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Posts with tag addon

Addons that you wish were still around

It is a rare occurence in the World of Warcraft that a player-made addon attains such great heights in effectiveness and popularity that it is essentially quashed. One of the most recent examples of an addon overstepping its bounds was AVR, the augmented reality mod that allowed players to "draw" on the game world. While the main purpose of the addon was to show players physical areas and locations to move to or be safe in during Icecrown boss encounters, the real treasure was buried in AVR's sharing feature.

What AVR did is not doable anymore, since Blizzard removed the ability for addons to do the type of "drawing" on the world that it showcased. Other addons like Antiarc's Poison Swapper were just too powerful and forced Blizzard's hand in changing the way rogue poisons work.

Addons have a rich history in World of Warcraft, with many of our favorites gone the way of the dinosaurs. Which addons, for better or worse, do you wish were still in game? Any addons that you miss from the early days like Cosmos and player-made minigames? Sound off in the comments.

Filed under: Add-Ons

Top addons and UI settings for PvP

WoW Insider covers the world of player vs. player action in Blood Sport for fans of Battleground, world PvP and Arena play. Steering you to victory is Olivia Grace, who spends most of her time in Azeroth as a restoration shaman turning people into frogs.

While derided by some purists, addons are a very useful part of your gameplay. In my opinion, they're far from being something that only people who don't know how to play have to use. Addons can help you improve. It should be noted that at top-level Arena tournaments, teams have to play without addons, so if that is your eventual aim, bear that in mind and try to use them to learn rather than becoming dependent on them. I'm not the most technical of ladies, so what you won't find here is anything that needs coding skill or an intimate knowledge of .lua to edit. And, while basic UI modifications are often pretty straightforward, they can still help you enormously.

So for the PvPer, what would I recommend? First things first -- let's get involved in that interface screen. Go into the Interface menu by pressing Escape, click on Combat, and put a tick in that Class Colors in Nameplates box. Why? Well now, instead of uniform red nameplates hovering over your enemies' heads, you have class-colored ones. Remember how I was telling you about reacting to situations? Well, if you don't know who's trying to kill you, how can you react? If you don't have enemy nameplates at all, head to Names and fix that right now! And get your hands out of your pockets!

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Filed under: PvP, Blood Sport (Arena PvP)

Lichborne: 3 quick tips to step up your death knight's game

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

So you know your rotations. You know your gear priorities. You know what to reforge, which buttons to hit, and how to stay out of the fire. These are all good things. Yet still, you feel like you're missing something. Maybe you feel like you could crank out another 1-2k DPS on some fights. Maybe you feel like your health keeps dropping a little low when you tank.

Sometimes, the problem with problems like these is that it's not a big glaring thing you're forgetting (nor is it forgetting to drop your favorite lucky vanity item). Sometimes, it's just that you need to tighten up your play just a little bit. This week, we're going to take a look at a few simple tricks that hopefully a lot of you can use just to shore up your play and go the extra mile.

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Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Gold Capped: Inventory balancing in TradeSkillMaster

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

TradeSkillMaster is the most powerful addon used to automate crafting and batch posting, and today, we'll be learning how to fine-tune the number of items created based on your selling history. Generally, when you started using TSM, you set up a default number of items for each trade skill group that you wanted it to keep in stock. For example, I told it to:
  • Always craft enough scrolls that I had two on the auction house when they were profitable.
  • Always craft enough of each meta-gem cut to ensure that I always had three on the AH when they were profitable.
Now when I hit the Restock Queue button in enchanting or jewelcrafting, it queues up enough stock to bring my inventory levels to two scrolls or three gems. What if I invested in some recipe I sell a lot more of, though?

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Addon Spotlight: ThinkTank sets you up for tanking fast

Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same.

Tanking in Cataclysm has simultaneously become the most reviled and most desired role players can choose. The random Dungeon Finder and Cataclysm's change in mechanics has created an odd world for tanks to live and thrive in, one of dependence and expectation. Blizzard's goal is to make more players into tanks, through the inclusion of tanking-specific heirlooms as well as rewards like the Call to Arms bag feature that launched with patch 4.1, providing extra rewards to players who chose to queue up as a much-desired tank. For the most part, Blizzard's efforts have been working well.

