Ultimate World of Warcraft Mod Guide

Looking for ways to improve your World of Warcraft skills? User interface mods are the answer, and Logan Booker has everything you need for PvE, PvP, raiding and more.
Things being the way they are in Geekdom, if you’re regularly playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game – or MMORPG as it is known by the sunlight-deprived – chances are it’s Blizzard’s monumentally successful World of Warcraft. Based on the lore of the Warcraft universe, the seeds of which were planted years ago in 1994 by the original real time strategy, WoW provides perhaps the most engrossing, polished and downright addictive online gaming experience known to man, short of being sucked into your PC to play laser Frisbee with a sentient program that dispenses Mars Bar every time you defeat it.

But your playing experience can always be improved and we’re going to do just that with this guide, by taking a look at the wonderful world of interface modding. First though, we’re going to explain a few concepts. Trust us they’re interesting, just like pie.

USER INTERFACING
You should already be familiar with game modding. If you’re not, modding refers to the act of altering a game, be it making minor changes to enhance play, or creating full-blown new elements that can stand alone from the original title. Customisation has always been the life-extending ambrosia for games – just look at the Half-Life mod Counter-Strike. It is the sole reason anyone plays the Valve’s original FPS.

World of Warcraft is no different.

Well maybe a little. Its nature as a completely online game means that modification is limited to client-side only – that is, changes only you can see. This essentially means all we can play around with is the UI – user interface – to add more information, graphics and to a small extent, automation to our game experience.

Modding in World of Warcraft is based on a plug-in system, much like Photoshop. To add something to your UI, you need to download a mod package and install it into a directory under the main game. This directory can be found under Interface\Addons. Blizzard unfortunately does not supply a tool to install add-ons easily, so without a third party utility – more on this later – you’ll have to create a folder and extract the mod package yourself.

Fortunately, WoW UI mods are based on the Lua programming language and have a fixed structure outlined by Blizzard, so other than extracting, no extra effort is required on your part to make them work.


Anatomy of a UI mod
A WoW UI mod consists of the following components:

1. A Table of Contents, or ‘TOC’ file. This file contains all the metadata for the mod, including dependencies, version information, the title and a description. This is the file WoW will read first.

2. One or more Lua files. These files will have the ‘.lua’ extension. Lua files contain all the scripting and programmatic information for the mod and are the files that do the work. They are human-readable and therefore a cinch to edit.

3. One or more eXtensible Markup Language, or XML, files. These files outline the visual aspects of the mod. That is the buttons, frames and usually the text and colours. Again, they are human-readable (if you understand XML).



These are the essentials of a UI mod. Other files are usually included, such as Targa (TGA) images for use as graphics, readme files and additional programming libraries.

Once a mod has been installed, you can enable/disable it via the ‘Addons’ button found on the character selection screen after you log in to WoW. Other options are available on this screen and include a memory allocation field and a ‘Load out of date addons’ checkbox. For the memory field, the default value of 64MB should be plenty, but if you run a lot of UI mods, you may need to bump this up. The only time you should need to use the ‘out of date’ checkbox is after a new patch has come out and your mods have yet to be updated. While this will activate your mod in-game, there is no guarantee that they’ll function correctly. For more information, see the ‘Getting WoW 1.x mods working in 2.x’ box on this page.

What mods can do
The feature set Blizzard has exposed to the client-side is powerful while remaining limited to prevent exploitation. Perhaps the easiest thing a mod can do is alter the way unit frames look. Unit frames are the boxes that show you and your opponent’s health and mana. By default, these boxes are latched to the top left corner of the screen. A unit frame mod can make these movable, take up less space, and report additional information usually hidden for the sake of simplicity – such as your mana regeneration rate or the armour level of your enemy. Modding is not limited to unit frames – action bars, bag slots and more can be moved and rearranged.

Other mods take things a step further. By reading spell tooltips and your equipment/talent bonuses, a mod can directly alter the information that comes up when you mouse-over a spell in your action bars or spell book, and report back updated values – something Blizzard’s UI does not do. This allows you to see, in realtime, just how much additional damage a spell will do. This is especially good for spells that do not use 100 percent of your spell or healing damage and would be a pain to calculate on the fly yourself.

