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Breakfast Topic: What's your favorite underappreciated addon?
This morning, I want to thank the developers and maintainers who manage the lesser-known plugins. While everyone knows and loves addons like Recount, Deadly Boss Mods, and Bartender, some of the others do things that are just as amazing with a fraction of the support. For example, one of the addons I simply could not do without is Baud Manifest. This little guy completely eliminates the standard "inventory-as-icons" motif and just gives you a list, with searching/filtering/custom categorizing features available. If you're like me and remember what something's called long before you remember the icon, then definitely give this one a try. It also works seamlessly in the Mists beta, which makes me a happy panda. What do you think? What are your favorite addons that nobody else knows about?
UI addons will be enabled in the next Mists beta patch
Lovers of addons, rejoice! Blizzard blue Vaeflare has confirmed that UI addons will be enabled in the next beta build. Finally, you can reincorporate your favorite addons into your Mists gameplay. Starting with the next Mists of Pandaria beta build, we plan to enable the use of UI addons. So whether you're a savvy addon author or the most discriminating player, there's no time like the present to start planning out your perfect UI. Addon authors should also make sure to check out prominent addon sites such as WoWInterface and Curse for a chance to apply for a Mist of Pandaria beta key. These sites have recently been given a lot of beta keys to distribute specifically to active addon authors. We likewise strongly encourage authors who have access to the beta to start testing out and fine-tuning their addon updates in the beta as soon as possible. If you use an addon and start seeing errors, try downloading the most recent version of it. If you are still having errors, you may need to turn off the addon until it has been updated. source As Vaeflare hints in this blue post, do bear in mind that addons that work beautifully on live servers will likely not work in beta. Mists reworks a great number of game mechanics, so the addon creators are working almost as hard as Blizzard themselves at getting their programs up to scratch. If you're trying out an addon and it's not working, first make sure that you have downloaded the Mists beta version, not the live version. Second, make sure that you have downloaded the latest beta version from the developer's site, or check Wowinterface or Curse for the latest versions. Remember that these addons are in beta themselves and that any bugs you find should be reported to the addon developers via the appropriate channels, not to Blizzard. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
4 robust UI replacement packages to streamline your screen
The original Blizzard UI is great. It's what came with the game, and I'd hazard a wager that it is used by the vast majority of players. And it works. It never has a hissy fit after expansions or patches because it wasn't updated by you or by its creators. It is already there, faithfully waiting for you to use it. But it can be slightly inflexible and not enormously attractive -- and that's where UI replacements come in. I'm not talking about individual elements here. No, this column deals with programs that totally replace your UI, reworking it from top to bottom. If this were an interior decoration show on TV, it'd be the one where they knock your house down and hide it behind a bus and everyone cries a lot. TukUI The first addon I'm going to talk about today is TukUI, created by the wonderful Tukz. I feel like it's probably the most well-known of UI replacements, but of course that could just be because it's the one I know the best and the one I heard about first. I also think it's by far the prettiest, but it has its downsides.
Reader UI of the Week: 3D spell effects eye candy
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. Now this is awesome and share-worthy to the extreme: a UI built around incorporating 3D spell effects from WoW into the UI elements that support them. Using a combination of WeakAuras, ingenuity, and lots of beer, Kait:Auras was born. Is it impractical? Yes. Is it awesome? Double yes. If you're going for eye candy, pack it with sugar and calories. Just when you think you've seen the last out of the World of Warcraft UI, someone comes along and breaks the game with a poison swapper or allows you to draw a phallus army all over Dalaran. That sense of adventure, that the whole game could come crashing down at any point because of some enterprising young upstart, was what fueled the fun of the addon community and development -- the off-chance that your addon, in the grand history of addons, would change the world. Making the game better was one thing, but the unintended and often hilarious consequences of giving Blizzard such a (relatively weak) headache is kind of fun.
