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Twittering from the World of Warcraft
Just in case you needed any more Twitter in your life (I'm getting to the point where I really don't), enter the PlayXpert Twitter widget, part of the PlayXpert gaming toolset, a free Windows application that you can download to run alongside your PC games (very similar to Xfire and that type of application). It's a little bloaty if all you want to do is run Twitter alongside WoW, but unfortunately, that functionality will never be available in an addon, as addons can't interact with any other outside sites.The poor man's solution here is to just run WoW in windowed mode and have your Twitter browser or client open right next to it -- you don't need a big application if you really need to be connected at all times. But if you want to livetweet your raid without sacrificing screen space to windowed mode, PlayXpert is one way to do it. It'll even do some autotwittering for you if you want.And of course if you're on Twitter already, don't forget to follow our WoW Insider Twitter account. We've already hit our goal of over 9,000 followers (and yes, a video version of the podcast is coming soon), but we're constantly throwing out little pieces of news, discussion and even some giveaways over there, so follow us if you're interested.
Are DPS helper mods cheating?
Karthis at Of Teeth and Claws raises an interesting question concerning "helper" mods for DPS rotations -- should they be considered cheating? He observes that, whie they may be a godsend for classes and specs with more difficult rotations, many of them remove the need to think about anything other than following the mod's instructions on what skill to use and when. He writes, "If a chimpanzee was trained to press the key that corresponded to the skill that Face Mauler popped up, then it would put out insane DPS without understanding even the very basics of what it means to be a feral cat."**The issue leaves me somewhat torn. There's no way around the fact that Karthis is right; mods like these -- and they exist for several classes -- make it possible for players to do great, or at least acceptable, DPS without understanding the class and spec they play. They also have the side effect of encouraging tunnel vision on the mob/s rather than what's happening in the raid (and, as someone who plays a tank, I must admit I hate dealing with an utterly oblivious DPS). Nobody wants to see a lazy player rewarded with excellent DPS for no other reason than their ability to install a mod and then do what the mod tells them to do.
WoW Insider exclusive: PopCap releases Peggle for WoW
digg_url = 'http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/04/23/wow-insider-exclusive-popcap-releases-peggle-for-wow/'; Yes, when PopCap released their Bejeweled addon a while back, the first question on everyone's minds was: when are we getting Peggle? And here you go: as of this morning, you can download the brand new Peggle for WoW addon from PopCap's site.WoW Insider got a chance to play with the addon from its early beta on, and it's extremely impressive -- not only will you find the usual addictive peg-hitting gameplay that we've come to know from Peggle, but PopCap and creator Michael Fromwiller (whom we interviewed about Bejeweled, and who we're told is actually being hired on full-time at PopCap as soon as he finishes school this spring) have really added a new level to the game by tying it right into World of Warcraft. The game rewards you with "Talent points" that can change the gameplay itself, and you can challenge other players within World of Warcraft to duels and score battles. There's even a "Peggle loot" setting, which, when used as Master Looter, will let your guildies and friends with the addon actually take Peggle shots against each other to determine who gets loot drops.It's really wild. Read on for our early impressions of the addon, check out the gallery below for exactly what it looks like, and then go head on over to PopCap's site to download it for free yourself.%Gallery-50946%
AMG TV plans first domestic 3D broadcast network, $50 add-ons to make your HDTV 3D
Japan and the UK won't be able to hold their 3D broadcasts over us by the end of '09, now that AMG TV is being bought by Signet Intl. Holdings, which plans to turn it into the first 3D broadcast network. Forget waiting for a standard, Signet plans to go with a solution from Kerner Broadcast Corp. -- a spinoff of Industrial Light & Magic and wholly owned subsidiary of Signet -- that promises a $50 add-on to bring 3D to any HDTV. Described by its own CEO as a 5, on a 1 - 10 scale of 3D quality it doesn't immediately inspire confidence, but we're willing to give this a try before knocking it. Most of the programming will be 2D converted to 3D, expect to hear a lot more before broadcasts flip on around Late November.
Addon Spotlight: DKIRunes/Diseases
Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here. This mod is strictly for Death Knights. Fortunately, I figure at least half of the WoW population has a Death Knight at this point, so a post like this isn't so much of a problem. What is a problem is Blizz's official rune UI (at right). I love Blizzard to tiny pieces, but they dropped the ball there, in my opinion. Aside from the icons being a bit ugly and inscrutable, it's flat-out difficult to tell the state of your runes at a glance on the default display. The little rotating line that is supposed to tell you when your runes is ready again is also hard to read, at least for me. And watching critical debuffs on the default target frame is less than pleasant. Fortunately, DeathKnight.Info Runes and Disease are here to give us all that vital information in readable and flexible form. The default state of the addon (as seen at the top right of this post) has way too much artwork for me; any pixels that don't contain information don't have a place on my screen. There's too much info I want to keep track of. But that's alright, because DKi Runes is extremely customizable.