During deep contemplation, a state which I frequent a lot these days, it dawned on me that I would love to be able to give new and budding tanks a list of resources for user interface tips to make their tanking lives easier. What better way to introduce more tanks to the game than by taking some of the mystery of the tanking UI out from the shadows and make a recommendation for a tank UI? So I began to search the internet, looking for the right UI to recommend for players who want to make a tank alt or for new players interested in the vital tanking role. Let me introduce you to ThinkTank.

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Filed under: Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight

Gold Capped: Cataclysm glyph addons

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

The glyph market has spawned quite a few of the important modern auction house addons. It's a uniquely challenging market, as there are hundreds of different products, each with their own balance of suppliers, buyers, and materials. The challenges faced by early glyph producers were met by a hodgepodge of fairly complex addons and macros, and only recently have unified solutions began to appear. I remember that at one point, I had addons to:
  • Keep track of how many glyphs I had on the AH, in various characters' banks and in their inventories.
  • Allow me to queue a list of glyphs and build a materials list (that allowed me to buy the vendor mats with one click).
  • Automatically queue enough glyphs in the second addon to assure that I kept stock levels at my desired level.
  • Automatically post every glyph I made onto the AH.
The tasks needed for this market are not unique, and so the most important tool that can trace its origin to the glyph market is certainly TradeSkillMaster. TSM is an addon that I've covered before, and it's built from the ground up to be perfect for glyphs. It's also perfect for a lot of other markets, but mostly those you can treat like glyphs.

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Gold Capped: Profiting with tailoring

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Tailoring is a profession often accused of being a profitless pursuit. While any profession can be unprofitable if you try hard enough, let's talk about some of the things you can do with tailoring. I'm going to start with the market that's newest for this expansion: PvP gear.

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Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Gold Capped: TradeSkillMaster advanced guide

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

edit: This is the TSM advanced guide, which assumes you've read at least the basic guide, if not the introductory description of the addon.

So last time we talked about TradeSkillMaster, it was just to go over the basics of the crafting queue. Let's finish the guide and talk about how to set up TSM so that it requires nothing more than a few minutes a day to get your work done.

First thing we'll want to do is update the addon. Since the last post, there's been a new version posted that's ironed out a few bugs. Don't forget to update the Crafting, Auctioning, and Shopping modules as well. The others haven't been changed.

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Filed under: Economy, Add-Ons, Gold Capped

Encrypted Text: Customizing Power Auras for your rogue

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. This week, we discuss one of my favorite addons.

Rogues hate unpredictability. Chance is what the others will try to stand on, and a well-prepared rogue will pull that pillar out from under them. Rogues perform at their peak efficiency when they're setting the tempo. While it may seem like chaos to the uninitiated, a veteran rogue is always in control. In order to properly manage our energy, combo points, and cooldowns, we need to stay several steps ahead of our opponents.

Our talent trees and rotations reflect our love of predictability. Aside from the occasional talent like Ruthlessness, we don't rely on chance for anything. In the past, chance has encroached on our playstyle in a few areas, but those have largely been eliminated. Cloak of Shadows and Sap are now guarantees, and we don't have to hope that we get lucky with Initiative or Vanish. Our rotation is in always our control.

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Filed under: Rogue, (Rogue) Encrypted Text

Gold Capped: TradeSkillMaster basic guide

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

edit: This is the basic setup guide for TSM. The advanced guide assumes you've read this, and you might want to read the basic description of what the addon does.

So you've decided to up your game and install an addon that lets you manage more types of auction house business in the same amount of time. All I've done so far is tease people, so I figure it's about time I wrote a TradeSkillMaster guide.

First things first: The addon on its own does nothing. You will need to download every one of the modules separately.

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Filed under: Economy, Add-Ons, Gold Capped

Gold Capped: TradeSkillMaster, the last trade skill and finances addon you'll ever need


Every week (since Feb. 14, 2010), WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, hate mail, or guild applications!

edit: This post introduces the addon and concepts, but for a hands on setup guide, check out the basic and advanced posts.

