Even if you don't use Omen, it's likely you've seen it or heard about it here on WoW Insider, in WoW itself, or somewhere else in the WoW community. Patch 2.4 and the redesign of WoW's combat log called for a complete rebuild of many mods, and Omen was far and away the highest in demand.
There were certainly some issues with Omen the day 2.4 launched, but the one man army behind the mod worked endlessly to get the addon in working order, while somehow making time for a chat mod, too. I think it's fair to say we know a thing or two about the mods, but what about the modder behind them?
Luckily for all of you, Antiarc(aka Adrine) is open to bribes(not really) so I've managed to sucker him into answering a few questions for us, many of which are taken from you, the readers! We'll go through a series of three categories. The Man, in which we delve into Antiarc's personal and professional life. The Mods, wherein we ask a few questions about his experiences in mod-writing. The Miscellaneous, where we ask Antiarc random questions that hold no bearing on absolutely anything! Hooray! Read on!
I have a confession: I've been mostly using the basic, vanilla UI for as long as I have been playing WoW. I do use mods, I'm not crazy, but the basic unit frames and action bars have served me pretty well.
It's not that I dislike custom UIs, or even that I do like the basic UI. The base interface has done its job, from level 1 in Northshire Abbey to level 70 standing on top of Illidan's corpse. It took that Illidan kill to make me realize that I did it the entire way using a supposedly inferior UI. I could do so much more! I could streamline everything, I could open up space on my screen, remove unnecessary information, enhance the necessary stuff...
Wow, this has turned out to be quite a task. My experience with these things is minimal, and I'm not always the most organized person in the world so I couldn't make myself a proper layout if I tried. Even worse is I need to redesign my UI on all of my characters because they all use different things. What's important to my Shadow Priest isn't important to my Protection Paladin, and what's important to her isn't important to my Rogue.
Each week, the Tuesday server down-time gives us all a little time away, which I often spend contemplating the state of my User Interface. As a semi-pro (long on semi, short on pro) addon enthusiast, this often means I visit various addon sites for updates and to peruse the new and exciting developments since my last visit. Although I am meandering towards automatic updates, because it makes me feel so connected, I still enjoy browsing what's new in the world of addons.
However, sometimes I start to wonder if life would easier without addons. I could spend less time worrying about updates, memory footprints, configuring addons and a potentially cluttered UI. I would not have the same power to make changes to the look and feel of World of Warcraft, as well as the opportunity to change my game play. With so many alts, and my known commitment issues, I need to add variety to grinding. What, then, for the freedom of giving it all up and just playing the game out-of-the-box?
It lives! Yes, indeed. As promised in my recent appearance in About the Bloggers, the leads of WoW Insider and I have finally worked out scheduling and the like to bring back two of the posts you've been asking for -- Reader UI of the Week and Reader WoWspace of the Week! From now on, you'll see Reader UI appearing on Sunday, and Reader WoWspace coming to you on Tuesday, just in time to help shake those downtime blues. But enough with the promotion, let's get on with the show!
This week's Reader UI of the Week comes to us courtesy of Adoru, level 60 Night Elf Rogue of "It Hurts when I PvP" on Sen'Jin. (Bonus points for the lolworthy guild name!) Adoru not only sent in a fantastic breakdown of all the mods involved in this week's Reader UI and the reasons for building it, (hint, hint) but additionally sent us a bunch of screenshots to choose from! So without further ado, here's your long-awaited (and hopefully welcomed-back) Reader UI of the Week.
While my WoW UI modifications don't give me an UberL33t look, they do provide a clean, consistent and usable interface. It's a work in process that never ends -- but I think it is coming along nicely. I started with a set of goals and they have been met for the most part:
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
This week's Insider Trader rounds up some of our favorite professions-related add-ons – and more importantly, it's a spot to share your favorites. I've learned that no matter how much time you spend poring over add-on sites and forum threads, as soon as you mention your latest cool find to a friend, he'll pop back with the name of another great new mod that you've never heard of. It's a fast-moving field, certainly.
As you browse the list of mods we've discussed in the past, be sure to scan all the comments for more ideas. Keep in mind, too, that some of the mods mentioned may have been replaced by newer, shinier mods or might even be defunct and no longer maintained. Read on for a taste of some of the sweet little tools that make life easier for every profession.
There's a storm brewing over in the UI & Macros forum, and it's about the terms of use for popular add-on site Curse. If you use mods at all, you're almost certainly aware of the site; I go there all the time. They're probably the biggest mod site right now. So it comes as something of a surprise to me that such a pillar of the scene would have what seems to be a pretty abusive set of terms service.
According to the analysis conducted in this forum thread, Curse's ToU "specifically removes any and all copyright that we as authors have on our addons." Yikes!
