For those that are curious, here is a link to one of my very old screenshots. It’s from back in the day when Black Temple was cool and spirit still sucked. Since this screencap (showing off my hunnie spriest as top DPS), my UI has cleaned up a lot, but the basic layout is the same.

(BTW, if you intend to stalk me please note that I have transfered off that server and from that guild some time ago and neither myself or my BF use those character names now.)

First off, I don’t use any mod that isn’t a WoWAce mod EXCEPT for SwStats damage meter at curse-gaming.com. So bookmark: http://files.wowace.com/

So, I’m gonna list some of my favorite mods and a brief summary of what they do. You can find them all at WoWAce.

1. Bartender 3 – Limited on functionable button space? Is that default bar on the side of your screen just too far away to put anything useful there? Move em, clump em, add more bars, get rid of the ones you don’t need.

2. Prat – (Not in screenshot) A chat mod with way too many options, but it has default profiles you can choose from and is simple enough to change a few things that annoy you. Gives you more information at a glance and reduces spam.

3. FuBar – Now, you don’t need FuBar for anything in particular unless you do use a lot of mods. FuBar is an information bar with many sub-addons that give you a lot of information at a glance. (Notice in my screenshot on the top bar there are many symbols. All of those are mods.) All its addons either give you immediate information or just plugs that mod into a FuBar option to keep your UI clean.

-FuBar ClockFu: Clock, keep up with time at a glance!
-FuBar DurabilityFu: % dispaly of your items
-FuBar ExperienceFu: For all you alt levelers!
-FuBar MoneyFu: Keep track of your money.
-FuBar OmenFu: (See Omen)
-FuBar SwStats2Fu: Plugin for FuBar for SwStats
-FuBar RecountFu: (See Recount)
-Fubar PreformanceFu: Track your latency, addon memory, etc.
-FuBar CharmsFu: One click for those shapes.

4. Omen – If you don’t know what Omen is, you don’t play this game enough. Omen is the latest threat meter to keep track of your threat on a target. While currently it is somewhat flaky due to the giant overhaul in 2.4, it is still a necessary addon for EVERY SINGLE WOW PLAYER, casual or hardcore. Keep it updated! I hate anyone who doesn’t use this addon.

5. Recount – a heavier version of SwStats. Some swear by it, others hate it. I dislike it because it’s such a large addon, but if you have the RAM it’s great. As an officer or raid leader, it’s an amazing tool. It will provide you with any player’s combat log. Great way to yell figure out which healer let the tank die! XD

6. Grid or Sraidframes – Necessary for any healer to show the entire raid’s hp (and mana if you want). Grid used to be slightly superior but SRF has come a long way. Which you use now is just preference for their look and setup requirement. Grid requires a lot of effort to setup in my experience, whereas SRF is set up for you by default and looks good instantly, with numerous options that are very easy to understand. Grid is instantly more compact, but SRF can be set up that way too.

7. Pitbull – There are many frames that you can download, and all of them are very different looking and utilized differently. My current favorite is Pitbull. It has many options and is very clean looking. It is somewhat large though and can pull you down. If you’re interested in other options, you can check curse-gaming for screenshots or the UI fourms.

8. SimpleMiniMap – I’ve used this addon for as long as I can remember. Move your minimap, change its shape, etc.

9. ElkBuffBars – This is not in my screenshot but it’s fairly popular. Display the symbol, name, and duration of your buffs, move em around, give them nicknames, etc.

10. XRS – Great tool for raid leaders. Displays current buffs on everyone in the raid (can be setup for any buffs for any classes), can be set up to display people who are alive, dead, afk, out of mana, pvp flagged, etc.

11. ClosetGnome – Most people these days have at least two sets of gear. Don’t spend 20 minutes finding them in your bags. (My boyfriend has 17 gear profiles now! Woot for main tanks!)

That’s all for now! More incoming in the future.

I am a world of warcrack gamer girl. I am female, not some boi livin in my mom’s basement in West Virgina working at a Blockbuster to giggle at the porn in the back room while I watch Witchblade anime type cartoons. (Okay, that’s a lie. That’s a really good anime actually.) I’m graduating college this year (hopefully this summer).

I play WoW obsessively, as I am a end-game raider. My main is my holy priest, geared in 3-piece t6 (hoping to get the 4th next week) and various other non-set t5+t6 pieces. My guild has slain the foul Illidan and through Twins in Sunwell, because we were totally not prepared… graphics wise. I had to buy a new computer just to look up from the ground on Illidan and in Sunwell.

I have numerous other characters 60+. These include a 70 feral tanking druid (my latest creation), a 67 mage who I can’t decide what to spec, 66 combat rogue, a 70 affliction warlock, and a 70 enhance shaman. I have also leveled my boyfriend’s warrior from 60-70 protection specced (why? I dunno), and have somewhat played his hunter once or twice. (So boring.) So, the only class I don’t have experience yet is a Paladin, because I can’t stand to level an entire class by autoattack. ktx.

The priest class I am very unhappy with since Burning Crusade (as I will bitch about a lot in the future), so many of those classes are post-BC. I will hopefully be swapping mains come the next expansion.

For the moment, I’d like to complain about my experiences and viewpoint on the End of Warcraft (TM). Now, whether or not you believe that such a massive online playing game can actually ever come to an end (until aliens flutter down and zap us all and destroy the interwebz), the fact of the matter is that eventually every game loses its popularity when something superior comes along. This is true outside of video games, obviously. Weird example: People still ride horses, but (in most societies) no one travels long distances by horseback anymore.

