World of Warcraft is undoubtedly the king of the MMO world right now, and if you are like 11 million others you are currently playing daily. What could possibly enhance your enjoyment of the massive fantasy world of Azeroth more? The answer to that question is really easy, the proper addons.

First let me explain what an addon is for those who may not know. An addon is an enhancement for the World of Warcraft user interface that makes in game tasks easier. They may help you manage your bags, casting bars, or even your equipment. There is an addon for just about anything that you can think of and using them will make your life so much easier.

Everyone in World of Warcraft has their own favorites but there are a few addons that almost everyone uses and in this article I will tell you what they are.

1.) Threat Meters

As you fight a creature in World of Warcraft you build up threat. Threat is a measure of just how much the creature currently hates you. You want to know where you appear on the creature’s threat list to either avoid gaining agro in the case of casters or gain agro for tanks.

Threat meters are not that important to the solo World of Warcraft player but if you group with others it becomes very important, especially if you are in a raid. Nearly all raid guilds require that you have a specific threat meter addon.

There are a number of threat meter addons but the most popular by far is Omen. It as well as most of the other addons that we are going to discuss can be found at wow.curse.com.

2.) Management Addons

In World of Warcraft you will have many things that need to be managed. As I said before there are addons for almost anything that you can think of but there is one addon package that will help you manage you casting bars, mail, buffs and much more. That addon is called CTMods.

There are two additional World of Warcraft addons that deserve to be in this section as well. They are Fubar and Titan. If you start adding a number of addons to your interface you are going to find your screen filling up with buttons for them. Fubar and Titan help by allowing you to add bars to the bottom or top of your screen to house these buttons and keep your screen neat and organized.

Last but not least in this section is a handy addon called Ark Inventory. It allows you to manage not only your bags and bank but allows you to view the guild bank and the bank of all of you other characters from anywhere in World of Warcraft.

3.) Specialized Addons

In this section of our World of Warcraft addons we come to those that serve a specialize purpose. Most are class specific.

Hunters will fall in love with Zhunter. It gives you an independent bar for your traps, tracking, aspects, and pet buttons thus opening up your regular bars quite a bit.

World of Warcraft healers (Holy Priests, Restoration Druids, Holy Paladins, and Restoration Shaman) will find Heal Bot to be invaluable. This addon places a frame on your screen with the names of everyone in the raid or group. You set up your mouse buttons to cast the spells that you need and then just click on the name. Gone are the days of frantically trying to target a player to get cast a healing spell on them before they die.

Warlocks might find Necrosis very handy for managing shards, stones, reagents and other warlock specific functions. Nearly every World of Warcraft warlock that I know uses this addon.

This list of World of Warcraft addons is far from being all inclusive, there are thousands of addons and everyone has different taste when it comes to them, My goal with this article is to give you a place to start when building your addon collection and make your life easier.

The Massively Multi-Player Online Games (MMOG’s) of today have become
almost like our real lives. They have an economy, a social structure, and their
share of bad apples if you know what I mean.

Have you ever been hunting somewhere within your favorite game and
someone just steps in front of you and takes the area for themselves? Have
you been belittled in chat channels just because you asked a question?
People who do these things tend to forget that they were new once upon a
time as well.

It seems that many of the players in MMOG’s have either forgotten how to
play well with others or simply could care less. My money is on the latter.

I have been playing MMOG’s since the days of Ultima Online and have
seen more than my share of disrespectful players. Through the years I have
prided myself on the fact that I do nothing in the game that I would not do
to someone in person.

If I came upon a group of people playing a game of full court basketball in
a park I would not simply walk out on the court and start shooting jump
shots. This philosophy carries over into my gaming life as well.

When I am in a low level zone farming items or crafting materials and a
player is around who is actually earning experience from killing the mobs I
simply move on. I remember the Everquest days when group kiting Hill
Giants in the Rathe Mountains was all the rage, simply because they
dropped good cash. You could go down there any time of the night or day
and find a high level character gathering up every giant in the zone and kiting
them around while those who could use the experience were forced to move on.

