Fuck you, Blizzard!!

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

I got the patch in 45 minutes last night on my crappy DSL connection, and a half-hour later, it was installed. Cosmos gave me all kinds of grief, but once I resolved that (more or less), the game ran beautifully, and I was cavorting in the changes.

If bittorrent doesn’t work, definitely look for mirrors for the patch; plenty of people mirror it, so you should be able to get it from alternate sources.

Sorry you had trouble with it!

Daniel

[Little_Wing]

It took over 8 hours to download the patch yesterday, which is fucking ridiculous. And considering how unstable the servers were last night, the game was virtually unplayable for me anyway, long download times or not. I’m amazed that Blizzard has made such a quality game but has such a shitty way of distributing the patches. (I’m pretty much computer/internet illiterate so I really don’t understand the process or why the hell it takes half a day to download.)

For future patches, how does one go about finding one of these free mirror sites? Is “bittorrent” a website? Sorry to sound dense. Any help would be appreciated and my email is in my profile if posting a mirror site here is frowned upon.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Little Wing

For future patches, how does one go about finding one of these free mirror sites? Is “bittorrent” a website? Sorry to sound dense. Any help would be appreciated and my email is in my profile if posting a mirror site here is frowned upon.

Basically Bittorrent is a system where everyone’s computer is simultaneously uploading and downloading the file, so at peak times, tens of thousands of computers are available to get the file from. Blizzard “seeds” the system with servers in the beginning, so that people can start the process by downloading from these serers, but there’s nowhere near enough servers for everyone to download from them simultaneously.

As near as I can tell, the system is pretty quirky–thus some people get it quickly (like me), while other people take forever to get it. Some kindly souls get around this by putting the entire file on their own website, where you can download it directly instead of using Blizzard’s program to simultaneously download it and upload it. The risk here is that some tweaker will attach a virus to the patch–this has happened in previous cases.

I know there was at least one thread on the www.worldofwarcraft.com forums yesterday where people were announcing web locations where you could get the file. The forums there are a stinking morass, for the most part, but if you go with a mission in mind, you can sometimes find something worthwhile amongst the dross.

Daniel

[Faruiza]

Shhhutup all of you! Do you want them to hear?? Do you?! The Blizzard Overlords might take it away from me, if they think I’m not being compliant, and I would not be able to live!!

Heh. Seriously. I got very lucky last night and managed to get that patch at 128kbs after getting me a static ip. I actually got to play for an hour before I had to get in bed, and I like most of the new features I encountered. I know at some point that chat bubble thing is going to irritate me, but right now it’s novel fun!

I’m sorry all you who had to futz with it all night and day. I know it’s frustrating, but considering the basis for comparison, Blizzard is the best thing to happen to Online RPG’s since…oh, I dunno…everything that’s been done before? It sort of stands to reason that there will be some problems with a patch that big.

Ok. I’m done splashing around in the geek pool.

[Leonard]

Luckily, I called home yesterday and got my wife to start the download at about noon. When I got home a 5:30 it was at 99.5% (and that last 0.5% took about 40 minutes). I don’t know what the hell is wrong with their downloader, but I’ve forwarded every port it said to in the DSL modem firewall and the software firewall for absolutely no change in speed.

My wife tells me that the lag from last night is gone today, so hopefully I’ll be able to hit Dire Maul when I get home. Did anyone get a chance to try it out last night? If so, how long of an instance is it? I’m hoping it’s shorter than the other high end ones, because I only get enough time to run them once or twice a month.

[Lilairen]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

I got the patch in 45 minutes last night on my crappy DSL connection, and a half-hour later, it was installed. Cosmos gave me all kinds of grief, but once I resolved that (more or less), the game ran beautifully, and I was cavorting in the changes.

How’d you wind up fixing Cosmos? I eventually gave up and shut the fucking thing off in the “Right, now I wait until this updates” fatalism mode.

Though since the patch gave me a bunch of extra taskbars, I wasn’t as badly put out as I was last patch.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Lilairen

How’d you wind up fixing Cosmos? I eventually gave up and shut the fucking thing off in the “Right, now I wait until this updates” fatalism mode.

