Addon Spotlight: Mr. Plow
Welcome, my friends, to this week's late Addon Spotlight, where we'll be looking at a little tool to help manage your inventory. First of all, I would highly recommend reading through Matthew Porter's Big bag blowout series over at The Creamy GUI Center, it's not only a fantastic look at many inventory options, but builds a solid foundation for your inventory addon needs. Given all that good information, I thought I'd pipe in with a look at Mr. Plow, an inventory stacker I use in conjunction with Bagnon.I never could get used to inventory addons that auto-sorted my bags into categories; I just wanted something to consolidate all of my bags into one window. That said, I am also somewhat obsessive about an orderly inventory, and had no problem taking time to organize my inventory so that items I got from grinding or quests were found at the top of the window, where I could easily sell and use them at my discretion.
Then came along Mr. Plow, the handy bag stacker that will organize and compress your bags for that neat and orderly look that former Army sergeants require of their inventory.I really need to extend credit to the reader that tipped me off to this addon. So, Skylark, if are still reading the column, thanks a million for the head's up, this addon is now a regular part of my UI.
Once you've got Mr. Plow installed, you'll be able to access the commands using the following slash command:
- /mp
Mr. Plow will do perform three major services to your bags and bank. First of all is the "Stack" function, which will create item stacks for you, compressing your inventory to reclaim some space. Second is the "Plow" function, which will shove your inventory into the corner so you've got some room to work with in your bags. (The author calls this defragmenting your inventory.) Finally, Mr. Plow will sort your inventory, grouping items into categories.
There is also an option called "The Works" which will run all three functions on your inventory, which has become the standard for me. My bank and bags are wired so tight that I have every confidence that I could pass the toughest inspection. There a few other options that you can play with, none of which change the fundamental functionality so I won't go crazy about them.
So, some of you may not see the logic in using two mods to do what many single addons do already. Call me weird, but I've not been able to kick my addiction to Bagnon, with its simplicity, and Mr Plow's focused purpose. So, given the overload of inventory addon love from The Creamy GUI Center and Addon Spotlight, what are you using to manage your booty? Dismissed.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Verses Aug 4th 2008 3:14PM
A couple of weeks ago I got really sick of the memory usage of Arkinventory, so i switched to Bagnon and Mr. Plow, it keeps my inventory tidy and I can actually switch bags with more ease for about half the memory usage and less unused features.
Squishy Aug 4th 2008 3:15PM
An alternative is BankStack.
http://files.wowace.com/BankStack/BankStack.zip
I can't remember why I switched a year ago, but I did.
Abedabun Aug 5th 2008 4:34AM
Because Bankstack runs so much more quickly, and can be used on guild banks, maybe.
Phil Aug 4th 2008 3:26PM
Still just using OneView (which wraps up OneBag, OneRing, and OneBank into one bundle). I tend to manually manage my items just the way I like them so I don't think I'd want a plugin doing it for me.
pkeller Aug 4th 2008 3:34PM
lol, I was worried I was the only one who obsessively spent time organizing and categorizing all my toons' bags and bank slots....and on occassion my guild's bank. Ok... maybe I have a slight problem, but it's good that I admit it even if I keep doing it, right? :P
marck Aug 4th 2008 3:36PM
"Call Mr. Plow, that's my name, that name again is Mr. Plow."
Personally I prefer plow king. ;-)
Kuhtarl Aug 4th 2008 4:36PM
I hear they're making a Spanish version of the Plow King on the next release.
Bunkai Aug 4th 2008 3:37PM
I've not tried Mr. Plow, but Baggins is so much better than Bagnon, IMO, that there's no challenge. Baggins will do all that Bagnon will do... plus more.
It has been a few months since I've used Bagnon, but I don't know that I would ever go back.
tuller Aug 4th 2008 4:03PM
The appeal of Bagnon is that it does less.
Bunkai Aug 4th 2008 4:08PM
Point taken...
Bagnon is definitely more minimalistic than Baggins.
Dightkuz Aug 4th 2008 3:45PM
I don't like changes so I'm gonna stick with Bagnon ;D
Nicholas Hayes Aug 4th 2008 4:26PM
Is there a Mr. Plow for the guild bank yet? Is someone working on that?
Abedabun Aug 5th 2008 4:34AM
Bankstack works on guildbank
Nicholas Hayes Aug 5th 2008 4:02PM
I tried bank stack with the guild bank and could not get it to work. It ways I need to be at the bank even though I have the guild bank window open. any thoughts?
Kemayo Aug 6th 2008 6:02AM
Bankstack only interacts with the guild bank through slashcommands. If you were just clicking the fubar plugin, it would be trying to sort your personal bank.
You can do, say, "/sort guild1" to sort tab 1 of the guild bank.
(This really is a deliberate design choice. Meddling with the guild bank is slow, and can annoy others. Rearranging the whole thing should require a very deliberate action to be taken.)
Nicholas Hayes Aug 7th 2008 5:04AM
Awesome, works perfect. thank you
Lucid Aug 4th 2008 4:56PM
I've been a fan of Mr. Plow (and Bagnon) for a long time but havent found an updated version for the good portion of a year now. The last version I had found very rarely functioned with my favorite feature : bankstack. I hate finding out i've been deleting items to make space and i've got heroic badges or pvp tokens in both my inventory and bank. I resorted to using a mod called simply "Sort" (maybe sortfu, not sure) which works significantly faster then MrPlow (it shuffles your inventory in groups of ~10 items, ussually taking only a few seconds whereas mr plow replaces each item one by one) and I'm happy with it but it doesnt have bankstack.
I'm glad it appears to have been updated and I'll be happy to give an old favorite mod a try. Hopefully they've updated the speed.
Guild bank sorting would be freaken awesome but im pretty sure the UI doesn't play well and give mods easy access to it, or else we'd see at least a few mods that could do it. I havent yet seen a mod that can do anything with the guild bank aside from record its contents.
As much as i hate it when blizzard obsoletes the hard work of some mod developers, I think an built-in sort feature is long overdue. It would be far quicker and more accurate due to being native.
Soatari Aug 4th 2008 6:20PM
Mr. Plow has updated versions released on Wowace.
Kalabus Aug 4th 2008 5:27PM
for those who disire an easy method to organise your bank I use this tidbit of info, I buy diferent bags for my bank, a minning bag, a jewelcrafters bag ect. so I have bigger bags for a low price and an effective way to organise my stuff in the bank, its easy to acess as well click on your bank ... looking for ore guess what I only have to open my mining bag filled with goodies.
jbodar Aug 4th 2008 8:27PM
Yeah, but what happens when all your inventory bags are Netherweave, for example? Where does all the rest of your stuff go? I can't fathom playing without a bag mod now. It's like going from Firefox + addons to IE6. I tried many but Engbags works the best for my needs. The only downside is that Engbags uses a fair chunk of RAM which takes its toll on my aging PC.