As you can see, UI mods are all about changing and improving the way your take in information from the game, and making it easier, or more efficient, to tell the game what it is you want to do. Once you get used to a good combination of mods, it can be hard to go back to the default UI.


Getting WOW 1.X mods working in 2.X
With the release of the ‘Before the Storm’ 2.0.1 patch – and the 2.0.3 patch that followed – most UI mods stopped functioning. But not necessarily because they were incompatible with the changes in the patch.

With the new patch, the mod detection routine in WoW simply checks each UI mod’s internal version number, and if the version is less than 20000, renders the mod inoperative for ‘safety’ reasons.

While most popular mods have since received updates, it’s possible that you’re using a mod that isn’t updated often, or at all, and haven’t found a suitable ‘2.0.0’ compatible replacement. If you’re eager to get your old mod working, if only to see if it still works, you can do the following:

1. Browse to the Interface\Addons folder in your main WoW directory,
and open the add-on you wish to manually patch.

2. Look for a file called ModName.toc, where ModName is the name of
the mod.

3. Go to the line that reads ‘## Interface:’ and change the number that follows to ‘20300’.

4. Save the file and start WoW.

If all goes according to plan, WoW will accept the mod as 2.0.0 compatible. There’s no guarantee it’ll work correctly so seek an update or replacement as soon as you can.

What mods can't do
As flexible as WoW UI programming is, there are many things you can’t do. Obviously directly altering values such as health or armour is not possible. Well, it is, but the changes will be purely cosmetic.



Sadly, the Draenei racial has nothing to do with UI modding. It does make a cool noise however.Earlier versions of the game allowed you to send keyboard commands and spell casts programmatically. This made it possible to make mods that would automatically move your character or cast a spell on certain events. This feature has since been removed as it was possible to write ‘bots’ or computer-controlled players to automate tasks such as levelling.

If you’re thinking UI mods might be a way to help you cheat, think again. Blizzard has been very careful in what is has chosen to expose to the modding community. Although it is still possible to break rules in the game using UI mods, the rules you can break are fairly basic (your running speed for example) and will no doubt be picked up either by a Game Master or reported by another player and you run the risk of having your WoW account banned. WoW also features algorithms to detect ‘banned’ mod functionality and will either prevent the function from running, or stop the mod from loading altogether – as was the case with Decursive, a mod that automated the removal of negative buffs.

Superseded functionality
Blizzard is continually updating its default UI to keep it ‘competitive’ with the modding scene and so has implemented usability into its UI that was once provided by the community. Such functionality includes:

• Scrolling combat text. By default, the Blizzard UI will not show events that occur to the player on-screen. A mod, called SCT, once provided this functionality, but has since been incorporated into Blizzard’s UI.

• Automatic self-casting. The original spell casting defaults were a bit dumb. For example, in order to cast a spell on yourself, you would have to select your player and cast the spell. ‘Selfcast’ mods quickly appeared that allowed you to click the spell and, depending on certain variables – Is an enemy selected? Is a friendly player selected? Does the player have a mana bar? – cast the spell in the correct manner. Again, this functionality is now a part of the Blizzard UI and can be enabled via in-game menus.

• Action bars. This was a significant deficiency in the Blizzard UI. In earlier versions of the game, the player had just 12 buttons in which to assign commands, which for some classes was far from enough. As you can guess, mods came out to add additional action buttons and eventually action bars that could be moved, rearranged and coded to only show in certain circumstances. Blizzard added more bars and buttons to the interface but these bars cannot be moved or resized and so it’s still prudent to use a third party action bar mod.

While mods still exist to implement the aforementioned now-default UI features, and in some cases, improve on them, you should be able to make do with what Blizzard has provided, the advantage being that you don’t have to worry about updating these mods when new patches come out.

