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Addon Spotlight: Hermes, Extra Button, and the mature language filter addon
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. One of the most often asked-about topics around these parts concerns the issue of raid cooldowns. A raid leader armed with sufficient knowledge and a knack for planning can orchestrate a cooldown rotation like no other. His excellence could only be improved by a cooldown monitor, allowing that intrepid leader to see what was at his disposal. Many players ask me where to find such a display. This week's Addon Spotlight pick is just the ticket. Allow me to introduce you to Hermes, a wonderful little addon that knows who has what raid cooldowns available. But first, we need to talk about a pressing issue, a dire matter that has threatened the very virtual world we inhabit. I am of course talking about the worst bug in the history of bugs: an eternal mature language filter. Let's fix that too, shall we?
How to fix that %$!@# mature language filter bug
With the release of patch 4.3, players have been plagued by one of the worst bugs in WoW history*. There you are, sitting in guild chat, when that guy shows up. You load up you chat input box with your customary "hello" to this person and, lo and behold, it looks like dialogue out of a comic book from the 1980s. I am, of course, refering to the mature language filter bug, which resets your mature language filter to "on" after every log in. Pain in the %!$, right? The addon community has graciously given us many fixes for the mature language filter bug, but the one I've been using is called Mature Language Filter Fix. You can grab it on Curse, slap it into your Interface directory in your WoW folder, and ta-da, no more mature language filter. Tell them how you really feel, every time, with this fix. There's also Force Mature Language Filter, which does the exact same thing. Two choices! Download Mature Language Filter Fix at [Curse]. Download ForceMatureLanguageFilter at [WowAce]. Don't forget to tune in to Addon Spotlight every Thursday on WoW Insider. *The Ice Stone has melted! Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. If you're new to mods, Addons 101 will walk you through the basics; see what other players are doing at Reader UI of the Week. If there's a mod you think Addon Spotlight should take a look at, email mat@wowinsider.com.
Reader UI of the Week: A tanking UI with a flair for scale
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. Welcome to another installment of Reader UI of the Week, WoW Insider's showcase for your awesome interfaces, customizations, and works of UI art. Sometimes we even learn a thing or two about how to assemble a working user interface from the charred remains of one poor soul's cooking disaster. Anyway, this week's user interface surrounds a subject close to home for me -- tanking. Warrior tanking, to be precise. Arothand's user interface boasts a clean layout that lets the addons themselves do the contrasting rather than a black background or border system, with an emphasis on keybinds and prioritizing buttons based on size. Let's jump right in and see if we can offer some tips and tricks, as well as praise, for this solid tanking setup.
Addon Spotlight: Patch 4.3 news, fixes, and troublemakers
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. After a fairly smooth patch launch, Hour of Twilight is in full swing, with players Raid Findering and getting ready for the Darkmoon Faire. On the whole, patch 4.3 did not give us many of the UI errors and mishaps we've come to expect from a big patch such as Hour of Twilight, but there were some bumps along the road. Most players' concerns were dealt with by clicking that magic little box, Load Out of Date Addons, found at the top right-hand corner of the addon menu at character select. By choosing to load out-of-date addons, you let the game bypass restrictions and let addons that probably don't have any problems continue running in the new patch 4.3 environment. If your game isn't loading, turn off your addons and load only a few at a time until you find the culprit. There are a few specific addons that were causing people trouble, so check them out below if you've still got some problems. Remember, update your addons first! OK, now you can continue reading.
Reader UI of the Week: Raiding without the clutter
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. One of the more common criticisms that commenters and players make about most user interfaces they see anywhere, this column included, is that interfaces that are made for raiding never show their true colors. Raiding players have a huge amount of clutter on their screen, from timer bars and boss health frames to cooldown notifiers and a bunch of meters. Well, not all raiding user interfaces are cluttered messes, and it's actually easier than you think to contain the cacophony of interface elements. Our featured UI this week was crafted by Scalions, a raiding rogue on the Stormrage server. His UI takes all of the cluttered, messy aspects of the common raider's user interface and works with those pieces to add them to the whole, rather than tacking them on as an afterthought. Let's talk raid UI elements!