I did three things:

1. I downloaded the alpha version from their website (www.cosmosui.org), which solves some of the problems; and
2. I turned off, under “Add-Ons”, all the aspects of the program that I was sure I didn’t need (including their popbars, now that WoW has them incorporated); and
3. I grimace and get click okay once every five minutes when an error message appears–at this point, they mostly seem to be when I right-click on inventory items.

I figure in the next day or two they’ll get the bugs ironed out of Cosmos. If blizzard included combatstats, smartcasting, and stats on your hp/mana bars, I would get rid of Cosmos entirely.

Daniel

[velveeta]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

If blizzard included combatstats, smartcasting, and stats on your hp/mana bars, I would get rid of Cosmos entirely.

Have you tried CTMod? It does all those things and doesn’t alter the framexml.toc which is a file Blizzard updates after every patch. I used to use Cosmos, but I find CTMod is less bloated, does everything I need (I think the hotbars are MUCH better), and they always (so far) have a new version ready to download the same day as the patch. You might want to try it.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@velveeta

Have you tried CTMod? It does all those things and doesn’t alter the framexml.toc which is a file Blizzard updates after every patch. I used to use Cosmos, but I find CTMod is less bloated, does everything I need (I think the hotbars are MUCH better), and they always (so far) have a new version ready to download the same day as the patch. You might want to try it.

Hmm…I’ll take a look at it. Thanks!
Daniel

[BurnMeUp]

i popped on last night. Took me a while to get authenticated during sign in, but the DL was 30 minutes tops, and the install was pretty smooth too.

I hadn’t figured out the extra toolbars but now that i know how to use them i’ll add them tonight. The quest tracker is pretty sweet.

[Lilairen]

@velveeta

Have you tried CTMod? It does all those things and doesn’t alter the framexml.toc which is a file Blizzard updates after every patch. I used to use Cosmos, but I find CTMod is less bloated, does everything I need (I think the hotbars are MUCH better), and they always (so far) have a new version ready to download the same day as the patch. You might want to try it.

Teine uses CTMod, I believe; I’ve peered at it over his shoulder.

Is there a way of getting it to flag drops by whether or not there are skills that use them? One of the things that I find tremendously useful with Cosmos running is being able to hover over random crap that I find and say, “Oh, that’s something I can use, I wonder if it’s something I have a recipe for already,” or, “Hey, Teine/Buzz/Mona/someoneelseIknow might have a use for that, I’ll ask if they need any.” I haven’t gotten the impression that CTMod has that functionality, but I’ve only seen it in action when watching Teine rather than grouping with him on the other machine.

[Agent_Cooper]

Sweet I can even bitch about WoW at SDMB! I share everyone’s amazement at how such a great “game design” company can be such a totally shitty “server maintenance” company. If AT&T really is behind it, well then I am much less amazed…

I disagree with whoever said there was notice. They said weeks ago that a patch was coming, but only on Monday did they say, “The patch is Tuesday!” Not that it matters much. I still dread every update they do. Even though the content is great, it tends to mean no stability for days on end.

I suffered the 2kb/s download only long enough to surf the fansites (wowvault) for a link to a third party host. There almost always is one within a short time of the patch. It got my patch at 300kb/s from them, while the Bliz DL was still at 2-3%.

On top of that, after patching and getting my UI rebuilt, (at least they added some function to the game UI, so 2 less plugins are required* to play now.) our guild was all lined up to conquer Molten Core… only to find out they bugged the dungeon with their “improvements”. Basically, they required splitting your 40-man group into four 10-man groups, which then got flagged with separate 6-day timers and could not recombine as a 40-man for the main dungeon. Grrr. I think the outcry caused Blizzard to hot fix it last night.

*not quite “required”, but the game’s natural UI is lacking enough that I can’t bring myself to play without enhancements.

[jayjay]

They nerfed hunter pets, too. There are some very unhappy Azerothian animal-lovers out there right now.

[Cerri]

@Lilairen

Teine uses CTMod, I believe; I’ve peered at it over his shoulder.

