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Addon Corner: Useful Addon Sites and Tips

I’m not going to rabbit on about a specific Addon this week, I thought I’d mention a few of the sites I trawl on a daily basis and other things that are useful when dealing with World of Warcraft addons.

WowAce

I’ve spoken briefly about the Ace libraries and how it benefits addon makers. The WowAce site acts as a repository for almost all the addons that use the libraries. As well as being able to manually browse what addons are there, you can also use their own custom utility.

WowAceUpdater shows at a glance which addons have updates

This tool is called WowAceUpdater (or WAU for short), this enables you to browse, download and update all your Ace addons in one fell swoop, it’s a great little tool with a nice interface.

Curse

Curse are a general MMO portal site but they have an expansive World of Warcraft section including a massive addons section. A lot of addon authors use curse as their main mirror for their addons.

Curse also have a utility (called the Curse Profiler) that monitors when addons are updated on their site, I have it set up to monitor non-ace addons (as WAU updates those for me), it also doubles as an addon itself, uploading character information to your Curse profile if you want it to.

WowInterface

WowInterface doesn’t have the nicest or friendliest of site layouts, it’s based around vBulletin and looks very cluttered, but it does have a few exclusive addons. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Tips

These few tips are mostly common sense but they can save you from tearing your hair out or breaking your monitor in frustration. Here they are:

1. If everything is working fine for you, don’t update! Only update if you are experiencing issues (for example after patch days) or there is a new feature that you really want.
2. After a patch, if you notice an addon missing or something not working how you expect, double check that you have "Load Out of Date Addons" enabled via the Addon button on the character select screen, most addons work fine after a major patch, but until the author releases a new version you need to force them to load.

Hope this post has been useful.

Tags: addon, curse, mmo, wau, wow

The Landscape of Northrend

While levelling Ryliana up through Outland I’ve been really impressed with each zones unique looks, from the burning red barren-ness of Hellfire Peninsula to the peaceful pale shades of Terrokar Forest through to the crazy blues of the mushroom-filled Zangarmarsh. It got me thinking about how Northrend will look when Wrath of the Lich King arrives next year.

When you think of Northrend you tend to think of white flowing fields of snow cut off jarringly with icy spikes and frozen lakes, so when Blizzard announced Wrath of the Lich King I was pleasantly surprised at the variety shown in the landscapes.

A nice vista of Howling Fjord

Howling Fjord is a good example, it’s one of two “starter” zones in Wrath of the Lich King and it mixes it up graphically straight away, as if to shout out “LOOK, NOT JUST SNOW!!!”

A sweeping shot of Daggercap Bay

A lot of the zone has a very wooded feel, reminiscent of the Hinterlands but with it’s own unique look. Giving it a kind of Canadian feel.

Part of Howling Fjord on fire, showing off the new flame effects

The trailer shows many unique areas, and it definitely looks like Blizzard are avoiding the “Look, another snow zone” problem quite well. I’d expect zones like Lake Wintergrasp and the Dragonblight to be heavily snowy, but based on the rest of the areas we’ve seen so far it’ll be nice to actually see some snow!

Tags: mmo, wotlk, wow

Addon Corner: DrDamage

I know…. it’s Saturday, At least I’m consistent at once a week… let’s make Addon Corner sometime over the weekend. That at least gives me Friday – Sunday … On with the post…

Ever wanted to know how much actual damage that Frostbolt causes on average? DrDamage is an addon that displays calculated average damage/healing of spells and abilities right on your actionbars.

The default Blizzard tooltips only show the base damage/healing of the spell or ability, which while useful isn’t as immediately useful as knowing how much on average that same spell or ability would do taking into account your talents, gear and current buffs.

DrDamage does this by hooking into your actionbars, whether you use the default Blizzard UI or you use one of the many actionbar replacements such as Bartender or Bongos2, DrDamage will show the damage/healing right on the spell/ability.

This helps you choose the best attack/skill for the job instead of overhealing or wasting damage.

Hopefully you’ll find DrDamage as useful as I do!

 

Tags: mmo, wow

New Flash “Atlas” Unveiled

Blizzard have unveiled an updated flash “Atlas” to replace their long outdated flash-based flight path map.

This new atlas contains a whole shedload of useful information which stems the need to visit Wowwiki or Wowhead quite as often.

As well as transportation routes it also shows where Alliance, Horde and Neutral outposts and towns are as well as what is contained at each. It can also show where dungeons are, what level range regions are for and where profession trainers can be found.

All in all it’s a useful update and definitely worth bookmarking. The WoW web team are producing useful features, above and beyond what you normally see on game sites. The Armoury (I insist on using the “proper” spelling, despite Blizzard EU using the US spelling…) is another example of Blizzard using the web in useful ways.

Tags: mmo, wow

Addon Corner: Atlas

The Atlas frame showing Scarlet Monastery Cathedral

Atlas is an essential addon for those who do dungeons or raid regularly. It shows complete maps for all the instances in the game, as well as extra maps showing flight paths as well as dungeon locations.

The maps Atlas show include points of interest, such as where entrances and exits are as well as where bosses are situated.

On the right-hand side is an information panel which shows location and level range information as well as holds the key for all the points of interest.

Atlas is providing functionality that should, in part, be integral to the game (the instance maps) whilst also providing useful information beyond that.

Tags: mmo, wow

Season 1 Gear Prices Revealed!

With Arena Season 3 preparing to kick off when patch 2.3 goes live, Blizzard are rolling the old Season 1 items off the Arena exclusive loot list and enabling any PvPer access to them.

Blizzard have said the plan is to roll the older gear of when a new season starts. so next year when season 4 starts, season 2 gear will be available for honour and season 1 will disappear forever.

