Blizzard announcement about AVR
Firstly I’m not surprised, this is the sort of thing which comes damm close to automating boss encounters. There have been some comparisions of this and DBM flying around but there are some major differences.
AVR allows the environment itself to be altered, putting circles down on the ground for where the bad is about to happen, dropping symbols to confirm where people have to run etc etc. DBM will mark up players, but it doesn’t tell them where to run, it’ll shout when the bad is going to happen but it’s still up to the player to remember and work out where it is they’re meant to be heading for. AVR is designed to provide unmissable visual instructions on where to run, where to run from, how the strategy is meant to work. As a pre-pull briefing tool it would rock and be no different to the various slides and screen shots out there which have been marked up. During the raid it’s akin to asking the boss “can you hold on a moment we need to put some paint on the ground to tell everyone where you’re dropping the bad”.
It also changes how we learn encounters, in my mind it’s learning a dance.
Take your partner (a big shambling undead thing) over to the side, step to the left, smack him over the head and twirl… (or when healing, know the flow of the fight, when could I come off healing to let the 5-second rule kick in and rebuild some mana, be aware of when the oozes are dropping keeping an eye on rottie to step out of the bile etc etc).
and so on.
So being explicitly told where to go each time actually reduces the need to properly learn how to react and puts a dependance on the addon to a level that it becomes impossible to have a decent attempt without it.
Nice technology, wonderful concept, but I’m personally not sorry to see Blizz break it.