I have been playing around with a new addon, TradeSkillMaster. I've talked about a whole slew of other tools players can use to make money before, but none of them are anywhere near as awesome as TSM. Before I jump in, though, you should all probably know that this addon is still in beta. There are a few little bugs I've encountered (and reported), but the addon works very well in its current state. Please note that when you download the addon, you will need to download each module separately, as the entirety of the addon's functionality is accessed through the modules. They are linked in the description section of the TSM main page, but if you have a Curse Premium account, you can get them all at once.

TSM is now my main tool for every single one of the markets I'm active in. That said, Sapu, the creator of the addon, needs help. He's done 95% of the code on the project so far, so if any of you are looking for an opportunity to work on an exciting and popular World of Warcraft addon project, I'd be just thrilled if it was this one. Down to business: what does TradeSkillMaster do, and why am I so excited that I wrote a post about it before it's done?

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Filed under: Economy, Add-Ons, Gold Capped

Blood Sport: Awesome arena addons and also ample alliteration

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more.

Listening Music: Dead or Alive with "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)." Long live the '80s.

Today's column is about nifty arena addons. Changing up your PvP UI for the better is an awesome way to improve your awareness of what's going on. Having easy access to valuable information can often be the difference between a win and a loss. We'll be discussing the best addons to use for a variety of different aspects within the arena.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Add-Ons, Blood Sport (Arena PvP)

Gold Capped: Auctionator addon helps you buy, sell and profit


Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For Gold Capped's inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! This week's gold blogosphere post is Kaliope's Cataclysm jewelcrafting coverage.

Auctionator is a simple, lightweight addon that allows you to do some pretty basic stuff very efficiently. I've said before that there are some serious problems with the auction house interface, and even though the last design pass left it in a better situation than it was before, it's still pretty bad for a few reasons:
  • You can't see the price of your competition when you are listing your auctions.
  • The default suggested price is absolute nonsense and doesn't contain a buyout.
  • You can't see the unit price for auctions when you buy.
  • You can't sort by anything useful when you buy.
  • You can't save searches to avoid retyping each time.
None of these are game-breaking, but they're the reason every single person with over 100,000g uses addons. I am still an Auctioneer user, but while its dev team was sitting on a nonfunctional development build when patch 4.0.1 broke the addon, I had to go elsewhere to avoid being tormented by the almost functional default interface. I discovered that of all the addons I played with, Auctionator is the one that will remain part of my toolbox going forward, simply because it has a few killer features that I find easier to use for some tasks.

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Filed under: Economy, Add-Ons, Gold Capped

Insider Trader: Using Auction Profit Master and ZeroAuctions to sell

Insider Trader is a column about professions, written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, who also writes Gold Capped. Basil can't figure out a way to make this a full-sized post, so he's just going to write it here: the gold cap is 1 million now. Email Basil with your questions.

In my recent post about using addons to more efficiently craft, I promised that I'd explain how to use these same Quick Auctions-based addons to sell. The basic workings of both Auction Profit Master and ZeroAuctions are actually quite simple. You give it a list of items, and you give your list a pricing scheme. Each time you batch post, it goes through your inventory looking for items on your lists to post.

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Filed under: Economy, Insider Trader (Professions)

Gold Capped News: Critical AH addons broken by patch 4.0.1

Welcome to a special edition of Gold Capped. Every week, this column (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday (or whenever there's breaking news). Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail!

If you were to install the PTR right now and try to post a batch of auctions for sale with your favorite addon, there's a good chance it wouldn't work. Blizzard has changed the way that addons can interact with the auction house so that it's no longer possible to queue up a large volume of auctions and let them post while you read my columns.

Both Auctioneer and Quickauctions 3 have been hit hard, obviously. These are the most commonly used addons for queuing up a bunch of auctions. The rule previously seemed to be that we're not allowed to buy in batches, but we are allowed to sell in batches. Well, it looks like Blizzard has decided that we can no longer sell in batches, either. In addition, QA3 has lost its ability to automatically cancel auctions that have been undercut. The new patch requires a hardware event per action, and this has not (at the time of publishing) been written into these addons.

So what is a batch? Since you can queue up multiple stacks of the same item using the default UI, that seems to be allowed still. What is no longer allowed is putting together a list of different types of items that you want to sell at the same time. Take heart, dear reader: There is a workaround!

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Filed under: Economy, Add-Ons, Cataclysm, Gold Capped

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