There are other bad parts of the ToU language too, including that Curse can change the ToU at any time without notifying authors. Of course, the site is within its rights to impose any ToU it wants on the users, but it's not nice to take control of creations out of authors' hands. I am not a lawyer, so it's altogether possible that I'm interpreting some of this incorrectly. The forum thread, however, claims that lawyers looked at Curse's terms and agreed that the interpretation is correct.
Until these provisions are changed -- and Curse promises that they will be -- I recommend mod authors use other sites like WoWInterface or wowui.incgamers.com. In writing this article I read the terms of use for those sites -- or rather, tried to. IncGamers doesn't even have their ToU up! But they've been a pretty well-behaved site in the past (they used to be worldofwar.net), so I trust them. WoWInterface's terms of service didn't seem to have anything like what Curse has, and a source at the site assured me that "we never touch an author's zip file without their knowledge and consent, ever." WI has a good history of respecting the community and the authors. Curse folks, are we all reading this wrong? Is there something in this issue that's being missed? Update: As several of Curse's employees have helpfully pointed out to me, the new ToU are much better. However, I still have reservations about them.
Last week on AddOn Spotlight, we discussed the damage meter (and more!) mod Recount -- and there was some commenting suggesting we should cover the Ace family of addons, so here you are. Ace isn't a specific addon, but instead a code library on which addons are built -- and you can get countless different mods in Ace format.
Ace was created because many different mods have to use the same types of basic functions. With ordinary mods, these basic functions would be written and included with each addon. With Ace, this basic functionality is packaged into a single library that all Ace mods use. What this means to non-programmers is that Ace mods use fewer system resources, because they all use a the standard Ace code, which is loaded once for all of the Ace mods you have. If you're using non-Ace mods, these basic functions are loaded seperately for each addon you have -- and the more addons you have, the more this adds up. (On the flip side of this, if you only use one Ace addon, you don't gain any benefits, but if you use all Ace addons, a little efficiency improvement in each can result in a big difference.) For the programmers in the audience, Ace means you can write your addon quickly, because you have immediate access to basic Ace functionality (you don't have to reinvent the wheel -- you only have to write code for what you want to do).
Want to get started with Ace? Read on for a list of some of the best Ace addons out there.
Damage meters in World of Warcraft can be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, they can give you detailed information about incoming and outgoing damage in order to help you decide on the best gear, the best talents, and the best spell or ability rotations to get the most out of your character. On the other hand, their list format can turn instance groups into a competitive game where the person at the top "wins" -- a dangerous thing when a DPS chart can't tell you anything about threat or deaths, nor utility abilities such as crowd control or dispels. However, I always like having Recount -- not only because it collects a metric ton of data about you and anyone you group with -- but because the information it tracks can help put DPS in the broader perspective.
To the right you see Recount's main window. Right now it only lists two items -- my Rogue alt and the elemental pet of someone I was grouped with before taking this shot -- but in a large group there will be a line item for every group member and pet, showing total damage, DPS, and what percentage of the group's overall damage they've done. If you mouse over anyone on the list, you will see the pop-up to the right, listing the top three attacks, top three attacked, and the damage done to each.
But Recount goes in to much more depth than this. Want to know the wealth of information that awaits you? Keep reading!
Lots of us have encountered those wide-eyed and eager WoW players who walk up to anyone with epic gear and say, "WoW! Where'd you get that? That's uber-cool lol!" We may even be that sort of player from time to time, if we see a piece of gear we think looks really wonderful or seems particularly useful.
WhoDrop answers that question for you before you even ask. Whenever you inspect another player (I'm using Examiner for that in the screenshot above), WhoDrop will insert a line at the bottom of the tooltip for each item you examine, telling you where exactly that item can be found. It'll tell you which boss drops it, whether it's crafted or not, or even how many Honor or Arena points it'll cost you to buy. Another addon which has a similar function is called Mendeleev, but I found that it overloaded me with too much information, so I went with WhoDrop instead. (Incidentally, the other two tooltip-info addons prominent in this screenshot are RatingBuster, with the stats, and Auctioneer, with the price information.)
Additionally, if you're approaching a certain boss fight, grinding a certain reputation, or PvPing for certain rewards, WhoDrop also features an expandable list of the items you can get from these various sources. It was also recently updated to include the Arena Season 3 gear, so you can now drool over that any time you wish. If you want a prettier interface just for looking at boss drops and such, you might consider AtlasLoot, which has most the same information and is easier to browse through (but it has no tooltip info -- you'll still need WhoDrop for that). AtlasLoot is a plugin for Atlas maps, which can help if you ever get lost in instances.
You know how it is. One of your favorite addons breaks down completely after a patch, so you go looking for the updated version, but then you realize you don't remember where you downloaded it. You check your favorite mods website, only to find that they only have the out-dated version. You end up having to check several different websites in order to find the update, and you wish there were a better way.
