Scholomance mod for Skyrim

Great looking mod for Skyrim which creates the WoW instance of Scholomance. It shows what a non-cartoon style of game might look like. Very darn appealing.

Cartoon style allows forgiveness for a huge range of visual issues, including a place not looking correctly fitted out with junk, details on surfaces, and all the other illusions that a human can detect, but need to be “designed by hand”. Probably relates to that old Uncanny Valley concept.

The image above looks like the entry bridge for Scholomance. Have a view of the rest on the link Steam Workshop: Scholomance.

Whats your mod philosophy?

With Warcraft being patched and expanded at the moment all the community created mods also require updates. Sometimes these updates are trivial and the author can easily make them compatible with the new version. Other times the work to maintain a mod is too much, and it becomes unsupported. At wost it ceases to function properly and breaks others. For the devs giving away their free time on Mods the patch/release period must be like Christmas and Tax time all rolled into one. The community loves the work, but is also very demanding.

For players with mods this means updating is an important part of any expansion or patch activity. I’ve been watching the forums and the chatter in game, and mods are back on the list of topics that we seem to love and hate.

So what is your mod philosophy?

• those who hate them, and refuse to alter the game.
• those who use only a minimal set
• those who explore options
• those who have hundreds of mods, and test, tweak, and alter their interface weekly rather than at patch and update times.

Blizzard has said that encounters are now designed with the fact that mods exists. In other words it is expected that mods will be used, and the complexity in raid fight mechanics reflects this. That means that competitive scenarios like pve, pvp, battlegrounds, etc are expecting players to be using performance enhancing mods.

My current philosophy is:

• Find a minimal set of mods which gives me enough information to play the game quickly and efficiently.Essentially focus on as few mods as possible, with the least memory and cpu requirements.
• Consider each mod in terms of the time it saves. (mailbox auto-open)
• Is the information significantly performance enhancing.(boss warning mods, threat meter, next dps button, auction mod)
• Look for mods which when removed alter the game-play in a negative way. (in-game map resizer, loot distribution mod, bag mod)
• And lastly a mod which improves the visual aesthetic of the interface. (unit frame mods, bar mods, buff mods, move everything mod)

At the moment I’m using roughly 34 mods, and I aim to use around half that. Hopefully.

Tekkub is the man, for mods.

Tekkub makes great mods, and they are worth a look, even just to read the dev notes:  http://tekkub.net/

• At the start of TekKrush, “And so it begins”
• For TekLoot french version, “SAY IT FRENCHIE! SAY CHOWDAH!”
• Random note, “Up, down, what do we care?”
• Again in TekLoot Russian localisation, “In soviet russia addon localizes you!”

Seriously though, go take a look. Darn good stuff for anyone who likes a mod.

Must have Death Knight mods

Here are a few mods that have made playing a Death Knight far better.

Of course some of these have applications for non-DKs, and there are a stack of ones that are generally useful across all characters.

1. Rune Watch. My favourite display for rune power, disease timer, and all the DK information which in normally handled by the default DK unit frame.
2. DK Presence Alert. This mod warns when you get threat, but instead of saying “Threat!!” it says “Switch to Frost presence!!!”. This is good as its a threat warning as well as a reminder for when you’re tanking but are in the wrong presence.
3. DotTimers. I use this for tracking what I have applied to which mob, which is also handled by the Rune Watch, but it is handy to see some of the extra cooldowns with the disease ticks.
4. Power Auras Classic. A way of showing customised screen affects based upon combat conditions. eg. I have Unholy Blight so that it creates a green circle around the RuneWatch area. This way I look in one easy place for all the single target info I need.
5. ZOMGBuffs. Reminders for Horn of Winter and Bone Armour. Works across all classes, and handy that it pre-warns so you can fit the spell into the next rotation set.

If you’re serious about a DK get something that each of these mods does.

MagicRunes vs RuneWatch

RuneWatch and MagicRunes both provide cooldown information for a Death Knight’s runes, and of the DK mods they are the best I’ve found. If you’re now leveling a Death Knight as your alt, as so many people seem to be, then consider geting both and playing with each.

There are many more mods out there, and they’ll all do some basic stuff. Frankly most are re-skins of the Blizzard UI’s Rune section, and most are exceedingly ugly. For a mod to be useful it has to give you accurate information, and be presented clearly. Adding art style to a good mod is valuable; making the Blazzard frame overly complex and fancy without anything extra is pointless.

Both MR and RW are good – I am torn between them, so much so that I use both.

MagicRunes

• better graphical timing of runes, as timer is displayed as a bar rather as a number
• needs a optional disease timer

RuneWatch

• design style is more akin to DK flavour, rather than a straight information mod
• includes disease detection and timing (a major point of differentiation), which for Unholy spec, is really handy.
• initial load state is way too huge for most UIs, but is simple to alter

Both

• support different layouts, styles, and symbols. No issue making each of these look and function in a reasonable way
• track rune cooldowns very well
• well supported and updated

Give me a Blacklist

Greedy Goblin has a post about leet-speakers, boosters, and the idiots who happen to play Warcraft (my words, not his). I agree with him totally, and have ranted a few times about oxygen thieves like this. GG advocates the IgnoreMore mod, and being on the front foot with adding people to your ignore list.

Good idea, but not far enough. I want an in-game Blacklist.

I want to be able to add an account to a list so that I’ll never see anything the Player says or does again. This would need to be added by Blizzard, and not publicise the toon names except the one you added it with. Basically this would stop major pains-in-the-arse players from ever being an issue. If I group and I can’t see somebody’s chatter, I’ll know I added that player to my Blacklist, and then I know to kick them, or leave the group.

All the goldspammers, the Trade Channel wankers, beggars, yellers, etc, will all be invisible.

As I said to greedy in the comments the response “[playername] has blacklisted your account.” will send the right message.

Ignore is not strong enough.

Mods that Are Working in v3

Like many folks my mods are a little skewy at the moment, and v3.0.2 will be here for a week so its worth updating. This led me to go and find some new ones. You can get all these from WoWMatrix and they are all Ace mods, so supposed to have low memory; ymmv.

Bags = Bagnon. I was using ArkInventory, and will again when its fixed. Till then this is good enough.

Bartender4 = great action bar mod.

Buffalo = the ultmate buff mod I have ever seen. Fantastic mod.

Ellipsis = a Dot, Hot, Cooldown, and target timer which is actually easier to configure and therefore beter than Dotimer.

FuBar = Good, but so many mods are not updated to Fubar v3.

Omen = Get it, your group needs you to have this, don’t leave the Inn without it.

Outfitter = an ok gear mod, but I’m not sold yet.

PitBull = Unit frames made very customised, and can look fantatic.

Prat = for comms/tells this is OK, but I feel its still a geek approch and could be more elegant.

Quartz = is a spell lag timer and castbar controller. Almost as mandatory as Omen.

ZOMGBuffs = there is no better way to record and control the buffs you need to give, and it learns and changes on the situation. Logic for all classes built right in.