Dependencies
Mods can function alone but, like anything programmatic, good mods use libraries or ‘dependencies’ to improve efficiency and reduce size. Dependencies are mods that do nothing themselves but provide a set of functions that can be shared among mods and include Sea (found in Cosmos), Ace and others. Using mods that share a common library can provide memory and load time savings and reduce the chances of bugs. The disadvantage is that if the dependency is ever abandoned you’re going to have to find replacements for all the mods that require it.



To the left is Bongos, a mod that lets you move your action bars around and easily perform keybinds, while on the right is OneBag, which combines your bags into one frame.


With the basics covered, it’s time to get on with the juicy stuff – the UI mods themselves. First, let’s cover some of the complete UI mod packages available. There are many of these, so we’re going to look at the more popular ones only.

COSMOS
Cosmos is perhaps the first ‘total’ WoW UI mod package ever created. It consists of a number of mods written by the Cosmos team and provides for pretty much everything a user could need. Cosmos is both extremely popular and infamous for this fact. A simple browse through the UI and macro forums on the World of Warcraft website and you’ll find post after post declaring Cosmos as ‘bloatware’. This means that it’s filled with unnecessary, or simply too many, mods. While it is the easiest option – it has its own installer and will have all the mods you need, no matter your class – chances are there will be many other mods it installs that you’ll never use. It is also a headache to update due to its size and number of dependencies, and often the Cosmos team will release ‘alphas’ of the package until all the mods have been patched.

NURFED UI
Nurfed UI is similar to Cosmos in that it provides a combination of mods in the one package, however Nurfed UI draws its mods from the community at large, rather than a dedicated team. Nurfed is also considered less bloated than Cosmos and thanks to the larger mod resource, has the cream of the crop of UI mods. The disadvantage to Nurfed is that if a mod is abandoned, it has to be replaced or removed, which can be a pain if you’ve become reliant on a certain mod.

While the package isn’t as up-to-date as it used to be, it looks like there will be a Burning Crusade-compatible version of it available if you want to check it out.

CTMOD
While CTMod contains its own unit frame and action bar mods among other things, most players only use the CT_RaidAssist and CT_BossMods packages, combined with Discord or their own personal preference for everything else. CT_RaidAssist provides configurable raid unit frames, main tank windows, emergency windows and other things that come in handy during a 40 or 25-man. CT_BossMods contains a list of all the current raid dungeons and bosses, and provides ‘warning’ support to instruct when bosses will perform certain moves or change phases. It is considered indispensable by most guilds and as such, if you’re going to raid, you’ll be ordered by your guild to download this mod and probably CT_RaidAssist. Don’t worry though – competent and dare we say better alternatives are available.

DISCORD MODS
Discord is again much like Cosmos, except the focus is kept to just a select few facets of the UI – the two main mods in the package being Discord Unit Frames and Discord Action Bars. Both are independent of each other.

Discord is a UI modder’s dream, allowing for a huge amount of customisation. Unit frames can be created from scratch to suit your needs, buttons scaled and broken off action bars, textures replaced and more. It’s updated often and is a popular, if daunting, choice.

ACE
Ace isn’t so much a UI package as it is a set of libraries, but is worth mentioning considering that many popular mods use it and, most of the mods we’re about to talk about use it.

With Ace, all of WoW’s UI functionality is streamlined into an easy-to-use command set, which helps to abstract the UI coder from changes to the WoW UI internals. The creators of the libraries are also focused on designing low-profile and efficient mods. If there’s a popular UI mod available, you can be sure there’s a better coded Ace alternative.


Sadly, Ace does not provide for everything, so we’ve split the mod recommendations into non-Ace and Ace. Most, if not all of these mods have been used personally by us.


These mods do not require Ace or Ace2 to function, and must be manually updated by visiting their pages on Curse Gaming or WowInterface.

BONGOS
Bongos is fast becoming one of the more popular action bar mods, and we consider it to be the most configurable while remaining lightweight and manageable. Bongos provides movable action bars that can be individually scaled and rearranged. A menu option allows you to bind keys on the fly and an intelligent docking system lets you connect bars together or to other elements of UI and drag them around as a group. The mod also provides replacements for the XP bar and cast bar, and makes the minimap, game menu toolbar and bag bar movable.

