David B covered the PetEmote addon way back in the beginning of this year, and now the Great Green Hunter has posted some really great ideas for custom pet emotes, for a few different families of Hunter pets. PetEmote lets your pet automatically show up in your emote text randomly, and is really good for giving your pets a little more personality of their own -- instead of just doing what you say all the time (and eating all of the food you've got to buy), PetEmote can make it seem like your pets are doing their own thing: chasing a stray bug that passes by, flicking their tails, or "giving you a sly look."
GGH's descriptions are really great, but of course whatever goes in the "Localization LUA file" in the PetEmote addon folder is what shows up in the game, so you can customize it as necessary. If you want to say your cat "waggles his butt, ready to pounce," you can do it.
Of course, if you think of your pet as just a DoT you have to feed, you might not be so interested. But having a pet and keeping track of where it is is such a huge part of the Hunter class (though PetEmote works for Warlocks as well) that giving your pets a little more personality goes a long way in game.
Welcome to this week's Addon Spotlight, where I'm going to pay tribute to your feedback by giving an official thank-you to you all for turning me on to Minimalist. Basically, this addon does everything I've been using multiple addons to accomplish in one simple package, with a memory footprint even Tekkub would be proud of. (I think, he gets pretty fired up about wasted resources.)
Alright, back to Minimalist, the addon that makes a bunch of little adjustments, helping to clean up the some-times cluttered default UI. It provides a way to automate some simple commands and remove some unwanted knick-knacks. (Actionbar chickens, begone!) The good news is that this is an Ace addon and there is already a Wrath-compliant version for those of you in the Beta.
There is a certain party, a regular emailer to us among our readers, who believes that we here at WoW Insider take a little too long at the start of our posts to get to the actual point of each story, so in this one, I'll just get right down to it: Blizzard needs to put Auction House information on the Armory.
I've been on the grind to the 5000g for my epic flying mount lately, and I've been playing the Auction House like a demon: calculating, buying, selling, and crafting my way to as much gold as I can throw together. And while Auctioneer has definitely helped, the best way I've found to track prices and make sure I get the most for my time in the AH is just to see the prices themselves -- no average price calculated by Auctioneer is worth enough as seeing the real thing. And that's where Blizzard comes in -- while there are a few sites that attempt to track prices with various methods, they have actual, constant access to the prices on every server. And they have a great place to put them: on the Armory.
The item pages on the Armory right now are practically empty -- besides some vendor and reagent information, there's almost nothing there (especially compared to, say, Wowhead). Giving player access to AH information would pull them into the game even when they couldn't play, not to mention let some of Blizzard's most talented web programmers -- their fans -- at data that they could do tons of great stuff with. Want a text alert when your favorite mats drop in price, or when there's room on the AH to finally sell off those Elixirs of Agility you've got? By passing out AH info to the Armory, Blizzard could give fans access to the data needed to make their own great tools, not only leaving Blizzard free to work on actual development, but giving us Auction House haunters all the access we need to track prices and have that much more fun playing the AH.
The latest beta build has brought a new twist to the good old map interface. As MMO Champion reports, there is now a dropdown box on the map screen, letting you choose from a few different "floors." What this means exactly, we aren't sure -- the obvious conclusion is that you'll now be able to look at different sections of the world map (for example, see into different levels of buildings or caverns). And Dalaran (which this map is a part of) is one of those areas that has two different levels, so this particular menu will let you see both halves of the city.
But this also suggests an even bigger change: including maps of instances in the official interface. Since launch, Blizzard hasn't ever shown us ingame instance maps (though we're not sure why -- maybe they want to require players to explore instances rather than follow a map through them). But lately, addons like Atlas have made them easily available to players, so maybe Blizzard has decided it's time to map out dungeons as well. We'll have to see what use they put this new dropdown to.
As expansion apathy sets in, and my friends and guildmates begin to lose interest in raiding, I have joined the ranks of the many players who have transitioned to playing their alts. To that end, I've had an opportunity to explore some new addons designed for specific classes. Spellcraft stands out as simple and useful for the mage about town.
