Project Lore

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 After you have logged in and are on your character select screen, the familiar window that allows you to load out of date addons or disable addons without deleting them also has a drop down that allows you to configure which addons load for which characters.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?

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Last Friday Blizzard put the kibosh on charging for any and all World of Warcraft add-ons.  In an update to their World of Warcraft UI Add-On Development Policy, the company's lawyers added three points to tackle monetary gain by LUA creators.  To sum up the associated points, developers can no longer charge for their add-ons, or premium content.  Nor can they ask for donations or display advertisements inside the game client.  The Add-On creators can still make ends meet through donations and ads via their website, but that may not cut it. It took a few days, but the weight of the changes have begun trickling down to us end users.  According to Zorba, "Questhelper's dead."  The author's decision to end QH's run after upcoming v1.0 is not due to Blizzard's addition of some of its functionality, but because donations via the webpage do not compare to the in-game nag.  Outfitter has also been killed by the change. Blizzard is creating its own equipment manager to support its Dual Spec feature, so that won't hurt much. It appears that there are three key things Blizzard had an issue with:

1. Blizzard doesn't want other people making money directly off their work.

2. Blizzard is trying to stop end users from getting harassed by advertisements, pop-ups and donations.

3. Authors have few - and easily adjustable - rights because without WoW, their creations are worthless.

The last point, is probably the most troublesome.  QuestHelper has been downloaded millions of times.  If even a fraction of those people use the mod, that means Zorba is providing a service to more people than most MMORPGs can count as subscribers.  With such a huge base, shouldn't an author have some rights?  I am going to put my neck on the chopping block and say that they do, just not as much freedom as they previously did. Since day one Blizzard has been playing with the add-on community.  During the Molten Core days, add-ons were used as automated decursing utilities, and macros were far more powerful than they are now.  Blizzard nerfed both because they felt that gameplay was being compromised, and as unfortunate as it is for the authors, that is what they did here.  Blizzard saw add-ons like Carbonite - the mod that reportedly kicked this off - adversely affecting a users experience due to the ads.  And if it wasn't the ad-based flavor, then they directly made money off Blizzard. Blizzard has laid down the law and there is little we can do to stop them.  Striking is a possibility, but could easily backfire on many authors by driving users to mods that serve the same purpose.  A general strike would be required, and I just can't see that happening.  The changes and incoming losses are just something that we will have to live with.  These hardworking Add-On developers do deserve our money, but they are going to have to come up with more creative ways to shake it out of us.  Although I believe I could easily live without any of my mods, I have and will continue to support the more complex ones (Auctioneer is the love of my life). Unfortunately, I don't have a golden suggestion for the developers to keep the green coming.  That being said, one way to guarantee more revenue for your work would be to host your own website, and attempt to create a community for the creations.  This will drive traffic directly to you, your advertisers and your donation button, rather than allowing sites like Curse or ZAM to reap those benefits. As personal as it may seem, Blizzard has removed an important part of your freedom, not your rights.  You can still pour your heart and soul into the add-on.  You can still make a living off it, you just have to do it by their new rules.  It won't be easy, but don't be like the RIAA and demand that the old standard remain in place through hell or high-water.  Come up with creative ways to draw income and attention to your creations.  Give those casual users yet another reason to feel guilty about ignoring the donation button.  Please, don't just throw your hands in the air and give up.  You owe it to yourself, your contributors and the add-on to at least try some new techniques before walking away. We will likely see more big name add-ons shutting down in the short term, so be prepared.  Which mods could you not live without?  I could manage to live without all of them, but my Auction House days would be far less profitable without my beloved Auctioneer.

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