While not as good as the venerable – but now abandoned – Bibmod, it is excellent nonetheless.

DRAGQUEEN
With Bibmod abandoned and MoveAnything! far too cumbersome, DragQueen is a simple solution to a simple request: Make my windows movable. By default, the Blizzard frames for the character, bag and talent windows are fixed in the one place. With DragQueen you can move them around, which is much more natural for a UI. Unlike Bibmod, DragQueen will not ‘save’ the position of a moved window and if you close and reopen a frame, it will reappear at its original position to the far left of the viewport. Keep this one up-to-date, as The Burning Crusade introduced new frames that older versions of DragQueen may not recognise.

WOWECON
Wowecon is a continuously updated ‘sell value’ mod that will show you in a item’s tooltip its value if sold to a vendor and the average value if placed on the auction house. The mod even shows what reagents the item will disenchant into, and the average value of those reagents. Great for the grind when you find an object you’ve never seen before or trying to decide which grey and white items you should ditch when your bags are full. It also comes with a Lootlink-like database so you can search for items and their details. Wowecon requires the use of an external executable to update the pricing information, which also serves to update the mod itself.

SPELLTIPS/THEORYCRAFT 2
Both SpellTips and Theorycraft provide the same base functionality – taking your spell and healing bonuses from talents, items and trinkets, and factoring it into your spell tooltips. SpellTips is lightweight and low on configurability but finished and reliable, while Theorycraft 2 comes with options galore, but is currently beta and not always dependable. There’s an Ace alternative, called DrDamage, but it’s fairly new and at the time of writing doesn’t include support for druids.

OMNICC
Cool down counters are a gold a dozen, but only OmniCC caters for almost all the action bars out there, including Bongos, Discord, Trinity and more. A cool down counter keeps track of item and ability cool downs and overlays numbers onto your action bar and inventory spaces so you can see, to the second, how long until you can reuse that item/ability. OmniCC allows you to customise the countdown, including fonts, the size of the ‘flash’ when the cool down is finished and a bunch of other things.

SW STATS
Recap was a fantastic mod with an excellent, easy to use interface. The last time Recap was updated however was 37 years ago (according to Curse Gaming, more like a year) and although a few have taken the code and created clones, it’s not the damage meter mod it used to be. Enter SW Stats, which took the crown of damage meter king and ran with it. Now it’s the default.
Damage meters track how much damage and healing you and your raid/group do. Its main purpose is for bragging rights, but it’s also good to test the damage per second (DPS) and healing power of different equipment configurations.




These mods use Ace, or the embedded Ace2. Using WowAceUpdater you can automatically update these mods to their latest version. To install these mods, just grab the updater (sourceforge.net/projects/wowaceupdater), run it, mark the checkboxes of the ones you want and hit F12. Easy.

AG_UNITFRAMES
A mod with a long history. Originally developed without Ace as Minigroup, then with Ace as Minigroup2, and finally Ace2 in this incarnation, ag_Unitframes is a lightweight yet highly configurable set of group and raid unit frames. A recent update has seen the inclusion of an attached casting bar for enemies, so you can do without mods like Antagonist if this is all you’re after. ag_Unitframes also includes support for raids, but without nifty features like range checking. Like other Ace mods, you can select between different bar styles so you can properly ‘match up’ your UI mods.
To access its advanced configuration options type ‘/ag_unitframes config’ into the chat window.

oRA2
oRA2 serves as a replacement for CT_RaidAssist, minus the raid frames. Basically it will interpret calls from CT_RaidAssist, so as far as CT_RaidAssist users are concerned, you’re using the same mod. oRA2 is significantly smaller and faster than CT_RaidAssist and is the perfect alternative if you’re crazy about efficiency. It’s recommended you also grab BigWigs and sRaidframes (though the latter is not essential).

