equipment-manager
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Addon Spotlight: Equipment and outfit 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, we'll dress you up in my love, in my love, all over, all over. The Lich King. C'Thun. Yogg-Saron. Kil'jaeden. These are the enemies of Azeroth. Old tier armor sets. Holiday tchotchkes and outfits. Cool-looking shields. ... These are the enemies of your bag space. Outfits, roleplaying gear, sets for all of your different roles -- this stuff starts piling up! Luckily, there are a whole host of addons out there designed to keep your outfits and gear sets in perfect order.
Tip: Show possible slot gear on character screen
I know for sure we've mentioned this on the podcast (in the ever-more-popular Turpster's Tips feature), but I'm not sure we've ever explicitly mentioned it on the site before, and this post from WoW Ladies is a great reminder to do so: next time you're checking out your character screen, try holding Alt as you mouse over the various loots you're wearing. You'll get a little popup with all of the gear in your bags that corresponds to that slot -- a (mostly) undocumented feature that showed up in patch 3.1 along with all of the other UI improvements.In fact, that's probably why this is just sneaking around now -- there were a lot of nice tweaks back then, and this one slipped through the cracks. Of course, now that the official Equipment Manager is in the game (you have clicked that checkbox in the Interface options to enable it, right?), you might not need to worry about switching your gear manually anyway. But just in case you haven't seen the Alt function on your character screen yet, there you go.
Breakfast Topic: Are you using Blizzard's addon replacers?
One thing Blizzard likes to slip in every few patches is a new UI function that "replaces" a popular add-on or set off addons. They've done it with Scrolling Combat Text, Threat Meters, and most recently, with Equipment Managers. The New Equipment Manager is nice, but it's also pretty basic. You choose to save a set, choose a name and icon for the set, and there you go. You can drag the new icon onto your toolbar for quick changes, at least, but there's not much else. You can't synchronize it with a talent change. You can't set events to automatically change sets. Because of this, or even because of straight up familiarity and the issue of remaking all your sets in the new system, I'm sure a lot of people will stick to addons like ClosetGnome and Itemrack (if it ever updates).
Equipment manager and dual talents won't mix
Now, I was under the impression that Blizzard eventually wanted to combine the dual specs and equipment manager features -- they were taking their sweet time making sure it was exactly right, but eventually when you switched specs, you'd be able to switch into the gear you wanted at the same time. But apparently that's not the case: the lovely Nethaera over on the forums says that no, there are no plans to connect the two. They believe that many people will want to change specs and gear at different times, so you'll still have to press two buttons if you just have two gear sets for two specs.Fortunately, that functionality is filled in very well with addons, and Eliah did a nice writeup last month of how to do it with a few of the available addons out there. Which is probably why Blizzard isn't doing it -- we've heard at the BlizzCon UI panel that they're more than happy to let addon authors fill in the extra functionality that they believe only a few players are looking for. And as you can see in the thread, there are macros that will tie them together as well.Better for Blizzard to get to work on something else than put together functionality that those who really need can already find. But yes, if you're waiting for an official solution to switching gear and specs at the same time, look elsewhere.
European weekly maintenance: 20th May 2009
Good morning Europe! How are we all this week? Enjoying Azeroth? As usual, it's maintenance time once more and today there is a little extra excitement in the form of patch 3.1.2.So with this in mind, all the European realms will be down between 3am and 11am CEST. Taking into account past weeks, this can change. The realms could be up by 8am or still down at noon. I will of course have my one eye fixed on the breaking news box and will update if and when one is needed.So to keep you occupied, Daniel has once again come up with a witty morning of the patch post offering things to keep you occupied. Personally I'm rather excited, there's so much in this patch, from the equipment manager (note to self: go dual spec as soon as the realms return), Innervate (Druids FTW!) and those shiny new textures for the Argent Tournament mounts. Lovely. I just wish I could be so happy about the nerfing of the Wintergrasp dailies but c'est la vie.
Patch 3.1.2 hits the PTR, premades available
We were all taken by surprise this afternoon when we heard the PTR has gone live for Patch 3.1.2, because we had little indication that it was going to have a public testing phase at all. It makes some sense looking at the content of the patch, because it seems they're trying to implement the Equipment Manager again, rather than waiting for the next full blown content patch. This patch also contains the new round of Argent Tournament mounts described a short while ago.When full content patches hit the PTR, the developers generally do not allow premade characters to be created so it doesn't taint the data gathered from dungeon and raid testing. However, this PTR period doesn't have any content like that, so they are allowing premades. If you've been wondering how X or Y class plays at 80, this is a good chance to play around a little bit.
