This game badly needs mods and macros.

First off, I noticed you completely dodged my statement about the difficulty of limiting unintended functionality in an API. The introduction of 3rd Party Tools/APIs leads to unintended, emergent gameplay that is extremely difficult for a developer to manage or control.

There is a simple, major fallacy to the whole "Addons/Macros are Required" position - if what you are saying is true, then virtually every Console Game and the vast majority of Computer Games (including FPS games and RPGs like Witcher 2 or Skyrim) must be unplayable... because none of them allow Addons/Macros

First, those console games are far more simple than a modern mmo.

Second, you're right...those games, and SWTOR too, are "unplayable" in a serious way for an extended duration. That's the difference between a game and a hobby.

SWTOR's interface would be fine...if it were KOTOR 3 and I were going to play it through once or twice for the story and then shelve it and move on to something else. That's what most people do with most games. But if it's a game I'm going to pay a monthly subscription to, and log on several times a week or even every day, and do that for years...that's a hobby. And it better not have a clunky, inefficient, frustrating UI.

Once the novelty of ZOMGLIGHTSABERS wears off, what you've got to have left is a polished, compelling game. "Can you identify a non-color coded 4 pixel by 4 pixel debuff icon on a tiny Op bar that's already overcrowded with 12 other buffs and debuffs?" is not exciting gameplay that's going to keep me logging in every day.

And yet, in WoW's 7 years there has never been an addon they could not cripple if they so desired. They've killed several. You greatly overstate these dangers.

Actually, there's a Blizzard Dev Blog where they mention they wish they could limit the features/functionality that have come from things like Omen/DBM/Recount but as they put it "you can't put the djinn back in the bottle" now:

http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=1860...for-next-topic
(Check out the answer to the 2nd question in the post)

You neglected to quote the next sentence:

They don't say they can't do it. They just made the decision not to. "not sure how we would prevent it" just says they didn't really do any research on preventing it.

If they wanted to break those addons they could do so by simply restricting addons from accessing combat data during combat. Boom. Dead Omen, dead DBM, dead Recount.

The reason they do not do this is because the players enjoy those features and don't want to upset so many people by taking away something that so many people have enjoyed for so long. My guess is if they had it all to do over, knowing what they know now, that they'd have put such restrictions into the game from the getgo.

It would feel really harsh to prevent addons from tracking some of that information, and in some cases we’re not even sure how we would prevent it.

What does that part mean? To me, it says that they might be able to stop mods form doing things...

my naga mouse handles all the macros I need it to. Get a g15 keyboard and you're set.

No it only says they didn't put any effort into doing it. They made the decision not to try because "it would feel really harsh". Read the whole sentence.

"we aren't sure how we would prevent it" is not the same as "we couldn't prevent it if we wanted to"

They are OK with allowing access to SOME information but aren't sure how they would stop it even if they wanted to.

You getting any of this...

P.S. "I'm not sure if I could drive if I wanted to". Does that mean to you that I just don't feel like it or that maybe I don't know how or am unable to drive?

You're being ridiculously and mostly likely intentionally obtuse.

The clear and unambiguous meaning of Blizzard's answer to that question is that they don't particularly like what some addons are doing but they decided not to break them.