Is there a way of getting it to flag drops by whether or not there are skills that use them?

You want Reagent Helper. It tags tradeskill/reagent items with what professions they are for.

Btw, those of you who hate Cosmos might want to try Ultimate UI. It’s a comobo of both Gypsy and Cosmos, without all the issues Cosmos throws at you, plus a few other very useful add-ons.

I’ve been spending UI-fixing time at Curse Gaming Mods. They have all the various mods and add=ons you hear about and a TON of really freakin cool add-ons I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Here’s a list of some of my favorites:

Feed Pet Button -

“Select a food for your pet and drop it onto the feed button. Clicking the feed button will drop the selected food onto your pet. When your pet is in “Happy” state, the button becomes transparent and a left-click will not activate it. However, you can override this with a double-click.”

Button is moveable, I have mine right up by my pet icon.

Hunter Pet Skills This one’s great for the hunter who’s still up-and-coming, and doesn’t have all his pet skills yet.

“Search an in-game database to find where the pet skill and rank you need is located. Type << /sk >> or << /petskills >> for a list of commands.”

This is one I haven’t tried yet, but I’m saving till I can pvp more effectively- ICU hunter mod -

Click on blips in the radar and identifies at most 10 targets in a selectable popup menu. On selection, player acquires the unit and a ping will be generated on the last known location of the target. Party members will receive the ping and a message containing target’s details. Move cursor away from radar or popup menu to close the menu. Shift-Click to generate a normal ping.

ItemBuff -

[quote]
This mod automatically displays icons and text at the bottom left of your screen for each temporary buff on any of the items you are using. The text will tell you the name of the buff and how long it has before it runs out, while you can hover over the icon and get the full tooltip for the buffed item. This is generally most useful for rogues and shamans, but might be useful for other classes, too. This mod is also in Cosmos.

[quote]

This is another one I haven’t tried yet, but I plan on adding for my mage mostly (don’t use succubus much on warlock atm) MezHelper -

This mod performs a variety of functions to help with crowd control and train mez breakers out of their dirty habits. It is currently working for Warlocks (Seduction) and Mages (Polymorph).

When you mez something, a timer will appear on screen showing you how long you have had it mezzed.

• You can automatically announce targets that you mez.

• While you have something mezzed, if someone breaks the mez it will display the name of the person who broke it.

• You may set the main assist for your party. If the main assist breaks a mez, it will not report the break.

• When a mez is broken, MezHelper will check the mez breaker’s target against the Main Assist’s target. If they are not the same, it will tell the mez breaker to assist the Main Assist.

• /MezAssist: a command that will assist the player you have set as Main Assist

NEW FEATURES
Strictness level: I’ve implemented levels of strictness for different playstyles and situations.

Lvl 1 (default): The most lenient. Use this if you don’t care who breaks a mez, as long as they are assisting the MA, or if you want MezHelper to generate less messages.

Lvl 2: Will ignore all breaks made by warriors, IF they are assisting the MA. Use this if you don’t care if the MA breaks the mez, as long as the breaker is a tank.

Lvl 3: The most strict. This is the level used in previous versions of the mod. Will show all breaks except the Main Assist’s. Use this to catch warriors who are assisting but still breaking mez with AE’s like Cleave or Thunderclap, or if you don’t want anyone including tanks breaking your mez before the MA.

Channels: You can now change the channel that MezHelper displays to. For example, /Mez channel PARTY or /Mez channel RAID

Evidence: Sometimes people want to know what they did that broke a mez, or perhaps you are just curious. You can check the event that caused the last mez to break by using “/mez evidence”. “/mez evidence public” will display it publicly.

PetLeash -

This addon is intended to keep your Warlock pet from chasing after fleeing, feared, or sheeped mobs. When a humanoid mob is close to death, it may run, causing your pet to chase after, and generally getting more aggro. This addon will make your pet follow you should a mob try to run away from fear or being sheeped. If the mob returns and attacks you or your pet, the pet will resume combat (provided it is in defensive mode).
If you cast “Fear” on a mob, PetLeash will detect the Fear debuff and command your pet to follow you as well, this also applies to mobs that are sheeped. Also, this will command your pet to follow you if a mob becomes charmed (no more breaking mezzes).