Revamped Argent Tourney mounts, EQ Manager coming
The blues have just announced today that "in an upcoming minor patch" (probably patch 3.1.2 or so), the faction mounts that you can get from the Argent Tournament will "have their visual appearances improved," apparently to better match in color their factions. Mounts already purchased will be automatically replaced; if you want to get the original mounts, you'll be able to buy them for 5 Champion's Seals and 500 gold (discounted by faction). In other "upcoming minor patch" news, the in-game Equipment Manager is coming, as they have been promising. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, it's basically Blizzard's answer to Outfitter et al., and was originally meant to be included in patch 3.1. Some bugs kept it from coming out on time, but apparently we can expect to to soon (or rather, "Soon™") be able to switch gear sets without mods.
Gear changers for dual spec
A few weeks ago, when it looked like Oufitter was dead and Blizzard's Equipment Manager was on the way, I did a rundown of some alternatives to Outfitter. Now patch 3.1 is here, dual spec is upon us, and the situation is reversed: Outfitter is still in action, and Equipment Manager is not (yet). As a gear switcher makes dual spec even easier, I thought it would be helpful to do a quick rundown of support for dual specs in the various gear switchers that are out there. Outfitter fully supports dual specs, letting you select gear sets to automatically swap into when you activate your primary or secondary talents (see screenshot). For ItemRack, you can set up a custom event to switch gear when you switch specs. ClosetGnome can do it with the SwapSpecs plugin. WardrobeAL doesn't seem to have particular support for dual spec. For users who don't already have a favorite gear switcher, I recommend Outfitter for dual-spec purposes; it's quite easy to use, and has dual-spec capabilities built in. Are there any other good options out there I'm missing?
Patch notes incorrect: Equipment Manager will not be part of patch 3.1
The official 3.1 patch notes for the live realms states that the equipment manager is now active. The patch preview website that went live says it isn't, and a blue post from a couple weeks ago was the first announcement that it won't be going live in patch 3.1 yet.So then why is the equipment manager in the patch notes?The patch notes are wrong in this instance.Zarhym/Floating-Red-Skull confirmed as much last night, and it's important to note that there might be a few other posts like this one throughout the day. In some cases patch notes can be incorrect in the finer points of the patch. This is one of those cases. Patch 3.1 is live and it takes us into Ulduar, delivers us dual specs, and brings significant changes to all the classes! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1 and the official patch notes!
Guessing on the patch 3.1 release
bridges_squares wants to know, and we're getting really, really close, so let's finally go out on that limb, shaky as it may be: when's the patch coming out? Turpster predicted it would be this past Tuesday on the WoW Insider Show last week (since Noblegarden and the equipment manager got delayed, he figured they wanted to hurry for a release), but obviously no dice on that one. And on the other end of things, April 26th is the date we're told Noblegarden will start, so it's a pretty good guess we'll see the patch by then.If you follow that line of reasoning, that just leaves the next two Tuesdays, April 14th and 21st. And since we had rolling restarts last week, it seems like maintenance this week will bring us the patch on Tuesday, the 14th. But of course there are other factors in here: the PTR should go down before the patch comes up, and since the PTR it still up, we be waiting until the 21st. Also, just because Blizzard said Noblegarden on the 26th doesn't mean they won't delay it again, so we may still see the patch on the 28th or after that. And Tuesdays are usually when the live realms get patched (Fridays are usually when the patch the PTR, in my experience), but technically they could do it anytime, right?So let's do a poll. I'm going to go with Tuesday the 21st (since there's no sign of the PTR going down yet), but when do you think patch 3.1 will drop? And no, "when it's ready" is not an option -- we'll just assume (hopefully correctly) Blizzard will make sure of that anyway.%Poll-28913%
Equipment Manager will not be in 3.1
It looks like Noblegarden started a trend: the Equipment Manager, Blizzard's answer to Outfitter et al., is being delayed and will not be included as part of the upcoming patch 3.1. The cited reason is that "certain issues were encountered...that could not be resolved in time" to be included with the patch, and they would rather delay to "ensure that this feature meets our standard of quality." Does this mean the patch is coming pretty soon? One can only hope. This is especially disappointing with dual spec coming as a major feature in the patch, and with Outfitter's author pulling the mod from distribution; people will be needing ways to switch sets quickly more than ever. Fortunately, Addon Spotlight has you covered - come on over and read all about some alternatives to Outfitter. Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Addon devs respond to Blizzard UI policy changes
