Blizzard recently announced a big change being made to World of Warcraft when the Burning Crusade is released (regardless of if you purchase the expansion). There is a lot of hysteria about this change. I hope to clarify below exactly what you can expect.
 
No macro or add-on will be able to make a decision about what ability is used, what rank of spell to use, who it is used on, or who you target. You will always be required to specify, whether by pressing a specific key or clicking a specific button, exactly what you want to happen.
 
This is currently accomplished by forcing a key or button to trigger a specific action—casting a spell or changing to a specific target—and forbidding the interface to alter the behavior of any key binding or action button while in combat. The UI will allow for certain, very specific, automatic behavior modifications—for example, allowing a button to cast a different spell depending on if your target is friendly or hostile, or depending on if you are pressing a modifier key. You will also still be able to switch action bars—so warriors will be able to have different buttons depending on stance, druids different buttons depending on current form, and rogues different buttons depending on if you are in stealth or not. You will probably also be able to switch action bars manually while in combat, if you happen to want certain abilities to be available in different situations.
 
Add-ons that allow you to pick a target and cast a spell at the same time (click-casting) will still be available. It will also be possible to differentiate between left-click and right-click (up to five mouse buttons, actually) as well as shift-click, alt-click, and control-click.
 
There will be a feature that allows a key or a button to open up a menu of actions, which can keep you from needing all your abilities on the screen at once. Making the key bindings automatically associate with items in a menu while the menu is open (for example, pressing 3 to open a menu, and then 4 to select an item in the menu, even though 4 means something else while the menu is closed) is not currently implemented, but it is on the list of features that will be added if there is enough time.
 
Because you can change key bindings and button actions out of combat, it is likely that add-ons such as Whispercast which automate buffing will continue to work, but only out-of-combat.
 
Any part of the visual interface that uses an ability or changes your target will not be able to move, appear, or disappear while you are in combat. This prevents add-ons from conditionally moving certain buttons under your cursor, for example. However, there will be no restrictions on what information the UI will be able to present to you. An add-on can highlight raid members' frames depending on if they have a debuff you can remove, or if they're badly hurt, or they want you to cast a certain spell on them, and so on. It will be possible to create a prioritized list of raid members (like the Emergency Monitor of CT_RaidAssist), but the list will not be directly interactive; you won't be able to click on a name and target/cast a spell on that player. The add-on would, however, be able to indicate when anyone on your static list of raid members is in dire need in any way it likes: a noticeable highlight, a large animated red arrow, whatever. You would then need to click on the list of raid members or press a key corresponding to that specific raid member to heal them. It will be able to advise you very overtly, but you'll have to make the final decision.
 
Any "main tank targets" add-on you have will remain nearly unscathed—you will not be able to customize the list of main tanks while you are in combat, but clicking to target or cast a spell on either the main tank or his target will be unaffected.
 
Any macro that uses slash commands only will mostly be unaffected. Any macro that uses a /script command to target a unit or cast a spell will not work, but many macros which do so without making conditional statements (if this is true, then do this) will be able to be rewritten in slash commands. You will still be able to use macros which consist of a series of /cast commands (which allows a button to use a different action if it is clicked and the first action is unusable for any reason).
 
Anyone who foresees the game turning into some sort of "whack-a-mole," remember that it was entirely possible before to make the UI into a whack-a-mole with only a single mole. It's also important not to judge anything by the status quo. There will be very little raiding of the current raid instances once the expansion comes out—and remember the new raid size is 25, which greatly reduces the number of people to keep track of. This change could easily be awful if the wrong types of raid bosses are implemented in the Burning Crusade. But this change was pushed for by the raid designers so that they don't have to consider add-ons like Decursive—which means that we will only get mass-debuff fights if the fight is designed to be monotonous (unlikely, to say the least). Also remember that if there is an inadvertent side effect of these changes, you can bet that it will at least be looked at.
 
I will update this post whenever I think or have my attention brought to something that needs to be mentioned or clarified. Don't hesitate to add a comment if there's something I'm missing, something that I'm wrong about, a question that you have, or if you hate my guts.
 
Last updated on October 9, 2006 at 10:15 AM.

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