What are leveling addons, and how to install them.
If you aleady know what addons are you can just Skip to the Installation Manual
| (Skip this part if you are just interested in installing the addons, the screenshots are down the page) World of warcraft is a wonderful game. But it is not just a game, it is also a game platform. That means the game enables amateur and professional programmers from all around the world to contribute to the game by adding functions and actions that were not there to begin with. These small software patches are called "addons" or "add-ons" because of the added functionality they bring to the game. Each addon is designed to do one main task such as: Threat meter: A pane that indicates who is currently on the top of the "hate" list of a certain mob- very handy in raids. Auctioneer: Has added features that enable you to gain advanced action in the auction house, such as estimating which items can be bought cheap and sold high. Arena addons: Put a pane on your window when you enter arena where you can see the named of your enemies for easier targeting.  Addons come in all shapes and sizes |
 As expected, there are hundreds of addons out there, some are professional and some are not so much. Like other things in life, the best addons don't come for free. Some Gold making guides explain how to best use addons that deal with money making, like the "Ultimate guide" that has a special guide to using the auctioneer addon. |
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How do addons workOk, so before the "step by step" explanation, lets understand exactlly how do addons work.When you enter your world of warcraft game, the game still does'nt "know" which addons you want to use, that's because the addons were not written by the original programmers that made the game. They are extensions. That's why there is a special directory you need to put all the files of your addon in. This directory is the ONLY place that the game will turn to to "find out" which addons you want to activate, and the game will "check" that directory every time you re - enter the game. There is no limit to the amount of addons you can have on your game, but the more you have the more possibility there is that they will "collide". Because many different people wrote all the different addons, they sometimes give the computer contradicting instructions, and it will result in error messages that will pop into your screen from time to time, and maybe make one of the addons not perform properly. How to install an addonThe directory where all addons shoul stay is called: "Addons" and it is inside another directory called "Interface". The interface directory is inside the directory where you installed your WOW game copy. This sounds a bit comfusing, but it's actually very simple.So, assuming I have installed the game in hard disk "D:" the path for the directory will look like this:  If you are not sure where your WOW directory is you can look for it on your local hard drives threw your operating systems' search engine. Now, lets have a look at the Addons directory.  As you can see, in the example there are several directories inside the Addons directory. One of them is highlighted and it's called "ZygorGuidesViewer". This addon is a part of the "Zygor's guide" leveling guide package that customers get when they purchase the leveling guide. It is very important that every addon will be inside a directory of it's own. That's why usually when you downlad an addon the addon will be in a form of "zip" file, or other compression method file. What are compression softwares?Compression softwares takes files and group them togather to a single file, that also reduces the size of the files. That way you can easly transfer a group of file by sending or dowloading the single "compressed" file, and do the extraction on another computer, to get back all the many files that were "compressed".That way, the "zip" addon file will contain a directory that has inside it all the files needed for the addon. How to extract files?Well, Since there are many compression and extraction softwares I can not explain each and every one of them, but they all operate kind of the same, that's why you can understand the idea behind it with these simple steps I'm making with a "zip" file.First I double click the zipped file (the file with the ending ".zip"). Since I have the Zip program already installed on my computer, the computer automatically shows me the following window:  As you can see, inside the .zip file there are 3 directories called "Cartographer, ZygorGuidesHorde and ZygorGuidesViewer". This means the package includes not one but 3 addons! What I need to do now, is tell the Zip program where to put the 3 addons directory. You guessed right, it's in the Addons directory I explained about just before. So I click the "Extract to" option, and then chose the addons directory by: 1. Opening the "d:" directory (this is the drive where the game is installed in this example) 2. Then opening the "WOW" directory, 3. Then the "Interface" directory.  This lets me chose the "addons" directory, and press "ok". Once that is done, the addons are ready for action! But there is still the final stage of actually activating the addons from inside your game. To do that, you need to enter the game and press the "addons" button on the lower left side of the screen where you choose which character you want to play.  Then you get a list similar to this:   As you can see, in the example window there are a lot of addons, but if Zygor guides would be your first addon to install, that list will be empty, except for Zygor guides addons. So basically what you need to do is make sure the "V" is checked next to the addon. Note that:a. You can check the "load out of date" option if you want. This means that whenever blizz puts out a new patch it won't "reject" all your addons. This is usually needed to be turn on with most addons, because they will still run properly even if they considered outdated. If the patch change will make your addon not function properly, you will be able to download a new version of the addon and put it in your "addons" directory instead of the old one.b. You can chose if you want the addons you "check" will working for all of your characters, or just the specific character currently chosen. Make sure this is to "All" if, for instance, you want your leveling guide to work for all characters you have, and for all new once you will create. That's it. Your addon is now installed and ready to go! Have fun! |
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