Addon Spotlight Alternatives: Buffs and debuffs
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. Tracking buffs and debuffs is a time-honored tradition amongst raiders and non-raiders alike. We've been watching for poisons, debuffs, debilitating magic, and disables since the beginning of WoW. Being able to quickly react to your own debuffs, whether you're the Living Bomb or you have a snobold on your back, is what separates the best players from the rest. We will be exploring the traditional type of buff and debuff display this week on Addon Spotlight, shedding some light on some old favorites, addons that have passed on, and distant favorites making a resurgence. Buffs and debuffs have also held a crucial spot on my own interface for years, right above my own status bar. As a tank, debuff tracking has always been a priority.
5 reasons your ret paladin should be equipped with addons
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Like many people, I honestly tried to get into SWTOR. I attempted to approach the game unbiased, but my experience with MMOs had already been colored by about five years of World of Warcraft. Now don't misunderstand me, SWTOR is still a good game in many respects (1.3 million other players certainly think so), but WoW set up a number of expectations that the fledgling MMO at least in my eyes failed to deliver on, not the least of which was a customizable user interface (UI). Over the years, addons have become a core part of the World of Warcraft experience, their functions and purposes as varied as the players and fans that create them. While it is certainly possible to play the game without using a single one, addons are meant to improve your playtime and maximize the enjoyment you get out of your time in Azeroth. In today's post-Sundering world, a ret paladin stands to benefit from picking up at least a couple of them. Let's check out some situations where having a little extra help would go a long way.
Addon Spotlight Alternatives: Cooldown bar timers
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. The Addon Spotlight Alternatives series continues with a look at cooldowns, timers, bars, and anything falling into the category of timing. Timing is a crucial factor in many of World of Warcraft's angles. You've got DPS rotations that can be made or broken based on the time between skill use. You've got tanks making split-second decisions on ability usage and timing -- what if you're only a few seconds away from a Shield Wall, but heroic Nefarian is about to use his thunder electro-whatever? Yeah, you have better been timing those cooldowns better, buddy. Cooldown and skill timing management are some of the game systems baked into the game to separate the better from the best, the true test for the most hardcore WoW players out there. People are still tackling Dragon Soul heroic content and succeeding because of good timing -- ask anyone about the gruesome slog that the Madness of Deathwing fight is on heroic. I did. I asked Rossi. He growled at me. We've established that timing is important, right? Good. Addons can greatly help you with the timing and cooldown tracking of your abilities because the game does a pretty poor job of it. That's not Blizzard's fault, either -- tracking your cooldowns in such an elaborate and specific way is not exactly what the game is designed to showcase to every player. This is all information we are willingly taking on in excess from what Blizzard is providing.
Breakfast Topic: What addon couldn't you play without?
When I first started playing WoW, I barely had a clue how the game worked. I was really lucky that the group of friends from the pub who'd got me started on it in the first place were lovely, kind, caring people who took time out of their gameplay to teach me how to do even the simplest thing. My friend Chris sat with me and explained blow-for-blow how to move, fight, open my spellbook, train, buy and sell. And then, once I got to about level 30, my friend Mark stepped in and told me about an addon called QuestHelper. My questing (I didn't do dungeons at the time) was revolutionized. I had navigation, routes to work the quests as efficiently as possible, and a plethora of other minor features that I don't recall. I do recall, however, that they were helpful! Mark told me that our mutual friend Paul didn't use QuestHelper, that he was a purist, and I couldn't for one second understand why someone would shy away from using such an amazing addon. Fast forward a few years, and I don't have QuestHelper installed any more, but as I'm leveling DPS characters, I'm considering getting it again -- the dungeon queues are so long! Now, my addons are legion, competing for RAM with the game. So choosing one addon that I couldn't play without was seriously difficult. Do I go for TukUI, the UI replacement I use? Hmm, maybe -- but it's mostly cosmetic, hardly vital despite its handy features. Gladius is a massive help in Arena -- I really suspect I'd miss it -- but it could perhaps be replaced by some cunning work with macros and the like and the basic frames. If I were to lose an addon, which has happened a few times through Cataclysm where they've been incompatible with patches, the loss that would cause me most bother is Bartender. It has all my keybinds stored up and saved in profiles, and it's ridiculously easy to set up and alter. For healing in the beta, I've felt the lack of Healbot, but I've managed. WeakAuras might be the one I've missed the most, for any other restoration shaman out there, this is a great way of tracking your Tidal Waves buff. I feel a bit lost without it. Is there an addon you couldn't play without? Are you like my friend Paul who doesn't really go for addons? He doesn't even have DBM ...
