Addon Spotlight: Stop spending and start saving with NazScrooge

Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same.

Addons can be surprising little fellows, breaking out of the perceived boundaries of what is right and easy and giving us something more intelligent or behavioral. These, my friends, are the really special addons, addons that change some aspect of the game that doesn't really affect your character as much as it affects you.

Behavioral addons are all around us. DBM is a behavioral addon because it changes the way you react to situations through audio and visual cues. There are new interactions between you and the information that are not happening for your character in-game. What about Auction House addons that force you to conform to a series of clicks each time you hit town, further changing your behavior based on the way the addon works? Interesting.

NazScrooge

Our addon for this week is all about saving money the old-fashioned way -- saving money. NazScrooge is an addon that acts as a virtual lockbox for your in-game gold. Gold never actually gets deposited anywhere and has no weight in WoW, a departure from the EverQuest golden era, so saving money in a separate, physical location was not an option. Virtual locations are plentiful, however.

If you've missed the days of physical monetary deposits and still want to have a separate location to save your cash, this is the addon for you. NazScrooge lets you set many different types of depositing including fully manual, automatic based on percent, or all money after a certain amount be put into savings. The final option is my favorite, because I have a full wallet understanding on my character, which is 4,000 gold. Any gold over 4,000 gets deposited into savings.

When the savings is done automatically for you, appreciation for automation becomes quickly apparent. You'll soon understand why putting your savings money away from your own eyes is incredibly helpful in actually learning to save money in game and in real life. In fact, it becomes a game. Ask Fox or Basil -- watching that number go up is a game to them. It gives them pleasure.

It's time to get real

Did you want LibDataBroker support with NazScrooge? Well, too bad, it's in there anyway. Your opinion didn't even matter! You wanted commands? Here are some commands! Type /scr to open it up, type /scr withdraw "goldamount" takes out the cash, /scr deposit "goldamount" puts it right back in. Hit /scr display really, really hard to see all that sweet cash you're saving. Epic.

Here's one of the emails (and a testimonial) that first alerted me to NazScrooge. As you will see, this email confirms what we have all just witnessed -- money-saving power supreme:

Saving money has never been easier, so start saving your gold. You just know there are going to be rockin' mounts and pets and stuff in Mists of Pandaria soon, so you're going to want to hit the expansion running with the cash in hand. Make the money now so you can enjoy it in the future.

I feel like we might have all learned something today ...

Download NazScrooge at [Curse].

How about we take it all home with an email from the Addon Mailbag?

Thanks for the email, Matt. Your problem has a simple solution. Many cast bar timers have an options called tradeskill merge or an option that sounds an awful lot like that. This option, once enabled, will combine all of your crafting into one bar, giving you the amount of time it will take to complete the entire task. Castbars and Quartz have this mode for sure. So not only did you hit me with a question that I have an answer for (which always makes my day), but you might even have an addon that already does just what you need in your arsenal.

You might also be interested in a similar feature -- flight timer bars. Flight timers know the distance and time that each flight point in the game travels and takes to complete. You can hop on a bird from one place to another and your cast bar will double as a timer for the flight. Now you'll know exactly how much time you have to go to the bathroom before landing in Booty Bay.

Thanks for the email, Chris. One of the best ways I've seen permanent buffs being shown alongside a SexyCooldown-esque bar was to get an addon like Raven. Raven is a more traditional bar or icon version of a buff/debuff tracker with the added bonus of turning on and off stuff you don't want to see. You could create a window for just buffs that have no duration, put that off to the side, and turn off all of the other Raven windows. Then you would have a permanent buff tracker, and it runs pretty light.

See you guys next week.

Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. If you're new to mods, Addons 101 will walk you through the basics; see what other players are doing at Reader UI of the Week. If there's a mod you think Addon Spotlight should take a look at, email mat@wowinsider.com.