so disgustingly hot over the last few weeks it has made me glad to be at work in the air conditioning. To make me feel grateful to be at work, something truly wild must have happened. That is how exciting my life has been. One more thing before we get started: Fuck ICE, fuck the Trump administration and fuck the people who support them.

More Like Addoffs (I’m Sorry I Wrote That)

I'd forsake the light for her

For those who don’t know—and I assume that’s all of you—Blizzard has recently released its latest version of World of Warcraft, 12.0, in the lead‑up to the newest expansion, Midnight. However, as part of their new patch comes perhaps the biggest mechanical change since its launch: Blizzard has significantly restricted addons and how they plug into the game.

A lot of this is going to change

For the second time in its 20‑year history, World of Warcraft has suffered a cataclysmic event, but instead of an Old God–corrupted dragon aspect breaking out of their underground prison, it is a sinister and evil entity: Blizzard’s API changes. Addons are small modifications that players can add to their game to change or alter certain aspects. This can drastically alter a lot of the game to suit certain needs. This can be anything from how the UI looks and operates, to how combat information is presented, to minor changes like drawing a circle around your cursor or auto‑repairing every time you talk to a vendor. During its heyday you could even play versions of Bejewelled and Texas Hold’em Poker with your guildmates. There were certain restrictions placed down—like anything that handled mechanics for you such as fishing or combat rotations—but for the most part it was open and wild.

This is an exaggerated joke UI... but it's not *that* exaggerated.

However, as the years went on and addon developers became more knowledgeable of the game’s systems, addons went from a convenience to a necessity. I’m sure you’ve seen screenshots of World of Warcraft raiders and their UI being an incomprehensible mess, making the UI in Xenoblade games look reasonable. Well, their UI is like that not because they’re galaxy‑brain geniuses able to soak in all the numbers. It’s like that because Blizzard’s encounter design pretty much requires them to. If you played World of Warcraft during its first few years, you might be used to raid encounters simply being tank‑and‑spank with an occasional “stay out of the fire” mechanic to make things a little spicy. That’s still true today… in Looking for Raid groups. But Normal and above? You’re going to need a five‑minute lecture before each encounter. There’s always going to be five things happening at once, and while most of it won’t affect everyone at the same time, it will affect you at least once. And if you screw that up, at best it will require the healers to heal you when they didn’t need to, and at worst it will wipe the entire raid. That’s not an exaggeration—the last boss of the most recent raid has a mechanic where if two people aren’t standing on top of each other, the entire raid is killed. So you can see why someone would want an addon that tells them they are that person and need to stand over there.

I swear to god this is a real screenshot

One of the biggest problems that high‑level raiding has had for years now is visual noise. It’s hard to tell what mechanics are happening when you’ve got twenty different players slinging a dozen flashy‑looking spells all at once. The worst example I can think of is the Sarkareth fight in the Aberrus raid from the prior expansion, Dragonflight. This is a boss fight where individual player position is crucial; however, not only are all of Sarkareth’s mechanics coloured purple—making them difficult to distinguish—but for some silly reason the platform you fight Sarkareth on is also coloured purple, making it nearly impossible to see anything on top of the aforementioned player spells. Now, I’m not really a fan of the raids in Final Fantasy XIV, but Square Enix does a lot to negate these problems, such as using universal mechanic markers (a soak mechanic looks exactly the same between encounters) and offering a graphical setting that disables all spell effects from other players—a feature World of Warcraft only just implemented last year. However, thanks to addons, you could cut out a lot of the visual noise to only focus on what affects you. My guild struggled with Sarkareth even with addons, so I cannot imagine what it would have been like without them.

Just don't stand in the purple stuff.

So if addons are so necessary for high‑end raid content, why is Blizzard trying to restrict them? In the old addon system, you could set it up in a way where the game would tell you where to stand, what gear to use, what to attack, which abilities to use, and in what order. So let me ask you this: at what point is the game playing itself? Obviously the game is not literally playing itself. You still have to press the button it tells you to and position your character in the spot it wants, but it’s getting pretty close. Video games are a series of decisions the player has to make to succeed. However, with an addon setup like this, those decisions the player needs to make get smaller and smaller until the only decision left is “push button or don’t push button.” That’s the argument Blizzard made, and it’s why those addons like I mentioned no longer work in World of Warcraft.

The death of Weakauras is causing quite the ruckus.

