Addon Devleoper Interviews

[Xinhuan]

That's the thing. The setting up of wowace and wowinterface were huge factors that allowed WoW addon programming in general to flourish, to have a forum of discussion. In particular, I want to mention the WowAceUpdater (WAU), it made addon updating so easy that much more users were willing to try out modding. That and the fact addon hosting sites went up, caused addons to be used widespread.

"A golden age is often ascribed to the years immediately following some technological innovation. It is during this time that writers and artists ply their skills to this new medium."

It wasn't just about "new and groundbreaking addons", it is also about the technology and other factors that made it possible.

[Shadowed]

Originally Posted by Xinhuan That's the thing. The setting up of wowace and wowinterface were huge factors that allowed WoW addon programming in general to flourish, to have a forum of discussion. In particular, I want to mention the WowAceUpdater (WAU), it made addon updating so easy that much more users were willing to try out modding. That and the fact addon hosting sites went up, caused addons to be used widespread. "A golden age is often ascribed to the years immediately following some technological innovation. It is during this time that writers and artists ply their skills to this new medium." It wasn't just about "new and groundbreaking addons", it is also about the technology and other factors that made it possible.

I'd have to lean to agreeing with Xinhuan.

Originally Posted by sigg I think the requests of users have changed. Today People want more Out of the box stuff. I will try to resume my thought: Integration. Users are looking for integrated UI and this is the reason of the success of Tukui, nUI and Compilations. Using a base UI, users can add a raid frames, a damage meter, any other addons etc. But Today, People prefered to reduce the number of addons. Adaptation. The possibility to switch all the user interface depend of if you are a healer, a tanker or because you change your spec. I know some people have two or three installation of WoW, with differents addons, different configurations. Customization and Simplicity. More the list of customization option are big, more you loose in simplicity. These two words are opposite in fact. For example, you can do what you wish with oUF, but you have to learn LUA. Some authors prefer to limit the customization and their addon is easier to use. The goal is to find the right middle between customization and simplicity. I am not agree with Xinhuan when he say the golden age of addons is over and there is no more innovative stuff. This is more because you are staying in the world of Ace. Ace did never evolute and is still in version 3. I want to highlight RDX 8, the addon I am responsible. RDX 8 is about to be the new golden age. Just spend 15 minutes to test it and you will be like all these people who PM me or send me a email, explaining their surprise and congratulating the job done. You will understand the concept.

Saying Ace 'still' at version is silly, 3 was a major shift from 2 that's still had some improvements and fixes made. There isn't a need for a 4 because 3 does everything fine and didn't have a lot of the issues that 2 did.

RDX 8 addon you linked doesn't look like it's anything exactly new. Maybe you make some improvements over existing addons, but RDX itself is quite old, and nothing you added into it at a quick glance is a "new golden age"

[hankthetank]

Originally Posted by Xinhuan It wasn't just about "new and groundbreaking addons", it is also about the technology and other factors that made it possible.

Originally Posted by Xinhuan Although at this stage of WoW in its 6th year of maturity, the "golden age" of addons have passed about 1-2 years ago, there's very little that hasn't already been done on the addon scene

Ok so your standpoint now is that you look on the technological advancement behind addon development and its execution as two different aspects which your previous statement implied otherwise to me. If that is your position the development evolution if you will was moot as it didn't help to create new concepts. I totally agree with you that most things have been done already, so you can't expect a new AVR every week. But imo the fact that now you have so much more collected knowledge to access, it is easier to build upon existing libraries and the expertise of the typical users who play the game for a long time is advancing as well gives opportunity to more output for the addon community. This of course is a consequence of the the provision of knowledge via growing communities and frameworks what you call the golden age. But my point is that the same things have been done over and over again. So if you want to create something new now would be the best time and so I'm happy to develop addons after your definition of the golden age and it's everything but sad that this time has passed. I'll leave it at that.

[Tuller]

I agree with Xinhuan as far as a timeframe for the golden age. It corresponds roughly to the time when I was in college until after I graduated and got a full time job.

I also think that WoWAce's transition to Curse was a big contributor to the end of it.