When you are playing your favorite game try to treat other players with the
same respect that you believe that you deserve. If you are interfering with
players earning experience or completing quests then move on and come back
later.

If we as players have consideration for both ourselves and others the worlds
that we play in would be much better places.

We live in a society of instant gratification. A society where the traditional values of earning rewards has gone out the window. The MMO gaming industry is jumping on the instant gratification band wagon as well.

NCSoft is a publisher of online computer games and on April 16^th they announced the creation of a subsidiary called NCcoin. NCcoin is a system which will allow customers of their games to use real world money to purchase virtual currency. They are not the first to implement this type of system. Sony Online Entertainment instituted “Exchange Servers” in their EverQuest 2 systems a couple of years ago.

In the SoE version players can play on the Exchange Servers and can sell items, money, and even complete accounts for real world money, of course SoE gets their cut. Dealing with the trafficking of virtual property items has been a headache for the MMO industry for years, but instead of combating such things Sony and now NCsoft have decided that if you can’t beat them, join them.

The SoE and NCsoft idea are good for a couple of reasons. By creating their respective systems they have done something to stem the flow of virtual items by making the sale of such items not as profitable any longer. The sale of virtual items brings in millions of dollars every year and of course large companies like SoE and NCsoft can see the dollar signs.

I am sure there are other gaming companies waiting to see how this pans out before jumping on the bandwagon as well. If all goes smoothly then we will see a flood of this kind of activity in the larger gaming companies.

Personally I am not a fan of selling or purchasing virtual items or cash with real money and I am sure that I am not alone in this line of thinking. I dislike SoE, but that is another story for another time, but I think that if a company is hell bent on selling their items and currency they should follow the SoE model and create servers specifically for this purpose.

I would wager that once more of the larger gaming companies start their own versions of the instant gratification system we will see a major crack down on the currency vendors which are so prevalent it today’s games. It’s odd how a gaming company seems to take these kinds of business more seriously when they are the direct competition.

Not long ago Blizzard Entertainment started giving us information on StarCraft 2 and most of us who loved the original are waiting with baited breath for its release. I am among those waiting but in my opinion Blizzard could have another smash MMORPG with a game called World of StarCraft.

In my humble opinion the MMO industry needs a good sci-fi based game. I know that there are games out that are sci-fi based but I did say we needed a good one. Sony Online Entertainment has Star Wars Galaxies but anyone who has any knowledge of the genre knows that the game is dying. FunCom has its hat in the ring as well with Anarchy Online. I was a beta tester for Anarchy Online and while it was interesting the performance issues that it suffers among other things relegate it to the “only on patch day” type of game.

There are so many of us who would love to jump into the StarCraft world and duke it out as Terrans, Protoss, or Zerg. There could even be a space combat based part tied into the game that would attract FPS (first person shooter) type players.

StarCraft has a rich storyline just as World of Warcraft does and in my opinion it could be developed into a space borne cash cow. Developing StarCraft into an MMO must have crossed the minds of the developers at Blizzard. If it hasn’t then they need their collective heads examined.

If Blizzard would put half as much effort into creating this game as they have into their other smash product World of Warcraft, we science fiction lovers would be in heaven and Blizzard might have to open its own bank to hold all the cash. See you all in World of StarCraft…I hope.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t come across yet another in a string of articles about why you should buy World of Warcraft gold. Then I log into the game and see messages from the soon to be banned gold spammers. Every once in awhile I think about the players that these articles and spam messages target, and think to myself… what a bunch of suckers.

A long time ago someone came up with a saying that holds true in real life and World of Warcraft. “There is a sucker born every minute.” There are differing opinions of who was the first to utter that statement but that does not matter. What matters is that they spoke the honest truth.

