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Blood Sport: Awesome arena addons and also ample alliteration
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more. Listening Music: Dead or Alive with "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)." Long live the '80s. Today's column is about nifty arena addons. Changing up your PvP UI for the better is an awesome way to improve your awareness of what's going on. Having easy access to valuable information can often be the difference between a win and a loss. We'll be discussing the best addons to use for a variety of different aspects within the arena.
Gold Capped: Auctionator addon helps you buy, sell and profit
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For Gold Capped's inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! This week's gold blogosphere post is Kaliope's Cataclysm jewelcrafting coverage. Auctionator is a simple, lightweight addon that allows you to do some pretty basic stuff very efficiently. I've said before that there are some serious problems with the auction house interface, and even though the last design pass left it in a better situation than it was before, it's still pretty bad for a few reasons: You can't see the price of your competition when you are listing your auctions. The default suggested price is absolute nonsense and doesn't contain a buyout. You can't see the unit price for auctions when you buy. You can't sort by anything useful when you buy. You can't save searches to avoid retyping each time. None of these are game-breaking, but they're the reason every single person with over 100,000g uses addons. I am still an Auctioneer user, but while its dev team was sitting on a nonfunctional development build when patch 4.0.1 broke the addon, I had to go elsewhere to avoid being tormented by the almost functional default interface. I discovered that of all the addons I played with, Auctionator is the one that will remain part of my toolbox going forward, simply because it has a few killer features that I find easier to use for some tasks.
Insider Trader: Using Auction Profit Master and ZeroAuctions to sell
Insider Trader is a column about professions, written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, who also writes Gold Capped. Basil can't figure out a way to make this a full-sized post, so he's just going to write it here: the gold cap is 1 million now. Email Basil with your questions. In my recent post about using addons to more efficiently craft, I promised that I'd explain how to use these same Quick Auctions-based addons to sell. The basic workings of both Auction Profit Master and ZeroAuctions are actually quite simple. You give it a list of items, and you give your list a pricing scheme. Each time you batch post, it goes through your inventory looking for items on your lists to post.
Gold Capped News: Critical AH addons broken by patch 4.0.1
Welcome to a special edition of Gold Capped. Every week, this column (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday (or whenever there's breaking news). Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! If you were to install the PTR right now and try to post a batch of auctions for sale with your favorite addon, there's a good chance it wouldn't work. Blizzard has changed the way that addons can interact with the auction house so that it's no longer possible to queue up a large volume of auctions and let them post while you read my columns. Both Auctioneer and Quickauctions 3 have been hit hard, obviously. These are the most commonly used addons for queuing up a bunch of auctions. The rule previously seemed to be that we're not allowed to buy in batches, but we are allowed to sell in batches. Well, it looks like Blizzard has decided that we can no longer sell in batches, either. In addition, QA3 has lost its ability to automatically cancel auctions that have been undercut. The new patch requires a hardware event per action, and this has not (at the time of publishing) been written into these addons. So what is a batch? Since you can queue up multiple stacks of the same item using the default UI, that seems to be allowed still. What is no longer allowed is putting together a list of different types of items that you want to sell at the same time. Take heart, dear reader: There is a workaround!
Gold Capped: Quick Auctions Poster does the undercutting for you
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Quick Auctions Poster is here, and it's going to change your life. It was written by one of the auctioneers who inhabit the Just My Two Copper forums, and here's the description of what it does, straight from the download page: This addon is a plugin for Quick Auctions that adds a checkbox to the auction house posting frame with which you can toggle continuous scanning and posting of Quick Auctions. It saves you the effort of hitting the post button whenever a scan has finished. Sadly, because this Quick Auctions button doesn't have a name and its function is private, this action can't be macroed, but this addon manages to obtain the correct button and simulates a click on it. In essence, you can fill your bags up with stock, and instead of using QA3 to post a single batch, it will keep refreshing your scan for you while you wander off to do something else. It will keep automatically undercutting everyone until you run out of stock.
The Road to Mordor: Pippin's top five plugins
This past week in LotRO's been a bit like riding river rapids: There's been a lot of rapid ups-and-downs, violent lurches to avoid dangerous objects, and a whole lot of noise that's drowning out the calmer waters ahead. For every piece of good news and positive word-of-mouth, there's been a lot of unfortunate bumps, such as server queues, dynamic layers, mouthy trolls and Codemaster's launch delay. However, I believe it's all going to settle down in a couple more weeks, and LotRO will emerge the better for it. So if this is your first week in Lord of the Rings Online, welcome! Find a great kinship, take time to smell the flowers, and hunt some orc for me. Today I'd like to take a look at one of the unsung heroes of the recent content patch -- the ability to create and use plugins (also called mods and addons) to enhance your user interface. While the system is still in beta and has a rough-around-the-edges feel to it, it's already shown great potential, particularly though the creativity that mod designers are pouring into it. While there are only a small number of plugins available as of right now and Turbine has yet to expand the scope of these Lua scripts beyond constrained limits, it's not too early to beef up your UI with these spiffy additions. Read on, free peoples of Middle-internet!
