Blizzard’s Midnight will break WeakAuras — and that changes WoW for good

Why this matters: Midnight’s “secret values” will gut the addons many players rely on

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Midnight is not a subtle UI tweak – it’s a structural change that removes the core combat information addons have used for years. That matters because tools like WeakAuras aren’t cosmetics; they’re how millions of players track cooldowns, personal buffs, resources and complex encounter timings. With Midnight set to launch March 2, 2026, the WeakAuras team has confirmed what a lot of players feared: they won’t support this new vision.

• Blizzard’s “secret values” hide personal combat data (buffs, cooldowns, resources) from addon APIs.
• WeakAuras – the most popular custom display and alert framework in WoW – says it’s fundamentally incompatible with Midnight.
• This change targets rotation helpers and HUD-style aids, but breaks many legitimate uses: accessibility bars, encounter reminders, stream overlays, and raid utilities.
• Blizzard frames the move as removing competitive advantages; the community sees it as an “addon apocalypse” for existing workflows.

What Blizzard actually changed (and why)

During Midnight’s beta Blizzard introduced the notion of “secret values” — combat properties that no addon can read. That list includes your own cooldowns, current primary resource, active personal buffs and even health in certain contexts. Game director Ion Hazzikostas framed the change as preventing addons from providing objective competitive advantages: “while addons can still thoroughly personalize your experience, they aren’t giving you an objective competitive advantage over people using the base UI.” In practice, this blocks the very hooks WeakAuras and similar mods depend on.

Why WeakAuras says it can’t adapt

WeakAuras’ maintainers — stewards of a project with over a decade of community content — laid out the problem plainly. The framework’s “core value proposition” is tracking your own combat state to trigger displays and alerts. Remove access to that state and you remove what makes WeakAuras useful. Team WeakAuras acknowledges Blizzard loosened some beta restrictions, but calls those changes insufficient. They point out that a version limited to non-combat triggers (reputation, XP, timers unrelated to your resources) would be “nearly useless.”

The project lead, Stanzilla, who’s shepherded WeakAuras for more than 15 years, told me the move feels fundamentally at odds with the tool’s mission. This isn’t about ego or Patreon dollars — the team explicitly said the decision “has nothing to do with money” — it’s about irreconcilable design goals.

The ripples: who else gets hurt

WeakAuras is the headline casualty because of how widely it’s used, but the fallout is broader. Addons that rely on aura tracking, resource bars, or combat-aware messaging are affected — fans and streamers who built custom HUDs, players with accessibility overlays, ElvUI modules, ConsolePort users, and niche raid utilities will all feel the impact. Blizzard split the changes into three groups: combat chat limits, nameplate concealment, and personal combat-state hiding — it’s the third that slams most addons.

Why Blizzard is doing this — and why players are split

There’s a legitimate argument here. Over the years an “arms race” developed: encounter designers made more complex windows of decision-making, and addon creators responded with rotation helpers and HUDs that reduced cognitive load. Blizzard claims those tools can erode class design and competitive parity. Some players welcome a cleaner baseline UI and a test of raw skill.

But that’s not the whole story. WeakAuras and similar tools also enable accessibility (remapping visual cues to clearer indicators), community-created encounter reminders, and nuanced quality-of-life features for raiders and speedrunners. Sweeping them away to punish rotation macros is like taking the kitchen out of a house because you dislike one appliance.

What gamers should expect

Expect a painful transition. At launch, many players will find raid UIs suddenly less informative. Community creators will scramble to rework addons, and new small utilities may try to fill narrow gaps — but none will replicate WeakAuras’ ecosystem if Blizzard refuses to restore combat visibility. Competitive scenes (mythic+ time pushes, high-end raiding, speedrunning) will adapt differently: some will embrace the new baseline, others will migrate to private tools or even different games.

There’s still a sliver of hope. Blizzard could offer a sanctioned alternative API or configurable permission model for trusted addons, or iterate based on player feedback. For now, though, Midnight’s “secret values” are scheduled and the WeakAuras team is drawing a line.

TL;DR

World of Warcraft Midnight’s change to hide personal combat data breaks the core functionality of WeakAuras and many other addons. Blizzard frames this as leveling the playing field; the community sees major collateral damage to customization, accessibility, and established workflows. If you rely on custom displays for raiding, mythic+, or accessibility, prepare for a very different UI on March 2, 2026.