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Addon Spotlight: Mailbag 4
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. Addon Spotlight is here on Thanksgiving to wish all celebrating a happy time with your families or food or both. I am going to eat myself stupid and worry about the consequences later. Until then, you all have sent in many questions about addons or looking for specific addons, so maybe it's time to clear out my old Addon Mailbag. If you'd like to send me a question about an addon, it's a very easy thing to do. Send all emails to mat@wowinsider.com, and have a little something about addons in the subject line -- it helps tremendously with the sorting. Minimap hell Our first email comes from Drasu, and he is sick and tired of all those damn minimap buttons getting in the way. Those minimap buttons can get out of hand very quickly, especially when you go on an addon-installing bender late at night, not thinking straight, and you wake up with a mess of a minimap. Let's see if we can help the poor guy out. Hey Mat, Love your Addon articles. One thing that I am desperately looking for is an addon that does one thing and one thing only: manage my mini-map buttons. Even after shutting off my non-essential mini-map buttons, I find it very difficult to manage the Blizzard default buttons and the remaining addon buttons without them overlapping or completely hiding one another. Any suggestions? Drasu from Kael'thas Thanks for the email, Drasu. You have the same concern out there as so many people, man. Those minimap buttons pile up, stack on top of each other, and force you to drag and move everything in order to get to the one little circle you need. It's a pain in the butt, truly. I've got two options for you to help you with your minimap button troubles.
Addon Spotlight: Leveling your pre-Cataclysm alt
Addon Spotlight 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. This week, level those alts quickly! It's been a heavy past couple of days in Azeroth. First, we've got heroics on the beta. Second, the public test realms are lighting the world up pretty good. Third, the clock is ticking faster and faster down to Cataclysm, so time is running out for getting those pre-Cataclysm alt characters ready. This week, Addon Spotlight focuses on a few of your old favorites -- addons to help you level up that pre-Cataclysm alt faster, hopefully ready in time for the big shakeup. From reputation trackers to quest helpers, these addons will make leveling a breeze. Let's roll!
What happened to TourGuide?
There have been many Addon stories that will live through World of Warcraft's history and beyond, as cautionary tales, expressions of visions or the refinement of a segment of the MMO genre that, rapidly, is becoming the norm in most games. Tekkub's TourGuide is going to be, if it is not already, one of those stories. Join me on this adventure where we discuss what all the drama was all about and an interview I did with Tekkub concerning the transpired events. [This article has been updated.]
AddOn Spotlight: Loot Addons
AddOn Spotlight 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! This week, little loot addons that help you day to day! Everyone loves learning about little utilities and other random addons that you might not think about everyday but that are useful and can make the WoW experience run a little bit smoother. Some weeks on AddOn Spotlight will be informational weeks, where I get to showcase some smaller addons that might not change the way you raid or experience the game in a huge way, but help make the little things seem even more insignificant. Think of these as "lifestyle" addons. This week is one such lifestyle AddOn Spotlight.
Addon Spotlight: TourGuide (UPDATED)
Amid the madness of yesterday's patch, there has been some desperate drama happening in the official UI & Macros Forums. It seems the massively popular leveling addon QuestHelper has encountered some troubles, with many users not able to use their beloved quest... helper. As with many crossroads in life, this presents an opportunity to consider a change, or at least a reason to try something else out while the developer of QuestHelper figures out the disconnect. Some time ago, I stopped using the memory-hogging giant in favor of one of Tekkub's creations. TourGuide may very well be Tekkub's greatest mod to date. It serves much the same function as QuestHelper, but it takes a different approach, one that doesn't eat up nearly as much memory. To me, it was sort of like selling my huge truck for a fast, agile Subaru. (Which I did in RL, yay!)I've been promising to profile this bad boy for a couple of months now, as I've yet to finish my own work on it, but I felt like you all needed an alternative. Besides, you may end up swearing by TourGuide like I do, it was more my style. (I've been working on a guide for TourGuide, but my day job has been bogging me down.)TourGuide is more akin to a traditional leveling guide than the so-called smart system of QuestHelper. With the "helper", I felt like I wasn't doing quests in the right order, at the right level and that I was missing out on some great quest chains.
