I haven’t played WoW in awhile, but I have an account. My stuff still isn’t here. It gets her next week, but I have my laptop which I loaded WoW on before I left Germany.
I was never a great player at Warcraft. I’m usually playing City of Heroes/Villains. It took quite some time to download all of the patches. (I can’t even remember if I loaded Burning Crusade on this laptop. Is there a way to find out? I don’t see it in the program folders, but maybe it doesn’t show up because its an expansion? My wife wants to get Wrath of the Lich King for a Christmas present for me)
Anyway, its difficult for me to get used to playing on this laptop and I keep getting lost. On my PC I have plugin that gives me coordinates, but I can’t remember the name. Can someone point me to a good one to use on this laptop? I hate running around a large area looking for something with absolutely no idea where it is.
my wife (www.pinktoque.com) recommends a combination of TomTom and Lightheaded; the former adds a headsup of current coords and adds target coords to your map, while the latter imports quest-specific info from WoWhead into your questlog, including coords that have a single-click interaction with TomTom.
I use Cartographer. It’s pretty basic, but does give coordinates on the map. I also run Omen (threat meter), Recount (DPS meter) and Deadly Boss Mods (mostly used in raids–warns of special attacks).
As for whether you’ve got access to The Burning Crusade…try creating a new character. It it lets you make a Dranei or a Blood Elf, and you can actually enter the starting area with that toon, then you’ve got TBC. Or, if you have a toon level 58 or higher, try to go through the Dark Portal…that should either take you to Outland, or tell you that you don’t have TBC.
I downloaded questhelper, but the option to auto install it via curse doesn’t work for me. I don’t know how to install it and I haven’t been able to find an installation guide. I have to go to work in about 20 minutes. If someone can walk me thru installing I’'d be grateful.
I think I’m coming in too late to help, but it’s pretty simple.
Download the Zip file (use the manual option, not the curse client option) containing one or more folders.
Put these folders into your World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns folder (if all you have is the Interface folder, make a new one in that called AddOns).
Load the game.
When you log in your account, there will be a button on the bottom left marked AddOns. Click that and verify that the programs you put in the folder look okay and don’t say Out of Date or something. If they all check out, you’re good to go.
I use an addon which you can get from curse called “coords.” It doesn’t tell you where to go, doesn’t map anything, just displays your coordinates beside the minimap. It’s “outdated” but works fine.
Questhelper can be very helpful but also a bit of a nag, plus it eats up resources.
To add to what Oakminster said, if your account is set up to have TBC but your computer isn’t, WoW will detect it and tell you, giving you a link to the download. The upgrade is for the account, you don’t have to pay to set it up in more than one computer.
It can be a nag (no, I don’t want to go to another continent yet! Stop bothering me!) but at this point I can’t imagine playing the game without it. Admittedly, it sort of feels like my game is on rails when I follow it step for step, but I find that to be a much better situation than wandering around for hours trying to find what I need and having to crosscheck with wikis and websites. And it is simple enough to ignore when I want to ignore it.
My new favorite WoW addon is called “Carbonite.” (carboniteaddon.com). This thing is amazing! It includes coordinates, it can track your quests (including a HUD arrow that points you toward quest mobs/items/questgivers/etc.) It speeded up my trip from 70 to 80 immensely, and now I’m using it to level my death knight. I was reluctant to load it initially (I try to run only necessary raiding addons), but several of my guildies that I trust highly recommended it, so I gave it a shot. I haven’t regretted it.
There’s a free version and a paid version–I use the free one and am thinking about upgrading, but it has a lot of very useful features in the free one (including most of those I use every day). The only problem I’ve ever had with it is that occasionally it points me in the wrong direction for something, but I haven’t upgraded to the latest free version so it might be fixed by now.
In Questhelper, you can filter the quests by zone or level by typing “/qh filter zone” or “/qh filter level 70” And if you ever don’t want to see it just type “/qh hide” (note: the same command is used to display it again, not “/qh show” which would just make too much sense).
The reason the auto load from Curse wouldn’t work is probably because you haven’t installed their client. It’s a little addon managing utility they created that checks your addon folder and automatically updates any addons you have with the latest versions (some addons are updated daily - Questhelper is probably one of those). It’s pretty slick, but unless you have a bajillion addons (like i do), I wouldn’t bother - downloading the zip files works just as well.
The expansions don’t load in a separate program folder. The best way to check whether you’ve got the BC expansion is to log into your account on the WoW website, scroll down to where it says “Account Information” and look at “Account Type” - it will have the name of the most recent expansion you’ve registered. (You can actually update to both expansions online, too, but some folks would rather have the box.)