My Mists of Pandaria beta UI is almost perfect
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. This is exciting. The very first Reader UI of the Week from the Mists of Pandaria beta, and it gets to be my own. In fact, the UI that I've created in the beta is a bit of a dream team, fantasy UI that has been bouncing around in my head ever since World of Warcraft went live on the first day. You see, it's taken more than seven years for this feature to be developed and implemented in the game, and things will never be the same once the newest expansion launches. I've been waiting for the ability to move my player and unit frames for a long, long time. The upper-left location of the screen was never my favorite area to slap a health and mana bar. I've put up with it over the years and have changed the feature wherever and whenever possible, but betas are not usually addon-enabled until the later days. Until then, I must make do. These days, however, Mists of Pandaria looks to bring us some beautiful new changes to the user interface and my own sanity, giving me the ability to change some of the fundamental aspects of the player and target frames. With just two small movements and two quick options, the World of Warcraft default user interface moved leaps and bounds forward in the race to compete with my custom setup. And this fact makes me wonder if the UI will one day be seen as analogous to transmogrification, where Blizzard thinks that people can't handle one thing but actually crave the other.
Addon Spotlight: 3 addons you shouldn't forget for your alt
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. Now is the perfect time to work on that alt you've been keeping locked away, sad and lonely for so long in his little alt box. You've got time now, right? Deathwing is long dead, and things are pretty chill. I even heard there's a new island out there to explore one of these days, most hopefully in July or August, which would be pretty cool. Ironically, when I'm leveling most of my alts from an early level, I don't enable most of my addons. What's the point? Group and raid content that requires any addons is far off in the future, the number of abilities I have at the time doesn't reflect the button matrices that I've built for level 85, and there is practically no similarity to playstyle. So I turn off my addons, save some very crucial ones. If you're looking to go addon-light for your next alt, I've got some addons that you're going to want to keep around because they make your life a thousand times easier. WoW's UI has gotten a lot better in recent years, but it still isn't perfect. These addons bring it a little closer to that perfection.
Reader UI of the Week: Enter the box with Oakdusa's raiding UI
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. Functional isn't always beautiful. All of you should go out to your vehicles in your driveways or parking structures and look at the floor mats. I guarantee that your car is a wreck. If you've got kids, don't even get up from the seat; we've all been in your car. Functional, but not going to win any beauty contests. I'm featuring Oakdusa's UI because it made me incredibly nostalgic for the days of the original World of Warcraft and its eternal predecessor, EverQuest. The EQ user interface was this odd creation, living in the realm of "this sounds like a great idea on paper because people enjoy the comforts of realism in a fantasy world." What an MMO's UI fundamentally had to have was not defined yet, not in the modern setting, until World of Warcraft came along.
Addon Spotlight: Mailbag 5
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. As the Mists of Pandaria beta rolls along (lots of monks are on the beta -- it's a joke about rolling), almost all of the zones are open to testing and nearing the level cap. Soon, very soon, Blizzard will flip that switch and we will be able to enable addons and it will be glorious. Until then, there are many questions about the current version of World of Warcraft (Cataclysm) that many people would like to have answered. If you've got a question, answer, addon recommendation, complaint, invoice, or other correspondence, you should email Addon Spotlight's amazing author Mathew McCurley at mat@wowinsider.com. Through that email, you will reach me and my eyes. Let's get going. In honor of Diablo, (H)el(l)ephant Our first email comes from reader Jmaximus, who sounds like a totally badass paladin on the Thunderhorn server. Any name with Maximus in it is going to intimidate me to some degree. Anyway, Jmaximus has an addon recommendation for the lot of you, so thank him, because this one is pretty cool. Elephant!