Addons 101: The other essentials
Addons 101 is a four-part series for beginners dedicated to understanding what an addon is, how they enhance the gameplay experience of World of Warcraft, some popular addons in certain categories, and popular venues in which to research, download and find addons. Addons 101 has covered a lot of ground for new players looking to get into addons for the first time. We have discussed what addons are and why you would want them, and we have gone over some of the basic elements of the World of Warcraft user interface and how they can be improved upon. I hope that some people have gained some knowledge into addons and have had their fears alleviated somewhat -- addons won't hurt you, I promise! This week, Addons 101 looks at what I call the other essentials. These are interface elements that have become important over the lifetime of WoW but are not intrinsically understandable just by looking at the user interface the game presents you with. Before I start, let me say that Blizzard has taken steps in the right direction on many of these items, but addons still do the job better, for the most part. We will discuss terms, recommend certain addons and hopefully give some good explanations for any questions that might be had. As always, if you're an interface and addon newbie, I'm more than happy to field questions at mat@wow.com (remember the one "t").
Scattered Shots: Hunter addons
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim. For almost every hunter who raids -- and the vast majority of those who don't -- addons are an essential tool for optimizing gameplay. While it could be argued that the only addon the hunter class needs is a pet (and possibly a frothing mug of awesomesauce), addons can contribute a lot to your performance. Properly used addons can help you avoid void zones, keep you alive and improve your DPS. Join me after the cut as we take a look at some of the key addons that every hunter should consider using. We aren't going to cover every possible addon, of course, but instead look at what I consider the most important hunter addons.
Security flaw allows addons to expose full real life names without user permission
There is a flaw in the design of the Real ID system which, (as we understand it) thanks to you being an automatic Real ID friend of yourself, allows any addon to expose your real life name to anything or everyone; even if you have not marked those people as a Real ID friend. We're hopeful that Blizzard corrects this design issue soon. From what we can tell, this has not yet been fixed. In the mean time, we strongly encourage users to make sure only trusted addons are installed. Take a few minutes and be doubly sure that only those addons you need and know where they come from are running.
Addons 101: The basics
Addons 101 is a four-part series for beginners dedicated to the education and understanding of what an addon is, how addons enhance the gameplay experience of World of Warcraft, some popular addons in certain categories, and popular venues in which to research, download and find addons. For the past couple of months I have been getting emails from readers who read and enjoy my addon columns every week and love reading the addon discussions that follow in the comments, but are still very new to the idea of addons to the WoW default user interface. In addition, I am sure there are readers out there who just haven't yet wrapped their heads around the concept of addons and what to do with these pesky pieces of code. So, as per many suggestions and adding to the ever-growing library of WoW.com 101 guides, I present the first part of Addons 101.
Inspect request throttling explained
If you haven't already heard among the throngs of vuvuzela-esque cries of "Gearscore is dead," Blizzard has decided to add a throttling time limitation to inspect requests that some addons use to quickly check to see what a character has equipped and what class that character is. The most notorious addons that use these inspection requests are "mouseover" addons that pull data about a character into a tooltip and Gearscore. There have been a lot of misconceptions about Blizzard's change, so it would be beneficial to clear those misconceptions up.
Midsummer Fire Festival: Need help juggling?
The Midsummer Fire Festival is pretty decent for a WoW holiday -- good experience and gold from extinguishing and honoring fires, fun cosmetic rewards and occasionally mind-numbing achievements. Wait, what was that last one? Torch Juggler has become notorious this year, as the achievement is not only difficult for people who are unable to click their mouses and buttons fast enough, but it is also part of the meta-achievement for completing the Midsummer Fire Festival and gaining the title "Flame Keeper." So, here's how to get Torch Juggler in three easy steps. Get about 15 Juggling Torches. For five Burning Blossoms, the holiday's currency gained through honoring fires, desecrating fires and dailies, you can purchase five Juggling Torches. Go to Dalaran. A common mistake is that many players attempt this achievement in other capital cities. You need to be in Dalaran! Download and install the mod Juggler. Juggler is a simple addon that you activate with /juggle or /juggler. The addon replaces your mouse wheel with a series of actions that select a torch and then selects where to throw the torch. Download Juggler at [Curse]. Activate Juggler, aim your mouse underneath your character and spin your mouse wheel faster than you've ever spun it before. Is this cheesing the achievement? You bet it is. But frankly, the achievement requires dexterity that might not be possible for many people, and factoring in other variables like lag time in Dalaran makes this addon worthwhile. And there you have it. The worst part of the Midsummer Fire Festival is now put to rest, so you can go on having fun.