Blizzard dropped a bombshell on the addon community last Friday with their new addon policies (among a few other clarifications, addon developers can no longer charge for their addons or even ask for donations in-game), and developers are reeling. Already, the creator of the popular QuestHelper has responded on his changelog, saying that the addon is "dead." He says that he has tried to get donations without having an ingame link, it doesn't work, and that without any money coming in, he doesn't see any reason to keep the addon in development. Likewise, the developer of Outfitter has pulled his addon from the usual outlets, saying that he "will no longer add value to the World of Warcraft" and that Blizzard is trying to "continue a system of treating addon developers as if their time and products are worthless."Blizzard may not be too worried about Outfitter -- they're planning to add an official Equipment Manager into the game soon (and Tobold makes a point that Blizzard may want addons to be worthless). As far as we've heard, there's no word from the folks behind Carbonite yet -- there's lots of speculation on their forum, but we've contacted them to try and get an official statement. They are the addon that's believed to have kicked this all off -- they were actually charging (and holding up full time jobs) for their addon, and word is going around that Blizzard released these new policies to put the kibosh on them.We'll have to wait and see on the long term policies of these changes -- a few developers have already called for a strike, though who knows how successful an idea like that would be. We'll definitely see a few devs hold back from working on their addons, but it's unlikely changes like these will shut down the community completely.
Official site updated with new UI additions
The official World of Warcraft website updated recently with an addition to their Under Development section. Call it a preview, reminder, whatever you want. They've added a listing of all of the new UI features coming in Patch 3.1, and I'm willing to say that there's more UI additions in this patch than in any content patch before it. Am I wrong? Possibly, but I can't remember this much coming all at once before.If you've been following WoW Insider since patch 3.1 hit the PTR, not much of this stuff will be a surprise to you, we've tried to cover the UI additions as they were pushed onto the test realm. Regardless, the new UI page details all of the following: Talent Dual Specialization Equipment Manager Updated Objectives Tracker Looking For Group Improvements Queueing for Battlegrounds From Anywhere Go on, give it a read, and make sure you're not caught off guard by all of the shiny new UI elements slapping you in the face the day you load up patch 3.1. You can also check out the galleries below that we've done previously, which will walk you through a few of these things. If you're the type that likes surprises? Well, don't look at them!%Gallery-45754%%Gallery-45780%%Gallery-45755%%Gallery-45767%
The Queue: WoW Insider Mobile and more
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Ah, Monday afternoon! Does it get any better than this? ...Actually yes. Yes it does. Someone throw me off of a cliff, please. I want to go back to bed. Yes, I know it's almost 4 PM. I don't care.Thander asked...When you pay for the dual specialization do you also get separate gem slots?
WoW Insider Show Episode 79: Argently competing
We had a great time as usual last weekend on the podcast -- Dan O'Halloran and BigRedKitty joined me on the WoW Insider Show, and we chatted about the most popular stories in WoW from the last week. We answered your emails, including how to fill up your guild with quality raiders and what kinds of things you can do to make leveling an alt easier (including not leveling an alt at all).And of course we talked 3.1 -- a little bit of class changes, lots of information about the new dual spec system, what the equipment manager is like (and what it can do for you), Ulduar and the bosses we've seen so far, and finally, the Argent Tournament: what we know and what we don't know just yet. And of course we updated folks on Turpster's new song (almost done, but not quite mastered yet), and on our drive to get over 9000 Twitter followers. If you aren't following us yet, head over to Twitter and hit follow so we can hit our goal and do a video podcast.Was a fun show to make, and hopefully you'll have just as much fun listening to it. We'll see you next week.Update: As promised, here's BRK's intro in mp3 form. No idea what you all wanted it for, but there you go.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[Ustream] Listen to the unedited recording in Ustream.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Galleries: Equipment Manager, LFG, colorblind mode, joining battlegrounds
Arawn from Crusader Aura sent in some excellent screenshots straight from the 3.1 PTR. And being the helpful netizens we are, we're passing them straight on to you. Check out the in-game Equipment Manager, which is simple, but functional; changes to the LFG tool; WoW's new colorblind mode; and the new ability to join battlegrounds from anywhere. Check the screenshots themselves for additional comments on these features' functionality.%Gallery-45754%%Gallery-45755%%Gallery-45758%%Gallery-45767% Want more news from the 3.1 PTR? Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