Servitude -

A warlock pet addon that manages and autocasts # of pet skills.

Type “/servitude” after install for the configuration window.

=== Voidwalker ===

• Auto Consume Shadows - Voidwalker will cast Consume Shadows after battle if his HP is below a specified percentage
• Auto Sacrifice - Voidwalker will cast Sacrifice during battle if his or the player’s HP drops below a specified percentage

=== Succubus ===

• Smart Soothing Kiss - Succubus will not cast Soothing Kiss if her HP is above a specified percentage
• Auto Invisibility - Succubus will cast Lesser Invisibility after battle if she has no debuff

=== Felhunter ===

• Auto Non-Combat Devour - Felhunter will search and devour magical debuffs on himself or the player after battle
• Hungry Felhunter - Felhunter will search and devour magical debuffs on himself or the player during combat if his HP drop below a specified percentage. You can set to always on by putting the threshold at 100%.
• The addon automatically creates a Magical Debuff List that can be divide between the list of buff you want to be devoured in combat, and those that you don’t.

ShardTracker -

This mod helps Warlocks to:

o track how many soul shards you have
o sort your soul shards into a specified bag
o keep track of your healthstone status
o create and use healthstones
o give healthstones to other players
o track your party members’ healthstone status
and be notified when they need new healthstones
o keep track of your soulstone status
o create and use soulstones
o see the cooldown time until you can re-cast soulstone,
and be notified when the cooldown time expires
o keep track of your spellstone status
o create and equip spellstones
o see the cooldown time until you can use an equipped spellstone
o automatically re-equip the item that was in your off hand when you
equipped the spellstone

For non-warlocks, this AddOn will display a small button
near the minimap when the player has a healthstone. Clicking on this
button will activate the healthstone.

(There is a Cosmos and a non-Cosmos version of this, so make sure you select the correct one! Also, you will need the Sea (general lua function library) included in Cosmos and UUI, or downloadable at Curse)

SmartPet This one I love for my hunter! Features:

• Taunt Management: Enabling this will ensure that your pet always has enough focus to Cower or Growl. Each time you enter combat, your pet will make use of the abilities that were set to Autocast when combat started, while maintaining enough focus to growl or cower every 5 seconds. After combat ends, abilities that were disabled by the focus manager during combat will be reenabled.

• Smart Focus Management: Enabling this will attempt to maximize your pets DPS output by automatically enabling and disabling burst and sustained damage abilities at the appropriate time.

• Health Warning: Enabling this will send a message to your party if your pets health drops below the specified amount.

• Auto Cower: Enabling this will cause your pet to cower when its health drops below the specified amount.

• No Chase: Enabling this will attempt to prevent your pet from chasing fleeing targets. Only works if you and your pet are fighting the same target.

I have this one for my priest, but she’s only lvl 8, so haven’t used it much yet. Rocks so far, though. PopGroup -

Pop Group is a simple utility that pops a list of your groupmates
under the cursor when you click a beneficial spell (buff, heal etc)
without a friendly target targetted.

Your name shows up under the cursor, so self casting is a double click.

The bars with the names are color coded for that player’s health - green
is above 2/3rds, yellow is 1/3rd to 2/3rds and red is below 1/3rds.

Additionally a tooltip shows the exact health percentage.

AmmoWarning -

Can be set to notify of low ammo/ammo count at certain events/ammo lvls such as entering a town, opening a vendor etc. Will also mark on your map where arrow vendors are after you’ve purchased from one. (You will need the MapNotes addon for that last part to work)

Auctioneer (Requires LootLink) -

This plugin provides you with in-game data on data that is collated by you at the auction house. You trigger the data gathering by typing “/lootlink scan”.

