WoW Addons: Part 1

No posts this weekend as it has been pretty busy, however as promised here is the first in what I've decided to make a two part posting about addons for the World of Warcraft.

Now I have alway been a complete addict when it comes to addons in the past to the point that I actually couldn't have named every single one I was using and to be totally honest probably didn't even make use of about 25% of those I actually had installed anyway. With my lovely new installation I dumped my /interface directory and headed over to the Curse Downloader Client. But more on what I actually installed later on in part 2, this post is all about what Blizzard have actually done to the interface attempting to catch up with some of the more successful addons.

After the jump we'll have a look at a breakdown of some addons and the updates Blizzard have made to the UI and discuss whether the standard UI meets up to the addon.


Questing and Cartography:

For a start, take a peek at the map pictured above, it's far more quest oriented. When leveling I was a keen devotee of QuestHelper for it's map guidance. The new map frame does pretty much what QuestHelper did in that it shows you where to find quest mobs and where to hand in. Also there's an all new objectives panel on the right hand side of the game screen. Add to that the new tooltip information I'm pretty much ruling out the reinstallation of QuestHelper for the time being as the only additional functionality I remember off hand from it that is missing in the new objectives tracking and map is it's pathing (remember those crawling ant lines across your map?) - I never really used that much anyway.

The other addon that I will not be bothering with for the time being (the jury is still out) is Cartographer as I'm keen on giving this new map a proper run for it's money. I get the feeling that a full screen map is going to irritate the hell out of me before too long but then I vaguely remember that even that is now configurable in the new UI. No doubt I will be posting further on cartography as in a world the size of Azeroth (not forgetting Outlands) mapping is of vital importance.

Baggage:

Oh dear, the bag frames have definitly not improved. I'm ready in a bit of a pickle with even a selection of small bags of 6 and 8 slots. Given that I've already been promised 4 [Netherweave Bags] by a friend I think this is something that will need addressing toot-sweet.

Money:
I will be installing Auctioneer, no questions, I'm not even going to visit the Thunderbluff Auction House to see what the UI looks like, Auctioneer is great full stop. Although an interesting point to note is that the vendor pricing of items now appears in tooltips. This is insanely useful, especially later in the game where grey items such as [The Stoppable Force] have vendor buy prices in excess of 2g.

Combat:
I'm not a huge combat addon user, I don't even make use of macros for my rotations I prefer the button mash and challenge of getting it right the human way. Having said which I've always been a fan of Scrolling Combat Text (SCT) for a slightly more detailed in game description of what is happening in a fight. For the sake of research I'm going to go with the default for a little longer as it's showing damage and heals (with big "in your face" numbers for crits).

Unit Frames:
Ok, I cannot handle the standard unit frames, they're just too artsy and contain too little information for the space they take up. Besides I like to have "target's target" and so on when I'm grouped so the verdict is "It's gotta go!".

Threat:
 It's interesting, as seen in the picture above, that there is some interesting threat-meter type thing in the offing with the core UI. I have yet to investigate this fully and no doubt as soon as I install a new unit-frames addon it will bork the whole thing, I'm going to hold off installing anything like Omen until this has been investigated fully and the first time I get my head pulled off in an instance for being over-zealous with my [Rejuvination] spam.

There's a whole pile of other addons I'm sure will follow in due course, particularly some druid specific ones for healing and decursing (yep I'm on the hard hard resto track). Next post (coming soon) will have a look back at this post and show the results of installing UI addons to change soe of the things we've been moaning about here. So for now I'll leave you with a pic of Romm's first (and probably last) bath.