The Addon Junkie

In this video, we explore and demonstrate the Threat Plates theme for Tidy Plates, a nameplate replacement addon for World of Warcraft. Threat Plates allows you to track simple aggro status on any number of mobs simply by looking at their nameplates. Since I’ve started using this addon, the “ginormous red bar of death,” as I like to call it, has saved countless DPS and a healer or two. I highly recommend it for anyone trying their hand at tanking, and it’s not too bad for DPS too. Video after the break.
(continue reading…)

Today we’re writing about something that affects everyone in the land of Azeroth: Bad tanking.

Specifically, we’re discussing the higher-than-average tendency of Death Knights to be poor quality tanks. I want to emphasize here that it’s not about the class and whether it’s “fit” to tank, nor is it always about the player. Most of the time it’s a simple matter of technique. More than any other class I’ve played, the Death Knight has possibly the least informative (or most misinformative… is that a word?) tooltips and spell descriptions that I’ve ever seen. Combine that with the fact that you essentially have two resources to watch – runes (cooldown-based) and runic power (starts at empty, fills as you fight) – and DKs can be a very confusing class to play.

Full disclosure: my DK is only 66 and I’ve only ever played as frost, but every level since the starting zone has been gained through instance runs, and 99% of the time I was the one tanking, quite successfully might I add. This video is primarily targeted to frost DKs leveling as tanks, but any DK of any level and spec who wants to try their hand at tanking might be well served by the information contained.

And now, without further ado, I present my humble submission for the betterment of low-level DKs everywhere. Video after the break.
(continue reading…)

So if you’re anything like me, you have a LOT of addons (well over 100 in my case). You probably also have more than one character, and you probably despise rolling a new one. I mean configuring all those addons was painful enough the first time, right? Well luckily there’s a quick and easy way to automate a lot of that tedious setup.

Due to security concerns with third-party LUA script, addons for World of Warcraft are limited to storing their settings in one of two places: the addon’s own subfolder of the Interface\Addons folder, or the WTF folder. WTF stands for “Write to File” and is the default for the majority of addons for a good reason. If LUA asks WoW to write something to a file using this method it is stored in a branch of a hierarchical folder structure that is specific to the currently logged on character. This means the addons do not have to be “aware” of which character is logged in – storage and separation of settings happen automatically. Not all addons can, or do, take the easy road so the method presented in the video is not a 100% solution, as shown in the video I still had to manually configure a few of my addons even after copying the files, but it works for the vast majority of addons out there. In any case, enjoy the video. It should be available up to 720p HD, and I recommend viewing it in as high a resolution as your computer and bandwidth will allow since today we’ll be looking at some fairly small text. My apologies for the letterboxing (black bars at the sides) as well. This video was thrown together in a hurry using Windows Live Movie Maker, and I will not be repeating that mistake. Future videos will be compiled in Adobe Premiere – just as soon as I figure out where my copy went… Video after the break.
(continue reading…)

“Hi, Dave” the crowd in [2. Trade] mournfully replies.

So I recently purchased a new computer – one finally decent enough to play WoW with all settings maxed and  get FRAPS footage at maximum resolution without any significant lag. As a test of this new-found ability I recorded a simple review of one of my favorite new addons, OPie, and posted it to YouTube. Within the first 24 hours it had been viewed 50+ times and even netted me a few subscribers. Now this may not be big by Chocolate Rain standards, but as a web developer who just dropped content onto the web and did nothing to promote it, I have to recognize that those are impressive numbers. I decided that I would make this my new hobby (since I’d been looking for one anyway) and begin profiling all of my favorite addons and trying out a bunch of new ones.

I’m hoping to manage a release schedule of about 1 video per week, though I guarantee you there will sometimes be more, sometimes less. I am currently a full-time student and hold down a full-time job, which tends to cut into my video editing time. In any case, I now present to you without further ado the video that started it all (video after the break):
(continue reading…)