They are free and as long as you download them from a reputable website like Curse Gaming or the other one, whose name escapes me right now, you’ll be fine.
Curse Gaming have an addon downloader application which you can use, or you can manually download the addons and put them in the addon folder yourself. I’m on a Mac, so it might be a bit different, but mine get put in World of Warcraft > Interface > AddOns. Each addon has it’s own folder and some addons have multiple folders.
The handy thing about the Curse application is that you can use it to check for updates for all your addons, which is an awful lot easier than going to each addon within the Curse website to see if there is a newer version.
A warning though, once you discover how useful these addons are, you’ll want more and more of them! But each addon uses up your CPU and if you get more than your computer can handle, the game will become very sluggish.
I think the most useful addons for a newer player are:
Auction addon. There are lots of different ones out there, so just go with what you prefer. It’s best to use one that’s popular, because it’s more likely that the developer is updating it (this is especailly important when there is a patch, as patches can affect how addons work or don’t work, as the case may be).
Bartender. You know the action bar at the bottom of your screen? And how you can go into Interface and click on other action bars? Forget about those. Bartender lets you display as many action bars as you want (well, up to 9, I think), and you can position them wherever suits you best on your screen. Most people put about three or four bars on the right hand bottom of their screen, like me. Check out my UI here, but don’t freak out at the fact that it looks really really different from the standard WoW UI - I’m a pretty hardcore raider!
You’ll notice that pretty much all my stuff is at the bottom of the screen. I find this much easier on the eye. For example, i’m a herber, so when I’m herbing, I’m looking at the minimap. It’s less eye strain to see my minimap where it is at the bottom of the screen, by the chat window, than it is to constantly move my eyes up to the top right of the screen.
No they’re free and as long as you download them from Curse or Wow Interface they should be fine.
You should join a guild as soon as you can find one that you think you’ll fit in it adds quite a bit to the wow experience and having a few level 80s on call for help is always a bonus while levelling.
A good general rule is that if an item is grey, it’s vendor trash, but if it’s white or green (or blue and binds on equip), it’s probably worth selling through the auction house.
Cashed in 60 Emblems of Frost and replaced my lowest-level piece of armor, my belt, with http://www.wowwiki.com/Verdigris_Chain_Belt. Of course, now I need to go and buy a new belt buckle for it - more gold spent at the AH.
My gear score’s now at 2259. Does anyone know what gear score is needed before you can do Halls of Reflection? I’m at work and don’t want to do too much Wow-related surfing.
Of course, maybe I shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry for HoR. The random dungeon finder tossed me into Pit of Saron yesterday; joined a group just as they were getting ready to tackle the first boss. We took him down (and I didn’t die!), then moved on to the second boss and took them down (and I didn’t die again!), but then we wiped on the second wave of undead mobs on the slope up to the tunnel, and wiped again in the tunnel fighting on that first ‘safe’ platform. At that point both the tank and one other DPS left the party, so the rest of us abandoned the run rather than wait for another tank to queue up. So so far that’s 3 Pit of Saron runs, two of which were successful (although I died against the first and second bosses both times, and the tunnel again the first time), and one that was unsuccessful.
The first two groups of undead on that hill leading up to the tunnel are probably the hardest fight outside of Halls of Reflection in the game. The only real competition is the last boss in PoS, where if your heals and tank aren’t 100% alert you can easily face a wipe. The tunnel is tough because the temptation is to just run straight to the center; I think from now on, having died that way once, I’m going to take it a bit slower, stuff falling from the ceiling be damned.
Tom’s toughest 5 man fights right now:
1 - Initial waves/gauntlet in HoR
2 - Going uphill to the tunnel in PoS
3 - Final PoS boss
4 - That undead mage guy in VH who summons the glowing balls and you have to kite like crazy
5 - Dunno. Black Knight (ToC) maybe? Or the gauntlet event in Halls of Stone; anyway, nothing else scares me or makes me sit up and take notice like the first 4.
Do you mean for the Dungeon Finder to let you in? We have a fresh tank who couldn’t get in via the Dungeon Finder when his gearscore was around 4K.
