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Addon Corner: Data Broker

And now for something a little more complex, Data Broker isn’t a specific addon, but more a new way for addons to display information. Addons that utilise Data Broker (or LDB) expose their information but don’t actually display it, that job is done by a specific display addon.

Sound complicated? I guess it does, but it’s really not any different from using FuBar or Titan and their associated addons except for two important differences. The first being that for the addon programmer they no longer have to write code for all the possible “bar” addons and secondly it gives the end user (you and me) choice on how we want to display stuff.

Okay, okay, so how does this work you ask?

Basically it works much like FuBar or Titan does now, but instead of grabbing say FuBar and having to grab other FuBar mods, you now just pick a display and any Data Broker mods will work with it. This gives you choice and versatility.

First you need to grab something to display. LDB has been accepted by the community really quickly which means that pretty much anything you used to display on your old FuBar or Titan bars has been adapted to LDB. There is a category for Data Broker addons here at WoWInterface.

Second you need to choose a display addon. This is what makes Data Broker such a cool development, it gives you choice in how you want to display things.

Here are a few display mods:

ButtonBin - A simple tray-like display.
Carousel - A single block that enables you to rotate through your various Data Broker addons.
Fortress - Individual blocks that can be snapped together however you see fit. Can replicate a FuBar-style display easily.
MakeRocketGoNow - Focussed on displaying “launchers” for various addons. Generally used alongside a more traditional display.
StatBlockCore - Also uses individual blocks, similar to Fortress but with a slightly different design intent.

I personally use Fortress with blocks snapped horizontally to look a bit like FuBar/Titan, but you can snap the blocks together however you want. Prior to trying Fortress I used StatBlockCore which is very similar, I just prefer how Fortress looks and feels when snapping blocks together.

There are no doubt other displays than the ones mentioned above, these are just the more popular/visible ones. I suggest simply trying a few out and see how it goes.

Addon Corner - Addon Basics

This time I thought I’d take a step back and actually start from the beginning and cover what an addon is, where you can get them and how they can help you!

So, first things first, what exactly IS an addon?

Well, World of Warcraft was designed so that players can create extensions that add or enhance World of Warcraft’s interface (the stuff you see onscreen). An addon is just that, an extension to the interface, generally to make something more accessible or easier to use.

Great, so what kind of things can addons do?

Addons have been created for a multitude of tasks, if you can see something onscreen then there have been addons to replace it with “better” versions. By better I really mean different, one person’s “better” is another person’s “worse”… 

Addons cannot “play” the game for you however, they can assist and aid you, but you must hit the buttons to move and cast. Pretty much anything else however is in an addons jurisdiction.

Okay great, so addons let you customise your interface, where do I get them from?

Well, this is the easy part, there are few websites that specialise in WoW addons. Both WoWInterface and Curse.com house the majority of addons available. Generally, if you’ve heard of an addon it will be available at one or both of those sites.

Cool, I’ve found an addon I want to use, what do I do with it now I’ve downloaded it?

Once you have the addon downloaded, it is just a case of “unzipping” it into your “World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons” folder.

Wait, what’s “unzipping”?

Addon’s generally come compressed, generally known as zipped (due to one of the most popular compression utilities called PKZip). This saves space and makes transferring files easier. You have to uncompress, or unzip these files to get them in a usable state. If this sounds complicated, don’t panic, the process is exceptionally easy.

You may or may not have some form of utility installed to aid with this process, but either way the process is similar. Simply navigate to where you downloaded the addon and double-click the addon to open it.

Then click Extract all files and click Next, then click Browse… and make your way to your WoW addons folder, typically “My Computer\Local Disk (C:)\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons” then click OK then Next then Finish.

Okay, I’ve done that, now what?

That’s it, the addon should now be functioning ingame. Start up WoW and have a look!

Wow, it worked! Now what?

Well, the answer to this depends on what the addon you installed does. Some addons require a little bit of configuring, some work straight away without you doing anything.

Generally there are two things an addon might do that lets you set it up how you want. The first is it might create a button around the mini-map area that you can click to get to it’s options or perform some task (the tooltip will generally explain). Secondly, more recently it might add a configuration area to the games options panel, to get access to this simply press Esc (or click the Game Menu icon) and select Interface. Select the Addons tab on the top-left of this pane and you’ll see various options sections for any addons you have installed that utilise this area.

Unfortunately, not every addon is consistent in HOW you access it, but generally one of those two methods will suffice. If you cannot figure out how to use an addon or how to access it’s options, I recommend visiting the addon’s page on the site you downloaded it from as there should be some kind of instruction there.

Hopefully this post is helpful, if you think I have missed something or glossed over something, please mention it in the comments and I’ll add or alter the post accordingly.

Just a little note!

Just a little note to say that’ll I’ll have a post covering essential add-ons that work with patch 3.0.2 a little later on.

See you on the other side!

Addon Corner - Opie

Rather later than originally intended, here is the 2nd video Addon Corner. Better late than never, eh!

This time covering the Ring-based Shortcut mod, Opie. Again, I apologise for my voiceover… It’ll get better… eventually.

Hope you enjoy it.

Addon Corner: Carbonite Quest

Edit: The version I used is 1.251. For some reason 1.26 wasn’t working for me.

And so, it arrives. Welcome to the return of Addon Corner, this time with video.

In this edition of Addon Corner I cover Carbonite Quest, a world map/quest tracker replacement.
I apologise beforehand about the voice-over, hopefully I’ll get better at it as time goes on. Seeing the addon in use is definitely better than not.