This plugin also provides you with a database of vendor buy and sell prices, and stack sizes for a relativly large set (about 7000) of common in-game items. This data is presented when you mouse over an item, and the tooltip appears (Yes, even when looting)

BankStatement -

View the contents of your bank, anywhere in the world, including quantity of each item. You will not be able to modify the contents of your bank (add, remove, move). This is most useful for those of us with poor memory skills. Bank Statement contents are stored distinctly for each character. You will need to visit a bank after installing BankStatement, to set up the stored items. (You can see any char’s bank from any other char, as long as you’ve visited the bank on that char after loading the addon)

CharactersViewer - T

his addons allow you to see your other characters equipments and stats. You have to log at least once with a character to have acces to a character stuff. You can see tooltip of equipement, and even link them to a chat windows with shift-left-click (as elsewhere in WoW).

Enchantrix -

This plugin provides you with in-game data on what a particular item will disenchant into were you to disenchant it. It comes with a reasonable huge prebuilt database of disenchants, plus it will collate any disenchants you do while it is loaded into the mix.

EquipCompare -

In WoW when you shop for items at a merchant and you hover over an item, you get a comparison tooltip showing the “currently equipped” item too. This AddOn adds such a feature everywhere in the game where you can hover over items, such as in your bags, in the loot window or on the reward page of a quest. You also receive comparison tooltips when clicking an item link in the chat box.

GoldView -

Creates a small frame at the top of the screen that displays the amount of gold, silver, copper. The frame is draggable so you can place it anywhere you want.

NEW* It keeps track of the gold you gain during a session. type /goldview session in game!

MinipetLeash -

MinipetLeash allows you to automatically summon an ornamental pet (such as a cat or rabbit). No more forgetting to resummon your pal when you hearthstone, dismount a taxi, or resurrect. You can specify the pet to summon, or let the program choose a random one from your inventory each time.

Been experimenting with this one, but it’s still in beta, so it’s DB isn’t by any means complete yet. However, you update it before login, so it’s convenient to update. Those of you who played EQ will remember the EQ version of EQ Econ WoWEcon

[emekthian]

This is why I only play single player console RPGs.

[velveeta]

@Lilairen

Teine Is there a way of getting it to flag drops by whether or not there are skills that use them?

On preview I see that Cerri has covered it. One more good one I would add is Gatherer. It keeps track of where you mine/pick herbs and marks them on your world map so you can find them easier the next time.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Wow, Cerri, that looks very cool!

I downloaded CTMod last night. It’s got most of the things I need, but I don’t like how it tracks party health–something very important for a healer class like mine. Cosmos gives you a set of stats in the middle of the screen, superimposed over the battle, making it very easy to pay attention to both the fight and party health; CTMod just gives you numbers off to the sides of your party portraits.

Anyone know how Ultimate UI handles this issue?

Daniel

[velveeta]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

I downloaded CTMod last night. It’s got most of the things I need, but I don’t like how it tracks party health–something very important for a healer class like mine.

I have an alt priest so I was going to try CastParty out.

Also, here is a huge list of UI mods: WoW mods

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

I’ll take a look at castparty soon–it looks interesting, but may be above my head, programming-wise.

Daniel

[Cerri]

I believe Ultimate UI incorporates the party health superimposed over the screen if you wish it to. UUI is really just a combo of Cosmos and Gypsy mods (if you haven’t checked out Gypsy mod’s bars you might want to, they rock imo.

These are the bars UUI uses), and I’m pretty sure UUI has all the add-ons Cosmos uses plus some others…just for some reason UUI doesn’t seem to give people the flak Cosmos does. Hell if I know why, I know diddly about script/lua coding. I just know it works way better.

Left Hand, you might want to try the Ultimate UI and add in the PopGroup add-on, I think you might really like both those mods working together as a healer class.

PopGroup (I know I listed it above, but I’ll post it here again anyways)

Pop Group is a simple utility that pops a list of your groupmates
under the cursor when you click a beneficial spell (buff, heal etc)
without a friendly target targetted.

Your name shows up under the cursor, so self casting is a double click.

The bars with the names are color coded for that player’s health - green
is above 2/3rds, yellow is 1/3rd to 2/3rds and red is below 1/3rds.

Additionally a tooltip shows the exact health percentage.