There are a lot of add-ons available for Warcraft. The range for little cutesy things to large databases of information to assist in your game play. What one person likes, you may dislike. It is all personal taste. I have not noticed any negative impact on performance when I use add-ons. But I have a pretty beefy computer (dual processor AMD and 2Gig memory) and a high powered graphics card (256Meg).

General instructions

Most addons install the same way. READ the instuctions, some addons are different and require more work. None of the add-ons that I like below require more than what I am about to give you.

General Information

Instructions for Installation

These are general, they assume some knowledge on your part as to how to locate the file you want and the downloading process. I also can not tell you specifically how your OS handles the ZIP files. You have have different software so it might be a little different. Send me an in game tell or talk to me on TEAMSPEAK and I will try to help.

  1. Locate the addon you want to install on the web. The links below take you to pages for the add-on I like. I will add more if someone asks. Everyone has to help me keep it up to date.
  2. Download the file to your desired directory. My recommendation is My Documents\downloads\WOW.
  3. Open a file manager window to the directory where you have put the file. (In most cases after Windows downloads a file you can an option to "RUN", "Open Folder", or "Close", choose "Open Folder".
  4. Double click on the downloaded file. You should see at least one folder and possibly a "readme.txt" file. These directories are compressed and will need to be copied to a new location. You should probably read the readme.txt file just to be sure you know what you have. If the directions are different than here, USE THOSE! Call this window "Manager 1"
  5. Open a SECOND file manager window, chosing "My Computer" is a good choice from the Windows Start menu.
  6. Locate your WOW installation directory. If you accepted the defaults then it is in C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft.
  7. Go into the directory Interface\AddOns. That means you are now in C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns. Call this window "Manager 2". DO NOT DELETE ANY FOLDER THAT STARTS WITH "BLIZZARD".
  8. Make it so you can see the list of files in BOTH windows at the same time by moving them around and resizing them. You don't need to see everything but you need a place to drag and drop files.
  9. In the "Manager 1" window, drag each folder (there may be one or more) from that window to the "Manager 2" window. This SHOULD automatically take it from a compressed file to an uncompressed file.
  10. (optional) When done, return the "Manager 1" window to the next level up ( My Documents\downloads\WOW ) and move the ZIP file to a directory called "current". This is also Drag and Drop but you can do it in a single window.

That is is, you have installed the AddOn!

Removing an AddOn

When you decide, you don't want the AddOn, you can uninstall it very easy.

  1. Open a file manager to the C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns directory.
  2. Delete the directory with the correct name.

DO NOT DELETE ANY FOLDER THAT STARTS WITH "BLIZZARD".

If you are following my recommendation, you now want to go to the downloads\wow\current directory and delete the corresponding ZIP file as well.

In-Game Setup of AddOns

After you logon to the game and you see your charactor list, look at the bottom left corner of the screen. There is a button labeled "addons". Use that button to turn AddOns off and on. It may also tell you things like "missing dependencies" or "not compatible" or other error messages. This is useful in debuging and can only be seen on this screen.

You will notice at the top of the screen a pull down menu "Configure AddOns for". The first choice is "all", for the most part I would say you should check this for all non-class specific AddOns like auctioneer. If you know the AddOn is for only one of your toons, then turn this off. Next you will change the "all" to the name of your toon, and turn on and off each addon you want or don't want.

Example: for Necrosis, a warlock only AddOn, I would go to "all" and turn this off. Then I would pull down on "Slapmesilly" (my warlock) and turn it on for this toon only.

Another option field is "Script Memory (MB)" - you can leave this alone. If you have a lot of memory in your computer (2 Gig or more in MY OPINION that is not SHARED with your video card), you might consider changing this number to 128. If you only have a few AddOns running you DON'T need to do this. The more memory the game can use, the better the performance. When you make this number bigger, you take memory AWAY from the game.

The last option on this is "Load out of date AddOns". The only AddOn on my list that is out of date is "WhoDat". It still works on the new patches so I have this box checked. If you are having trouble getting things to work, turn this off as part of your debugging.

NOTE: When Blizzard does a new patch, you may need to turn off the AddOns or at least some of them. They may not work after a patch is made. You need to check on the websites for make sure.

Mandatory Guild AddOns

This section is still work in progress. Our best guess for now. We will make an announcement in the game and on the guildportal website when we start enforcing this.

Highly Recommended Addon for Raid Parties

The following are recommended for raids. They are based on experience of others and used in other guilds. When we start organizing raids on a regular basis I expect these to be mandatory. It will be the decision of the RAID organizer for now to make this call.

My Favorate AddOns

My addons working as of 25 Sep 2007

If they have done an upgrade since, I may not have it. Check addon sites if you need to.

 

Add On sites:

http://ui.worldofwar.net/

http://files.wowace.com/

http://www-en.curse-gaming.com/