Patch 4.3: Addon survival guide
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. Every patch is coupled with potential problems for all of our favorite addons and utilities we've added to our game throughout the years. With a few simple precautions, you can be relatively free of addon issues on patch day. Here's a quick checklist that you should follow in order to be ready for patch 4.3 with as few problems as possible. Back up your interface folders. Copy your interface and WTF folder in the WoW directory somewhere safe outside of the WoW directory itself. Just make a folder somewhere on your hard drive called WoW Interface Backups and copy and paste in your interface and WTF folders. Don't move anything -- just copy. Backups are always good to have. Update your addons to alpha or beta versions. Many addons allow you to download alpha or beta versions that aren't release versions but have had work done on the PTR to make them patch-ready. If you use an addon updater like the Curse client, right-click on an addon to select the release you prefer. I prefer alpha or beta releases, since they're the most up to date. They are potentially unstable, however. For patch days, you'll want the newest versions. Upgrade to those alpha or beta versions, but be sure to have a backup! Did I mention backing up your interface folder? Do it. On patch day, remember to hit "Load out-of-date addons." Loading out-of-date addons is a big deal. While some of your outdated addons will need updating, some of them might still work. If one of your addons hasn't been updated on Curse or WoW Interface, it might not have needed an update at all. With a little preventive maintenance on your end, you can experience a relatively painless patch transition and be ready to group and raid on Tuesday. Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. If you're new to mods, Addons 101 will walk you through the basics; see what other players are doing at Reader UI of the Week. If there's a mod you think Addon Spotlight should take a look at, email mat@wowinsider.com.
Addon Spotlight: Mailbag 4
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. Addon Spotlight is here on Thanksgiving to wish all celebrating a happy time with your families or food or both. I am going to eat myself stupid and worry about the consequences later. Until then, you all have sent in many questions about addons or looking for specific addons, so maybe it's time to clear out my old Addon Mailbag. If you'd like to send me a question about an addon, it's a very easy thing to do. Send all emails to mat@wowinsider.com, and have a little something about addons in the subject line -- it helps tremendously with the sorting. Minimap hell Our first email comes from Drasu, and he is sick and tired of all those damn minimap buttons getting in the way. Those minimap buttons can get out of hand very quickly, especially when you go on an addon-installing bender late at night, not thinking straight, and you wake up with a mess of a minimap. Let's see if we can help the poor guy out. Hey Mat, Love your Addon articles. One thing that I am desperately looking for is an addon that does one thing and one thing only: manage my mini-map buttons. Even after shutting off my non-essential mini-map buttons, I find it very difficult to manage the Blizzard default buttons and the remaining addon buttons without them overlapping or completely hiding one another. Any suggestions? Drasu from Kael'thas Thanks for the email, Drasu. You have the same concern out there as so many people, man. Those minimap buttons pile up, stack on top of each other, and force you to drag and move everything in order to get to the one little circle you need. It's a pain in the butt, truly. I've got two options for you to help you with your minimap button troubles.
Reader UI of the Week: The right kind of compact rogue 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. Keeping things tight is a noble goal for any UI junkie. Sure, flashy is fun and downright awesome when you can get away with it, but compact UIs are always the little darlings of the screenshot world. People marvel at how much screen is actually taken up by screen real estate and not addons or buttons. We love addons and buttons, but we just want them contained, penned up, and above all not running around crazy and loose. Khirsah sent me his rogue's user interface, which I thought was pretty neat and wanted to share. The user interface takes the bottom bar concept and augments the HUD interface to it in the most minimal way. The two raised sides composed by the chat box and minimap give everything that tiny bit of symmetry that puts me at peace. It's simple but dense and packed with information, yet it still looks clean -- noble goals fulfilled, in my opinion. Let's dive in a little deeper.
Addon Spotlight: Grab bag 6, the grabbiest bag
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. It has been quite a while since I've done an Addon Spotlight grab bag article to throw all these little baby utilities and useful addons at you. It's like Addon Christmas and I am jolly ol' Saint Addon, ready to toss presents under your interface folder. Hilarious, I know. If you've got a recommendation for an Addon Grab bag article or an addon you want to share with the rest of the world, send your recommendations to mat@wowinsider.com with Addon Spotlight in the title. That means it won't get lost in the "buy WoW gold now" or "Mat, why aren't you answering my emails, it's your baby" filters. Recommend your favorite addons! Show My DPS Simple and to the point, Show My DPS shows you your DPS. Shocker, right? Slow down, Slick -- let's talk about why you might want to install this addon either as a complementary addon to Skada/Recount or just by itself.
Reader UI of the Week: Going from laptop to desktop
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. The move from laptop to desktop can be a startling change of pace for many players. Usually players go from a desktop to the more mobile laptop, considering that laptops are so powerful these days that they're not being thought of anymore as second-rate gaming machines. Jumping from laptop to desktop would be a pretty jarring experience. Reader Blackoccamy has made this jarring move and has sent in her UI to show off a simple and lived-in DPS user interface. After going from a healer role to a DPS role, the requirements for a user interface drop a bit, since you don't need to have as much concern for your fellow raiders. Many pieces of DPS UIs don't need as much functionality as their healing equivalents, so you might find yourself with some extra space left over.
