Addons & You

SaladFork of Omen of Clarity fame posted a list of five questions about Add-ons in the Blogstorming section of BlogAzeroth. Since I'm good at lists, I thought I'd pick up the challenge and go with it.

He asked,

• How many addons do you have?
• What addons can you not live without?
  
• If you met someone new to the game using the default UI, what addons would you recommend they start with?
• What are important qualities you look for when you look for new addons?
  
• How do you usually find new addons? Are they recommended to you? Do you search for them? Are they required by your guild?
  
• What sort of layout does your UI have?

For the number of addons I have, its a pretty strange answer. I was a beta tester for the MazzleUI from WowInterface. Since beginning the beta (almost a year and a half ago now) I have for the most part let the latest build of the compilation dictate what's in my UI. I have added a few things, and replaced some. Those things are GroupCalendar, Omen, Violation, Ogri'lazy and sometimes Auctioneer. I will state clearly, that MazzleUI is not as updated as it once was, and it's so nearly deprecated it's not funny. But I'm not code smart enough to fix it. The absolute things I can't live without are having the 5-man units at the bottom of the screen which makes healing easier and the autoplacement of spells into bars. Those two just rock hard.

The addons I can't live without are, a threat meter (Omen), better Unit Frames (DUF/sRaid Frames), and some bar mod (Bongos).

For a total newbie to UI modification, I'd start them with Mazzle if I could talk them into it. If not, they must absolutely have a threat meter. Useful only in groups (unless playing a hunter or lock), nothing says "Hey, I know what I'm doing" more than a threat meter.

For new add-ons, I always look for the Ace alternative. Since so many of my mods are Ace mods, I like to keep it in the family.

I usually find new add-ons through word of mouth. And for me, "word of mouth" includes reading others blogs and listening to the few podcasts I actually remember to download.

Layout for me, is pretty much built into Mazzle. But I think it's a clean compilation which puts important information in the right places. It keeps the center of the field of view open so you can see the most important thing -- what's going on in game without hiding it behind addon windows.

So, that's my post. I hope this is my welcome back to regular blogging!!

So. Here's a shot of my UI...With the bonus of the bottom of Karazhan included...

You Eye

Since I got a comment from yesterdays posting about the UI, I thought I could post on that. Here's another posting with another UI picture, this on in combat.

That said, I'll refer everyone who is interested to WoW Interface where you can search for MazzleUI. This is what it looks like. I don't really know what to say about it. I've been using it since beta testing (over a year for me now) and in the dark days when UI's break, I'm so ineffective I generally don't do anything of any consequence. The pieces of the UI that I'm most happy with in Karazhan are the respawn timers (Incubator from ACE, on the left side of the screen midway), the HUD (an integral part of the compilation), and the buttons (Bongos1 in the UI, but the cool thing is they skills & spells are placed automagically). I'm also fond of the Context Menu (that 4x4 block of buttons hovering above the maintank windows). The 3D models are also pretty cool-they pictures are animated and do semi-random emotes.

Next - A significant milestone.

I CAN HAZ INTRFAYCE?

So, like patch 2.2 hits and my UI totally freaking breaks. I spent several hours last night doing three things in a iterative fashion. And by iterative I don't mean the orderly kind of iterative where you do step one, then step two, then step three, then back to step one.

Instead I did step three, then two, then three, then one, then one, then two, etc.

The three things I did are:

• Try to fix my old UI
• Try to download a new UI I liked
• Try to put together a brand new UI all my own from random bits.

So. The bottom line is I didn't get to play and I'm frustrated.

Hate you Blizzard. Hope you get thrown in a pool.

*Edit*

Hate you less Blizzard. Got the UI working - sorta. Just want to mention that getting thrown into a pool is still in play.

*Edit*