A Lawyer's take on the new UI policy
The intertubes are abuzz with the new UI policy enacted by Blizzard a couple weeks ago. Not being able to charge for add-ons or solicit donations has caused quite a stir amongst some folks. Certain add-on authors are even going as far as to boycott their projects until Blizzard changes their policy.ZAM networks, who runs the WoW information site Allakhazam, got a chance to sit down and talk with Connie Mableson, a lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property Law and Computer and Internet Law. You can read the full interview over at their site.One of the highlights of the interview is that Connie thinks Blizzard will begin monetizing the UI. "Based on all the changes Blizzard is making, I believe the Blizzard business model is to "Monetize" UI Mods/add-ons by developing them in house and offering them for sale to players "Now I don't necessarily agree with the end analysis, but her arguments are compelling and make sense. It will be interesting in another year or so to see where this UI policy change lands us. We'll have to wait and see!
Carbonite going free, continuing development
The guys behind Carbonite have finally responded to Blizzard's new addon policy, and probably not in the way you might have guessed: they're continuing development, and they're making the addon free. Carbonite was rumored to be the addon that started all of this trouble: they had a partial version up for free download, and were charging for the full version of the addon, which apparently Blizzard didn't appreciate. But rather than shutting down the addon completely, they've decided to go free for everyone, and they're continuing development -- version 3.00 is supposed to be out next week.It's worth noting that they still have a number of donate buttons on their download page, which Blizzard is supposedly fine with -- all Blizzard wanted was the donate buttons out of the game itself. And of course, if you find this addon (or any other) helpful, you should definitely support the people who make it.Reaction on the addon's forums is grateful as expected -- lots of people figured that this addon would be shutting down for good, so many are glad to see it will be continuing development. And one developer does say that Carbonite will be removing any obfuscation from their code, as per the new policy, so it's possible that other addon developers will be able to more easily hook into their code and use their techniques. Of course, whether the addon will still be financially worth it for the devs remains to be seen but for now, they're going along with the new policy and widening their audience at the same time.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Addon Spotlight: Alternatives to Outfitter
Every weekend (ish), Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here. The addon world is currently abuzz with reactions to Blizzard's new addon policy (briefly: you can't charge for addons or solicit donations for them in-game). I'm not going to go there in this column, since it's been pretty well covered around the blogosphere and in any case I don't want to ignite a flame war. However, I do want to talk about an issue related to the developments surrounding the new addon policy. The author of Outfitter (and GroupCalendar) has chosen to cease publishing those addons (in protest, asapparently). I rely on Outfitter on all of my characters, and I'll be sad to see it go. But if it isn't going to be updated any more, it's time to start looking for replacements.
Reader UI of the Week: Frogs of Korgath
World of Warcraft allows an unprecedented ability to modify the user interface to meet our needs. Each week WoW Insider will bring you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send it to us, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@gmail.com. After a couple of weeks /afk, Reader UI of the Week is back with a Druid UI on our hands from Frogs of Korgath. I'll let him explain his setup from here: I'm a raiding resto druid, though I don't have much time for that as a full-time student. But I've been a UI fanatic ever since I was a wee young lowbie, years ago, and like to have a neat and well designed interface. Here's what I like in a UI: first of all, it must show all the information I need. Namely, I need a unit frame, cast bar, action bars, and chat, as well as the other less important things like damage text, minimap, and buffs. Secondly, it must not be cluttered: everything should have its place and that place should not be in front of a void zone. I like to have as much free space as I can manage. Thirdly, it must look nice. I like to look at my UI and see something to be proud of. So, how do I do it?Hmm, I wonder! Full details from Frogs after the break.%Gallery-19902%
Reader UI of the Week: Andrea's UI
World of Warcraft allows an unprecedented ability to modify the user interface to meet our needs. Each week WoW Insider will bring you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send it to us, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@gmail.com. Andrea, whom you may already know from the blog Altoholics Are Us (where you can find more UI discussion), sent us this UI. Says Andrea, "Since I play a lot of alts, having one that works for them all is important to me." And how does one keep these many addons up to date and working? Andrea also advises WowMatrix, a third party application which will automagically download and updated versions of any addons you're using.For the details on the exact addons involved, read on!%Gallery-19902%
