With 2.4 looming, many of you are on the verge of an addon crisis. With most major content patches comes the horror of watching your lovingly crafted UI crumble into out-of-date obscurity. Amidst the chaos, some crusade to protect us addon pilgrims on our journey to updated bliss .These brave souls have developed addons that automate the updating process, and they just save your soul in the coming weeks when we face the Sunwell. Many of you already use programs to manage this process, but for those of you doing it addon-by-addon there are some other options.
The developer of UI Central 4.0 was kind enough to tip us off to the new version of this software package. Stop! Before my fellow Mac users sigh and move on, this one will work with OS X Leopard, so there may yet be hope for your salvation. However, you must have an Intel-based Mac, as I sadly discovered.For you Ace enthusiasts, you can always rely on the Ace updater to handle your updates. I use the Mac version of Ace Updater, which I find keeps my addons smelling fresh and alluding to pine. I personally swear by this one, but I don't have much choice as a Mac user, so take it for what its worth!
There are also numerous other addon updaters out there, a quick search yielded these:
Those are three amongst many I'm sure exist. I can't necessarily endorse any one site or addon as safe or superior, but you've got options. Whatever your source of Addon love, there should be something available for download.
I do want to point out that one great way to find fun new addons is stumbling across them during your updating. Also, this can offer something to do on Tuesdays, when the world comes to a screeching halt.
Have at it, readers! Prepare yourself for 2.4 and chime in with your addon updating suggestions!
Subscribe
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
3-14-2008 @ 5:07PM
Perrins said...
WOWMatrix is awsome!!!
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 5:43PM
Verses said...
I agree, but a new trend has come in .lua "edit it yourself" ultra light addons (such as Butsu, oUF etc.) so you don't really have to update them every patch... But either that, WoWMatrix really is the best one i've ever used.
3-14-2008 @ 6:01PM
humperdinck said...
Agreed on WowMatrix - plus it's available for Mac (non-Intel, even).
3-14-2008 @ 5:24PM
zachb said...
WoWus is also a really good one.
http://wowus.m6.net/
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 5:29PM
Murdock said...
Given up many times viruses have shown up in these addon managers I would never, ever use one. UI Central has been hacked and had a logger inserted how many times now?
Definitely a risk not worth taking. I recommend making a favorite list on your choice of addon sites (I use curse) and just hitting that list on patch day.
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 6:09PM
Theserene said...
Same thought here. Even a blogger on this site got their account hacked.
I'm not taking risks by introducing executables to my environment that I am not 100% certain of. Manually downloading updates to the addons is a pain but that way I am sure that no .exe stuff is getting onto my machine.
3-14-2008 @ 5:42PM
Tumnus said...
Curse's client automatically notifies you of updates to your add-ons too.
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 5:52PM
MartinC said...
BE WARNED.
Many mod updater exe's have been found to contain keyloggers. Some of these may be intentional, while likely most were originally legitimate exe's which have been repackaged to include keyloggers, then uploaded to popular sites.
While updating mods manually is a pain, it's still the safest route. The widespread dominance of keyloggers, along with the even larger pain after getting your account hacked, just isn't worth it. Use your own judgement.
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 6:05PM
jrodman said...
You're probably right, although it wouldn't be such a big deal if wow-related software was properly hosted.
Why don't authors of wow related software simply make a minimal website using Trac or similar to post minimal docs and for people to refer to for downloads? It's really not hard. If you can write an addon you can do this.
3-14-2008 @ 6:06PM
Faeroe said...
Imo, Jwowupdater is the easiest addon updater. one click updating after telling it where your wow folder lives. It even auto updates itself (if you check this option) Best part it is only needs java to run, and i do believe it runs on macs.
check it out:
http://code.google.com/p/jwowupdater/
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 6:07PM
Aichon said...
For Mac users who haven't made the switch to Leopard, there's also jWowUpdater.
http://code.google.com/p/jwowupdater/
It was originally designed to work with Ace addons, but has since been updated to add support for updating from Curse, WoWUI, and WoWInterface. The support for the other three still has a few kinks that are being worked out, but it's in active development and is constantly being updated. And while anyone can use the .jar version of the program, Mac users might prefer to use the Mac-native version that's available from the googlecode site.
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 6:19PM
John said...
Ya know...I kinda wish my account would be hacked. That way i would be frustrated and quit the game.
Ok not really, but if it happened I would probably quit, as gettign all that gear again would be dis-heartening.
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 7:29PM
kapowaz said...
"Important note for Mac users: you must first install the developer preview of Java SE 6."
Ugh. I wish developers would stop inflicting this crap upon us. Listen guys: Java is a really crappy way of delivering good, platform-sympathetic applications that adhere to the human interface guidelines for that platform. This is before you consider the rather silly hurdle that this application requires Mac users install an unsupported and beta-release Java VM.
Sorry, nuh-uh. As others have pointed out, we have WoWMatrix, which is native, has a decent UI and well... it works.
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 8:30PM
PeeWee said...
I wonder how many liks to keylogger-updaters this article is gonna produce.
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 11:32PM
Tekkub said...
I wish people would stop encouarging people to mass-update on patch day. Every patch day the same thing happens... everyone flocks to the sites to update every addon they own when only a few broke, and the addon sites come crashing down due to the load.
If your addons did not break DON'T UPDATE THEM ON PATCH DAY, it's that simple.
I never push out updates to my addons unless something FUNCTIONAL changed in them, I won't contribute to the huge amounts of wasted bandwidth on patch days.
Reply
3-14-2008 @ 11:34PM
ScytheNoire said...
WoWAceUpdater is the best and missing from the list
Reply
3-27-2008 @ 9:02PM
Seamus said...
WoWAceUpdater is no longer in development.
3-17-2008 @ 12:28PM
LostOne said...
WowAceUpdater isn't being updated anymore, the developer I guess got tired of people complaining about the ads. But it wasn't getting updated that much and was working fine without need for many of the updates. The only reason to keep updating it is to justify the ads, so he could make money off of it. Greedy.
However, the old version I have works just fine. I'm using it until it breaks (which will only happen if wowace redesigns their site so the updater can't find the addons anymore).
3-15-2008 @ 4:02AM
Cairenn said...
There are updaters available for WoWInterface as well. http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8239-WoWInterfaceUIManager-Windows.html for Windows users, and http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8242-WoWInterfaceUIManager-GenericLinuxMacintosh.html for Mac and *nix users.
Reply
3-19-2008 @ 12:42PM
Juliah said...
I've heard advice saying that it's best to update your add-ons individually, as some updaters contain keyloggers.
Reply