ranzware
World of Warcraft is, broadly speaking, decently supportive of its UI modding community—for better or worse. While I’m a fan of cobbling together WeakAuras and the like, and the practice of UI addons has kept the game afloat without updating its UI for almost 18 years, it’s also led to an arms race of sorts. Raids have to keep pace with the latest and greatest tools and, from a player perspective, things can get a little… messy.
Still, some relish in the eldritch madness of a clunky, noisy UI, believing themselves to be crafters and scholars of the incomprehensible, diving into the depths of user-generated content. They are mere children splashing about in a paddling pool when compared to Baltoboulbobbi on YouTube, who assembled a non-Euclidean nightmare of over 3,600 mods last month (via WoWHead).
What impresses me more than anything about this unseemly vision from the void is how Baltoboulbobbi only had to remove 20 addons to get the whole thing ‘working’, as per the video’s description: “I had to remove the 8 most RAM consuming addons to not hit my 16GB RAM limit, as well as 12 addons that prevented the game from working. So in total there are 3,683 addons running.”
I put ‘working’ in quotes, because while the game is technically functioning, it’s an incomprehensible mess. As soon as Baltoboulbobbi boots it up, an ominous monologue from a frog in Felwood fights for space among several other announcements, an enormous train horn, and a monotonous informational notice for Leatrix Sounds. It all blends together into an assault of noise that is probably what Odysseus heard while traversing the River Styx. Have a listen for yourself below.
Visually, World of Warcraft is rendered completely unusable. “Game has become mahjong,” the video states, as Baltoboulbobbi rushes to close whatever windows they can. “There is a black hole of 100+ addons stuck in the middle that I can’t remove.” Also, two overlaid naked taurens, breathing ominously..
Still, things seem peaceful. Right up until Baltoboulbobbi tries some combat. While killing a single Planestrider, I was able to make out the following: a fart sound, the Metal Gear Solid discovery noise, a dwarf saying “you got my attention”, a second fart sound, a phone ringing, a third fart sound, the “Finish Him!” soundbyte from Mortal Kombat, and a fourth fart sound. This is all tied off in a neat bow by some guy saying “you may now drink” and a soothing set of windchimes.
That’s all small peanuts when compared to what happens as Baltoboulbobbi levels up. It’s just an assault of noise, the only legible thing being “and his name is John Cena!” fired at full blast. The one addon I actually like the look of, a cute little RPG stats screen accompanied by music from a game I haven’t played, is immediately destroyed by the sound of a metal pipe falling as loudly as it possibly can.
Baltoboulbobbi is able to complete a handful of quests before the game finally gives up the ghost. They have also, hilariously, committed themselves to a hardcore 1-60 “all addons” run by stating they’ll do so if the video reaches over 20,000 views. Fair play, they do appear to be following through, with their channel’s “live” section already having four parts dedicated to the venture, each about 1.4 hours in length.
It’s… not good watching material, more a suggestion of noise and sound than anything that could be considered a playthrough, but they’re at least giving it a try. And you know what? Godspeed to them. Putting up with this mess for almost six combined hours at the time of writing shows more mental and physical fortitude than I will ever have.
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Kurt Indovina
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