You do realise that Cata and MoP are regarded as casual friendly/focused as opposed to hardcore focused right?

You do realise there's more to the world than just North America right? That article is about WoW reaching it's first million subscribers in North America but if you read just a little bit more you'll find that by that point they had just over 4 million paying customers worldwide. Now it'd be nice if SWToR could match that sort of performance but only time will tell. As it is I think it's a little early to be getting overly giddy about how it's doing especially as the released subscriber numbers are likely to include a significant number of people who are still in their first month. It won't be until the next earnings call or the release of more detailed info that anyone outside of BW or EA will be able to say with any certainty how well the game is doing in terms of retaining players.

That's strange because i'm pretty much sure that most people claim WoW's drop in subs is due to changing focus from hardcore players to casual players. Don't see many people claiming Cata made the game more hardcore as far as i'm aware.

The only subtext is one you've added yourself so you can try arguing against it. My comment was all about the use of recount to compare yourself to the rest of the raid group to ensure that YOU are performing as well as you could be and/or are pulling your own weight. It wasn't anything to do with using recount to bash or harass anyone, either explicitly or in the subtext.

Did you not know that the UI is a hidden boss fight? Having addons would be a crutch for people who don't understand it and are too lazy to learn...

No it doesn't. Mods and macros don't and can't automate the game unless Bioware chooses to allow them to do that, it's that simple.

So you don't know what you're talking about but feel the need to not only comment but to exaggerate your statements to try and show a point which doesn't actually exist? It's a little difficult to give constructive comments to your posts because they don't reflect reality or what it is people are asking for when they say they want mods and macros.

And how exactly would introducing mods and/or macros let the game do everything automatically? It would require Bioware to include that functionality in the API and I can't really see that happening can you? Mods and macros can only do as much as the API (and therefore Bioware) let them, they're not magic tools which can change the games mechanics and functions against Bioware's wishes.

No, they want them because they perform a useful function. If they didn't then people wouldn't want them regardless of whether they're in WoW or not.

You don't need any mods to run any instance in WoW. It's perfectly possible to run them successfully without mods if you so choose, they are entirely optional.

That might be the case if the only thing Recount did show was a DPS meter but thankfully it shows far more and you'd be able to use it to find out that Hunter B was far less valuable to the group than Hunter A.

What I still don't understand is that if addons make the game so easy that you almost don't need to play at all in order to beat content then why doesn't everybody currently raiding in WoW have a full 7/7 clear of Dragon Soul Heroic? Or even a full clear of Dragon Soul in normal mode? They all have access to addons, how can they possibly not be beating the content?

I'd hope that his comment was made in the same vein as mine, which was if you're going to throw ridiculous statements out about evil things addons have done without any facts then i'd do the same. Ooo, what does curse add to my computer?

There's nothing arbitrary about using actual information to tell someone that they're underperforming. At the end of the day if you're in a group that is working towards the goal of downing a boss and you're not performing up to par then you're not playing the class 'right'. That's not to say you can't play your character however you please but there are times and places where people sometimes aren't right for what they are trying to do.

So how do they make the content more difficult if/when addons are introduced? You've already said that addons cause fights to get more difficulty to compensate so how do they do that without altering the content mechanics?