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The Lawbringer: The dangers of addon auto-updaters
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? As new people flood into the new and exciting World of Warcraft that Cataclysm has brought us, security concerns become heightened and the number of people targeted becomes greater. No one wants to get hacked, and no one wants to have to deal with all the mess that comes with the hacking hassle. This week, The Lawbringer continues an important discussion about account security by talking about addons, auto-updating programs, and the potential risks involved.
Addon Spotlight: Starting from scratch
Since the release of Patch 2.4, Blizzard has recommended to players that they delete the contents of their Addons and WTF folders to ease the transition to the changes made with the new content patch. I've had a few people ask me how this is done, so here it is, folks; how to start from scratch.First off, it might help to understand where your addons live and how your preferences are stored. The guts of your addons live in the Addons directory, the working parts so to speak. When you configure your addons, these preferences are stored in the WTF directory, which also provides a home for your macros, video settings and any other preferences you are able to change. In order to truly "start from scratch", you will need to remove all traces of your addons and their associated settings. This can present some frustration to those of you who don't want to reconfigure all of your settings, but it is part of the price paid for patches.Keep reading to find out how you can do some spring cleaning in your World of Warcraft directory...
Addon Spotlight: WoW Interface.com our salvation?
I am not in the habit of trying to break websites, so I hope this update won't destroy the last chance for addon updates this afternoon.I just reported that Ace and its affiliated services are down. Curse Gaming and WoW UI are also down for the count. There was an attempt to push you towards those sites and/or WoW Interface's Patch 2.4 Survival Guide, but they've all been the victim of a bandwidth cleave. I mentioned a few days ago that WoW Interface was sitting secure in their new server system, as well as holding a trigger finger over a mystical ultra-low-bandwidth version of their site. As it turns out, this system may save many of us from addon doom! This spartan version of the WoW Interface site consists of a list of addons. That's it. If you know which addons you want, it provides you an option on this day of chaos. Although the WoW Interface download site is up and down right now, this list version appears to be holding steady.If you happen to be a WoW Rookie, I would not recommend you make any attempts to jump into the world of addons by grabbing addons from a list without shopping around. You little newb bunnies should consider enjoying the tidal wave that is new content patch.Good luck out there, and don't kick the cat again, the fault never lies with the innocent. (Sort of the definition of innocent). Dismissed!
Your Addons vs Patch 2.4
Once again, we find ourselves anxiously waiting for the World of Warcraft servers to come back up. However, today stands out as the best (and worst) variety of Tuesday downtime. Today we see the release of patch 2.4 and, for your addons, it is a day of reckoning. The majority of you are familiar with new content patches and the havoc they wreak on addons, but for those of you new to this; many of your addons could very well be broken. There are a number of philosophies on how one should approach this. Some would suggest disabling your addons and waiting a few days until the storm subsides. Some have even said you should clear out your Addons folder, or your WTF folder. Clearing out the Addons folder gets rid of the addons, while deleting your WTF folder will clear all player and character settings. I personally go this route when I find that most of my addons are acting "buggy" or weird, or when I want to start with a clean slate.I recently wrote an article on how you can automate the updating process, which I would recommend you take a look at, the servers are down anyway! Alright, really I would recommend reading through the comments of that post, as some of your fellow readers have some great advice and insight you may find helpful. Also, the folks over at WoWInterface contacted me in regards to their own addon updater, which looks promising as well. They have been busy testing it and have released a Windows version as well as a Mac/Linux version, both of which merit a look in my opinion. WoW Interface also released their Patch 2.4 Survival Guide, which I profiled recently. All this just screams that you've got options, so keep reading!
WoW Interface's Patch 2.4 Survival Guide
I've talked about the anticipation of 2.4 going live and the pending consequences to your addons package before. Now the folks over at WoWInterface.com have developed an addon survival guide that may help ease the transition to Patch 2.4. With their migration to a more powerful server system and the option to go into ultra-low bandwidth mode, WoW Interface is looking to face the 2.4 addon battle head-on.Their new Patch 2.4 Survival Guide is a concept that many of you many find useful on patch day, in fact you may find that it changes the way you find and update addons. Although many players (including myself) have made the transition to auto-updaters, this page serves some very unique needs. First of all, this page currently shows the top 70 mods, across the listed sites, and puts them all on one page. Each addon has a short description of its function, something that would be very useful for new players looking to get some tried-and-true addons. You may be wondering what the big deal is, and rightfully so. Read on, my friends, the best (in my opinion) feature is yet to be revealed.
Addon updating made easy
With 2.4 looming, many of you are on the verge of an addon crisis. With most major content patches comes the horror of watching your lovingly crafted UI crumble into out-of-date obscurity. Amidst the chaos, some crusade to protect us addon pilgrims on our journey to updated bliss .These brave souls have developed addons that automate the updating process, and they just save your soul in the coming weeks when we face the Sunwell. Many of you already use programs to manage this process, but for those of you doing it addon-by-addon there are some other options. The developer of UI Central 4.0 was kind enough to tip us off to the new version of this software package. Stop! Before my fellow Mac users sigh and move on, this one will work with OS X Leopard, so there may yet be hope for your salvation. However, you must have an Intel-based Mac, as I sadly discovered.
