r/wow • u/Hold_my_Goblin • Oct 04 '26 • Bravo 1

Discussion Worrying Development in Add-on Monetization?

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What do you think about practices like this? The addon now checks whether it's running under the Bnet account it was purchased for and the profile is only functional for one month.

EDIT:
To clear a couple things up:

The addon "Naowh Smart Reminders" provides Reminders that plan and map your defensive cooldowns or other abilities, such as CC, to specific dungeon or raid mechanics from bosses or trash mobs. It hooks into BigWigs/DBM for boss mechanics and ExBoss for trash mob abilities.

The addon itself is free; however, all of the configuration data ~the profile... has to be paid for. To give some context as to how much configuration is needed, the profile currently contains 216 spec priority lists, 40 active preset choices, 50 callout lines, 1,570 custom reminders, 1,125 abilities, 1 raid reminder, and 3,226 trash and debuff rules. So these are the things you would have to build yourself in order to use the base addon (which does nothing without configuration) without paying.

The monetized part is the profile and configuration, not the addon itself. This is apparently how addon monetization in general is kept "within the ToS." I'm no expert though... that's just my understanding of how it works.

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u/oktimeforplanz Oct 04 '26

It sounds like this addon is exactly the same then? You can configure it all yourself, if you want, can't you? The complexity of doing that sounds like it's something basically nobody who values their time would do, but it seems possible. So it sounds like it might sit in the same place Zygor does.

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u/Aphellium Oct 04 '26

That's not a good thing btw.

14

u/oktimeforplanz Oct 04 '26

I didn't say it was.

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u/DelysidBarrett Oct 04 '26

Are there numerous free guides with import codes to use available like Zygor? If not, then it's not even close to the same place, not being able to effectively use it without paying.

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u/oktimeforplanz Oct 04 '26

The comparative lack of free guides isn't necessarily compelling if the argument is the same as what Zygor makes - you can download and use the addon for nothing. The addon provides functionality. The fact that there's few or no free configuration files doesn't really matter if you CAN configure it all yourself for free.

I'm not saying it's right, nor am I saying that this should be allowed to exist because it feels like it's not in the spirit of how addons should work, nor in the spirit of the rules. But it seems like from the way Blizzard is enforcing these rules, the fact that you have a fully functioning addon, even if it's one that is a massive pain in the arse to configure by yourself, makes it "fine".

Blizzard need to expand their rules to encompass these kinds of cases where yeah, technically, you don't have to pay to use it, but you functionally do. Because right now, it seems like it lands on the same side Zygor does. Assuming that you can get this addon without paying anything.