WoW Forever: AI-built addons flood in, creators report copies

Addons and tools built with AI are spreading quickly around WoW Forever, and the game has not even opened yet. This comes from one report built on interviews with people who make the game's community tools, and Blizzard has not commented on it.

Sildri Silentcrest, who works on a popular combat log site, says 200 developers used its free API 2 years ago, 2 to 4 of them abusively. Today the figure is 10,000 developers, with about 1,000 abusing it, and at least 1 commercial request arrives per day on average. Silentcrest sees the flood of AI-coded addons as a root cause. The site is changing its API to favour tools that analyse data in depth over tools that scrape basic statistics, and it is adding a paid key for commercial use.

Plusmouse, a well-known addon creator, says AI tools are copying their ideas and points to a nameplate design that now turns up in many AI addons. Plusmouse has filed copyright complaints with the main addon repository, and some led to takedowns. Some of their code repositories are now private to keep them away from AI tools. Some posters disclose their AI use only after being called out, and 1 tool lets players run AI coding assistants inside the game to keep building addons.

No specific security incident is reported. Silentcrest's main worry is abandonment: a project built quickly could be dropped just as quickly, leaving out-of-date information, buggy software and possible vulnerabilities. Addons already work within limits Blizzard has set for WoW Forever. The game opens for Europe at midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.