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World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft game director details which combat add-ons are safe and which will be eliminated in the coming purge
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WoW snaps up one of FF14’s best features by letting players choose how many particle effects they want swamping their screens during raids
Harvey Randall
25 June 2025
I can see clearly now the flames are gone.
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(Image credit: Blizzard)
World of Warcraft’s been making strides in the realm of visual clarity, recently—like upgrading its dreaded swirlies into actual, proper AoE markers. Well, more strides are just around the corner as Blizzard continues to make improvements.
As posted on the public test realm (PTR) forums for the game’s upcoming patch, Ghosts of K’aresh, Blizzard’ll be implementing a proper “spell density” system into the game. As the post explains, spell density currently just adjusts things based on your framerate—if you had a beefy system, you’d still be seeing every fireball and shadowbolt your raid could output.
“The new system provides game designers and artists with improved controls over which spell visuals get displayed and how,” explains community manager Linxy, “So that there can be a reduction of visuals that do not convey useful information to the player about the state of combat.”
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World of Warcraft game director details which combat add-ons are safe and which will be eliminated in the coming purge
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WoW developers step in to try and calm tensions between themselves and the UI addon community: ‘We are embarking on this project with the aim of leveling the playing field’
Players will be able to choose between “everything”, “reduced”, and “essential”. Everything does what it says on the tin—all particle effects, all the time. Reduced “is tuned for what we consider to be ideal for dungeon and raid content”—likely prioritising important spell information such as beneficial AOE heals and the like, while Essential “is for players who need the most reduction possible”.
There’s a few exceptions to the new system. Your own spell effects’ll always be visible, as will those of NPCs and enemy players, though Blizzard has plans to tweak things based on how PvP functions: “We recognize that PvP combat has different criteria for which visuals are important for combat decision-making.”
This is more-or-less how it works in Final Fantasy 14. Which, given how flashy and over-the-top combat animations in that game tend to be, is more of a necessity than a QoL feature. If I turn on all animations in an Alliance Raid, my computer starts to scream like I’ve trapped a tiny little man in the heatsink.
Still, it works swimmingly there—and has plenty of benefits. Spell designers can get buck wild with their animations without sacrificing performance, meanwhile, encounter designers have more freedom to use visual cues, knowing that anyone playing on a high difficulty’ll be slapping that bad boy on ‘essential’.
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There’s room for things to go wrong, though. WoW has a lot more in the way of specs, optional talents, and trinkets to contend with—so Blizzard’ll need to properly tag its beneficial spell effects, which ought to still be present so players know to stand inside them.
The studio’s taking some major swings at the game’s quality-of-life and longevity in recent months, representing a kind of tectonic shift in design philosophy that’s bound to ruffle some feathers. This, however, feels like an unalloyed good.
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Harvey Randall
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Staff Writer
Harvey’s history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he’s since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G’raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He’ll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don’t ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.
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World of Warcraft game director details which combat add-ons are safe and which will be eliminated in the coming purge
Blizzard’s making a huge World of Warcraft change: combat add-ons will be eliminated, with new features coming to replace some of their functions
WoW developers step in to try and calm tensions between themselves and the UI addon community: ‘We are embarking on this project with the aim of leveling the playing field’
How World of Warcraft’s add-on changes will affect the most popular mods
WoW’s idea to clamp down on combat add-ons is misguided, especially since it could keep improving its base experience without, uh, doing that
After 2 decades of snacking, a new World of Warcraft spell renders vendor food partly obsolete
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