Reader UI of the Week: Five Death Knight UIs
World of Warcraft allows all of us an unprecedented ability to modify our user interface to meet our needs. Each week WoW Insider will bring you a fresh and detailed look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send it, along with your character name and server, to readerui@gmail.com.Last week we took a brief glance at three assorted UIs, but this week we're taking a look at five Death Knight specific UIs. (A closer look at four of them, though the fifth came without much background information. However, that fifth has a unique look that was worth showing off, and here's to hoping someone in the audience help identify some of the mods it's using.) I was curious what mods DKs might be using to keep an eye on their runes, and for those who don't want to read the whole thing to find out this crucial piece of information, the five UIs here include two users of Magic Runes, one user of X-Perl, one user of DKI Runes, and one unidentified rune interface.For UI details -- and your comments! -- read on.%Gallery-19902%
Addon Spotlight: AutoBar
Last time on Addon Spotlight, we looked at Dominos, my current favorite bar mod for all my spells and abilities. Of course, like any good raider, I also have bar spots for my various consumables: bandages, potions, elixirs, buff food, and so forth. But it's a pain to manually reconfigure all that every time I get a new item. Fortunately, I don't have to: AutoBar does it for me, and means I never have to hunt in my bags for a scroll or a quest item. In short, AutoBar adds one or more bars to your screen, each full of buttons for various categories. For instance, the default "main" bar has slots for: Hearthstone (and related abilities, like Death Gate or Scroll of Recall) Health potions Mana potions Buff foods Mage foods Elixirs (battle and guardian) Mounts Tradeskills Quest items Trinkets And probably some more things that I'm not remembering right now. AB shows the most recent item you've clicked for each category (in some cases) or the best item (in others), and other options in the category appear on mouse-over.
Clippy brings copy/paste to jailbroken iPhones
Those with jailbroken iPhones who use the Cydia package manager discovered a new add-on in the past day or so -- Clippy, from iSpazio, which introduces a method for copy and paste to the iPhone.According to users, the add-on inserts two buttons into the system keyboard -- one for copying and another for pasting. Those who have tried it out say that it only accepts user-entered text and copies over one line at a time, which can get cumbersome.Sebastien over at the iPhone Download Blog gives a detailed overview of how the application works. "After installing the application, type any text you want and simply hit the "123″ button on your keyboard to show the copy/paste buttons. Tap "copy" and start selecting the text you want to copy. Tap "copy" again to end the selection. Then tap "paste" to paste this text where you want it to be." This implementation isn't up to Apple's standards for grace and ease, but it seems workable.My iPhone isn't jailbroken, so I haven't had the chance to try out Clippy. If you've downloaded and had a chance to try out the app, please let us know your impression in the comments.Thanks to all who submitted this!
Video: Working iControlPad adds buttons to the iPod touch
It's pretty wild to have seen the iControlPad go from idea to concept to production, and here's the final step straight from Engadget: video of the device working just as planned. ZodTTD is playing quake4iphone on it, and while the naysayers will probably still have some nays to say, I'm convinced. If Apple is as serious as it seems about turning the iPhone and the iPod touch into serious gaming devices, it would be worth selling something like this as an official accessory. It's fine and good to say that the multitouch screen works even for traditional controls, but so far, we haven't seen a developer that's been able to put "buttons" on the screen and still be able to make worthwhile use of screen space.As Engadget says, there's still no price or release date on the iControlPad, and given that it's working on jailbroken games right now, there's no sign yet that we'll have any official App Store support. But it's an idea for which the time, in my humble opinion, has come.
Compare gear easily with Pawn
Gear is one of the main ways characters in WoW get more powerful, and pretty much the only way once we reach the level cap. However, it can sometimes be difficult to decipher whether one item is better than another - as a rogue, will 10 hit rating help you more or less than 10 Agi, assuming you're not capped? (Less, according to most sources.) Questions like these are why stat weighting scales were developed; they aim to answer questions like that by expressing how much each stat is worth in terms of "points," which quantify how much each stat helps your DPS/healing/tanking. For instance, Shadow Panther has calculated that if 1 Agi is worth 1 point, 1 hit rating is worth 0.85 points, 1 Str, 0.55 points, and so on. Many different rating scales for various classes and specs can be found around the internet.
