Blizzard gives us so much. They've been crafting the game for years. The sheer audacity of MMORPGs and the technical challenges that they imply are mind boggling. The fact that it works at all is little short of a miracle.
Don't fiddle with miracles: You'll get turned into salt.
From my point of view this lead to a tentative, if not actively distrustful, attitude to Add-ons. It seemed presumptuous. I don't even know what I'm doing; why try to fine tune it.
Arguably, thought, they are a part of the game. And, like every other part of the game, sooner or later I jump in.
My first Add-on was a pretty simple one: The Azeroth Advisor. Barely an Add-on at all, really. That's not a criticism of the service but it doesn't really have a direct in-game effect. I got into it after I heard Curt Schilling on the How I Wow podcast. I was impressed by him and his approach.
Azeroth Advisor sends each of your characters a customised email every week that tells you about the sorts of things you might need to know at your current level and maps of the areas you are hanging out in. I've definitely learnt things and they successfully run a fine balance between information and potential spoilers.
Most recently, however, I've picked up Auctioneer Lite. I don't know what the extra features are for Auctioneer but I'm sure I'll get there soon.
The first thing I go completely hooked on is having the vendor price, estimated Auction House price and disenchant value on everything. I mean everything. Things that you find. Things that you are merely contemplating making. It's ridiculously useful.
That's just the frosting on the cake, though. The next thing that just revolutionised my AH behaviour is that the search function works. And you can sort by price and price per unit and all that other really obvious stuff.
I'm writing al this down because I can already feel myself losing contact with my pre-auctioneer self already. How did I function? I haven't installed it on Katyana's machine yet and she doesn't like the Auction House. She feels it hasn't worked well for her in the past (she also really wanted to disenchant everything to up her Enchanting skill)
I have a feeling that heads up pricing information will make all the difference for her.It might seem obvious, but I am, as stated, a colossal noob. So it took me a really long time to include bidding in my AH process as well. Now I'm addicted to it; blanket bombing huge swathes of things that seem under-priced.
Now I can see, in principle, how the Auctioneer Data could be manipulated. Which means it's not the final answer to everlasting cash. But at least it does bridge the gap between too much data to track and ready to rock.
My hit pick is Spider's Silk. It's worth up to 9g per unit as raw material but tailoring it into Spidersilk Drape's turns out to be a real winner. The perfect cash crop for Lvl30s looking to buy that first mount.
4 comments:
As with you, I've really become reliant on certain addons. I must have wasted hundreds of gold by not using addons such as AuctionLite. SCT was also a revelation before Blizzard finally came around to making their own version of it (although not as good as the addon ones, in my opinion).
Oh, and I'd love a high res version of that Tanaris screenie!
I just looked up SCT and it looks pretty over the top to me. Which I'm learning is code for "I'll put it on just to see and then never go back" :-)
If you click on the Tanaris shot you can see a 1600x175 version. If you want more I'll need to pull out the photoshop files and send it to you.
This post won at the title :)
I find add-ons tend to be a slippery slope - one, two, three, then your whole game is bogged down. Or maybe that's just me =P
Welcome to the awesome experience that is WoW - when you get your first 60% land mount you wonder how you ever were arsed to run on foot between your kill mobs and the quest hub. When you get your first 100% land mount you wonder how you didn't fall asleep while riding that normal speed mount. When you get your first flying mount (that used to be 60% flight speed, but even at that speed the point is valid) you wonder how you actually had to run around things like mountains. When you get your first epic flying mount you go "HOLY SHEEET".
And it's very much the same with addons. I got an addon that I bound to mouse button 5 that opens a ring of icons with all my teleport/portal spells on my mage, then I put the mouse cursor over the one I need and when I release the button, the cast starts. I can't ever imagine going back to having a couple of them actionbar:ed and the rest in the spellbook. :D
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