If you are contemplating buying World of Warcraft currency or have actually done it you are two things, a sucker, and Lazy.

World of Warcraft is one of the easiest games that I have ever played when it comes to earning gold. I earn an average of 1000 gold per day with zero cheats, zero hacks, and zero exploits. If you just get up off your lazy butt you can do the same thing.

There are many opinions as to why people are lazy. Maybe being born into an affluent family has something to do with it. Money talks where these people are concerned. It’s easier to pay someone to do something that to do it for yourself. My advice to this type of player is to yank that silver spoon out of your mouth and grow a set. Learn to earn what you get in game and in life. Once can do that then you can appreciate what you have.

Then we have those who swear up and down that they simply don’t have the time to earn gold. Simply put if you have time to play you have time to earn gold. I usually play 2 to 4 hours per day and as far as MMO games are concerned that is not a great deal of time. In that short time I earn…yes earn…500 to 1000 gold. For example yesterday I logged in after work as I usually do and played for 4 hours. In that time I chatted with friends, laughed and joked with my guild, and earned 1200 gold. Honestly it really is that easy.

With the prices of World of Warcraft gold running around $.05 per gold in my estimate that the gold I earned would have been around $60. I don’t know about you but I can think of better ways to spend that kind of money. It might not sound like much but it could be a night out with the wife or girlfriend, dinner with your Mom and Dad, or a trip to the local pizza joint with your kids. Like I said there are better places to spend real world cash.

No matter what reason that people give when buying World of Warcraft gold, it comes down to one thing. They are just too damned lazy to go out and earn it for themselves. When a simple player like myself can earn 1200 gold in 4 hours, anyone can do it.

Are there secrets to earning large amounts of World of Warcraft Gold? I wouldn’t call them secrets but you need to understand how it’s done. Can I teach you how to earn the kind of gold that I do? Yes. Will I teach you how to earn hundreds of World of Warcraft gold per day? That is up to you. I publish a free World of Warcraft Blog and I run a free World of Warcraft email list. Feel free to join us.

Is your bank account hungry for more gold? You may not realize it but there are literally dozens of ways to feed it in World of Warcaft. I know that the gold sellers would like you to think otherwise but there is absolutely no reason to spend your hard earned real world money for WoW gold.

Earning gold in World of Warcraft is not a deep dark secret. It isn’t something that you need to have a degree in Molecular Engineering to understand. The process of earning gold is simply digesting the information about daily quests that can be found anywhere on the internet and developing a plan to make the quest system work for you.

In a nutshell I will explain how I consistently earn more than 800 gold each and everyday in World of Warcraft. My usual day in game is about 4 hours long. It can be longer if my guild has something going on of course. In those 4 hours I run 25 daily quests. From those quests alone I earn about 290 gold.

The way I expand that amount is by having the proper professions. Each and every character that I have, and I have many are 2 profession gatherers. They all use some combination of skinning, mining, and herbalism. When I am out running my daily quests I harvest materials.

Add the amount of gold given for the quests, to the amount of gold I earn by selling all of the materials that I gather and finally add in the proceeds for selling the green and blue items that I get while questing and it totals somewhere between 800 and 1000 gold per day.

Do I sometimes make less? Yes. Do I make more? Yes, sometimes a lot more. It all depends on the drops. To make a long article short all you need to do is work within the mechanics of the game and you can earn a steady income. You do not need cheats, hacks, or exploits and if you need more than 800 gold per day you might want to take a look at your spending habits.

Could I tell you step by step how to put 800 or more gold per day in your pocket? Yes I could, but alas that is another tale for another time.

There are a great many methods that can be used when earning gold in World of Warcraft. Some of these methods work for the either the Horde or the Alliance only. The tip that I describe in this article works for both.

The two main requirements for this tip are The Burning Crusade expansion and a character of the appropriate level for Shadowmoon Valley. The creatures that you will be dealing with range from level 67 to 70.

