Character Transfer Affecting Add-Ons?
by Mike D'Anna 
Jun 29th 2006 at 12:20PM
In the wake of the paid character transfer service going live recently, a few players have apparently been experiencing some issues with their custom interfaces & add-ons after transferring their characters. Reader Sean Bonner reports that after his characters' move to the Eitrigg realm yesterday, he has been having many add-on problems, and this post over at Metroblogging also reports similar issues."6 months worth of interface development and addon fine tuning is UP IN SMOKE. When I started up...on Eitrigg all my custom interface, addons and macro preferences got left behind on Stormrage, or at least in the Stormrage folder. I figured out how to move my macro files over and now all 60 of my macros are available. But, I can't figure out which addon .lua files to move to restore my add-on preferences. I've made copies and dropped them in all the folders I can think of with no luck."
Have any of you who have also transferred your characters experienced any problems after the move? Blizzard, any news on why this might be occurring? Chime in if you have any info on this problem; hopefully this can be brought to Blizzard's attention & the issues addressed.
Filed under: Realm News, Realm Status, Odds and ends, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
blubbo Jun 29th 2006 12:45PM
This is not Blizzards fault, well, not entirely anyways. The problem lies in the format of which addons saves their settings. It's 'Charname on Server' and, logically, if you change servers those settings wont be used anymore.
A search and replace of your old servername to the new one in all .lua files (I might suggest to start with one file to see how it goes:) in the SavedVariables folder should do the trick... I'd think...
sollaires Jun 29th 2006 12:52PM
The issue with copying mod preferences between servers is that mods save their preferences in different ways. Off the top of my head, if you copy the directory .../World of Warcraft/WTF/YourAccountHere/YourOldRealm/ to .../WoW/WTF/Account/YourNewRealm/, that should keep several things. The other thing you'd need to check would be your global SavedVariables directory which is in ../WoW/WTF/Account/SavedVariables/ . In these files, mods often store which realm and character the settings apply to. In the case where you moved all your chars off or do not care about the old chars at all, you could try replacing each occurance of YourOldRealm with YourNewRealm. If that makes any sense.
I'm sure this will come up again, and I'm sure Blizzard will say it is your responsibility and/or the mod developers responsibility to handle mod migration.
Pickypants Jun 29th 2006 12:57PM
I really don't understand the widespead useage of macros and add ons.
Is it just me? I have tinkered around with them, but never really bother after an hour or two.
I have no trouble pwning allies and raiding sans any of that stuff.
What's the draw that makes people have to futz around after every patch?
SilentBob Jun 29th 2006 1:50PM
@ Pickypants -
Well, for one many of the better addons bring functionality that just isn't there with the standard game. The guild I'm with uses CTRaid for all of our runs, this helps the healers out immensely by allowing them to see the stats for all of the members in the raid, not just their party. It also has boss mods that help you warn your party of incoming effects or phases of battles, not to mention, it gives everyone "tank buttons" which makes assigning an MT, OT, and MA much easier, Garr and Ghennas are complete cakewalks.
For myself, I run a mix of Discord mods, which allow me to configure multiple action bars and UI layout tweaks so I can keep all my spells / actions / abilities only a click away. TitanPanel is also a huge help, as well as MetaMap and Atlas. To devalue these mods only hurts yourself in the long run. Most of the high-end raid guilds now require running CTRaid if you want to join the group.
SB
PS - Another great mod we've been playing with recently is KLH Threat Meter which can help keep your DPS in line from ganking aggro off your tanks (especially if you have peeps fond of racing in DamageMeters)
bliSSter Jun 29th 2006 1:58PM
Some of these issues could depend on the addons themselves and how they're written.
Depending on how wedded you are to a particular addon and what cached data you have - you might need to jump into the actual global variables and .lua files saved by the addon. I recently did this with my Lootlink cache so that the data is shared between different realms. I really wanted to have access to all of my Lootlink information so I had to get inside the global variables and change the server identification number so all the realms were writing to the same cache file.
This type of thing, of course, could also render your addons completely unusable if you're not careful - so be sure to have a backup handy. :P
James Jun 29th 2006 3:48PM
More people coming to Eitrigg?? Bah! It lags enough :X
As for addons: The ones that came with 1.11 patch still don't work (ya Blizz's addons -- not the 3rd party ones). Maybe 1.11.1 fixed them (haven't tried since), but the "Addon Config" when you right click your portrait, still throws errors whenever I mouse over it.
Michael #1 Jun 29th 2006 5:31PM
I'm the original poster at Metblogs Azeroth.
I searched all my realm specific .lua files and do not see any reference to realm within. I tried moving the folder to the new realm folder and I tried moving just the contents to the new folder. NO LUCK. Heres the odd thing, I was able to swap my macro.txt files and my 60 macros to the new realm folder no problem?
I'd love to hear from anyone who has had success with their addon preferences sp that I can get all mine up and running.
Pickypants Jun 29th 2006 7:41PM
Thanks for the insightful post SilentBob. Perhaps I should take another gander. That Threat Meter mod seems perfect for my group of friends. They're rogues who think the point of the game is to do as much burst DPS as possible, as the party's tank, it annoys me to no end.
blubbo Jun 30th 2006 6:23AM
@Michael #1: Not all addons save their .lua files in the realm specific folders. Most (of mine anyways) still use the WTFAccount\SavedVariables folder so you could take a look at those files using the same aproach.
Hopefully someone (*cough* blizzard *cough*) will come up with an easy way to manage these settings cause this is hardly the last time we'll hear about this problem.
blubbo Jun 30th 2006 6:27AM
oh, the path should be WTFAccountname-of-your-accountSavedVariables