World of Warcraft: Forever is taking the same stance as retail for how it treats add-ons. In a recent Kotaku interview, lead encounter designer Mike Nuthals said Forever will bring over the in-combat add-on disarmament that blocks programmatic tools used to automate marking and player communication. He did not publish an allow-list. The line he stated was "those kind of computational add-ons."
That is the retail Midnight-era rule, applied to a level 60 Classic+ client. WeakAuras became default kit in Classic raids. Warcraft Forever testers may have to get the same information another way. However I personally don't think it will matter too much once players get used to it.
A WeakAuras pack maker was quoted by a X user under the post, and mapped what that cut usually means if Forever matches current retail.
What still works, in that read:
- Custom timers, bars, icons, and text
- Boss cast bars and countdowns if a legal trigger exists
- Custom sounds, TTS, and planned reminders
- Personal cooldown, resource, and buff displays
- Raid-frame buffs and debuffs using Blizzard's filters
- Glows on unrestricted abilities
- Manual raid notes and assignments
- UI layout, fonts, textures, colors
- Class packs with some logic stripped
- Likely personal trinket ICD and proc tracking
What goes on the chopping block:
- Auto mechanic assignments that detect bombs, sort players, and tell each person where to walk
- Assignments that rewrite themselves off deaths, debuffs, or available cooldowns when that data is locked
- Full tracking of other players' cooldowns
- Auto interrupt rotations that watch who kicked and pick the next
- Next-action guides that combine restricted stacks, resources, and cooldowns
- Plater recolors and custom names tied to locked NPC IDs
- Custom warnings on locked enemy spells
- Details-style live combat-log parsing and instant death logs
The WeakAura pack maker's point was the raid pack can still look familiar. The automatic sorting and decision-making Classic packs do now is the part that dies. The bigger pain, in that post, was other QoL add-ons and whether WeakAuras even gets a maintained Forever fork. Fojji said they will test on beta and build a workaround if the main project sits it out.
The beta is tomorrow, September 17, 2026, PST through October 21. Guaranteed seats are the Skyborne Epic Pack and the Warcraft Forever Collection. The client opens at 20, then 30 after a couple of weeks. Thursday morning also has the live Q&A, Forever block at 10:30 a.m. PDT. Add-on specifics belong there. Nuthals already said the philosophy. The spell-by-spell list does not exist yet.
Replies under N_Tys X post split the usual way. One camp says if you need WeakAuras to see the mechanic you were already lost. The other camp says Blizzard used community tools as the UI for a decade and is now ripping out the coordination layer. Both can be true. Forever still wants Warlock summons and downtime before the pull. Computational marking during the pull is the piece they are cutting.
Are you fine losing WeakAuras if personal timers stay, or is that cut a skip for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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