There is a quest series that you can grab from Earthmender Torlok at the Alter of Damnation. For those of you using coordinates he can be found at 42,45. The quest series is just icing on the cake so to speak and is not required to use this method of earning World of Warcraft gold.

The area you are looking for is near Oronok Torn-Heart. To reach him and your hunting area you will need to locate the path at the west end of Coilskar Cistern (loc 48,20) and follow it up to the top of the mountain.

Once you find Oronok head to the north and you will discover and area filled with Ravenous Flayers and Domesticated Fel Boars. These flayers are the creatures that you will be concentrating on. They are well spaced and for the most part you can kill them one at a time. Occasionally you may pull two but that is uncommon if you are careful.

The Ravenous Flayers and Felboars have an ongoing war that you can use to your advantage. Use the boars (they are non-aggressive to players) as a “pet” while you kill the flayers. If you are semi-well equipped for you level you should be able to down a flayer in less than 20 seconds.

My testing of this method revealed an average of 21 Gold, 12 Green items, and 10 stacks of Netherweave cloth per hour. On most servers Netherweave cloth can bring in 2.5 to 3 gold per stack sometimes even more. Using this method it should be quite easy to knock down 50 gold per hour.

While 50 gold per hour may not sound like a much, you need to take into consideration the ease in which it was earned. I cannot think of very many areas that you can earn 50 gold per hour and have very little chance of dying.

If you make use of this method it will help your bank account grow steadily. Making World of Warcraft gold is honestly very easy if you know how.

By Jon Burstein |South Florida Sun-Sentinel - April 6th, 2008

He wants justice in the mystical world of Azeroth, protecting warriors, warlocks and rogues from what he calls a conspiracy threatening their way of life.

Antonio Hernandez plays World of Warcraft. It’s the most popular online role-playing game in the world, with more than 10 million subscribers paying to create characters who go on quests, kill monsters and earn “virtual gold” in fantastical realms. The world — a direct descendant of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings — even has its own carefully calibrated economy. But an outside force threatens the game’s integrity, Hernandez says. He has called on his fellow adventurers to join him as he takes a stand. The battle won’t be fought with wands or swords.

It will be waged in the Fort Lauderdale federal courthouse. The former assistant manager at an Orlando-area video game store is suing a company he says sells “virtual gold” from the World of Warcraft for real money. He wants IGE U.S. banned from selling gold — a practice commonly called “gold farming” or “real money trading”— because it hurts the game’s economy and ruins the entertainment experience, according to the lawsuit. Virtual gold, earned within the game, can be used for such things as buying and repairing equipment or learning new skills.

The case is thought to be the first of its kind — a lawsuit filed by a player seeking to ban “real money trading” within a virtual world. Hernandez wants a judge to certify the case as a class-action lawsuit, another potential first when it comes to lawsuits involving online role-playing games.

The legal fight is being closely watched by the fledgling field of “virtual law” and passionate World of Warcraft players.

“The real significance of this case is, ‘What are the rights of the [virtual world] community members when they go online?’” said C. Richard Newsome, Hernandez’s attorney.

Devout World of Warcraft players argue that people who buy gold are akin to baseball players who take steroids. Gold should be earned by each player by doing such things as completing quests and slaying monsters, not with a checkbook or credit card, they argue.

Attorneys for IGE U.S. have argued in court papers that Hernandez and other players have no standing to sue because they have no ownership or property rights within World of Warcraft. Hernandez’s lawsuit fails to show how he suffered actual damages, according to legal filings by IGE U.S.

In addition, IGE U.S. is no longer involved in the virtual gold business, said Miami attorney James M. Miller, who is representing the company. He declined to elaborate further.

“The stakes are high and our intention is to address [the lawsuit] in court,” Miller said.

In addition to the lawsuit, the Florida Attorney General’s Office has opened a consumer protection investigation into IGE U.S. The state sent a subpoena to the company in December, demanding documents detailing “the sale of World of Warcraft gold to consumers in the state of Florida.” IGE U.S. is fighting the subpoena.

