Breakfast Topic: How do you cope with broken addons?
by Ken Easthouse 
May 11th 2011 at 8:00AM
Our guild did a lot of prep work for Patch 4.1. Several of us got together before the patch went live and formed groups to clear Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub. There were promises of new loot, new bosses, new mechanics and new features that were very exciting, especially for a "minor" content patch.
Upon logging in, however, we all immediately noticed several addons were broken or were breaking the game. Recount and Skada caused a lot of problems the first day, but so did Deadly Boss Mods, Bagnon, Mik's Scrolling Battle Text, and dozens of others, before they were updated later that evening.
For the most part, my main (a shadowpriest) was unaffected. I simply turned off Recount and kept rolling. None of my DoT timers needed fixing, and everything else was purely cosmetic or out-of-combat-oriented (although Bagnon got annoying after a while). My blood death knight, however, had major issues when my rune tracker wasn't working. It got to the point I couldn't play him, simply because I was so flustered with trying to track my runes using the native UI. All my plans for tanking dungeons for new mounts went right out the window; instead, I opted to try to make money enchanting for all the new gear that was just introduced.
When your favorite addons break, do you change your game plan for the day? Do your addons change how you play the game or your comfort levels with your characters?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Tenebrae May 11th 2011 8:06AM
Carbonite broke pretty bad at first, stopped me from any serious kind of playing until some great person posted the fix on the carbonite forums. I can deal without most addons, but carbonite is just so central to my play experience.
Ebrion May 11th 2011 8:16AM
This. I can't do my dalies or my question on alts without it.
Rezai May 11th 2011 8:23AM
I used to be the same way but there was about two weeks it seemed where carbonite didn't update when 4.0 released. I got used to looking at the numbers on the map and planning accordingly . I do wish blizz could make is so you can do the same on the mini-map (like carbonite) but I have been carbonite free for awhile now.
edgeblade May 11th 2011 9:15AM
I was stuck without it for a bit too, but then I found out they had a beta posted on their site and installed that. It's worked fine ever since.
Elmouth May 11th 2011 9:49AM
Addons are easy, you should ask how people cope with broken Mods.
Zhiva May 11th 2011 8:07AM
I download working versions of those which were updated and fix those which weren't. Well, some. If it's not too much work :)
DarkWalker May 11th 2011 1:05PM
Same here.
Knowing enough lua to fix an addon is a lifesaver sometimes. It also allows me to, usually, cobble together a fix for a misbehaving addon in a few minutes while I wait for the updated version (although often said fix removes some of it's functionality), as well as to keep using unsupported addons for which there is no modern equivalent.
MusedMoose May 11th 2011 8:11AM
I don't use many addons, but if something goes wrong with one, I just do some research and find another to do the same job. Case in point: I used to use a rare-tracker called Silver Dragon until I noticed it had a major memory leak. After it found a rare, I could just sit there and watch the amount of memory it used go up, and up, and up... @_@ So I swapped it for NPC_Scan and haven't looked back.
I just hope that if Healbot ever breaks horribly I can find something that works the same, and quickly, or healing will suddenly get a lot more difficult. Oi.
Mau May 11th 2011 8:13AM
A true warchief wouldn't use add-ons!
GhostWhoWalks May 11th 2011 8:14AM
I go fairly light with the addons, so they don't factor into my gameplay much. There is one, however, that gives me headaches if it's not working: Altoholic. I rely on it so much to check the professions of my alts and keep track of my item stocks, among other useful functions, that when it breaks due to a patch I feel almost blind.
Hairfish May 11th 2011 9:24AM
Altoholic here, too. It "broke" last night, which turned out to be a local glitch that fixed itself after a personal restart. I have 11 addons, and could live without most of them -- in fact, only four are loaded all the time. If either Altoholic or MapNotes isn't working, though, I feel...handicapped.
Lyn May 11th 2011 10:19AM
Aye this. While I try not to allow myself to be too dependent on addons, and don't absolutely need any to play, I have come to rely on altoholic (well, and dbm in raid) pretty heavily ever since I discovered it. Very frustrating when it breaks.
Eirik May 11th 2011 3:37PM
I can recommend BankItems as a replacement for Altaholic. All BankItems does is track items and tokens among your alts, banks, and guildbanks.
For recipe information, I can pull up a guild roster listing of professions, enable "see offline members" if needed, and look at the "All" list for the profession I want. Shows who has the recipe, the recipes they have.
About the only thing I can't do with this combination is compare world event achievements.
bjorn9486 May 11th 2011 8:16AM
I could play 4.1 without any addons but Bartender 4; I discovered on that day how important it was to have all my keys lined up and in one spot.
ikkewow May 11th 2011 8:16AM
when patch 4.1 hit, balance power tracker got messed up and as a balance druid, this is my single most important addon. I just couldn't play without it. Thank god it got fixed short after though
razion May 11th 2011 8:16AM
My add-ons are usually aesthetic. Add-ons like SexyMap, and etc. That said, I've never had an add-on "break" before. I'm usually paranoid about being up-to-date on things like files, so I tend to check the sites while the loading screen bars are going through or when I'm in a queue and have nothing else to do during it. None of my add-ons particularly change my play-style, as I like to stick as close to the original game's intent as possible (in short, I'm a purist).
That said I only got into add-ons this expansion, and played completely unaltered from original WoW up through vanilla to Wrath (and yes, even raided like this [very successfully, I might add]). I have no problems at all using the original UI. However, when I do have to use it I always shrink it down to that 0.1 level to make it take up as little of the screen as possible so I can see more of what's going on.
Samutz May 11th 2011 8:16AM
Some addons I can live without for a while, such as recount and msbt. Otherwise, I go looking for comments on curse, or look for the author's official website, for newer updates or 3rd party temporary fixes.
Rezai May 11th 2011 8:19AM
As long as bartender is okay I'm good. It takes me awhile but I generally get used to everything except the bars. The bar's are all over the place and take up way too much room. I wait a day or two and they always update. When they don't......... well I'm not going to think about that.
Anti May 11th 2011 10:34AM
What Rez says. Anything but Bartender. It is so integral to me, if it breaks I don't play until it gets updated. Everything else is just aesthetics.
Tsukuri May 11th 2011 8:21AM
I don't use many addon's so i don't really encounter these problems much. However because I work i don't download the patch until about 6, by which time most addons are updated. The only addon which can interfere with my gameplay is Heal-bot for obvious reasons, but I mainly play dps on my chars so it's not too much of an impact.