As you can probably tell, the community was pretty split on this. Some thought it was a good idea that allowed actual skill to be the focus, while others argued it makes high‑end content more difficult to get into and complete for those who don’t have the time or skill. I’m somewhere in the middle. Yes, a majority of high‑end raiders have leaned on the addon crutch a bit too much in recent years, where a lot of guilds require these addons to be installed. But at the same time, those addons became necessary in the first place because of Blizzard’s poor encounter design. The true litmus test on whether this addon purge is successful or not is the first raid of the new expansion. Have Blizzard changed their encounter designs to be more easily readable and communicated, where addons are not necessary? Or will guilds be stuck because the encounters are confusing and overwhelming? I guess come back in a few months to find your answer.

Microsoft and Nintendo Try To Convince You That Games Are Coming

The 2026 release calender

Microsoft and Nintendo had their little videos showcasing a ton (?) of games releasing over the next year. Microsoft had their Developer Direct which was so jam‑packed they had to use Playground Games twice, and Nintendo decided they didn’t need a release date for Fortune’s Weave so they gave us a Partner Direct instead. Sigh. Okay, let’s see what you got.

Hopefully that lady is screaming 'Chicken Chaser!'

Fable

I loved Fable 1 and 2 as a kid. It was like playing my own fairytale, but between Fable 3 being sort of ass and the revivals of the franchise not even getting out of the starting box, I had little faith in what a new Fable game would bring. But after what feels like the first time we’ve actually seen Fable, I am… kinda whelmed. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great, but Fable had a sort of British charm that did not come through in anything they showed us. But the tidbit that piqued my interest a bit more is that the game’s structure is akin to something like The Office, with interviews with the characters intersected with the game. I don’t really care for The Office, but this is a structure that hasn’t really been done in a game before, so it tells me that the developers at least have ideas and a vision, so I am at least curious to see how it plays out.

We got cherry blossoms!

Forza Horizon 6: Shadows

Forza in Japan! Sure! The Forza Horizon games are games that have already perfected the formula, so they don’t really need to add anything significant. Just keep putting it in cool locations and the people will be there. It obviously looks gorgeous and they are definitely making inspired choices regarding locations and integrating the culture, but the home‑building aspect seems like a massive waste of resources. Just give me rainy neon‑lit streets and a sick drift car and we are golden.

Look, it's all of the new original third party Switch 2 games!

And the Nintendo Partner Direct…

...had really nothing I was excited for. I am sure it’s cool to have Tales of Arise and Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun on Switch 2, but… I’ve played those games already. The only original game they showed that I am interested in was Orbitals, which requires me to know someone with a Switch 2, and I can’t even get my friends to play games they already own. So that’s a non‑starter. Yes, Resident Evil Requiem looks awesome, but I am not playing it on Switch 2; I am playing it on my fancy way‑too‑expensive PC, so really they had nothing for me. Now, if this was a regular Direct with some news on Fortune’s Weave or the rumoured Xenoblade 2 remaster, I’d be singing a different tune.

What I’m Trying To Play And Failing At

Resident Evil Requiem seems so far away...

I’ll be honest, I am in a bit of a rut right now. Resident Evil Requiem and World of Warcraft: Midnight are coming out at the end of the month, but between now and then I’ve got nothing on my plate, so I’ve been bouncing around several different games to pass the time with nothing really sticking.

Those killed Giant Bomb (it got better).

My first choice was Marvel Rivals since I hadn’t really been into it since it launched, and while some of the new heroes are cool, I still don’t like the third‑person camera. I understand you need it so you can look at your shiny and overpriced cosmetics for your large-bottomed lady, but I have always preferred first‑person over third.

No no, they never made a sequel to Overwatch.

Which then led me back to Overwatch 2, or Overwatch 1, or whatever the hell Blizzard is calling it now. I haven’t played Overwatch seriously since they cancelled the oft‑mentioned single‑player campaign, so I had a lot of new content to go through. None of the new heroes really did it for me, but I still like playing Mauga, so that’s something. Overwatch is still enjoyable to play, but the problem is that they recently announced another overhaul of the game, which includes reverting the name back as well as five brand‑new heroes. So I feel like playing it now would just make me not want to play it when the new stuff hits. I don’t know.

Oh yeah, this is the right image.

Then I retried Deadlock and it still scares me. That game is so goddamn dense and so user‑unfriendly that every time I play it I feel like someone on the other end of the internet connection is wishing death upon me. I like simple games with a lot of depth if you want to engage with it. I want to be able to see my feet in the pool. Deadlock is like staring down a vast black hole with seemingly no end. It has the same problem Dota 2 suffered where it has so much going on it makes it impossible to get into. I am sure if I put in the time I could get into it, but I no longer have the patience to play multiplayer matches that go for 40+ minutes.

I also tried Highguard and… yeah, that’s not it. I think that needs to go back in the oven a bit.

The Addoncalypse, Microsoft and Nintendo Had A Thing Sort Of, and What Do I Play When I Have Nothing to Play - The Cleanup 8/02/26