WoW Add-ons I Can’t Live Without (Ave’s Version)

I was just sitting here freaking out because I logged onto WoW, downloaded the new patch, and then found that one of my add-ons didn’t work.  Then I had to laugh at myself because I’ve become so dependent on my add-ons.  I’m so used to them that half the time I forget they aren’t normally a part of World of Warcraft.

First, a quick note on what I don’t use:
I don’t, and probably never will, use things like Carbonite and Quest Helper.  Don’t get me wrong, these are both very well designed, useful addons (Bugsy and most of my guild swears by Carbonite), they just aren’t ones that I enjoy using.  The reason is simple – they make the game boring.

There are a lot of people who will disagree with me on that point, and are perfectly happy following the dotted lines on a map to get all their quests done as fast as possible and level without ever bothering to read the information in their quest log.  However, I find the game much more enjoyable when I have to read the information given and try to figure out the quests on my own.

That said, I do tend to get annoyed if it takes too long for me to figure out where I’m supposed to go… but then I just google it.

BetterQuest
This is just a simple quest tracker, which I like much more than the one WoW already has.  You can put it wherever you want on the screen, plus it has an opaque black background, which I find makes it a lot easier to read.  It is also easy to minimize it when you are in a dungeon or a raid and don’t need to see your quests (but could probably benefit from seeing more of your screen).

AuldLangSyne
Definitely one of my favourite add-ons, though it hasn’t been updated since the last patch and therefore isn’t quite working at the moment.  It ads an icon to your FuBar (that’s the icons around your minimap) that shows you who’s online in your guild and your friends list when you mouse over it.  From this list you can whisper someone, invite them to a group or add a note about them.  The notes feature is especially useful if you have trouble remembering names, or if you just do a lot of dungeons with random strangers.  I use the notes feature to keep track of a lot of things: people I do/don’t want to quest with, frequent customers (I’m a Jewelcrafter), people who have helped me, people’s alts… the list is endless, really.  When you add a note to someone, the note will show up under their name in the chat when they log on/off.

Bunny’s QuestLevel
A simple addon that shows you the level of each quest in your quest log.  I disabled it because I downloaded a replacement questlog after the last patch (I really didn’t like the layout of the new one, and it refused to work properly for me), but it is useful.

FlightMap
Adds icons to your main map that show where the flightplans are, as well as calculating time and cost to get from one place to another.  When you’re flying, a status bar will appear to show you how much longer you’re going to be in the air.

GatherMate
Records the placement of everything you gather (herbs, ore, fish, chests, ect) on the main map, which is useful if you do frequent runs to replenish your stocks.

QuestGuru
This is the addon I mentioned before that I downloaded to replace the new questlog.  I like the layout of it much better than what is now the default one in WoW.  It also comes with a quest tracker, but I like the one you get with BetterQuest better, so I disabled the QuestGuru one.

Reagent Helper 2
This adds a list of professions and classes that use an item to the tooltip you see when you mouse over the item.

Swindler Preventer
Adds information to the tooltips that tells you which NPC, if any, you can buy the item from and how much it costs when bought from the NPC.  This effectively makes sure that you don’t buy something from the Auction House (AH) for 10gold that you could have bought for 50silver from an NPC.

Cauldron
Changes the skill window (for jewelcrafters, leatherworkers, enchanters, ect… anyone who makes anything) into a two-paned, searchable window.  It has a lot of useful features, such as sorting the items you can make differently, only showing certain difficulties of items, only showing the items you have all the materials for, ect.  It also allows you to queue things, so you can make a list of all the things you need to make (this gets saved, too, until you clear it) and figure out which materials you need.  The queue is also useful when you need to make one item in order to make another item. 

Ex: I want to make a Glyph of Rapid Charge, for which I need Midnight Ink, which is another item I can make.  So I put Midnight Ink into the queue followed by Glyph of Rapid Charge, and then I can make sure I have all the mats for both items before clicking “process” and making the items in the order I need to.

This saves you a lot of scrolling through the skill menus.

Guild2Guild
A useful add-on if you are a part of a guild that tends to team up with another guild.  So long as one person who is online in each guild has Guild2Guild installed, the guild chats will be linked so you can all talk to each other.

PyreHealer
An extremely simple healing addon.  I found I didn’t need all the extra stuff that gets added into a lot of the others.  This gives me a toolbar with a box for each person I’m questing/raiding/in a dungeon with.  All I have to do to show the number of boxes I need is go into the options and click the checkboxes beside the titles (payer, group, raid 1, raid 2, ect) until it shows what I need.  Then each person’s health will show up as a percentage in their box, and I just have to click on it to heal them with whatever spell I have programmed.  You can program different spells to correspond with different key combos, and it works for anything you might want to cast on another player, not just heals.

RandomPet
I currently have 39 pets.  I am very proud of that fact.  However, summoning a pet every time I log on, enter a dungeon, go on a boat, fly somewhere, ect gets rather annoying – never mind being totally unable to choose which pet I want to wander around with.  This is where RandomPet comes in handy.  Every time you don’t have a pet out, it will randomly pick and summon one for you.

WIM (Wow Instant Messenger) v3
I definitely can’t live without this one.  I tend to completely ignore chat when I’m questing, and then people get annoyed at me because I miss their whispers.  This makes whispers pop up in seperate windows on your screen, kind of like MSN.  They automatically minimize when you’re in battle so they don’t interfere, and the add-on keeps a message history so you never forget what you were talking about.  This is also a useful add-on to have if you often find yourself in a city selling whatever skills you have and have trouble keeping track of all the people asking you for stuff.

Accountant
An add-on that tracks your spending vs. your earnings.  It’s not entirely necessary, but it can be useful.  It lets you know things like how much money you’re making from looting, from the auction house, from trades – as well as what the ratio of spending vs. earning has been since you logged on.  You can view stats by session, day, week or total (forever).  You can even view the stats of all your characters combined.

EWOlson_GetSellValue
This will add a note to the item tooltips telling you how much gold you can sell each of your items to a vendor for.

FreeBagSlots
Shows you how many slots are free in each of your bags.

FriendShare
Synchronizes your friend/ignore lists across all your characters.

QuickRepair
This add-on will automatically repair your gear, using either your own funds or your guild’s funds, whenever you click on a vendor who can repair things for you.  This makes it a lot harder to forget to repair, since you’re probably going to a vendor when you’re in town anyways.

ShowGuildList
Changes the default Social panel to show your guild list instead of your friends list whenever you open it.

VendorBags
Will open all of your bags automatically whenever you go to a vendor, the Auction House, the Bank or open a trade.  Of course, you can also just press Shift+B… but who wants to press extra buttons?

And that’s it for my add-ons.  Hope some of you found that useful. I’ve always been a little obsessed with add-ons in any program (you don’t want to know how many I have on firefox), so let me know if there are any useful ones I missed and I might check them out.

For those of you who haven’t tried out add-ons for WoW yet, a good place to start is by downloading the Curse Client.  It will give you access to hundreds of add-ons that you can search through and add easily.