Friends

If you only had 6 friends this would be much easier...

But if you're like me, you may need an addOn.

Friends are a funny thing. At some point someone you group with says "Great group ! Put me on your friends list and let me know if you ever need help !" How many times does that person never group with you again ?

Then there's the ignore list . I'm pretty sure, if someone ninjas my loot, I want them on ALL my ignore lists .

There's a couple of ways to handle friends . HoloFriends handles them all . With control to copy friend/ignore lists across alts, add notes to both, AND to sort lists by any category you want, there's not much more I could even think of adding . It's a great option that I can't believe Blizz hasn't put in yet. First thing I did was sort my friends by Guildies, People for Rep, People for PVP, Crafters, and RL friends . You can then go to each character and add a personal note, such as "Pervy (paladin) Hates healing" . It saves me a lot of time knowing who can/will do what before I ask every single person on my list . My only complaint is you have to manually choose which friends to share with which lists .

If you're looking for a simpler way to just keep your lists matching on all your alts FriendsShare Resurrection is for you . Very lightweight and no setup . It auto adds and removes friends/ignores on all your alts, and is sorted per server .

addOns tested:

FriendShare (25k)

FriendsShare Resurrection (10k)

FriendSync (had an error)

FriendMinder (had an error)

Friends With Benefits (70k)

HoloFriends (139k)

BRKWWS

BigRedKitty has done a lot of hard work to show how to get your WOW Web Stats in to your blog or guild web site! I encourage you to check it out and read a bit of his awesome blog if you have the time!

Hiding Gryphons

Sometimes a simple change can make a big difference. For me that revelation came through gryphons... or should I say, lack of. Those 2 little gryphons attached to your action bar may not even bother you, but the moment you realize, "hey, I can put my chat down there", or a million other things that can slide down that extra half inch, you wonder why you didn't try it earlier.

There's only 2 choices for this and both aim to do nothing except banish those gryphons. I went with Gryphons Remover due to a significant lack of, well, anything. No gryphons, but also no memory usage. I'm sure it's doing something but it's still smaller than the other choice Hide Gryphons which used about 5k.

redRum

Ok, maybe it's old age, or maybe it's how rediculously small the red number on each action button is, but I can't tell when I'm in or out of range for spells. What's worse, only the main action bar even shows it !

Simple problem = simple answer

Enter: GIANT RED BUTTONS. It the "large print" for gamers.

I found a couple of choices for this. They all did the same thing and there aren't really many options you'd need for something like this. Some let you pick a custom color for each situation, but an addOn like this I think should just be simple and lightwieght.

And the winner is.... ( sorry award show season is taking it's toll)

RedRange . At a super-light 5k, you can't go wrong. Red for "you can't use this because of range", Blue for "you can't use this, you've spent all your mana". What more could you ask for !

Now for the runners up:

Red Out (96k)

Range Color (147k)

Range ReColor (106k)

Unit Frames: so many choices

If you're like me the default Unit frames leave a... bit... to be desired. Why have plain bars with too little info when you can have interact lines, threat, reputation, defecits, class colors, and 3D portraits!

There's a lot of choices when it comes to Unit frames. Some are pretty easy to get going, others... not quite.

It may be a good choice to start with something simple like X-Perl . X-Perl has a lot of options for customization, raid support & frames, and works well right out of the box. My only issue with X-Perl (and a few others) is the lack of visual changes. If you like an almost default Unit frame with lots of usable info, X-Perl may be for you ! There is also Perl Classic which is a more basic version with a much simpler look and feel. My only complaint was that, in my tests, Perl Classic actually takes a bit more memory than X-Perl, so don't think that less information is necessarily lighter on the CPU.

Now if you want simplicity, you can't get much simpler than Sage . There's a few pieces of info you can enable / disable, but you probably won't do anything more than move them where you want.

If you happen to be the text based type of player who just likes the facts, Satrina is a text only Unit Frame. You can adjust size / position, but that's about it.

Now for the big guns ! PitBull has just about anything you could possibly want ! 3D portraits, built in threat bar, and more customization than you'd probably use. The topper to all this is the visual "interact lines". A simple idea, but can be crazy depending on your placement of the different frames. Any time a player attacks / heals another player a tiny red / green line connects between the 2 players. I had my party and raid bars on opposite sides of each other and the green lines from healing were going nuts from side to side. PitBull is an awesome Unit frame addOn, the only downside is memory usage.

Last but not least, and the WTFBBQ pick, Ag Unit Frames . To me AgUf is a happy medium between info, looks, and customization. You can adjust just about anything and with the addition of AgUf Layouts , there's a layout for just about anyone.

I hope this gives you an idea of all the possibilities for your Unit frames and all the great layouts that can be built around a good looking, usable Unit frame !

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Here's the screen shots

For the number crunchers, here's my base memory usage for each addOn in this review:
Ag Unit Frames - 2.4m
Perl Classic - 2.1m
PitBull - 7.5m
Sage - 550k
Satrina - 350k
X-Perl - 1.8m

the BASICS: where do I put this ?

When you first download an addOn, most times it is in a .zip format. So first we need to UnZip the file. You can UnZip the file anywhere you like, My Documents, Desktop, anywhere easy to find. Make sure you watch to see the extracted folder's name as sometimes the folder is named after the addOn, sometimes it is inside a folder named Interface or AddOns.

Now we need to navigate to your WOW folder. This is, in a standard installation, found under

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft

If you've done a custom installation you should know where you put it =p


The main folders we'll be working with are, of course, the addOn folder, located in your WOW folder under

World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\

This is where you will put the folder you've extracted (make sure you see a file ending in .toc in the top folder of the addOn). An example would be

World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\FuBar\Fubar.toc


Some addOns will also include some saved variables which will alter the starting state of the addOn. Saved variables let each addOn know where to place the visual aspects,and store data the addOn needs.

The Saved Variables are found under

World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\


We'll get in to saved variables more later.

WTFBBQ

Hi, and thanks for checking out WTFBBQ for addOns !

Have you ever thought "man i sure could use and addOn to do ...." ? By the time you talk to friends, figure out what addOn actually does what you want, scour the internet, find the addOn, and download it, you still don't know how to get it in to WOW, OR make it work !

WTF addOn BBQ is going to help !

I've been playing WOW since day 1, have about 300 days played total, and have spent a LOT of those working with addOns. I've played just about every class to 70, raided a lot of end-game content, and am working on finishing out the rest. Be assured, I usually know the pains of each class when it comes to lack of information, and have probably already sought out the best answer to my questions !

Feel free to start sending in your addOn questions, tips, and rare finds, and I just may feature your addOn ! Also, new authors, please send me your addOns if you'd like me to test and feature your new addOn ! Please make sure you put the name of your addOn in the title of your email and a description of your addOn and how to use it !

Well, what are you waiting for ?! Get to sending !