World of Warcraft’s Midnight pre-patch addon lists reignite community debate over UI changes

Back in Gamescom 2025, Blizzard turned up in Cologne and began its Burning Crusade against combat addons. As part of the game’s features, Blizzard would be making large changes to the API built into WoW, helping to significantly reduce the amount of power addons have in-game, and leveling the playing field a bit.

Yet, over the course of Midnight’s alpha and beta, we have seen addons get nerfed, and Blizzard’s UI options slowly get better. It got to the point where tools like Weak Auras, the most sophisticated add-on to likely ever exist, announced the end of development, moving into Midnight.

The story was supposedly over; Blizzard had won. Yet, it seems like Blizzard is only really preventing extremely sophisticated combat addons. Instead, those sorts of UI combat trackers can now be done with what’s built with the Blizzard UI edits, among other features.

As a result, new tools and customization means we may be back to where we started ahead of Midnight’s pre-patch launching later this week (writing as of January 19th).

Northern Sky Raid replacing some old WA functionality (sort of)

WoWhead, one of WoW’s destination sites, spotlighted an add-on called Northern Sky Raid Tools. The add-on promises good things, mainly text-to-speech, which is great, considering that one deaf guild, Undaunted, had to nearly quit the game because of accessibility issues with the removal of Weak Auras.

Yet, some of the ways that this addon offers with assignments, reminders and cooldown trackers are eerily similar to Weak Auras. Due to most bosses generally having a set condition when they do a move, it’s easy to display reminders for assignments, cooldown usage, and other tactics for boss mechanics in the addon.

While it’s not as reactive to an aura tracking a boss API move, it can still be very useful, albeit more rudimentary than WA. There might be some cases where timings are off, but the tool tips are there to roughly prepare when things are on the way.

So, we may still be in a world where players still need to do some heavy UI modifying to be able to raid extremely effectively.

You may need even more add-ons, or just don’t bother at all

WoW has always had strong UI configuration. From historical addons like ELV, to even Blizzard greatly improving its US customization in recent years. With the growing demand for add-ons, baking it into WoW has become more important as part of player onboarding. Not to mention it’s something other MMOs also have built in too like Black Desert, for example. 

Towelliee the tank commented on it too, essentially saying this is normal and some players are better because they make better use of their UIs. He has also been commenting on UIs over the weekend, and the add-on conversation is hopefully being put to bed. 

Blizzard seems to be settling on what it doesn’t like, and everything else is allowed to exist. It comes after realizing how much of the addon community they killed off very early into the Midnight alpha. For those unaware, Blizzard pulled back on some of its Add-on policy. Innocent and harmless things like UI Colletor add-ons were caught in the crossfire, which only had upsides to the more casual side of the game.

For more competitive players like Kams, who competed with Limit in Race to World Firsts, he also shows his disappointment with how the combat addon scenario is playing out.

As for more casual or semi-serious raiders, it may now mean there’s even more addons spread around to get similar functionality they once had. One Reddit post even highlights a large list of perceived useful addons for a remote of functionality that WA or other addons once did well. 

So, it leads to a question: is the add-on environment better or worse as we approach Midnight? If players end up downloading more addons than they had previously, then is that arguably not a worse state for the addon community and enthusiasts?

The Spirit of Midnight

As mentioned, Blizzard wanted to rip add-ons apart. And they’ve largely succeeded in destroying most of the combat addons. Yet it’s left a gaping black hole of things trying to fill the void through other means.

Sure, the combat API is stopping most of the feedback from bosses and encounters. But other add-ons will find ways around it.

Kwepp, an Officer in the prestigious raiding guild, Method, quite likes the changes, and he only needs a few add-ons for finishing touches. These are: Unhalted Unit Frames, Plater, and BetterCooldownManager.

The removal of some addons, like kick timers tracking for PvP, to direct boss lineups, is putting skill back to players who actually learn other classes, tracking and fights well. But only time will tell if more and more workarounds are discovered.

It might be best to go into Midnight with as few add-ons as possible. See what Blizzard has done with the base UI. Then, if there are a few things that are missing, try the add-ons still left standing.

We’ll have a better idea of how the add-on perception is shaping up by the end of Season 1 of Midnight, as we’ll likely see the true extent of what has happened by then with seasonal and raid content “figured out.”

We reached out to Blizzard for comment about further addon monitoring through Midnight. If we get a response, we’ll let you know.