You can download Carbonite Quest from both Curse.com and Carboniteaddon.com.

Any suggestions about what I should cover next time are welcome. At the moment I’m thinking either QuestHelper or doing themed episodes, quest trackers, unit frames etc.

Addon Corner: MrPlow

We all know the feeling, you’ve been questing and grinding, you open your bags to find that quest item you need to use and… there is no way on Azeroth you can find it amongst all that crap. Between vendor trash, cloth and consumables, an individual item just gets lost.

MrPlow (presumably named after the Simpson’s episode) takes your bags, gives them a good shake and sorts them out.

It takes any part-stacks in your back and joins them together, it also defragments your bags, leaving all the space at the “bottom” of your bags.

 
Before and After shots of MrPlow (Really poor Before shot though, it WILL fill in gaps too)

All in all a very useful addon, keeping related items together (all quest items, all potions etc.) is especially handy.

Addon Corner: Atlasloot

I’ve mentioned Atlas in a previous Addon Corner, so this week I’m going to give a brief overview of Atlasloot.

Atlasloot is a loot browser, it allows you to view various loot tables including Faction and Reputation rewards, PVP gear and instance drops. It can be used on it’s own or attached to a map addon. Obviously by the name you can tell it was meant to link with Atlas but it can also link with Alphamap if you use that.

Atlasloot in it’s solo form, you can view reputation and PvP rewards this way

If you use it alongside Atlas, you can the ability to click the boss names on the right of the Atlas display to show the loot table overlaying the map.

Atlasloot combined with Atlas, it integrates well with Atlas’ UI

Atlasloot makes it much easier to see which instances drop useful upgrades without having to Alt-Tab out to a site like Wowhead, Thottbot or WoWWiki.

Addon Corner: WoW Armory (Guild Bank Features)

The WoW Armory isn’t an in-game addon but with it’s new-fangled guild bank features it’s a really useful tool.

Blizzard introduced the Guild Bank concept in patch 2.3, a shared space for guild members to share items and cash for the greater good. It’s quite versatile in that you can have up to 6 tabs holding 98 items a piece, each tab needs to be purchased for an increasing amount each time. (100G, 250G, 500G, 1000G, 2500G and 5000G respectively).

Each tab can have basic permissions set, such as which ranks can deposit and withdraw items and how many item stacks they can remove per day. You can also give each tab a title and icon.

As well as this, each tab has it’s own log history, so you can see who has deposited and withdrawn items. The guild bank also has a monetary log as well.

This is all fine and well you may say but what does it have to do with the WoW Armory!

The WoW Armory has recently (November 19th) been updated with the ability to view the contents of the guild bank and logs from the website itself. As well as seeing the usual guild roster and guild information (complete with tabard if the guild has made one), you now have tabs to access the guild bank itself and the logs.

Here you can see my guild’s bank, this is the first tab.

Underneath the tab contents there is a set of buttons representing the bank tabs as well as a display of how much money is in the guild bank. It pretty much mimics the in-game interface for the most part.

Along with this duplication of the in-game bank view, there is also a detailed sortable list of the contents, so you can quickly see, for example, all cloth items or all weapons.

The Bank Log tab is a complete log of deposits and withdrawals (the ingame bank only displays the last 20 or so) which is sortable.

The ability to view this information outside of the game is really useful, especially for the Guild Leader and Officers. The Armory gets more useful over time as Blizzard keeps adding features!

Addon Corner: Talented

Now that patch 2.3 is out you might need to freshen up your addons folder. Patch 2.3 makes a couple of addons I used prior to it obsolete by including either some or all of their functionality available in the default interface. Those two addons were CT_MailMod (which I used for mass mailing) and GFW_TrackMenu (which I used for easy "Find" skill changing).

As well as trimming out those addons which are no longer needed, why not add one?

This week I’ll briefly mention a great addon called Talented. Talented as you might guess is a replacement for the Talent window.

Talented displaying Ryliana’s Frost build

Talented displays all three of your talent trees at once giving you an "at-a-glance" view of your build. This is more convenient than the default talent window as it doesn’t require clicking tabs or scrolling to view where you’ve spent your points.

Talented will also show at a glance what spending your point in a specific talent will do.

As well as this, Talented lets you set up "templates". These are builds that you can switch to easily to remove the tedium of re-speccing. This way you can have, for example, a Deep Frost, an Arcane and Elemental (Fire/Frost) mage builds that you can switch to simply by paying the re-spec fee at a trainer, then clicking two buttons on the Talented window. Instead of having to manually spend your points (and remember where they should go).

While certain classes will have more use of templates than others, Druids and Warriors spring to mind, they are useful for everyone, especially at endgame.

These features are the kind of thing you don’t notice until they aren’t there.

You can get Talented from here.

Addon Corner: Cartographer

Cartographer is an addon that replaces the default world map. The default map has the main disadvantage of taking over the entire screen, Cartographer allows it to show in a scalable window as well as having the ability to hide the map frame.

Cartographer also comes with a whole bunch of other useful features, like showing where gathering nodes are (such as ores for mining or herbs for herbalism), showing where other party/guild members are on the map.

But perhaps  the most useful feature in Cartographer is the abilty to show waypoints, typing /waypoint x,y will produce an arrow that points to that location along with the distance. This alone makes completing quests so much easier, combined with an addon such as Lightheaded this gives you clickable co-ordinates that automatically generate a waypoint arrow simplifying questing and making finding those awkward mobs a breeze.

Cartographer is one of those addons that once you’ve used, you can’t imagine not having used them.