IGE U.S. had a Boca Raton office, but it is no longer open, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Newsome argues that when players subscribe to World of Warcraft, they are bound by an agreement that specifically states they “may not sell items for ‘real’ money or otherwise exchange items for value outside of the [virtual world].”

Gold farmers damage the game’s economy, making it harder for the typical subscribers, who pay $14.99 a month, to earn gold through regular play, Newsome said. That means they have to spend more time on the game gathering gold to compete, he argues.

“This loss of time, conservatively, amounts to hundreds of thousands of hours of subscriber time and causes the irreparable harm of driving subscribers away from World of Warcraft,” according to Hernandez’s lawsuit. “The economic harm incurred by this loss of time is in the millions of dollars.”

And many players can’t afford to buy gold, Newsome said. In at least one instance, the cost of buying 80,000 gold coins was $2,399.94.

Newsome said Hernandez is unavailable for comment while the litigation is pending.

Hernandez does have at least one high-profile supporter of his lawsuit—the company that produces World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment.

“We believe that shutting down gold farming and real-money transfer is in the interest of all World of Warcraft players and that a victory in this case would have a positive long-term effect on the online gaming industry as a whole,” said Paul Sams, Blizzard Entertainment’s chief operating officer.Greg Lastowka, an associate professor at Rutgers School of Law who is writing a book on virtual law, said there have been instances where game manufacturers and “real money trading” companies have gone to court, but this marks the first time a player has launched such a legal attack.

“This [lawsuit] has more of a feel of a community trying to enforce its rules rather than a game company trying to enforce its power over the participants,” said Lastowka, who has done consulting work for Newsome.

Since the lawsuit was filed in May, Newsome said he has received a deluge of e-mails from the World of Warcraft community offering support.

It’s not uncommon for serious World of Warcraft players to spend 20 to 30 hours a week in the online world, Lastowka said. One such player was Nelson Izquierdo, of Hollywood, who at his peak was playing the game 40 hours a week.

Izquierdo, a 22-year-old student at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, said he can spot gold farmers because they often stay in a specific area, killing the same monsters over and over again. In addition, it’s not hard to spot players who have spent money to buy gold and weapons from online companies, said Izquierdo, who in World of Warcraft was a Level 70 warrior named Swisher. He is not involved with the lawsuit.

“They show that they have no skill,” Izquierdo said. “The guy who has spent time on his character will come out on top … You feel more worthy of your gear and your character when you put the time into your character.”

The people who buy gold typically are professionals who have disposable income but don’t have the time to invest in the game, said Craig Kelly, an Art Institute instructor who teaches video game design.

And the people collecting gold for real-money trading companies are largely from overseas, working in “gold farm” rooms filled with other World of Warcraft players. There have been estimates that there are more than 10,000 gold farms in China alone, said Ge Jin, a University of California San Diego graduate student who is making a documentary on gold farming.

Many gold farmers in China play the game 10 to 12 hours a day in an atmosphere Jin describes as “a mixture of boredom, exhaustion and fun.”

“Most of the time it’s just a job for them … killing certain monsters in certain areas repetitiously,” Jin said.

Kelly said that despite the lawsuit, he believes real money trading will remain a “fact of life” for online games.

“It’s supply and demand. As long as people are willing to pay for fake money, there are going to be people who [sell] fake money.”

Jon Burstein can be reached at jburstein@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-449l.

So, if you like I just took the plunge into Vista thinking it would make everything better and faster I’m sure you are as just as disappointed. So without giving you any technical reasons as to why it’s running slower (on the same computer you were using with Windows XP just a week ago…) lets jump right into speeding things up.

First things first, let’s ensure we have the newest video card drivers. So far, each time a new driver has come out for my video card, it has been the biggest single boost to WoW performance every time! So update your drivers frequently!