Addon Spotlight: Get prepped for Pet Battles
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 this very moment, I am taking a break from running dungeons, farming for transmogrification equipment, because the instance counter has ticked to five in an hour and I just can't go back in. I am no stranger to farming and farming and farming for something that I want. As an MMO veteran, this is pretty commonplace and something we expect and understand as a fact of our MMO lives. With Pet Battles coming in Mists of Pandaria, those rare pets out in the world are becoming even bigger status symbols, when we gain the ability to finally show off, train, and battle those companions. Like most of my articles, it all started with an email from reader Josh: My question is there an addon that tracks and counts the number of mobs or certain mobs you kill? I'm starting to farm mobs for mini pets and just counting in my head gets boring (doesn't help my mind tends to wander). Thank you very much :) When I asked on Twitter for recommendations for an addon to feature this week, two addons stood out from the pack because of my current obsession with finding every rare pet left for me to catch and bosses just not dropping my transmog items. @Skolnik (of the immensely interesting podcast Warcraft Less Traveled) recommended Bunny Hunter, an addon that tracks statistics based on your farming sessions for rare pets and mounts that have low drop rates. Another addon I've been meaning to recommend, Rarity, lives in the same category, so why not package it all together?
Reader UI of the Week: Mark addon territory with Aeide's setup
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. With many players getting ready to return to the World of Warcraft when the newest patch Hour of Twilight hits the deck, I thought it might be good to look at some more bare-bones approaches to user interfaces since setting up a whole new UI, especially after being gone for a while, can be daunting. A good friend of mine recently started playing his death knight again after a long time being absent and asked me what addons he needed. As my smile quickly turned into a serious, broad line and my lips lost all sense of joviality, I realized that one of my best friends hasn't been reading my columns. Tsk. Anyway, today we're taking a look at Aeide's user interface, built from the ground up with love and care. Aeide is a PVE player exclusively, with a penchant for pushing everything to the bottom of the screen and keeping the middle and top as clear and clean as possible, much to my own heart. With some simple kgPanel work and some minimal planning, you too can space out your addons and give them clear little borders to live within. Any UI that promotes addon segregation is one step ahead in my book.
Addon Spotlight: Commenters' favorite addons
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. Thank you to everyone who commented on last week's Addon Spotlight with your favorite addon for a chance to win the Razer Nostromo that I've been rocking for a few weeks. Hopefully the winner of this piece of hardware will find as many uses for it as I did during my time reviewing it. You all had an incredibly diverse array of addons that you deemed your favorites, and I was not surprised at the direction those suggestions took. Today, I'll pull a bunch of commenters' suggestions, and we can give those addons a quick rundown and see which are your most recommended. Altoholic Altoholic had a huge showing in the comments, as people attested to its robustness for making sense of a huge stable of alts. It is no surprise that WoW players are invested in their game and even me, master of hating alts and having trouble playing any other character than my designated main, have alts and appreciate addons that make managing them easier.
Reader UI of the Week: A distraction-free hunter 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. Welcome back to Reader UI of the Week, where your awesome UI creations go out for the world to see and learn from. I must stress again that this is a learning experience, people. Learn. Adapt. Thrive. Evolve into user interface greatness. Our submission this week is one of those examples of coolness and tidiness that many people could get some cool ideas from. Sigkill is a hunter with a distraction-free UI. His email subject started to pick at my mind: distraction-free. Are there really distractions out there that are part of a user interface? Why would a game distract you from, say, playing the game? Are there addons that are distracting you during serious raid play or just flashing when things shouldn't be flashing? Am I being too nitpicky? Well, I might have figured it out, and with your help, I think we'll be on the road to distraction-free UIs for all of us.
Addon Spotlight: Addon Roulette and win a Razer Nostromo
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. I'll be honest -- this week is a resting week. BlizzCon 2011 was awesome, way too much fun, and exciting for us on the ground. I am tired. I am so tired. My plane got delayed, my train didn't come when it was supposed to, and my cats moved in to my spot on the bed. I was gone for like five days, and they already think they own everything. Alex Ziebart, your new editor-in-chief of WoW Insider, said I should do something different to shake out of the post-BlizzCon excitement slump, so here's Addon Roulette. What is Addon Roulette? I went to Curse, closed my eyes, and started clicking on things. These were the addons that I hit. Event Alert My first series of random clicks brought me to the Buffs and Debuffs tab of Curse's site, which then lead me to EventAlert. EventAlert is a addon similar in vein to TellMeWhen that displays your big class procs when they happen, right in the middle of the screen for you to see. Along with the visual proc indicator, you get a timer that tells you how long you have to use that proc. From what I've seen, it's particularly useful for death knights and paladins, both proc-heavy classes.