Addon Spotlight: GTFO revisited
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. If you asked me back in 2009 if GTFO would become one of the most widely used, universally loved, and iconic addons in World of Warcraft's history, I would have laughed you out the door. You see, not standing in bad things was the ultimate test to see if you were ready for the big boy leagues. Sartharion and his three drakes brought a whole new meaning to the phrase "if you stand in the bad, you're losing DKP." World of Warcraft made standing in stuff a staple game mechanic for boss fights and player spells and abilities. A common thread presents itself -- Blizzard took potentially clunky boss and game design and made it more accessible. Boss design used to be a mix of larger and stronger versions of regular mobs, like in the EverQuest planes, or unique mobs that would have some awesome new NPC abilities or even steal a player ability or two, like in the EverQuest planes. WoW might not have done it first, but the game sure did make it pretty and varied. For every action, there is a reaction, and for every good thing to stand in, there are a hundred more bad things. Standing in bad things has become the joke of the era, culminating in Wrath of the Lich King with the ultimate send-off to positional and location-based mechanics -- heroic-mode Shadow Traps. GTFO's alarms and bells would echo down the sheer icy cliff walls of Arthas' monstrous fortress, the angry screams and painful sighs of adventurers falling to their deaths, the alarm not even finishing its full playback.
Reader UI of the Week: Bryce and Elv's UI stand against any foe
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. As many of you already know, my go-to recommendation for pre-fab compilation user interfaces is ElvUI. I love this addon pack because the skinning of the interface keeps the game uniform with easy-to-read fonts and lots of information for both the novice and expert, and it's updated enough that, for my purposes, I've never really worried. Bryce's user interface starts with an ElvUI foundation and moves toward full-featured completion with a bevy of new addons not included in the pack. Filling out the areas that ElvUI doesn't necessarily cover, Bryce has complemented the addon pack with addons necessary to raid and function, as opposed to addons that skin or change the aesthetics of the user interface. Here's the part that interested me about the aesthetics issue: None of the addons that Bryce added to his setup changed the way ElvUI actually looks. Sometimes you get to talk about behind-the-scenes addons. Let's have fun with it.
Addon Spotlight Alternatives: Unit frames
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. Unit frames have evolved significantly over the course of WoW's life, from static, portrait-driven frames to dynamic and animated hubs of information. I've always treated the unit frames as a centerpiece and counterweight, like a see-saw, using the unit frame's natural duality to its best effect. There are few addons or types of addon that can take on as many shapes and forms as the unit frames do. Not least, the unit frames provide some of the most vital information to the player possible -- your health. For healers, from the very beginning, the group and raid interfaces were unable to cope with the sharp skill incline after reaching level 60 cap. There was nothing that I wanted more than a robust group layout of buffs, debuffs, and easy-to-read healths and percentages, with the ability to make it look the way I wanted to. The idea of something like Grid had not even come up yet. Original unit frame addons were blocky messes of textures and bright blue and green bars. Portraits were taken way, way too far. Kids in the candy store.
Reader UI of the Week: Neutral elements and goldfish
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. What do you get when you cross readers with UIs? Reader UI of the Week, of course. Want to show off your own interface creations? Send an email, screenshots, and anything else you'd like to readerui@wowinsider.com, and you might see your submission right here. That's totally awesome. This week's discussion is all about Alvala and a changing multi-spec setup that eventually had to accomodate the healer lifestyle. With a flair for keeping things neat and tidy, as well as introducing neutral elements that span each class, spec, and role for every character, Alvala has created a UI that works for pretty much anything she can think of with room to grow. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but at the end of the article today, I talk about how much I like the little WeakAuras goldfish that Alvala has on her UI. It's pretty much one of my favorite things. Must have caught me at a good time, little goldfish.
