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State of WoW modding

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Hobbilis:
Steff, please do make video tutorials. It would help everyone, especially new comers. Cheers guys!

XxXGenesisXxX:
To put more of a negative reflection on it all as balance in my honest opinion: WoW modding has seen better days in some respects. Modcraft is one of the few (English speaking) sites worth even looking at, the community is the only one that still actively helps on a level of more or less "equal" contribution. Most other sites are just veterans answering newbies questions to keep the site alive. No new tutorials or re-written tutorials are really done by anyone.

For myself personally, I don't know if it's me truly burnt out on WoW in general, or that I am just not creative enough to find new things to fuel my creative drive, but I don't even have WoW installed anymore. My extent of WoW modding is answering friends on Skype. I haven't been on Ownedcore in 6 months to a year, or even taken the time to read posts on here.

Some other people also like myself move on to other things to fill their creative appetite, with things such as ComputerCraft on Minecraft, or other games that require scripts to be written. Which is all well and good, but I don't think enough new people are coming into the WoW modding to fill the void of those leaving or not posting anymore.

The reason I think it's slowly dwindling is because of the larger modding sites like AC-Web and Ownedcore. These sites, while they do not share the level of experience per person as smaller communities, that's exactly what they are needed for. They are gateways that are easily found for newer modders to start learning. But most of those communities are stale as all hell and don't retain enough new people for them to eventually get to a level to post their own content.

Another factor is 3.3.5 has been researched to death, which is certainly a good thing if documented, which it is. But it leaves very little for the less experienced modders to explore. One of the things that many modders thrive on is exploration in attempt to understand the emulation system. These days to really find or create something truly new, you need a much higher level modding skill than you used to. This lowers many newer peoples creative drive as the sense of accomplishment is a matter of following already documented stuff.

That's my opinion on it at least, but I haven't done anything in quite a while now, nor have I been actively reading the forums. So I could be wrong about the larger sites, but I doubt it.

iindigo:
Genesis, I agree with you on everything but I think a factor that should not be underestimated is the state of the tools. Simply put, the usability and learning curve of WoW modding is terrible because of the tools. Worse, nobody really seems concerned with making said tools more friendly and usable, meaning that they will continue to drive away newcomers. There are a number of creative people out there who are looking to get into the community but simply don't have patience and/or time to dedicate to overly technical crashy tools.

Hobbilis:
Firstly I'd like to say thanks to Genesis. Thanks for your feedback, it was very constructive and informative.
I have never made anything by myself because I find it too time consuming, especially using "peripheral" software.


--- Quote from: "iindigo" ---There are a number of creative people out there who are looking to get into the community but simply don't have patience and/or time to dedicate to overly technical crashy tools
--- End quote ---

So much this. You have no idea how stressful for a new comer that is. I hated it. I just hate that I have to have 20 other mini programs created for only one thing. Instead of being incorporated all together with other software in one big piece.

schlumpf:

--- Quote from: "iindigo" ---Worse, nobody really seems concerned with making said tools more friendly and usable, meaning that they will continue to drive away newcomers.
--- End quote ---
Not true. It just is really time consuming coming up with good, user friendly tools. It is a huge pain, which a lot of people -- like me -- are just no longer wanting to feel. People put great length into making tools like Noggit more stable, user friendly and correct. There have been multiple tries to rewite it, completely or partially. In the end, it takes about a year to come into a state where you can actually show it to an end user without getting flamed for being broken even more than before. There is no motivation for most programmers to take that, especially as users won't notice that pain and long time needed. There is nothing coming from enduring that pain. At least that has been the reason for me to stop doing it.

We know the tools are bugged and horrible UX, but we aren't paid for it and the people offering to work on it are even less experienced with actually writing applications with good UX. Most developers don't even know how to write proper code.

tl;dr;was bullshit: People had been working on it and gave their best. At least five people I know of failed. It isn't fun. People stop doing it. They are concerned, though, and partially hate themselves for sucking that much.

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