Trying to Learn

[bsmorgan]

Originally Posted by Lybrial Personally I would never release an API so badly documented like the WOW API is, especially not when I'm a company as big as Blizzard.

Blizzard created this API for the purpose of writing their own UI. I'm guessing they have documentation for internal use. They could have kept the API private and user-written addons would not have been possible.

Instead, they made the decision to allow user-written addons with the caveat that the API was not guaranteed to remain stable, was provided as-is with no documentation, and could/would be changed at anytime at their discretion including changes to cripple addons they determined to be unacceptable.

Over time, Blizzard has demonstrated the instability of the API with deletions, incompatible changes, and numerous other challenges for the addon community to figure out on our own. In some cases, they did listen to the addon community and modified the API to allow controlled access to sensitive areas.

In summary, Blizzard's API is primarily for their internal use. The fact that we can also use it is a bonus, a privilege, not a right.