For a big chunk of the gaming population, addons are mysterious things you download and hope will run. But for many talented people, they're an opportunity to help the community and make things easier for the rest of us.
Well, some of the tedium has been taken out of addon writing with the help of Microsoft. What?? Yep, you read that right. Microsoft loves WoW, too. Using CodePlex, their open-source project site, they have helped create an Addon Studio for WoW based on the Visual Studio package. The download contains everything you need to create addons, so don't worry if you aren't the owner of Visual Studio already.
So what does this mean exactly? The project team has converted the addon writing process from text and code to drag and drop. You get the look and feel of common programs like Visual Basic but with the command structure of WoW. By having the process be graphic, you just pick and choose what you want from the list.
Specifically, Addon Studio will provide an interface that allows addon creators to build in familiar surroundings. You'll also have the ability to auto-generate items like the table of contents or lua events. Error checking for FrameXML and Lua parsing also helps to speed the addon process up. Likewise, they have included Ace2 templates so you can still tap into one of the most commonly used addon libraries and updater systems.
Long-term, this should open up addon creation to those that enjoy dablling with programing, but don't have the time or skill to build them without a bit more structure. And that can only be a good thing.
[Thanks, Jason!]

















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-17-2007 @ 4:53PM
draeth said...
Can someone please tell me how to get addons??? Ive tried countless versions, dl'd them, unzipped them in the addon folder blah blah blah and every time i boot up wow their never there, i have no idea what im doing wrong.
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12-17-2007 @ 5:25PM
James said...
The blah blah blah part of your post could be where the problem is. When you start up WoW, there is a button that says 'Add Ons' at the character selection screen. You need to make sure everything in there is turned on, and see if the add on is maybe out of date.
12-17-2007 @ 5:33PM
Khanmora said...
The UI and Macros forums can answer your question, just follow the guide stickied here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=9339C381AC8D85ADF391C422BE48D934?topicId=442927843&sid=1
12-17-2007 @ 5:01PM
Aaron said...
I hope its done in ace2 :p
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12-17-2007 @ 6:10PM
Marcie Knox said...
It's compatable with Ace2, yes. But the user interface to write the code is different.
12-17-2007 @ 6:17PM
Corrine said...
The UI and Macro forum's response to the addon can be found here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3466286997&sid=1
Some negative comments in there, it looks like. I still need to learn to program addons before I can make my own comments, though.
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12-17-2007 @ 6:39PM
theremover said...
it's too bad so many tools like this are platform specific. There are lots of similar development packages available that are cross platform that could have been used to create this. I hope someone will give the mac users some love in this dept. soon.
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12-17-2007 @ 7:05PM
draeth said...
the blah blah blah isnt important, the important part is that i have the folders unzipped in my addon folder and there is no ADDON button in the bottom of the character selection screen so idk whats the problem.
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12-17-2007 @ 7:33PM
Locane said...
derth, when you unzip them, you also have to make sure they aren't nested ie : you unzip "thisaddon" and it creates a folder named "thisaddon" inside it will usually be a folder named "thisaddon" and thats the one you need to move.
so unzipped to /thisaddon/thisaddon/(addone files)
12-17-2007 @ 7:48PM
James said...
Okay, could be that your addons sense what a whiny twit you are and won't work for you. I think they added that in 2.2.
12-18-2007 @ 12:35PM
Theserene said...
the blah blah blah isnt important?
HOW many times have I heard THAT line when working in tech support and it turns out the blahblah contains the reason why it's not working...
12-17-2007 @ 10:47PM
draeth said...
james ur fucking hilarious, thanks for the help i forgot all about that whiny twit detector
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12-18-2007 @ 3:48AM
Fizzl said...
My first response to this is: Nice!
Time to go play, it will be especially good if i can mess around with add ons (at work :P) without having wow up.
Lucky for me my still a student status means free visual studios from MS.
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12-18-2007 @ 8:44AM
Pook said...
So in the video of Microsoft presenting this program -
http://blogs.msdn.com/vsxteam/archive/2007/12/15/AddOn-Studio-for-World-of-Warcraft-released.aspx
At 5:11s he breaches the WoW Eula by logging into his wife's account.. I also would presume there was copyright infringement issues with the Halo sounds.
Nice to know they don't think Eula's or copyright issues are of any consequence.
12-18-2007 @ 4:00PM
danielfe said...
@14 who stated we breached the Wow EULA for Warcraft and Halo, it is not a violation of the Warcraft EULA, and, when we first decided to do this demo, we *explicitly* contacted both Blizzard and Bungie Studios (for use of the Halo sounds) to make sure everything was fine with the demos.
As for the Warcraft EULA, it is not a violation to log into another person's account assuming you are an authorized user of that account. In fact, the EULA expicitly calls out in Section 6 that "...you will be responsible for all uses of your login information, whether or not authorized by you" and I can guarantee you my wife is responsible and did authorize this use.
It would be a violation of the EULA if my wife had sold, gifted or traded her account as outlined in "8. Ownership/Selling of the Account or Virtual Items" which she would not do.
The only reason I used my wife's account is for the comedic effect of (1) A cute female Gnome Warlock named Shedevil being played by a guy and (2) Gnomes have an amusing dance.
Thanks,
Dan Fernandez
[Guy in the demo]
Microsoft
12-19-2007 @ 10:10AM
Chris Anthony said...
Dan, that's an interesting reading of the terms of service (not the EULA; that's a different document). You're arguing that in Section 6, by including the phrase "whether or not authorized by you", Blizzard is implicitly allowing users to authorize others to use their accounts.
Section 3, however, puts the lie to that: "You may not share the Account or the Login Information with anyone other than as expressly set forth herein." I would argue that, to be frank, "implicit" and "express" are antonyms; since Section 6 does not directly say "You may authorize other users to use your account", doing so is a violation of the TOS per Section 3.
However, you also say that Blizzard gave the thumbs-up to the demo, and since that's the case there's not really a point in arguing it further in this instance.
12-18-2007 @ 9:11AM
Shae said...
I have to admit, I've been playing the game for 2 years and I still feel like a complete add-on noob. I've tried my hand with a few on my main (priest) but always found them a pain when they would break on next patch and eventually just gave up. However now that I seem to have garnerd a nasty alt addiction, I should stop being so lazy and edumacate myself again... if anyone has any suggestions on good reading material and decent places to get started I'd certainly appreciate it.
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12-18-2007 @ 12:38PM
Theserene said...
I am of two minds.
The large part of my working day is fixing code that other people have created (inbetween writing my own) and some of that does come from dabblers who get hold of a program that makes their lives easier and think it makes for a good product.
I do think people really do need an understanding of at least good programming practice before they start writing program add-ons, no matter HOW easy it looks.
It saves a lot of time for us experts later on.
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12-18-2007 @ 3:20PM
Shawn Wildermuth said...
I played with this for a couple hours last night (I've never done anything with LUA or Addons) and it was pretty seemless. I was alble to create a simple addon that posted data to the Combat window with Pet Experience stats when the pet got XP in less than an hour. The dialog editor was cool, but it seems a little wonky (couldnt' get just an arrow cursor once I picked a tool), but was much better than hand-coding the xml file. Overall I was *very* impressed.
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12-19-2007 @ 2:09PM
zushiba said...
@Dan Fernandez, I think what you guys have done here is great and I hope it doesn't end at a tech demo. The potential for addon development with such a UI is incredible. I've made a single addon since I've started playing at release. It's just so time consuming and I work full time so I don't have time to really put what I want into an addon.
Hopefully this package will be my answer.
I look forward to seeing more development.
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