BIGWIGS
BigWigs is a replacement for CT_BossMods, but includes a plug-in system to add additional features. The base BigWigs has support for all major boss fights in the game, and can interpret calls from CT_BossMods. The great thing is you can use oRA2 and CT_BossMods, or CT_RaidAssist and BigWigs, and it’ll work just fine. Like oRA2, BigWigs is coded with the Ace community methodologies in mind, and is much smaller and more efficient than its CTMod counterpart.

ONEBAG, ONEBANK, ONERING
Whether you install the ‘One’ series of mods is really down to personal taste. World of Warcraft departed slightly from the ‘single inventory’ system in Blizzard’s other RPG Diablo, and replaced it instead with multiple bags. This is great for organising, but a nightmare if you’re trying to find one item in your bag. OneBag, using the native bag functionality in the WoW UI, connects all your bags together into one big bag. It’s many times smaller and less prone to bugs than AllInOneInventory, which hacks together its own bag-stitching code. For the old-school RPG player, it’s a must-have. OneBank duplicates this functionality for your bank, while OneRing does it for your keyring.


Cartographer
An essential mod for the battleground player, replacing the basic dots on the battleground map with numbers in coloured circles – the numbers representing which group the player is in, and the colour their class. This functionality also works outside of battlegrounds. Cartographer also lets you customise the scale, opacity and position of the world map and allows you to write map notes marked by unique symbols. This mod is quite large as it includes instance maps with important areas marked, and supports a plug-in system to expand its options. Check out the Ace Updater for a list.



Antagonist
Not a required mod with the recent change to ag_Unitframes, but if you want to know what the cool downs are on your opponent’s abilities and the time left on their buffs, look no further. Antagonist also adds a movable enemy casting bar, and can be configured via chat box switches.

Elkbuffar
Replaces the default Blizzard buff frame with a custom frame that reduces the buff icon sizes and straps a timer bar to them. The mod has configuration options that allow you to scale, resize and move the buff frame and provides a more ‘at a glance’ set of timers for your buffs and debuffs. Includes buff/debuff sorting as well.

Capping
Another must-have mod for the battleground enthusiast, providing skinnable bars for flag, tower and graveyard captures, as well as an estimated ‘time-to-win’ counter for Arathi Basin. Capping has the ability to output times to the chat window, and can display queue wait times, portal times and other useful countdowns as bars on-screen.

sRAIDFrames
An incredibly configurable set of dedicated raid frames that can, if you want them to, be made to look identical to CT_RaidAssist’s frames. In addition, sRaidframes can change the transparency of players outside of a certain range making BG healing a breeze; show on their unit frame when a character is stealthed or in shadowform; grow groups in any direction and it shares bar skins with most other Aces mods. sRaidframes however does not completely replace CT_RaidAssist – you’ll need to grab oRA2 as well.

Wardrobe2
A great mod for classes who need to carry around multiple sets of gear… druids and warriors being prime suspects. With Wardrobe2 you can assign your current gear setup to a name, and then select that name to re-equip that gear set. This mod includes a FuBar plug-in, so if you’re using FuBar it’s even easier to use. An option is also available to set an equipment set for when you’re mounted, but we couldn’t get it to work correctly during play.

oCB
A nicer looking cast bar with a timer. It’s not a complex mod, but if you’re going heavy with the Ace stuff, oCB matches the ‘feel’ of most Ace mods. The only gripe we have with this mod is that there doesn’t appear to be an ‘ show anchor’ option so positioning it requires you to be casting a spell – using your Hearthstone should do the trick.

Tinytips/LitheToolTipDoctor
Both mods provide the same functionality, but TinyTips has more options. Basically, if you want to reposition your tooltip, these mods will do it for you. LTD is simple in operation and extremely lightweight, while TinyTips lets you reconfigure how the tooltip looks and what it says, and includes limited plug-in support. LTD is not maintained by the looks of things but works fine, so don’t be afraid to use it until a patch decides to break it.

