Nigel Paravane

The World of Warcraft multiplayer game exposes a programming interface for the Lua programming language. Because of this, many people have written legal addons that extend the game’s core functionality or provide alternate user interfaces. Some of the packages are huge but some are small and provide very specific functionality. In addition, there are some common utility libraries that people have developed to make the addon creation much easier.

I tend to experiment with addons and substitute new ones for old ones, and then sometimes switch back. I tend to favor small improvements rather than wholesale user interface changes. A good source for many addons is the WowAce.com download site. Check there often for updates or new addons.

These are the addons I’m currently using:

• Auctioneer
  Augments the built in auction software to help you set prices competitively as well as know what items are worth when you see or get them.
• Telo’s InfoBar
  Adds some key information right at the top center of the screen. I use it to display money, coordinates, and bag slots used. I briefly used Titan but that took up too much screen real estate.
• XLoot
  Speeds up the process of looting because it moves the window right next to the cursor. It also provides some better descriptions of the items.
• Cartographer
  Much better maps and additional addons than what come with WoW. In particular, you can see all areas of the regions, not just the ones you’ve visited. There are addons that can show you where mailboxes, vendors, etc. are.
• bEQL
  This is an enhanced quest list and tracker. You can see more info about the quests you are doing and it uses two pages.

Here are a couple of other hints that might make your playing easier:

• Go into Interface Options and the choose Advanced Options. In the Action Bars section, make sure Always Show ActionBars, Show Right ActionBar, and Show Right Action Bar 2 are clicked. This will give you 24 more always-visible slots to store buffs and spells.
• In the lower left of the screen there are two tabbed windows for General and Combat Log. If you right click (or Apple click) the tabs you can unlock the windows, change the fonts, filter messages and so forth. I’ve made the fonts as small as possible and dragged the Combat Log to be just above the General messages.

Full disclosure: these two hints were explained to me by my 10 year old son William.