Totem Talk: Power Auras for restoration
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast Last week's discussion of Dual Wield restoration was a good follow up to our discussion of the official shaman talent preview. Everyone had lots of great opinions on the topic and there was some good speculation on other things the community would like to see happen as Cataclysm comes closer to being released. This week I would like to revisit a topic we covered briefly in part 2 of the restoration addon discussion, Power Auras Classic. If you remember last month Matthew McCurley did a fantastic write up in Addon Spotlight on this mod and earlier this month Rich Maloy did a great write up on basic power auras for enhancement shaman. So this week I would like to expand a little bit more about the usefulness of this addon in the hands of a healing shaman.
Totem Talk: Restoration addons, part 3
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast In April we talked about addons and macros that were focused on restoration shaman. We highlighted some staple addons and some useful macros for a variety of situations. In May, I tipped my hat to Power Auras Classic and pointed out the interaction between Totem Radius and AVR/AVRE. Shortly after that second addon post, news arose that AVR was going to be killed in the next major patch to hit servers. While I've never been one to rely solely on mods, it did make totem placement a lot easier and was pretty useful. In the end, though, it empowered players too much and so must be dealt with. Since that news dropped, I have been going through reader email about addons and mods as well as combing through all the various choices available. So today, I would like to bring you part 3 of our restoration addon discussion.
The cynic's guide to World of Warcraft
We tend to be very careful while composing articles here at WoW Insider. We're always mindful that not everyone plays the game in the same way, or has the same experience on different servers or factions, but every so often a certain madness seizes us and we feel the urge to ... tell the truth. In that vein, I am pleased (sort of) to present The Cynic's Guide to World of Warcraft. This article owes a heavy debt to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary. If you want to see a real master at work, read that.
Totem Talk: Addons for restoration, part 2
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast. Not too long ago, we talked a bit about helpful macros and addons for the restoration-minded shaman. That post was full of great comments from the community and some great advice about macros and addons that you, the readers, use to great effect. Since then, I've had quite a few emails about various mods as well as some time to try out a good many of them myself. So today will be a part two to the addon and macro post, but without the macro part. Over the last few weeks, I've been playing around with various new mods and some old ones and thought I would take the time to share my findings with you.
Interview: WowLens and a National Science Foundation grant help researchers mine player data
Addons have been used in World of Warcraft for a variety of in-game purposes, such as data monitoring or making players' lives easier. What happens, however, when smart people decide to use the power of WoW's interface for a scientific and statistical purpose? Researchers at the University of Minnesota, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, under a project by the National Science Foundation, are using an addon called WowLens to gather peer review data. The project aims to use the wealth of people, resources and data floating around Azeroth in compiling data for research projects. It personally reminds me of Folding@home, but with statistics instead of computer processor cycles for medical calculations.
Totem Talk: Restoration addons and macros
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast. We have come a fair distance so far, starting from the basics up through last week, when we talked about haste and its use to a raiding restoration shaman. Today I would like to discuss macros and addons for the restoration-minded shaman. Macros have been in the game for a long time, and over the course of years, they have changed to allow or deny certain functions. The same can be said for the various addons that have existed over the life of the game. There are some addons and macros that can be particularly useful to you as a restoration shaman.
April Fools EPEEN meter now a reality
We all saw this coming. When April Fools jokes and pranks have any basis in the real world, someone, somewhere is going to make it a reality. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone -- E.P.E.E.N. meters are becoming a reality. Addon developer suicidalkatt has created a theme for TidyPlates that mirrors Blizzard's own April Fools creation, the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number addon. You can pick it up here at WoWInterface. The addon requires Gearscore to run, as it uses the player's value from Gearscore to scale your bar. Just make sure to select the EPEEN theme on TidyPlates after you download and install the theme. stolenlegacy over at WowAce has also begun work on his very own E.P.E.E.N. meter. The addon is in its very early stages of inception, but I can't imagine it will be anything less than amazing. Personally, I am very excited. My number will most likely be gigantic (and not compensating for anything, whatsoever). With a true E.P.E.E.N. system in place, maybe we can finally kill GearScore once and for all. Rather than be judged by a number cobbled together from disparate item values, we can be judged by the size of a bar cobbled together from disparate item values. All kidding aside, I am happy that World of Warcraft's user interface allows for fun stuff like this to become realized and that Blizzard has a good sense of humor when it comes to the addons the community could potentially come up with. While we're on the subject of bringing April Fools jokes to life, can we get another petition going for two-headed ogres?
Gold Capped: Making money with jewelcrafting
Want to get Gold Capped? This column will show you how, and is written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast, and the Call to Auction podcast. Hi folks, this week we'll be going over jewelcrafting. Making money with jewelcrafting can be a challenge, but it's a rewarding one. In fact, very few professions have as much earning potential as this one does. We'll start with the easy part: if you have a jewelcrafter, where's the low hanging fruit? I like to call this "reactive" profits. Anything where you can get a fixed income sort of profit for minimal effort, but you can't grind falls into this category for me. Alchemy has daily epic gem transmutes, mining used to have a daily Titansteel cooldown, tailoring has a bag cooldown, etc. What does jewelcrafting have?