This addon handles a few mage functions via a simple graphic interface and a set of more subtle features. With automated reagent restocking, polymorph warnings, Evocation weapon-swapping and a simple teleport and portal menu, Spellcraft offers much while asking little. (The memory footprint is minimal)
Granted, there are addons that provide similar functionality, and I've profiled a few of them, but Spellcraft is tailor-made for mages and their unique abiities.
Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.
I've been teasing you all with a surprise topic for a little while now, and here it is! OMG a hardware review in The Creamy GUI Center! That sound you're hearing are minds being blown across the planet! Ok, well maybe it's not that radical of a topic; keyboards, mice, and other peripherals are a vital and often overlooked part of the user interface. So this week I decided their time has come as we take a look at the Logitech G series keyboard. And who knows, maybe I'll sneak in an addon or two for good measure. I can't stray too far from my roots can I?
Welcome, my friends, to this week's late Addon Spotlight, where we'll be looking at a little tool to help manage your inventory. First of all, I would highly recommend reading through Matthew Porter's Big bag blowout series over at The Creamy GUI Center, it's not only a fantastic look at many inventory options, but builds a solid foundation for your inventory addon needs. Given all that good information, I thought I'd pipe in with a look at Mr. Plow, an inventory stacker I use in conjunction with Bagnon.
I never could get used to inventory addons that auto-sorted my bags into categories; I just wanted something to consolidate all of my bags into one window. That said, I am also somewhat obsessive about an orderly inventory, and had no problem taking time to organize my inventory so that items I got from grinding or quests were found at the top of the window, where I could easily sell and use them at my discretion.
Then came along Mr. Plow, the handy bag stacker that will organize and compress your bags for that neat and orderly look that former Army sergeants require of their inventory.
Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.
I'm back this week to finish our look at inventory manager addons. In the last twoparts we looked at addons that helped you organize and sort your inventory. Now we know exactly where to find that nifty new doodad you just got but how do you quickly equip it when you need it? We'll solve that question this week with a look at addons that help you swap equipment around in the thick of adventuring. With so many items that have a particular use,, the addons reviewed this week will hopefully take some of the hassle out of using them. And for those classes that have different sets of gear for different occasions, these addons will help you out the most. So let's get right into it with a look at outfit and gear managers.
For this week's addon, I thought I would share one that is built around a macro that we've hinted at over at Macro Anatomy. This addon has been abandoned by the author, but there is a patch available that will update it to work with 2.4. (Although I am using the "unpatched" version just fine.)
GoGoMount will pick the most appropriate mount for you based on given conditions. If you can use a flying mount, it will summon your flyer, otherwise it will randomly select from your ground mounts. (This includes summoned mounts for Paladins and Warlocks.) If you have multiple flying mounts, it will randomly select one of these as well.
It supports Druid travel forms and Ghost Wolf for Shamans as well. So, in less words; this addon is your one-stop mounting shop.
Welcome to another installment of Addon Spotlight, the quiet home of mod enthusiasts amongst the whirlwind of breaking news that is WoW Insider. Reader Kyle "strongly" suggested that I profile Talented, an addon that replaces your talent interface and opens up some extended features for talent planning.
Considering the tone of his suggestion, I would venture to say that Kyle has grown frustrated by his fellow players' tendency to screw up their builds or they're taking too long to respec. This can, indeed, become an issue when one is respeccing for raiding, arenas and different roles for hybrids.
This is where Talented, and its companion Talented_Data, can save you time and a little money if you're prone to selecting the wrong talents when you're in a hurry. This addon allows you to build talent templates, which can be applied via one click after a talent wipe. I do this when I switch from a PvE Retribution spec to Holy for progression nights or arenas. I have to say, it helps reduce the risk of mistakes, which can leave me free to spend more time remembering to grab the correct gear out of the bank.
Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.
Welcome readers to this week's The Creamy GUI Center. It looks like I stumbled upon an addon topic that, judging from your comments, a lot of people view as a cornerstone of their UI and addon experience. This week, thanks to reader feedback, I'm going to extend our look at inventory addons to three parts instead of two so that we can take a look at a couple of fan favorite bag addons that I missed. I did indeed hear your cries of wanting more in the comments, so let's get down to it with a look at ArkInventory and TBag.
