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The Queue: The Duke swings the Nutcracker
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today. In the spirit of the holidays, I'm going to throw a little Duke Ellington at ya' as today's listening music. In my prolonged stint as a music major in college (saxophone FTW), I always wanted to play his Nutcracker Suite, but never got the chance. But nonetheless, it's one of my favorite pieces of music -- holiday or otherwise. Enjoy it as we delve into The Queue today, starting off with a question a lot of folks have been asking. Many asked... "What's happening to the podcast?"
Turning off the fog effect
Here's a neat tip from Amiyuy of the WoW Ladies Livejournal group. Personally, I don't mind the "fog" effect that sometimes pops up in game -- I experienced it most recently while doing OS the other day, though it pops up on the haunted Borean Tundra coast and a few other places ingame as well. But a few people don't get along with it too well; like the drunken blur effect, it can be somewhat overwhelming for those with a weak stomach.Fortunately, there's a way to turn both of those off -- you just have to dive into the config.wtf file in your World of Warcraft installation's WTF folder (open it up with Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac, though be careful in there, and save a copy before you do it: if you accidentally edit anything else, it could cause problems on your game), add SET ffx "0" to the end of the file, save and close it, and then you shouldn't see that fog effect any more.
Playing WoW off an SD card
This week at the popular Consumer Electronics Show (CES as everyone calls it) our sister site Engadget was covering all the hoopla. Some exciting technology was unveiled that will allow a theoretical 2 terabytes of data to be stored on a new SD card format called SDXC. An SD card is the kind of card you can put in your camera. Most desktop and laptops have SD drives built in these days, so you probably have access to one even if you don't know it.The cards are great for storing pictures and other data. I've used a 2 gigabyte one quite a bit to transfer around files, and in particular relevance to WoW, large addon and configuration directories (the WTF folder in the root WoW directory). It's much faster to put the 150 megabyte of WoW configuration files onto the card and physically transfer it than to deal with a slow and shabby WiFi connection.However with the introduction of this new technology an interesting prospect is raised: playing WoW off an SD card directly.
Titan Panel's perpetual GM ticket
Brad Justice (let me say that again, Brad Justice!) sent us a valuable tip about Titan Panel, and it's easily confirmed by a casual look over at the official forums. Let me explain. No, there is too much -- let me sum up.If you use Titan Panel, you may see an unexplainable GM ticket open in the upper right corner of your screen. You may open that empty ticket, and then Abandon it. Your attempt will fail. But don't worry -- it's not your fault. It's Titan Panel. That ticket will linger there like some kind of horrific nightmare. But there's hope.You can either simply disable the AddOn until they get the problem sorted out or attempt a "full UI reset." (A full UI reset is the process by which you basically delete the WTF folder, Cache, and Interface folders and more or less start all over again.) I personally went for the slightly less-intense "disable" option.Anyway, good luck fixing it -- we just wanted to let you know this is what's up, since Titan Panel's pretty popular.Edit: With a ninja-like quickness, Titan Panel has released an update which should help clear this up.
Addon Spotlight: Starting from scratch
Since the release of Patch 2.4, Blizzard has recommended to players that they delete the contents of their Addons and WTF folders to ease the transition to the changes made with the new content patch. I've had a few people ask me how this is done, so here it is, folks; how to start from scratch.First off, it might help to understand where your addons live and how your preferences are stored. The guts of your addons live in the Addons directory, the working parts so to speak. When you configure your addons, these preferences are stored in the WTF directory, which also provides a home for your macros, video settings and any other preferences you are able to change. In order to truly "start from scratch", you will need to remove all traces of your addons and their associated settings. This can present some frustration to those of you who don't want to reconfigure all of your settings, but it is part of the price paid for patches.Keep reading to find out how you can do some spring cleaning in your World of Warcraft directory...
Blizzard loses a round in the fight against botting
In Blizzard's attempts to get rid of gold farmers and hackers, one of their most annoyingly persistent enemies has been the WoWGlider bot, now known as MMOGlider. They've been throwing suits and countersuits at each other for a few years now, but the latest salvo seems to have gone against Blizzard, the Game Activist reports. Blizzard was trying to subpoena Joe Thaler, owner of Lavish Software LLC, maker of programs such as EQPlayNice. While Lavish Software's programs do not appear to be cheat programs on their own, they did make a deal with MDY Industries, maker of MMOGlider, to use the programs within MMOGlider. According the judge's decision, Blizzard was hoping to obtain all documentation related to the deal, all communication between Thaler and Lavish and MDY and its owner, Michael Donnelly. They also wanted a list of all WoW accounts owned by Thaler and Lavish, as well as the contents of the WTF folders of every installation of WOW used by Thaler and Lavish Entertainment. Unfortunately, the Judge ruled that Blizzard was demanding information that could compromise Lavish's trade secrets and client confidentiality, and that the demand for the information within 9 days did not give Thaler and Lavish enough time to respond an gather information. It's worth noting that the judge did specifically say that Blizzard could file another subpoena that would be more narrow in scope and allow more time for Lavish and Mr. Thaler to respond, so this is probably not a fatal blow to Blizzard by any means. I personally hope not. I've never had much patience for bots, or people who feel they have a civil right to cheat at games, so I'm rooting for the big bad corporation on this one. What about you? Thanks for the link, Tyrsenus.