Addon Spotlight: Mailbag 3
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. Do you know where I am right now? I am probably at the Anabella Hotel in Anaheim, Calif., about to hand out some seriously sweet prizes to you awesome fans who are showing up for the party. If you're not here, you're most likely getting yourself pumped for the live stream. If you don't care about any of this and you're just reading Addon Spotlight today, well, I appreciate it and I love you, loyal readers. Since I am writing this column in advance of my impending journey to California, I went with the mailbag motif. If you have a question for Addon Spotlight, want to recommend an addon for the column, or have a comment about addons that have been featured, send an email to mat@wowinsider.com with something Addon Spotlight-related in the subject. Let the good times roll.
Reader UI of the Week: Cruelblade pushes everything to the bottom
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. With BlizzCon only days away, you can imagine my excitement and the amount of chaos in planning and executing this week will bring me. Never fear, gentle readers. Reader UI will not get lost in the shuffle. Speaking of BlizzCon, if you're going to be around at the WoW Insider Reader Meetup party jointly thrown by Wowhead, Tankspot, and more, you should come say hello to me. If you can't find me, ask Twitter where I am. Cruelblade is a man cut from my own cloth. When you take a look at his user interface, you'll understand why. Everything is so neat and tidy, packed in to the bottom of the screen, leaving as much view space on top as possible. Meticulously planned and simple, to boot, Cruelblade's setup is one of my favorites this year. I mean, really -- look at how awesome those embedded target and player frames are. Are you serious?
Submit your UI to Reader UI of the Week
World of Warcraft's user interface is one of the most awesome features that the game includes. Where else in MMO-land can you find UIs as diverse, creative, and different than those of all of your peers and community pals? Here on WoW Insider, we have a little column where your work gets shown off and discussed amongst our own little community, and we want your submissions. The final patch of Cataclysm is coming soon, and as the most recent expansion winds to an end, our user interfaces are settling in to the new changes that the sundering brought. I want to see your Cataclysm UIs. We even love to help players with their UI design woes, discussing ways to change or adjust your UI to get it to look a little bit cleaner, a little bit smoother, or just plain nicer. If you're going to send in a call for help, please be as descriptive as possible -- it's hard to solve a problem that isn't exactly there. Submit your user interface to Reader UI of the Week by emailing, coincidentally, readerui@wowinsider.com. Here are some tips to remember and information to include when you are submitting your UI or call for help:
Addon Spotlight: More information from Visual Combat Table
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. Tanking used to be inaccessible because of the numbers game -- mitigation numbers that were hidden away in the great unknown. Players had to rely on the stalwart parsers and number crunchers over at EJ, Tankspot, Maintankadin, and all sorts of websites in order to inform the community about these magic numbers on defensive stats to let a tank do his job. Nowadays, hit and miss numbers are easily displayed for players, and defense as a statistic to worry about is gone forever. That all being said, the tanking game is still a numbers game, but this time it is more nuanced with the introduction of mastery and the ability to mitigate most damage a tank takes. You've seen numbers being thrown around and you may or may not know what they mean. Well, Visual Combat Table (VCT) is here to make sense of those numbers for you. Tanking is soon to become another hot commodity role to fill in the upcoming Raid Finder, so arming new tanks with mitigation knowledge is always a good thing. My introduction to VCT started with an email from its creator letting me know about its existence and the role he felt the addon played in the tanking community as a whole. While reading his email, I thought back to my first few weeks of tanking in Cataclysm and realized that for all of the information the game was showing and telling me there still was a great deal that I was struggling with. I wanted more information, and sifting through forum threads wasn't giving me a quick enough answer.
Reader UI of the Week: Absinth's simplistic healer 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. This week is a big submission week for Reader UI of the Week, meaning I need you fine folks to send me a new crop of interfaces to discuss. BlizzCon is coming very, very soon, and that means I have to get some columns in the bank, so to speak, for when I'm away having an awesome time with you guys and gals at the convention. So submit your UI to Reader UI of the Week. You know you want to. Send submissions, explanations, and screenshots to readerui@wowinsider.com. As for today's submission, Absinth is a priest is a clear goal: make a healing user interface that gets rid of the clutter, put most of healer arsenal on VuhDo, and keep the screen free. Overall, I think the style and configuration works, but some players may be reluctant to give over so much power to a healing addon. That fact does make you wonder about the power disparity between healing addons and the default user interface, though ...
