Update: The addon has now been renamed and updated for the new WAR patch since Mythic has added a standard "Join All" button but this adds the ability to select which ones via checkboxes. So if like me, you dislike Lost Temple of Isha, you exclude that (or other) Scenarios.

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Here's an addon I'm finding useful, it's simple and self-explanatory: Scenario Join All Button Join Selected Scenarios.

Not much to write up about it really, it just makes it easier to queue for more than one Scenario at a time. Especially useful at Tier 3 which opens up 6 Scenarios.

Works great for both solo and joining as a party.

With WAR, I'm happier than I've ever been with an MMORPG's default interface.

I've tried to hold back the compelling forces of Addon addiction. After an initial love affair with them in WoW (I even created a few of my own) I cut back and did without them completely in Age of Conan.

Today I caved and installed an Addon for WAR. It's a case of not-quite-perfect, just-needs-this, or so I justify it to myself. I just needed a bit more button bar functionality to make the most of my modest screen real estate.

Vertigo turned out to be my solution.

I love the simplicity. Vertigo doesn't create new bars / buttons, it changes the shape of the current bars. To work correctly, you should have all 4 bars showing, then just change the columns and number of buttons.

"/vert cols 4 1" will change bar #4 into a vertical shape.

"/vert buttons 4 10" will change the number of buttons on bar #4 to 10.

A good combo of these commands is "/vert cols 4 3" and "/vert buttons 4 9" which will create a 3x3 square of buttons like this:

Use WAR's builtin UI editor to move the bars around or resize them.

Update: Tycho over at Penny Arcade is calling this combo of addictive game within addictive game "Chicken Cordon Meth".

If anyone ever wondered how crazy addons could get within WoW, here it is: Bejeweled in WoW. There have already been attempts at clones of this game as an addon, but this one is for real, an official port of the hella popular puzzle game to be played within World of Warcraft.

It's a great idea really, something to distract yourself with while waiting for your teammates to show up for a raid or return from the graveyard, or better yet when Mr. Raid Leader is busy droning on in Ventrilo.

I'm not sure who should be more proud, Blizzard or PopCap Games.

Now if only they'd make Dynomite for WAR.

I've never understood why Blizzard's UI only allows one linked item to be open at a time. How are you supposed to compare gear that way? Switching back and forth between links via chat is a pain in the arse. Link Wrangler fixes this by allowing 5 link windows open at once. It also adds other features via buttons to re-link, view in the dressing room, compare with equipped items, etc..

It's a simple and elegant addon. I highly recommend it.

(For more addons that I have recommended, see the list of MMOROG articles with the Addon tag)

A guildmate recently asked me to recommend some addons, so I'm using this post to provide links. Some of these I've previously highlighted on my blog, in which case the link goes to the blog post first and is noted with a star *. Other links are to the preferred source for that addon to the best of my knowledge.

First, my own:

• ALE (Another Laggy Evening) *: My fancy ping meter.
• GuildBB: In-game forums system that sends messages via the mailbox.

Addons I recommend:

• Bartender3: Easy to use and configure Button Bar replacement.
• CT_MailMod: Send multiple attached mails easily.
• ItemRack: Switch gear sets very quickly. An addon to do this is almost essential when you have multiple sets of gear.
• LinkWrangler *: Open more than one linked item at a time.
• OmniCC: Display cooldowns on everything as a countdown number.
• PhanxChat *: Chat channel changes that are more logical than Blizzard's defaults.
• Pitbull *: Great feature-rich UnitFrames. Warning: very complex to setup.
• Quartz *: An excellent replacement Casting Bar.
• SCT (Scrolling Combat Text): Much better than Blizzard's copycat Floating Combat Text.
• SuperInspect: Inspect from futher away and cache it too.
• SW Stats: DPS meters.
• TrinketMenu: Switch and use trinkets easily, with auto-queues for cooldowns.
• XPUpdate: Display exp as numbers instead of a bar.

I created ALE (Another Laggy Evening) last year during a vicious bout of lag that our entire server was experiencing in the months prior to Blizzard's hardware upgrades. I wanted a better representation of ongoing lag than Blizzard's simple ping.

I also added a bit of frivolity with a built-in drinking game, which would cause your character to drink alcoholic beverages on severe ping changes and other events. The drinking game was overly complex and it died with Blizzard's 2.0 changes. I never recovered the drinking game, but I did continue the extended ping meter.

I've just updated ALE today for the most recent version of WoW. I made a small change to the meter to display the ping on the timelapse graph by default (previously the ALE logo was shown).

Eventually I'll get around to seriously updating this addon, perhaps with comparative lag displays for party members, etc.. Meanwhile, it works and does what I want it to do, demonstrates my lag over time.

You can download the latest version of ALE from Curse-Gaming.

(This is an update to an addon that I've created. For addons that others have made and I recommend, see the list of MMOROG articles with the Addon tag)

One thing that has always bugged me with the default Blizzard UI is the clunky and inconsistent way that chat channels work. For instance, Party and Guild chat become 'sticky' after you use them, so your next chat line automatically goes back to that channel, but other channels are never sticky. This has been the source of numerous mis-types within the game. PhanxChat fixes that and a bunch of other inconsistencies, plus streamlines your chat display for less clutter.

There's a whole host of useful features, which can be turned on or off, but one of the reasons I love PhanxChat is that it has an intelligent configuration by default. I install it and play, it does all the right things for my preferences. Here's the list of bulleted features:

• Hides the chat scroll buttons.
• Hides the chat menu button.
• Shows the scroll-to-bottom button only when you're scrolled up.
• Enables mousewheels scrolling in the chat frames.
• Moves the chat edit box to the top of the chat frame.
• Enables arrow keys in the chat edit box.
• Disables the flashing effect on chat tabs.
• Locks chat tabs to prevent accidental undocking (hold SHIFT to drag).
• Configures chat text fading.
• Sets the fade-in alpha for chat frames.
• Removes the brackets around player names.
• Colors player names by class, if known.
• Remembers channel colors by name, not number.
• Shortens channel names and chat strings.
• Enables sticky chat for all chat types.
• Suppresses channel leave/join notifications.
• Suppresses repeated messages in public channels.
• Makes URLs in chat clickable for easy copying.
• Colors URLs in chat and adds brackets around them.
• Adds "tell target" functionality.
• Auto-enables chat logging.

That list may seem overwhelming, but it's the simplicity and ease of use with PhanxChat that I love. It just works for me.

Update: A recent version of PhanxChat sets not only all chat channels as 'sticky', but also emotes and whispers. I didn't like whispers included, nor did anyone else in my guild. Although there's no setting within PhanxChat's menus to exclude whispers, there is an easy fix if you're not afraid of a quick edit to the PhanxChat.lua file:

On line 52 of PhanxChat.lua, within the declarations of PhanxChat.stickyTypes, change:
["WHISPER"] = true,
to
["WHISPER"] = false,

You can download PhanxChat from WoWInterface, where it is usually updated most often.

(For more addons that I have recommended, see the list of MMOROG articles with the Addon tag)