If you can’t tell what video card is in your system, right click on your desktop and click personalize (remember, were in Vista now). Next click “Display settings” and in the drop down box you should see the make and model of your video card. Mine is an NVIDIA card so I would need to go to www.nvidia.com to retrieve the newest drivers. If your card is an ATI card, go ahead and navigate to ati.amd.com to grab the newest drivers.

Alright, now that we have the newest video card drivers (and have restarted our computer) let’s take a look at the next biggest boost.

Many people will argue with my suggestions in this section, but that’s good, because depending upon your video card model, driver version, DirectX version, and whether or not you have an adobe product loaded on your system (strange isn’t it, fortunately it doesn’t matter because we are going to play with settings here anyway…) these settings will be different for everyone.

So let’s start in the World of Warcraft display properties. While Warcraft is running, run your mouse over your latency bar. Yes, that little green (though, more than likely yellow if you are on one of the damn original servers) bar that tells you your latency between you and the wow servers. Ever sense a recent patch, it also shows us our video FPS (frames per second.)

So here is what I want you to do. Start changing settings in your video options menu and keep restarting wow and check this number. Smooth game play hovers at roughly 30-45fps (and of course higher on faster computers…) and will go up and down depending upon where you are (in Orgrimmar expect low FPS, and in arena you can expect a much higher FPS) so make sure you are in the same place when you take each sampling. This is quite time consuming and is irritating to do, but once you have the optimal settings for your system, your game play will be much smoother. Remember, when you hover over the video settings, Blizzard generally tells you whether or not the setting will help, or hinder performance.

This last setting is relevant to only Windows Vista. Here are two settings I wish to note that destroyed performance on my system. Duel monitor setups will slow wow way down in Vista, and not running warcraft in full screen will be a huge bane to performance.

Now let’s talk about Vista’s settings. What I want you to do is right click on the World of Warcraft icon and go to “Properties.” In properties you will need to go to the “compatibility” tab. Check “Disable visual themes,” “Disable desktop composition,” and “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” and click apply. This will turn off some of Vista’s special effects while World of Warcraft is running. This will help WoW’s performance. I have not noticed “Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (Service Pack 2)” to make any difference.

Well, these are just three things I have done to make my system go faster, and I would love to hear any feedback as to other things you can do to make wow run smoother on Vista. Please drop me a line over on my site and I will be sure to share it with everyone I can. For the horde! (And yes, Vista is quite an upgrade from XP and will eventually be able to game the same as XP. For those of you who haven’t yet switched, you may want to reconsider if you are an extreme WoW player.

If your World of Warcraft is running slow in Vista and you would like it to run faster check out my article on World of Warcraft in Vista.

More articles from this pro: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Joshua Sommers

I have always been a proponent of providing the people who read my articles with the best information, products, and advice that I possibly can. Now I have come across something that I really think will astound you.

After reading all of the leveling guides on the market I thought that they were more a pain in the butt than anything else. You either had to print them or alt + tab out of the game to read the next steps. That has all changed now. Not too long ago I became aware of a new World of Warcraft leveling system. Yep, you read that correctly, I did say system.

This system is distributed by Team Idemise and it makes leveling so much easier. This system incorporates the best of all of the leveling guides I have ever read with in game access. No printing or jumping out of the game.

At first I thought it was just another in a long line of leveling guides but thought what the heck and decided to give it a try. Let me tell you that I was pleasantly surprised. The system places the guide in the game as an addon. It becomes part of your world map and gives you step by step instructions on where to level, what quests to do, and how to do them.

To test this system I started a brand new character on a new server and just followed the guide. I thought that I was pretty good at leveling my characters quickly but honestly I have NEVER leveled a character as fast as this one. I went from level 1 to 70 in a shade under 6 days. Now that is flying.

This system is probably the best thing to hit the “leveling guide” market since it began, but don’t take my word for it.

Take a Look for Yourself

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