MOBHealth3
Provides an estimate of an opponent’s health, based on the amount of damage you do. By default, the mod will sample 10 hits before showing a value, but this can be changed to just one if you want it straight away. According to the author the estimate is mostly accurate when set to 10, so either keep it as it is or, if you’re impatient, lower it a few notches. Two versions of this mod exist – one for custom unit frames like ag_Unitframes and one for Blizzard’s
default frames.

Voyeur
Put simply, this mod extends the range you can inspect other players, and also shows their guild and level in the character window. Due to internal changes by Blizzard, no ‘inspection’ mod can see what items an opposing player is wearing.


Non-Essential Ace Mods
The following is a quick list of other mods you can try that aren’t necessarily ‘must-haves’, but are useful or cool anyway.

Baggins Allows you to create virtual bags. A bit of a compromise between Blizzard’s default inventory and OneBag.

FruityLoots Auto-positions the loot window at the cursor. Not required if you have auto-loot enabled.

GrindStatus Show reputation grind bars, as well as reputation rewards and hand-ins. Not essential as the Blizzard UI allows you to replace your XP bar with a reputation bar.

Nvp Shows PvP rewards and their associated honour/token cost, saving you having to travel half-way across Azeroth.

FarmerFu A plug-in for FuBar that lets you track item counts in your inventory. Good for grinding.

Combine Currently in development, but looks like it’ll be an excellent guild/raiding tool. The included raid calendar will be a must-have.

GonffBar Energy tick rate bar for rogues and druids so you can time the perfect combination of moves.

ChatLog Improves chat log memory, history and reloads logs after disconnect.

DruidBar Creates a mana bar while in forms.

SimpleCombatLog Simplifies and expands the combat log options and display, makes it easier to see when you hit and how much damage you did.
GotWood Tracks totems for Shamans.

Now that you’re armed to the teeth with World of Warcraft mods, it’s time to configure them. Depending on what you went with, this can take 10 minutes, two hours or the better half of a century. Keep in mind that WoW updates often ‘break’ setups so don’t do anything exceptionally complicated that’s going to have you crying every time Blizzard releases a new patch. That said, here’s a list of the more popular layouts:

Default: Everything is positioned the same way as Blizzard’s default interface. All you’re doing is ‘upgrading’ it with mods that have more functionality. This will give you the least amount of downtime during WoW updates, but doesn’t really take advantage of the fact you’re using mods.

Centre: Player and enemy unit frames in the centre, with action bars on the sides or around the edges. Forgoes the use of party frames, using a raid frame instead. Space-saving but takes some getting used to.




Centre-heavy: Places buttons in the centre of the screen and ‘fans’ them out to the chat windows. Like the centre layout, the unit frames are placed in the middle-bottom of the screen so you don’t have to move your eyes far to see your health and your opponent’s. Minimap is sometimes placed directly in the middle and elements are fanned around that instead.




Bottom-heavy: A UI style that favours placing most elements at the bottom of the screen, excluding one or two objects such as the player frame or buff frame. This gives you plenty of space up top for raid frames and the viewport.




Minimalist: Shrinks and hides least-used or unused frames, making as much space as possible available for the viewport and raid frames. Good for DPS classes that don’t require a great deal of situational awareness, but healers would be better off with one of the more object-heavy layouts.




Top-heavy: Buttons and some unit frames are attached to the top of the screen. Not a bad layout, but due to the way some mods overlay rather than push the screen down, you can end up obscuring your view. This is the reason why bottom and centred layouts are preferred.




Side-heavy: Most buttons and unit frames are distributed around the screen, leaving a centre ‘circle’ clear for viewing. Again, not a popular layout (it duplicates the default layout somewhat) as the bottom of the screen usually contains a big wad of ground that could be used for frames and bars.




Put the 'U' in the UI!
In this guide we’ve covered most of what you need to know about modding your World of Warcraft user interface. What we haven’t touched on is making your own – something that’s fairly in-depth and would require the entire magazine to cover – and the configuration options of each mod, but most come with decent documentation. If you’re in doubt, just go to the chat window and type a forward slash, followed by the full name of the mod. This should bring up options for it. Also check the minimap for new buttons.