KitKatsFTW over in Europe has developed a simple solution: a site called "WoW Mod Search," which uses Google's custom engine to search through the four main WoW mod sites: WoW UI, WoW Interface, Curse, and WoWAce. The site is simple, unobtrusive, and aside from some google text ads, there's absolutely nothing to get in your way.
I use Inquisitor on Safari to quickly use shortcuts of any search engine without actually visiting the website itself first. If any of you out there are also using Inquisitor, or any similar search plugin, you should be able to just copy and paste this search url into your plugin preferences as a shortcut for quick access to WoW Mod Search later. (The "%@" in that link represents the space that will be replaced with your searched keywords when you use the plugin.)
The focus here is to clear the majority of my screen so that I can just enjoy the game, seeing the really rather nice graphics that Blizz have made the effort to produce. I'm the raid leader in our Karazhan raids, so I also need to see how the raid is doing, have the healers got enough mana, who's targeting who and so on.
Have you missed us? We're sorry for the extended break, but as you now know, we've been slammed under helping to get Massively off the ground. (Speaking of which, if you haven't been over there, you do know we're giving away a Murloc suit, right?) But we're back now with lots of Reader UIs to show you -- so on we go with this week's featured UI, courtesy of AareDub from the guild <Sonic Death Monkey> on Eitrigg.
I have to give credit to Taeo for giving me the inspiration. I saw a very crisp UI and thought, "I can do that." I've always tried to re-arrange my UI to allow for the most viewing space possible, but Taeo's UI just made something click for me. It only took me a few days to complete, but it took a month or so for my server transfer cooldown to get me back in a raid for some screenshots.
Curious? Join me after the break for more from AareDub!
Whenever I ask people what the best way to make money in game is, chances are the word "Auctioneer" will be somewhere in the reply. Recently we received a head's up from Tagor that this fabulous addon is getting a revamp, but it isn't available to download just yet. They call it AuctioneerAdvanced, and soon it will be available to organize all your auctioning needs.
They've added a ton of new features to this already powerful tool, the chief amongst them being a smart scan ability that will enable you to walk away from the Auction House when you are in the middle of a scan. No longer will we have to stand for 20 minutes at a time doing nothing but letting the addon do its thing, only to have it cancelled in the middle and have to start all over. You can now pause and resume Auctioneer, to run to the mailbox, buy reagents, have a dance contest on the AH bridge, whatever.
Also of note is the retooling of the memory usage on this mod. Evidently it will no longer take up a huge chunk of your memory as it goes, which is definitely good news. I'm also pretty excited about the incremental scanning feature that will scan items even when I am not standing in the AH. I dunno about you, but spending that half an hour once a week standing around like a dope in the AH was really cramping my style.
Currently AuctioneerAdvanced is available as a preview only, and if this doesn't strike you as odd, it should. I can't for the life of me remember when an addon received demo time like this. If you are interested in demoing the mod, it can be downloaded here. In any case, it looks like this mod will definitely be worth the wait.
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, your one-stop mage shop for all your magical caster needs.Last time we spoke about the macros mages should know and love, those little additions to your game play that will make you even more uber than you already are.At the end of that article I mentioned we would next talk about the addons that mages simply shouldn't do without, and even the comments in that article mentioned a few (thanks for stealing my thunder guys.)
This isn't to say that as a mage it is required that you use mods when you play.Think of these more as the added features on your luxury sedan, the DVD player and the auto-adjusting seats.The mods I use are an extension of the way I already play, but they don't play the game for me.Try them out, see if they work for you, and let us know how it went.Like I've said before, no one can tell you how to play your class; we can only suggest things that might make playing your class easier or more fun.
This week's Reader UI goes out to all the lovely folks on the other side of the Pond that spend time with us here at WoW Insider! When I saw this particular submission land in the Reader UI mailbox with its gorgeous custom art, I knew it was time to showcase some great talent (and some really interesting screen shots) from the EU side of the house. This week's 1440x900 UI was submitted to us by reader Fabian who just finished his apprenticeship as a Digital Media Designer. (Grats Fabian!) For those of you who are curious about this lovely Alliance-themed UI layout, there are several more screen shots, lots of details, and an Q&A with Fabian after the jump.
I have a confession: I've been mostly using the basic, vanilla UI for as long as I have been playing 
Each week, the Tuesday server down-time gives us all a little time away, which I often spend contemplating the state of my 
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
Damage meters in 
To the right you see Recount's main window. Right now it only lists two items -- my Rogue alt and the elemental pet of someone I was grouped with before taking this shot -- but in a large group there will be a line item for every group member and pet, showing total damage, DPS, and what percentage of the group's overall damage they've done. If you mouse over anyone on the list, you will see the pop-up to the right, listing the top three attacks, top three attacked, and the damage done to each.
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