Do you think using mods is cheating?

Q u o t e:
i do. i think the need to use mods is evidence of a flaw within a game. no game should require one to have to use mods in order to achieve certain goals.

everything a player needs to progress within a game (WoW) should be provided for in-game.


discuss

We're on the same page then! Mods allow players to customize the game, get more detailed information, etc., but by no means are required to play - despite what some would say.

The mods that we find are extremely useful, are approaching the "we need this" mark, or we just plain like using ourselves, we may evaluate, and then possibly integrate into the game itself if they can work.

That's right! World of Warcraft already has "mods" built into the game, and you use them every day, you dirty cheater!

Things like self cast, unit frame and raid ui features, to a lesser extent voice chat, floating combat text, quest tracking, and additional action bars (that's right, people used to just play with the one action bar) just to name a few, are all mods originally created by the community that we've integrated in one form or another into the base game itself.

Mods have heavily influenced World of Warcraft, it would be less of a game if they didn't exist, and they've created a passionate and dedicated community surrounding them. To discount them as cheating or "bad" would be ignoring a large part of what makes WoW great, and that's being able to customize your experience.

I <3 mods.

Q u o t e:


I find it surprising Drysc that Blizzard would take a few mods that are very in-depth things, such as an aggro meter, and would have an interest in providing that information in game. Which makes me wonder if that feature will even be as specific as what we have.

Any info you can give us?

Hrm, I'm actually not positive what your question is. If you're asking about what could be in development, well, I couldn't say even if we were. (apparently we announced something at BlizzCon, but I won't go there)

If you're asking about the difference between "official mods" and fan-made ones, we do simplify whatever it is we're integrating, we make it as easy and visually pleasing as we can. Fan based mods have the luxury of including tons of options, which is great, if you hate the built in scrolling combat text then there are some great mods out there that offer more functionality. We're not trying to replace those, we're simply providing a new feature in a very approachable, and basic way. The other mods are always going to be more robust than we can be, and that's really awesome, you have a choice among 10-20 mods all doing the same thing and you can try them all until you find the one that works for you, but for the non-mod user or new player we need to design our UI with simplicity and visual cohesion in mind.

So, in-short, our built in UI is probably never going to satisfy the already hardcore mod user, and it isn't intended to. That's why the ability to mod is there, for them to go bat poop crazy and fill their screen with bars and sliding graphs and laser shows and percentages and whatever else they can jam onto their screen.

Q u o t e:


I think a reliable threat meter would be the best mod that the development team could possibly integrate. The user-made mods do NOT have access to threat information. All they do is estimate threat based on known formulae, and sometimes this goes wrong, or provides you with an innacurate picture of where your threat is at.

Threat is internal game information that isn't available to us. Healing threat is a particular sticking issue with the current threat meters.

Hrm, indeed, indeed....

Q u o t e:
What's weird to me is when the mods found on curse are better than the versions actually implemented into the game. It seems that Blizz should be able to do a better job with the money, staff resources, and inside game design information they have (no only that but the ability to change the game to work in a mod).

It seems like the modders often do more with less.

That's not to say WoW isn't brilliant work, because it is...

What I'd like to know is if you ever contacted a modder because of their work and brought them into your company...

Read my other post in this thread, should hopefully explain that a little. I'm really not sure if we've ever hired someone to do UI work that was developing them for the game already. Possibly? I really have no idea. It wouldn't be a dumb idea, that's for sure, there are some very talented people out there.