Everquest was absurdly popular long ago, before World of Warcraft came along. It still is incredibly popular, and there are lots of people who play it. But why? Why do people remain with vastly insuperior games? Why will people be playing WoW in 20 years?

The answer to that is fairly easy, in my own opinion. It’s the same reason that people still blog on sites like LiveJournal.com, which has been purchased and repurchased, modified and destroyed. Time and community. When you type /played in WoW, you don’t want those 300 days of played time to just be deleted. You don’t want that bank of awesome T1 gear with +strength and +shadow-resist healing gear that you worked so hard and anxiously waited so long to achieve. And o’course, since all your friends are sticking around, why go anywhere else. That’s the entire point of an MMO isn’t it?

The truth is that superior games come along… eventually. For some of us, not soon enough. But that means that the current game has to have flaws, right? Where are the flaws in WoW? What are the developers overlooking and ignoring that is going to be the downfall?

Before I delve into this oh-so-not-obvious topic, let’s compare WoW1.0 (pre-BC) with WoW2.0 (post-BC).

WoW1.0-

1. PvP – Player vs. Player combat was really non-existant, in my opinion. While it was an interesting and different aspect of the game, it wasn’t a serious avenue for the large majority of players. There was spectacular gear that anyone with the time investment could achieve, but a rare few ever would. It required such an investment that would take literally around a month to dig through the grind to even have a shot. And anyone who achieved the title of Grand Marshal was instantaneously famous on their respective server.
2. Raiding – The only possible and reliable method to gear at an unpainful pace. There existed only 20mans and 40mans. Raiding was not terribly hard outside of a few key roles, and did not require a massive outside investment of time until Naxxramas.

3. 5-mans – The secondary way to get any amount of gear. There were few 5mans to run, and no real progression between the two.

4. Crafted Gear – Crappy and no real purpose for most professions.

THE FLAWS -

The further a guild progressed, the harder it was to recruit (prior to server transfers).
New players could not achieve suitable gear to make it into a guild.
Causals could quickly bore of content.
No one saw the content when it got old.

THE FACTS -

Why did casuals ever play WoW1.0 when there was so little to do? Truth is, they did, and they did it because of the “Wow!” factor. (Lewl @ pun.) Standing in IF, they’d see someone with amazing gear, and they’d say to themselves “That could be me!” So they grinded and applied and PvPed and tried to work their way up the social ladder. Is it sad and pathetic that people did that? Sure it is. But who are you to criticize? YOU’RE PLAYING THIS GAME TOO, NERD. What’s your /played? Go cure cancer or something.

WoW2.0

1. PvP
2. Badges
3. Areanas
4. Rep grinds
5. Heroics
6. 10-mans and 25-mans

I don’t need to elaborate on these, cause THEY ALL DO THE SAME THING. Every avenue is a way to get geared, and every one of them makes everyone equal. The “WoW” factor has been completely eliminated from the game.

Why’s this a problem? It’s great, right? Everyone can gear-up and raid all the same content as it is repeatedly nerfed for the completely retarded children that can’t even spell their own name yet click a cube.

Do you honestly want a game where your role is to run a few instances over, and over, and over… and over to get gear everyone else already has and to experience nerfed, crappy content that’s a year+ old? Is that fun and exciting?

Why play a game without progress? Especially a game that requires this much time investment. The fact is, no one does, and if you say you do you’re either a very boring person or a liar.

BUT THIS ISN’T ANTI-CASUAL!

Raiders are not crying because we want you to hate the game and suck. We don’t mind you having all these boring, repetitive ways to farm gear. If that’s what gets you hot at night, it’s all cool by us.

But the end-game raiders DO NOT WANT TO FARM. Casual-friendly gear has ever so slowly been developing closer and closer to our end-game gear. This means that many of the items that YOU have access to are equal or better than what we can get putting in 40+ hours a week to get. (Yes, raiding at the peak is a full time + time and a half job.) We already have hours of wiping to do, hours of consumable farming, hours of money grinding to pay our repair bills, and now hours of badge farming to get gear to beat the content that is supposed to GIVE us the gear we need? NO THANK YOU.

WoW2.0 vs WoW1.0.

Yes, WoW has continued to grow.

However, it is not because the game has improved over the expansion. WoW currently does not have any real competitors, and as all monopolies do, their consumer base increases steadily over time.

The Positive of WoW are numerous and I could list a hundred of them. Lots of content, steadily trying to improve, good (but getting excessive) graphics, interesting promises of the future.

The negatives, however, are going to break the game:

1. No uniqueness and individuality
2. Grinding is an never-ending cycle.
3. The top players are slowly losing interest and becoming frustrated.
4. Lack of goals and development for each player.

Casual-friendly really isn’t casual friendly. WoW1.0 as a casual, it didn’t matter if you logged on for a week or a month. You didn’t lose honor, you didn’t lose gear, you didn’t lose time.

You can’t log on for a week now? 30+ badges gone, 500 arena points gone, a full clear of Kara missed, thousands of rep behind the time, 100g a day lost.

Sure, you can do it, but if you’re really so casual that you only jump on two or three times a month, how many years will it take you to get the gear you want? Expansion is coming out soon pal.

Do I see WoW’s customer base collapsing under itself? No, of course not. The game is so popular, and as I stated before, no one wants to have all this time gone to waste. But, eventually a competitor will develop and see the market that end-game raiders are searching for. And when that happens, it doesn’t matter all the other crap they don’t have (the rep grinding, the welfare epics, the pvp), where the end-gamers go, everyone else will eventually follow. Like it or not, that’s why everyone came to WoW in the first place. No one wants to play a game without progress.