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  • Addon Spotlight: 3 addons you shouldn't forget for your alt

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    05.24.2012

    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.

  • Addon Spotlight's top 5 addons of 2011

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    01.05.2012

    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. Addons and the WoW interface had a big year in 2011. Many famous addon authors and developers left World of Warcraft for different games or exited the genre altogether. Some addons were incorporated into WoW itself, like the oft-requested bag search and a really cool new altitude notification system for tracking on the minimap, making exploration in 3D environments that much easier. Transmogrification and void storage were introduced, and new interface elements like the new Extra Button and PlayerPowerBarAlt confused and amazed us as we scrambled to get our action bars working before raid night. Here are my top five favorite addons of 2011. Remember, these are not addons that came out in 2011, but rather the five addons that I just could not live without this year. These are the five addons that I will never be able to live without, and you probably have some choice words about this list. Let's hear your own top five lists in the comments.

  • AddOn Spotlight: Chataclysm

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    04.02.2010

    AddOn Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. We'll look at everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your AddOns folder will never be the same! This week, Fontwing and his Fontflight of the Chatbox destroy Azeroth as we know it in the Chataclysm. In my humble opinion, the chat addon is probably the most important addon ever created for World of Warcraft. ... Hey, what are you doing? Whoa, all right, calm down -- put down the pitchforks, damage meter enthusiasts. I'll explain. Chat is arguably the most important aspect of a massively multiplayer online game. It fosters communication and community and provides a basic level of interaction to players with other players and the game itself. I remember the days of Ultima Online where you couldn't even send messages back and forth to people in tells. Chat has come a long way in MMOs, so it seems only fitting that chat interfaces evolve with the medium. This week, I will be talking about my two favorite chat addons, Prat and Chatter, and giving some cool, helpful tips to get the most out of your chatting experience in WoW. Saddle up, because you're about to experience ... the Chataclysm.