GotGame releases their ingame browser separately
Behold the power of WoW Insider -- GotGame told us about their browser and social networking service a little while ago, and we were so much more fascinated with the browser part of their app that they split it off. And here it is: Rogue is what they're calling their ingame browser application -- you can download it for free from the site, and after a quick install, you can open up a browser in any PC game.As lots of commenters said on our last post, this isn't really an ingame browser, it's more of an overlay that lets you browse while playing the game. And all it really does is save you the couple of minutes it would take to tab out and check your own browser (or just run WoW in a windowed mode, and use both at the same time).But there are a probably a few users out there who would find it really useful. Downtime is the main issue I can think of (though lots of my downtime is filled lately with the Bejeweled addon anyway). But if you've been waiting for a solid, standalone ingame browser to come along (complete with Flash support, which makes it easy to pull up Hulu or Pandora while playing), Rogue is it.
Design a disease timer for DeathKnight.info
DeathKnight.info is having a Death Knight Disease Design contest (say that three times fast) -- they're working on putting together a disease-timer addon for you former slaves of the Lich King, but they need a little design help with it. What you've got to do is take the graphic above (you should probably take the one off of their site, just to be safe, because it's got to be a certain size), and design a way to use it as a disease timer -- it's got to show all the info you'll need in an addon, and it's got to "look awesome," too.I'm terrible at design, but maybe there are some budding designers out there with some kickass ideas. If you win, not only do you get your ideas included in the Runes addon, but you will pick up a free 60 day gamecard as well. Hit up their dev thread if you have questions about how the mod works -- hopefully we'll see some creative entries here when the times come to vote for a winner next month.
Essential Addons for Wrath of the Lich King
Wrath of the Lich King brings with it a host of new and exciting features. Even with all these new features you'll want the latest addons as you level your way through Northrend. We've compiled a listing of key Wrath of the Lich King addons. We'll update this post as much as is warranted. Feel free to leave a comment if you notice a download link isn't working. But at the same time, please do not post any download links of your own – we'll have to delete it as we want to ensure all the addons we link are virus free and safe for everyone. If you need help installing an addon, check out our handy how-to guide. The essential addon list after the break.
BigRedKitty: Gorilladin 101
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. We are concerned. One the one hand, we've received truckloads of emails asking for help with Gorilla-pets. And we can understand that, as the Gorilladin (Gorilladin = Gorilla + Paladin AoE attack) version of this pet deviates from the standard hunter-pet model of single-target destruction. This guy is an AoE-tank and the way to properly utilize him is different than every other hunter-pet. Thunderstomp and Volley are your friends with a Gorilla, foshizzle.But on the other hand, the hunter-community has had to "endure" two of our movies about the Gorilla already, and doing another seems to be a little overboard. Can one have too much Gorilla? We really don't want a backlash.We decided to do one more Gorilladin movie, but this is the last one. We're going to try to cover, in fine detail, a successful way to train and utilize a Gorilladin for use with farming multiple mobs. We chose Talbuks because we love leather, but the methods herein work with any non-caster mob: humanoids, beast, demons, etc.The two macros we discuss in this movie are:The Simple Pet-Misdirection Macro/cast [target=your_pet's_name] MisdirectionThe Pet-Attack Macro/cast Hunter's Mark/petattackThere are many variations of these, but we're aiming for simplicity here. This is a 101 class, not graduate studies.And because we're sure someone will ask, we're using Perl Classic Unit Frames, Bartender4, ButtonFacade, Chatter, OmniCC, and FuBar3.5 addons. You are invited to download the YouTube version (95MB) of this movie here, and the full-sized version (154MB) here.As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time! From his video guides to Karazhan For Hunter Dummies, nobody covers raid Hunters like BRK. Looking for more Hunter goodness? Check out our non-raid Hunter column, Scattered Shots or the WoW Insider Directory of Hunter Guides.
Bejeweled 1.02 is out
The most important addon of all has been updated to version 1.02 for compatibility with patch 3.0.2: PopCap's Bejeweled has a new version ready for download on their site that will work just great with the new patch. And there's a new feature, too: PopCap says so many people asked for a little minimap relief that they've added an option to either turn the minimap icon off completely, or move it around the minimap wherever you like.Unfortunately, the endgame got nerfed so much that odds are you won't die in raids until Wrath, so that part of the addon probably won't get used much. But my flight paths have felt empty without the gems to match since Tuesday -- the new version of Bejeweled is the most welcome addition to my addon folder.
