WoW Interface's Patch 2.4 Survival Guide
by Sean Forsgren 
Mar 23rd 2008 at 11:00AM
Their new Patch 2.4 Survival Guide is a concept that many of you many find useful on patch day, in fact you may find that it changes the way you find and update addons. Although many players (including myself) have made the transition to auto-updaters, this page serves some very unique needs.
First of all, this page currently shows the top 70 mods, across the listed sites, and puts them all on one page. Each addon has a short description of its function, something that would be very useful for new players looking to get some tried-and-true addons. You may be wondering what the big deal is, and rightfully so. Read on, my friends, the best (in my opinion) feature is yet to be revealed.
This new Patch 2.4 Survival Guide does something I've yet to see a major addon site do before. Each of the top addons listed has a download link for WoWInterface.com, a typical feature. What I think goes above and beyond the call of duty, is the fact that this site also provides links to alternate download sites. This means links to Curse Gaming, WoWUI.com, Ace and each addon's homepage if available. That's right folks, WoW Interface is doing its best to give you all the available information and links for each of its top addons. How many car dealerships point you in the direction of other dealerships in case you'd like to shop around? The very idea of doing this reeks of player-oriented thinking. Now, I won't endorse any site as better than another, its all personal preference. However, I certainly give a huge kudos to WoW Interface for stepping outside the box to provide a hub for your favorite addons, which certainly bodes well for their site traffic in the future.
So, you may be wondering what exactly makes this new concept a Patch 2.4 Survival Guide. Well, prepare yourself for the other nice feature of this new tool. The folks over at WoW Interface will be working around the clock during the madness of updating for 2.4 to let us know, via this new page, when each of these top addons have been updated. Basically, you can continue to check this page to see which addons have been updated, and choose from the different sites to download the updated versions.
For new users, and those who don't auto-update, this site can be a great place to stay current and find addons that other players are using the most. For those of you who auto-update, or are considering it, WoW Interface also has an auto-updater, with a Windows version and a Mac/Linux version.
So, check out this page! It has gone live and has a little something for everyone. As always, use the Internet at your own risk, but should you come across something malicious while using this page, I'll be right there with you.
Dismissed!
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Tricks, News items, Add-Ons, Features, Guides
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Neesan Mar 23rd 2008 11:51AM
All I need is WoWAceUpdater ^^
yannster Mar 23rd 2008 12:04PM
I would also recommend wowmatrix.com for people (like me) that have a couple of non-Ace addon or use Macs (or Linux). I also find the interface a lot cleaner. :D
Patyn Mar 23rd 2008 2:38PM
I love WoWMatrix too. It's been easy to use and very convenient!
PeeWee Mar 23rd 2008 12:33PM
Step 1: Use all 'Ace' addons from wowace.com
Step 2: Run the WoWAceUpdater after the 2.4 patch.
Step 3: ...
Step 4: Profit!
^^
But I agree.
Tirion Mar 23rd 2008 12:51PM
Is it just me, or does AceUpdater put a lot of unwanted mystery AddOns in everyone else's interface file? Makes me a little nervous.
Lori Mar 23rd 2008 2:01PM
I used an autoupdater (NOT Ace) once and got extra addons, too. One or some of them screwd up my UI and left it that way even after I deleted them. It took two days to get it back the way it was, so I'm also afraid to use them.
Sakerin Mar 23rd 2008 2:25PM
They are probably dependencies and/or libraries for your mods that it downloaded for you automatically (since you clearly are not capable of doing this yourself based on your comment). Were these not in place your addons would not work and you would be here posting about what a piece of crap the updater is because you fail to understand the concept of dependencies and libraries.
They're pretty much screwed no matter what they do since most people don't understand what's really going on in the background.
Lori Mar 23rd 2008 3:01PM
Well, actually all my addons did work and continued to work after the extraneous addons were deleted.
I didn't say, nor do I think, autoupdaters are "a piece of crap". They may be fine for others but I don't want to use them if I'm going to get new addons that change things I don't want changed.
Tirion Mar 23rd 2008 3:39PM
@8
I understand what dependencies and libraries are, thank you for your concern. What I experienced were AddOns that functioned perfectly well before these additional Mods appeared, and continued to function after they were deleted. I'm not calling the updater a "piece of crap," so please unclench yourself (though you clearly are not capable of doing this yourself based on your comment). ;P
Slayblaze Mar 23rd 2008 12:51PM
That page is incredible - great job and kudos to WoWInterface !!
I do use WAUpdater of course, but I also have about 20 non-Ace mods. I'm also using this opportunity to prune my a few off my list that are no longer used, so this will be a huge help.
lord hobo Mar 23rd 2008 2:38PM
Ive been using Curse for the 3 months ive been playing wow now while i have had no issues with it im willing to give Wowace a try.
Fanryn Mar 23rd 2008 3:00PM
Ace isn't just a site to download mods from, it's a set of shared libraries that modders can use to make mods. The way the Ace system works, if you download three mods that make use of the same library, only one copy of the library will be loaded instead of three, saving you some system resources (as I understand it).
It's a very useful setup for modders and players alike. You can find Ace mods on Curse, but you can find pretty much all of them on the Ace site.
Scrooge Mar 23rd 2008 4:01PM
Any of the auto updaters play well with Macs?
Kilim Mar 23rd 2008 5:12PM
WoWAceUpdater (http://www.lsmason.com/software/wowaceupdater/) runs beautifully in OS X 10.5.
merchantmedia Mar 23rd 2008 7:02PM
I use World of Warcraft UI Updater (see link below) and it draws from all the main sites to update my mods. It gives you the option to download "externals" or to turn it off (for those of you who are nervous about extra files being placed into your addons folder).
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wuu
Sinnu Mar 23rd 2008 10:41PM
Auto-updaters can be a great time saver, but anyone considering them needs to be aware that some of them have been compromised repeatedly in the past and keyloggers have been autodownloaded and installed for you by these oh-so-helpful programs. And then you be pwned.
ui.worldofwar.net I remember in particular being hit multiple times with this sort of issue... and usually denying it and refusing to do anything about it for some time after it is first caught.
Be aware. Be warned. Downloading and installing everything yourself is always the safest option.
Yaimano Mar 24th 2008 2:18AM
I hear everyone going on about WoWAce but when I tried it nothing would freakin work, I spent hours trying to figure out why Cartographer and the nodes data were being bitchy then I just deleted the stupid thing and got them off Curse, and it all worked fine. So eh.