Managing Addons
Posted by 
Heartbourne on Friday, June 12, 2009 - 15 Comments Tags: Addons, Addons, Deadly Boss Mods, addons, atlassloot, cartographer, cutup, facesmasher, fubar, lootlink, music, outfitter, peggle, performance, questhelper
Heartbourne on Friday, June 12, 2009 - 15 Comments Tags: Addons, Addons, Deadly Boss Mods, addons, atlassloot, cartographer, cutup, facesmasher, fubar, lootlink, music, outfitter, peggle, performance, questhelper 
I've been playing WoW since the open beta. Today, I made a discovery. You can set your addons to be enabled or disabled for each of your characters! After you have logged in and are on your character select screen, the familiar window that allows you to load out of date addons or disable addons without deleting them also has a drop down that allows you to configure which addons load for which characters.I stumbled upon this when I was trying to uninstall addons. I thought it would be useful to try to manually delete the files instead of using a manager because addons have complicated configuration files; there are files in /WTF/Account/AccountName/Server/Character and /WTF/Account/AccountName/Server/SavedVariables, and sometimes its unclear where data is stored for modular addons like Cartographer, Atlasloot, or FuBar. I searched my computer for the name of the addon and a few files came up. I curiously found some files called "Addons.txt" that contained a list of my addons and whether they were enabled or disabled. More importantly, they were in the configuration folders for each of my characters!
It only took a couple seconds of carefully examining the addon window to find out that I have somehow missed this feature for who-knows-how-long.
This is great for enabling or disabling class-specific addons like Cutup or FaceSmasher. I disabled all my combat related addons, like Deadly Boss Mods and Outfitter for my bank alt. The GUI is easy to use, but manually editting text allows users to copy/paste among other things, such as saving "addon profiles", allowing you to switch between interfaces for PvP or PvE easily. In fact, that sounds like a great idea for an application.
The load time difference was enormous! I decided to check out how many resources my addons were using. I whipped out the good old PerformanceFu and took a look at my statistics. It showed me how much memory LootLink and QuestHelper were using. Surprisingly, Peggle was not among my highest resource-intensive addons! Players with a few addons can hover over the menu button for some similar statistics.
I timed a login with all my addons on and another with all my addons off. With my approximately 120 addons, it took 32 seconds to login. With no addons, it took 2 seconds. This could be faster if I wasn't in windowed mode or listening to music and browsing the web at the same time, but the fact that addons cost me 30 seconds while logging in and likely lots of Dalaran lag inspired me to clean out my addons.
What tips do you have for addon management?
Reader Comments (15)
first
second but nvm
you really didnt know that ? ive known that for ages ! :P
Hmm, this is pretty much how I've had to set it up, and have been glad of this feature: Having Auctioneer only on my bank/auction Alts has been nothing if not a gods send =) Love it to death but DAMN is it hungry.
/facepalm
As a programmer that has worked on online games for a decade, I have learned not to judge people for their inability to manage add ons.
As such, I like to use the K.I.S.S. principal. (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) with the 'stupid' being me... not the person I'm trying to advise.
First: Use an addon manager like Curse.com to install and update your addons. It's easy, it works. You see the same interface I do, which makes it easier for me to help you if you have problems. This is opposed to telling you things like "Oh! Just unzip the folder in it's own directory under C:/Program files/World of warcraft/Interface/Addons (Which.. of course... is OS dependant...) then you're like "Wha? unzip? Folder? What are you saying?"
Second. Have enough RAM. If addons cause lag or other delays, add more memory to your system.
I practice what I preach, I use www.curse.com's update manager for all my addons that I don't write myself.
Thanks i didn't know that option was there. gonna sort of the addons once and for all.
I didn't read the blog well enough the first time, I suppose...
120 addons? Holy cow!
I tend to be judicial with my addons... And, out of curiosity, will now go look to see exactly how many I actually load...
It looks like 16. But... I'm only counting actual addons... were you counting EVERY MODULE of every addon? X-perl contains ... like... 17 modules, but I count it as 1 addon.
Now, how were you measuring the load time? It matters where your character is at the time of load, etc... As a test, I'll load up from the character selection screen (where you press 'Enter game)'... with my 16 addons...
lemme get a stopwatch... brb..
Lessee.. Loading a level 26 Paladin into the Wetlands on the Dark Iron server took 5 seconds with all addons.
With no addons... it was faster, perhaps 3 seconds from button push to fully loaded game..
@BobCharabini
I totally agree with you.
/facepalm
/facepalm
/facepalm
/facepalm
/facepalm
I would never think t see someone that doesn´t know that thing... (especially playing since open beta).
Like... when choosing you char you have "Addons" on bottom... and a freaking arrow asking to which char you want those addons to work... don´t know how anyone could miss it for 4 years.
Sorry mate. That was an epic fail
Biggest tip for addon management: don't have 120 addons, rofl. Seriously, though, I have no idea how many addons I've got, but things like Xperl, Auctioneer, and Atlas have like 15 folders each. I've got enough RAM and CPU speed that it doesn't really bother me so I'm fine with it right now.
It's funny you've only discovered it just now. Personally I've got >300 addons and all running on my main (except for Auctioneer, which I only recently disabled because it was eating 60MB).
The interface is bugged for me though, probably through a massive overload of addons. When I've got an addon enabled on all characters, I go to one character and disable the addon there, it is disabled for all my characters (or only some, it's really weird).
Also does blizzard not save my 'enabled-disabled' settings. I have to change the addons, press OK, then quit the game and restart it.
As for updating, I've made every addon I have a favorite on both wowinterface and wow.curse (wowinterface ftw!), so I get about 3-10 emails every day with updates. Don't like the concept of wow.curse's updater (and the filthy dogs disabled WoWMatrix - shame on you!). Just waiting for Wowinterface's updater, I must say it looks very promising.
Check out the addon:
OptionHouse (sometimes referred to as OptionLessHouse) it allows you to toggle addons on/off with only a /reloadui.
Ah thanks! I never knew that, and this might be helpful =p
What kind of computer do you use?! I use very few addons and I thought my computer was very good, but it takes me about 30 seconds to load my character without addons. :(
Now it's time to go to curse.com and get yourself a nice little addon called "Addon Control Pannel"(acp for short), it will let u manage ur addons without logging out.
Just a tip
is it me, or everyone in The Totally Raid Guild has white house computers? Everyone got tons of addons and got 80 FPS...
I thought i had a good computer, but with 38 addons i got only 20 fps in the wild :(