Addon Spotlight: Four for the Fourth
Welcome to another installment of Addon Spotlight. Today I thought I'd present you with four addons that make minor changes to your UI while providing little or no additional functionality. Call these vanity addons if you like, although you may find one or more of them actually useful.In the spirit of the holiday weekend (for those of us in the U.S.), I thought I would start with some color-oriented addons. I use these almost entirely for the sheer joy of some more bright colors on the screen, but I as I always say, having a quick visual reference to information adheres to the simple but powerful UI philosophy that less is more.oGlow is a very simple addon that does one thing, it lights up the icon border of an item with the color matching it's quality. As my paladin's character pane shows, epic items are brightly lit with a purple border, rare items are blue and green items are green. (Okay, no green items there, but you get the point.) I think I replaced that green item with my Medallion of the Horde last week, am I supposed to get a pen for being green-free or something? The only real use I have gotten from this, aside from a pretty glow, is being able to quickly assess another player's gear while inspecting them. I would like to think I am able to tell this by just looking at them, but I like to snoop anyway.
Addon Spotlight: Fuzzy Logic
Welcome to a special "maintenance day" edition of Addon Spotlight. Today, we're going to take a look at one more Hunter specific mod, wrapping up my week of hunter love. Thus far, we've taken a (another) look at Fizzwidget's Feed-O-Matic and some off-the-beaten-path macros. I'm going to, once again, feature an addon that integrates macros into the major functionality and one written by my favorite developer: the ever-candid Tekkub.True to form, Tekkub wrote this addon to be simple, efficient and easy to use. The aptly named Fuzzy Logic is a macro-based addon that will react differently based on the current status of you and your pet. As with many of Tekkub's Random Crap, this addon works with pretty much no memory footprint, and very little setup required. What I love most about this type of addon is how much they add to my own gameplay while asking so little in return. I use this, amongst others, so often during my daily grind (when I get around to rolling my Hunter), that I can't imagine life without them. In a sense, Fuzzy Logic has become part of my own "default UI".Come on back after the jump for Tekkub's description and how to configure this one. (Just for you, Tekkub)
Addon Spotlight: Steal Your Carbon
Sean is diving, sunning himself and trying to drink all the cervezas in Cozumel this week, so don't feel bad if he doesn't respond to emails and comments. He'll be back in action next week, fresh and ready to re-join the Addon Army's battle for the perfect User Interface!Welcome to this installment of Addon Spotlight! Today, we're going to take a look at another of Tekkub's addons. I've being singing his praises for weeks now, but don't worry, he's not paying me to do this. I enjoy his addons as they are simple, sleek and highly functional. Besides, eventually I will have written about all of his work, or perhaps not.So, today we're talking about Steal Your Carbon, a reagent stocking addon. Here is how to get started; open the config window by using this command: /syc Once you're in the window, drag an item from your inventory into the little box. Then use the arrows to tell the addon what amount of said item you would like to stock. I use the "Overstock Items" option to make sure I always have enough of whatever item I am stocking. There is also a great feature that enables the addon to upgrade water automatically. For example, if you've been restocking Moonberry Juice, Steal Your Carbon will automatically update and stock Morning Glory Dew when you ding 45. This is a simple matter of selecting the "Upgrade water" option.There's a couple more features, come on in the check them out.
Addon Spotlight: Buffet
Welcome to the Sunday edition of Addon Spotlight. Today I am going to spotlight one of my new favorite addons. Many of you may shake your head in silent ridicule of my constant love for Tekkub's addons, but you need to check out Buffet!Buffet, in Tekkub's words, is a simple water and food managing addon. It combines two of my favorite addon characteristics; saving actionbar space and making use of the macro system. So, basically, what you get with this addon are two automatically generated macros that will manage your food and drink items. The addon will create the two macros, which are placed in your General Macros tab, you just place them on your actionbar. Suddenly you will have two great little automated buttons. In combat, they switch to consumables you can use in combat, like Super Healing Potions, Super Mana Potions and Master Healthstones. Out of combat, the macros (to include the icon and tooltip) switches to the best food / drink combination available. Check in after this for the best description available; Tekkub's.
Addon Spotlight: Control Freak
WoW Insider co-lead Mike Schramm brought up an interesting question for today's Breakfast Topic; how can players utilize the Focus Target feature in World of Warcraft? Macros are certainly a great way to manage your focus target and what is being done with it. I've yet to write a installment of Macro Anatomy that covers the topic, so where can one turn if you want to utilize this feature? Bad boy developer Tekkub has created Control Freak for people wanting to have fun with the focus target and their crowd control abilities. Granted, there are a lot of other things you can do with this feature, but this addon very efficiently automates the process.After I profiled Tekkub's ChatSettingsFix (2.4), I thought I should start looking into his other mods. As it turns out, Tekkub is a man with the unique ability to provide little fixes and additions that greatly enhance gameplay. I am quickly becoming a fan of his work, so you can expect to see more of the grizzly dev's work here at Addon Spotlight.Enough of my professions of love for the guy's mods, read on for details about how to use Control Freak.