Addon Spotlight: Revisiting OPie
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. At the end of last week's Addon Spotlight, I put out the call to readers to let me know what addon, category, or type they would like to see revisited or discussed on this week's edition of the column. Emails, comments, and more came through, and the two biggest contenders were OPie and the various raid frame alternatives. (Also, commenters seem to have an affinity for GTFO, so we'll get ourselves reacquainted with that lovely addon in a few weeks.) OPie strikes a personal chord with me, not only because of its functionality and ability to remove a ton of clutter from your interface, but also because of the association with a radial menu not unlike Secret of Mana, one of the best SNES games of all time. I loved Secret of Mana more than I can tell you, and OPie brings the memories back in full force.
More addons and extras for your PvP UI
WoW Insider covers the world of player vs. player action in Blood Sport for fans of Battleground, world PvP and Arena play. Steering you to victory is Olivia Grace, who has spent the past two weeks adding additional addons. A while back in January, I wrote a guide to PvP addons and UI settings. This week's column will talk about a bunch of addons that aren't necessarily ones I'd recommend, so please, please head on over to the old column rather than just downloading everything on this page! Don't want to read a whole other column? Well, all right, then. I'll sum it up really fast for you here, and then we'll get into the fun bit! What's the fun bit? Well, a bunch of people last week suggested new addons for me to try or for others to use, and a few have suggested others to me more recently -- so here's where I try them! How is that fun? Oh, shush. Trying new things is great! As long as they're legal. At the time of writing the first piece, before starting my research for this one, my default addon set for Battlegrounds was: REFlex gets top billing, since it's always on, all the time, for every character. It's a data gathering addon that tells you all your Battleground and Arena wins and losses ever. It's exportable as a CSV file for you data geeks out there, simply the best way to keep up with your stats. LoseControl is another great one that's always on for every character. Whenever you lose control of your character or their abilities via a silence, stun, or otherwise, it puts the icon for that ability in the centre of your screen with a pie-chart timer for the duration. SaySapped does exactly what it says on the tin. Always on, though not really needed in Arena when you're Skyping. If you get sapped, you say "sapped." Alerts people in the area of your sappy state. Healers Have to Die is mean, right? But if the healers aren't from your faction and you're in a BG, they do. Puts a mark on a healer's head that's extremely obvious. Default settings need to be told to chill, or they'll spam you to insanity and beyond! SmartTargeting makes your tab target your nearest enemy rather than your nearest enemy unit in PvP scenarios. What does that mean? Well, in a BG, you don't have to tab through a gang of venemous snakes to get to the hunter. Just click? Sure, but I like tab targeting, OK?
Reader UI of the Week: Vhei's Cataclysm 2.0 UI packed up for you
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. When a beautiful user interface hits the site and people ask where to get it, I have the sad news that not everyone makes their user interfaces available online. The process done correctly, mind you, is a relatively complicated one -- there is a lot that goes into it, especially for a first-timer. So while it is not a requirement to make your user interface available when submitting to Reader UI of the Week, it's always a pleasure when one does come down the pike. Vhei's user inteface creations have always been fun to showcase because of his talent and attention to detail. Lots of user interfaces out there do what his does, as do all of ours for the most part, but the construction of the whole is where I am always impressed with his creations. I've just gotten an email from Vhei letting me know that his last UI, the Cataclysm 2.0 UI, has been released as a package that you can download and try out. He's even got a video on YouTube explaining the process. Let's find out more, shall we?
Addon Spotlight Alternatives: Boss mods
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. Did you know that there are multiple addons out there that can competently handle boss timers, cooldowns, and announcements? Did you know that not every one of those is named Deadly Boss Mods? By far the most popular, DBM has set the standard in terms of features and relative ease of use for a category of addons that has a high potential to overcomplicate things. Instead, the addon community has created niches and fanbases around its labors of love, creating the juggernaut boss mods that we have today. Deadly Boss Mods sits proudly in the Addon Kingdom with BigWigs and Deus Vox Encounters (DXE) as champions of letting you know that you're about to wipe the raid because you're standing in the wrong stuff.