At noon today, Kaelten of WowAce fame posted a thread on the WowAce forums discussing the future of their massively popular project. There's quite a bit of nitty gritty coder lingo that you don't really need to know unless you're involved in WowAce, but there's other important information for us normal folk, too.
First, a few obvious things are pointed out. One, WowAce became big. Really, really big, and I imagine much bigger than they had ever imagined. The way WowAce is set up doesn't work so well with that much of a load and that many mods and packages being developed. Additionally, the amount of bandwidth they used monthly is absolutely enormous.
To quote: "As it currently stands files.wowace.com pushes out an incredible amount of addon updates. In an average month we're talking about more than thirty terabytes of data! In a busy month clearing sixty is no problem, and I don't even want to talk about what happens on major patch days."
Fixing "their" bugs which in turn breaks "our" addons and mods. The suggestion is that they don't care, or could take steps to prevent this.
As you can imagine, all sorts of responses cropped up, including the usual people who get into arguments with other posters, players in agreement, joking and sarcastic responses, and of course, an awesome string of blue responses.
Amid the madness of yesterday's patch, there has been some desperate drama happening in the official UI & Macros Forums. It seems the massively popular leveling addon QuestHelper has encountered some troubles, with many users not able to use their beloved quest... helper.
As with many crossroads in life, this presents an opportunity to consider a change, or at least a reason to try something else out while the developer of QuestHelper figures out the disconnect. Some time ago, I stopped using the memory-hogging giant in favor of one of Tekkub's creations. TourGuide may very well be Tekkub's greatest mod to date. It serves much the same function as QuestHelper, but it takes a different approach, one that doesn't eat up nearly as much memory. To me, it was sort of like selling my huge truck for a fast, agile Subaru. (Which I did in RL, yay!)
I've been promising to profile this bad boy for a couple of months now, as I've yet to finish my own work on it, but I felt like you all needed an alternative. Besides, you may end up swearing by TourGuide like I do, it was more my style. (I've been working on a guide for TourGuide, but my day job has been bogging me down.)
TourGuide is more akin to a traditional leveling guide than the so-called smart system of QuestHelper. With the "helper", I felt like I wasn't doing quests in the right order, at the right level and that I was missing out on some great quest chains.
Brad Justice (let me say that again, Brad Justice!) sent us a valuable tip about Titan Panel, and it's easily confirmed by a casual look over at the official forums. Let me explain. No, there is too much -- let me sum up.
If you use Titan Panel, you may see an unexplainable GM ticket open in the upper right corner of your screen. You may open that empty ticket, and then Abandon it. Your attempt will fail. But don't worry -- it's not your fault. It's Titan Panel. That ticket will linger there like some kind of horrific nightmare. But there's hope.
You can either simply disable the AddOn until they get the problem sorted out or attempt a "full UI reset." (A full UI reset is the process by which you basically delete the WTF folder, Cache, and Interface folders and more or less start all over again.) I personally went for the slightly less-intense "disable" option.
Anyway, good luck fixing it -- we just wanted to let you know this is what's up, since Titan Panel's pretty popular.
Edit: With a ninja-like quickness, Titan Panel has released an update which should help clear this up.
David B covered the PetEmote addon way back in the beginning of this year, and now the Great Green Hunter has posted some really great ideas for custom pet emotes, for a few different families of Hunter pets. PetEmote lets your pet automatically show up in your emote text randomly, and is really good for giving your pets a little more personality of their own -- instead of just doing what you say all the time (and eating all of the food you've got to buy), PetEmote can make it seem like your pets are doing their own thing: chasing a stray bug that passes by, flicking their tails, or "giving you a sly look."
There is a certain party, a regular emailer to us among our readers, who believes that we here at WoW Insider take a little too long at the start of our posts to get to the actual point of each story, so in this one, I'll just get right down to it: Blizzard needs to put Auction House information on the Armory.
Brad Justice (let me say that again, Brad Justice!) sent us a valuable tip about Titan Panel, and it's easily confirmed by a 
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