That said, you can go in at level 80 regardless of your gear so long as you fly there.
Unless by ‘do’ you mean effectively kill bosses in the dungeon. I healed one of our fresh warrior tanks through it, I’m not sure what his gearscore was but he was only 26.7K HP buffed. It was pretty close but we got there!
For those of us discussing DK tanks in ICC (especially vs. Pallies) - looks like Blizz realizes there might be a problem:
*Sacred Duty now provides 2 / 4% Stamina, down from 4 / 8% Stamina. The cooldown advantages of the talent remain unchanged.
* Frost Presence now provides 8% Stamina, up from 6% Stamina.
* Icebound Fortitude now provides 30% base damage reduction, up from 20% damage reduction. For a geared tank with high defense, this translates to 50% damage reduction, up from 40%.
Part of an incoming hotfix.
And Tom I think Paletress is harder than the Black Knight in ToC (or at least I’ve always seen PuGs more likely to wipe there).
HoR is tough. I recommend trying it in non-heroic mode first, to get a feel for it. The gear is still better than your average heroic run, and you can experience the fights without quite so much stress.
That being said, I agree with Tom - those fights on the hill/ramp in HPoS are rough. That’s especially true in my experience because no one wants to try crowd control. Nearly every group has a DK or someone else who just wants to pop AOE-effect abilities constantly, rather than have the benefit of taking one or two of the MOBs out of the fight for a little while.
Are you having the most trouble on the last phase, I assume? I’ve been having good luck with him in randoms lately, as most people seem to be following this general method -
First phase, normal fight, have someone either kill or root down the ghoul. Have something like Deadly Boss Mods to warn you on ghoul explosions in this phase and the next.
Second phase, start on the knight then use any AOE cooldowns to help tie up/slow down the ghouls. People should be prepared to do a lot of running, and watch out for the healer to make sure he/she isn’t getting swarmed. Drop frost trap/earthbind totem/whatever near the healer in that case.
Last phase, cluster around the knight to take advantage of any AOE/chain heals, and blow all cooldowns. Pull out temp pets (elementals/treants/ghouls/Army/bloodworms) to help - and take the occasional Marked for Death, hopefully - and go go go. It’s a race to the bottom of your health bars, so this portion is healer-intensive.
My GearScore is around 5075, and I’ve never been put in HoR by the random DF (I’ve only done it once, with guildies). I’ve only been randomed for PoS and FoS once each. DF hates me.
OTOH, I’ve done Halls of Lightning so often that I’m starting to feel real sorry for Loken. I think I’ve killed him about 30 times.
By this time, I’m really not having any trouble with him; spot #5 on that list was kind of honorary as the only real challenges in the 5 mans (barring incredibly moronic PuGs) is the ICC dungeons and that one guy in VH. Mostly now I just do AOE damage and have my ghouls fight his ghouls in Phase 2, and blow the defensive cooldowns for phase 3.
ETA: though I do sometimes wish during Phase 2 that I had that pally skill that lets you taunt all the enemies off of a player by selecting that player.
Trade ya. Lately about half the time I get the ICC dungeons or ToC when I random, which is really annoying when I’m looking for a quick faceroll to get my two daily food pellets.
Just to clarify because some folks might be confused (I know I was until I figured it out)–there are different ways to measure gearscore. The two I know of are Wow-Heroes.com and the in-game addon “Gearscore.” The scores they give are vastly different, so make sure you’re talking apples and apples when comparing gearscores with somebody. For instance, my Wow-Heroes gearscore for my mage is 3037, but my Gearscore score is something like 5750 (I don’t have the addon so I can’t check it myself).
When these addons first came into vogue, I remember people looking for heroics groups, “minimum gearscore 4000-something” and I looked at my (at the time 2700-something) score and thought, “Sheesh, what are they doing to get their scores that high? Especially when I’ve got mostly BiS or close to it gear?”
But each addon uses up your CPU and if you get more than your computer can handle, the game will become very sluggish. 