This means you can purchase season 1 gear for honour and marks. So you’d better get farming!

For the entire Season 1 set, you’d need 65250 Honour, 50 Alterac Valley Marks, 50 Arathi Basin Marks and 30 Warsong Gulch Marks. That’s a lot of battlegrounds to play!

MMO-Champion has the entire list including the arena point cost of Season 2 and 3 gear.

Tags: mmo, patch 2.3, wow

I’m a Dedicated Hardcore Casual!

In the MMO community there is a strange desire to pigeonhole people, usually this is to somehow justify to one group, or individual that they are somehow “better” than another. Nowhere is this more visible than in the World of Warcraft community.

Apparently you can be classified into one of two camps quite easily, you are either “casual” or “hardcore”.

A casual player is generally seen as someone who plays less than 20 hours a week, who is busy in real life, either through a job or other real life commitments, probably doesn’t play games all that much and prefers solo or small group play rather than the big evil raids with 10+ people in them.

A hardcore player however is generally seen as someone who plays 30–60+ hours a week, has no job or commitments, lives with their parents (usually in a basement, but really, who has their PC in a basement???), plays games all the time and does raids every day of the week and plays 40+ arena matches a week, they also can’t stand solo “casual” content and believe you should start at level 70.

Obviously those two descriptions are extremes (and exaggerated), but you’d be surprised at how many people really think like that. Hardcore pretty much equates to “lonely geek who lives with his/her parents and has all day to play” while casual equates to “normal person with a job and family who doesn’t get much free time”.

Not only is it common sense that you can’t simply pigeonhole people into two bins marked “Life, No Epics” and “No-Life, Got Epics” but it’s stupid to try to justify to yourself why Bob/Bobette has better items than you, simply put, they’ve put the effort in. Epics are open to all, it just takes effort, use your time wisely and don’t whine about it.

I don’t like the terms casual and hardcore simply because casual gives the impression the player isn’t bothered or doesn’t care and hardcore just sounds like it’s trying too hard to be important. Like all those sports that insist on being “extreme” because that somehow infers greatness.

People all want and get different things from WoW, whether it’s the buzz from doing the latest raid content with a group of 9+ guildies or saving up for your epic flying mount through daily quests and grinding. There are a whole variety of people who have “FUN” doing a wide variety of stuff in WoW, there is no need to label them and dismiss them just because of their outlook.

All players who get to level 70 are dedicated, just as those who raid or PvP are dedicated.

Casuals have some light-hearted fun doing Battleground PvP and get “free” epics, Hardcores take the hard route and raid for them. Each to their own…

Is there any need to derive derogatory labels for people who you envy?

Tags: mmo, wow

Addon Corner: CT_MailMod

“Nobody puts Addon in the corner!” as Patrick Swayze would likely say upon seeing my lateness with this weeks Addon Corner, but I have an excuse… Patch 2.3, Episode Two and Portal.

I’d been looking forward to Half-Life 2: Episode Two since, well the ending of Episode One, and it took up most of yesterday evening (after downloading the whole shebang, with Portal and TeamFortress 2), but what about the rest of the day… well I kind of got absorbed in reading about all the new loot and stuff found in Patch 2.3. So much so that I just kind of well forgot about Addon Corner. But your perseverence with reading my pathetic excuses will be rewarded with cake.

So, what addon am I going to mention today? CT_MailMod

CT_MailMod is a very simple, but indispensible addon. It adds a few nice features to the in-game mail window.

• Mass Mail Tab – Allows you to send up to 21 items to an individual in one go instead of having to create 21 seperate e-mails, just type in a name and drag the items to the boxes.
• Alt-Click functionality – Allows you to Alt-Click an item to automatically add it to the mail window, this also works with the Mass Mail feature as well as in player trades.
• Forward function – Allows you to forward a mail complete with attachments to someone else.
• Open Mail – Allows you to open either selected (tick the checkbox next to each mail you want) or all mail at once. This saves on the tedium of opening 20 expired auction e-mails.

I’m surprised a lot of that functionality wasn’t included in the base game but CT_MailMod has turned into an essential addon for me.

Tags: mmo, wow

2.3 On PTR Is GO!

Patch 2.3 has finally gone live on the PTR, 2.3 has LOTS of changes to almost every facet of the game.

The main addition that most people will notice is the experience changes from level 1 – 60 which I’ve spoken about before (and will no doubt talk about again once I’ve had hands on experience of it). There are quite a few other BIG changes incoming in 2.3. Most notably Zul’Aman and Guild Banks.

Zul’Aman is a new 10–man instance designed to go after Karazhan in terms of loot and progression. The first boss is apparently around the difficulty of Prince from Karazhan and gets harder the further in you go. There are 6 bosses in Zul’Aman with Warlord Zul’jin being the “big” instance boss.

Guild Banks are a feature that players have been asking for for awhile and we knew they were coming but now the details are visible. 6 tabs containing 98 item slots equals 588 slots total with permissions settable per tab. All transactions are also logged so you can see which naughty guild member is looting the epics!

There are lots of other nice little changes too, like a flight path at the Rebel Camp in Stranglethorn and more vendor discounts with higher reputation (5% @ Friendly – 20% at Exalted).

The major WoW sites will be covering all these changes over the next few weeks. I’m interested in seeing how a lot of these changes pan out!

Tags: mmo, patch 2.3, wow

Patch 2.2.3 Live

Just a quickie to note that patch 2.2.3 is currently being patched in. It contains various fixes, predominantly sound fixes for issues with patch 2.2.

Patch 2.3 will probably show up on the PTRs soon, presuming a 2.2.4 patch isn’t required .

In other news, Ryliana is now level 48!

Tags: mmo, patch 2.2.3, wow