Most guilds require their players to have at least some add-ons that make raiding and doing 5-man dungeons more bearable – threat meters like Omen and boss-fight helpers like Deadly Boss Mods, but while those add-ons are functional, and while they may be some of your favorites because playing the game without them can be less fun, let’s hear about some of your favorite add-ons for World of Warcraft!

What are some of the add-ons that have customized or tweaked your interface or your gameplay style to the point where if something happened to them you’d be lost, or at least looking for a suitable replacement? Are there any that have gone out of development that you miss to this day? Sound off in the comments and we’ll use your favorites in an upcoming feature!

Rumors were flying at the end of last week that Blizzard would begin throttling server information requests, like inspection requests used by mouse-over add-ons that look at the gear of the player being examined piece by piece – like the infamous GearScore.

Just as soon as the rumors started to hit the boiling point and people on both sides of the discussion were claiming hallelujah, this was the end for GearScore or alternatively, how dare Blizzard target GearScore with a change like this, Nethaera made a post on the official forums to both confirm the point and clarify the reasoning behind it:

It’s important to understand that the throttling that is being done isn’t intended to break any functionality of add-ons, but merely to control the amount of queries that are being sent to the server at any given time. (Thus throttling the queries.) The queries will still occur, it just won’t happen as quickly as they currently seem to. You can read the statements that WoW Ace and WoW Interface have up for a bit more information on these changes. We wanted to give mod authors a heads-up prior to making the change so that they could make any adjustments they needed to on their mods.

http://wowinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33432
http://www.wowace.com/announcements/blizzard-to-start-throttling-inspect-requests/

Nethaera makes a great point. I try to keep a technical eye on the machinations behind the scenes at Blizzard (see Additional Instances Cannot Be Launched: A Technical Perspective) and the rationale makes sense. While I don’t think that GearScore alone is breaking the game – which is the defense that some people are raising – I think that the proliferation of add-ons that query the game servers regularly in rapid succession can definitely drag down overall performance, and it wouldn’t take too many people running the same series of add-ons regularly that insist on querying the servers for in-game information that the default UI traditionally doesn’t make available (especially on-mouseover) to drag down server performance for everyone.

Still, what do you think? Is this the end of GearScore and add-ons like it, or will their developers simply find ways to adapt over time? Are you glad to see add-ons like these go, or are they just valuable tools that people are using poorly? Sound off in the comments!

My main is a hunter, so I can appreciate tips like this – the post is written for and tailored to hunters, but the flexibility of Power Auras is all but legendary. You could tie this same arrangement and set of alerts to just about any class and series of abilities! If you do play a hunter, or your main is a hunter, you’ll probably get a lot more out of this amazing post on Power Auras tips over at HuntsmansLodge.com.

It’s a little old, but it’s a more than definitive guide to getting power auras set up for a leveling or a raiding hunter (although raiding hunters will reap the most benefit – if you’re leveling and want to train yourself for raiding, you’ll get a lot of good use from this too) or just making yourself familiar with the add-on so you can tweak it and add your own customizations later on.

I went with some of the default scripts that Garwulf has in the post, and I already can tell a difference – I’m much quicker on the draw than I used to be, and I like that a lot.

Seriously though, as if we needed a way to blend any more addictive things together, now we have TweetCraft, an add-on for World of Warcraft that allows you to keep on top of your Twitter feed while you’re in-game. This way you don’t have to tab-out to update your feed, and you don’t have to take a time-out from raiding to check up on how your friends are doing. This way while everyone is taking a bio break or arguing over loot, you can open up TweetCraft and tell your followers exactly how funny the whole debacle really is.

At the same time, I see how this could be usef legitimately; the folks at WoW.com are known to raid and give away loot card codes and such while they’re raiding – this could make it even easier to interact with people over Twitter while in-game.

That being said, I think that’s about where the legitimacy stops – just like the Peggle add-on, this is pretty much another great way to keep people in-game longer and give people a way to get their fix for one service while getting their fix for another. Now you don’t have to wait until you’re on a gryphon or a wind rider to tab out and read what everyone’s said while you were questing!

Wrath is here, and while I’m all tied up in Northrend (hanging out with the ambassadors of the dragonflights in The DragonBlight right now, actually), some of you are probably getting some Death Knights going or wondering what add-ons might be worthwhile to help you experience all of the new content to its fullest without being frustrated.

Well, a number of the addons that you likely used prior to Wrath still work, and I’m planning a juicy personal roundup of addons that I use to get around in the near future, but the fine folks at WoW Insider posted their essential addons for Wrath just before the expansion hit. Some of them are great, some of them are useless, some of them are class specific, but they’re all worth taking a look at if you’re interested in some addons that enhance your gameplay.

Do you have any favorite addons that you simply can’t play without? When a patch hits, which addon do you wait for before you start playing again? Let us know in the comments.

I’d like to tell you all about a nifty mod I’ve been using that makes me happy, happy, happy. It’s called Call To Arms and actually allows the global LFG channel to be what it was meant to be — a global LFG channel.
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Trinket Menu

Why am I always the last one to know about these things? I had the stupidest Trinket organization bar thingy in DAB and all this time it was right there in front of me at Curse.

I have two simple requests. No, make that three.

1. Can someone please make a voice activated addon so I can just yell “CHARGE”, “HAMSTRING”, “REND” and “MORTAL STRIKE”, “on that lvl 60 rogue over by the tree”?

2. Can I get an advance copy before everyone else?

3. Can I have a cut of the millions because I thought of it?

C’mon geeks why don’t we have this yet? YELLING FTW!

Every couple of weeks or so I go on an addon trawl and what better time to do it when you’re BlizzardPatchDownloader seems to be stuck on 84%?

ChatIgnore – Unfortunately, there are some people in the world you’d rather not listen to, this helps you achieve blissful silence from those annoying people. Right Click on someone’s name and not only do you get a Whisper option, you also get an Ignore.

Eloquence – Quite possibly the most exciting addon, I’ve seen in a while. This is the final solution to 1337 speak etc.

Panza – Finally this is out of Beta, and I’d recommend any healer to check it out. Feature rich is an understatement! Originally written as a Paladin Only addon called ‘Paladin Assistant’, the auto-buff, auto-heal and panic macros are something to be amazed at. The more people who use this the better as this addon speaks to other users and can make the most of healing by initating a co-operative setting. A must try addon.

Fizzwidget’s Linkerator – Not a new addon, but it’s added auto-complete functionality means that users of addons like LootLink/ItemsMatrix/KC_Items/ etc might want to port over to this lovely addon. It basically remembers items you’ve seen and if you type them out in chat e.g. (by typing [light-) it will try and autocomplete and autolink the item for you. If you don’t use the full functionality of those heavyweight item addons, try this one out.

Enjoy.

Ok I’m sure everyone has wondered. What’s under the last layer of clothes I can’t take off that female night elf? Well sady I have the answer. David Robinson’s World of Warcraft Naked Mod makes all naked bodies of characters and the model of the succubus appear naked with body hair and nipples. Ya I know… I’m gonna Burn in MC for this.
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