Interface Tips for Patch Day

With major UI changes now live in patch 3.1, you may find your carefully tweaked interface less than functional. Many major addons are updating very quickly and are well prepared thanks to the PTR, but for addons that are developed by one or two people, both of whom are very excited to jump into Ulduar, updates may not come so soon.

For players new to the addons scene, if you want to try experimenting with getting your now outdated addons, be sure to hit “addons” in the bottom left of your character selection screen and check the box that says “load out of date addons”. At this point, I would suggest turning on one or two addons at a time and playing with them to see how functional they are before continuing. It can be very confusing as to why there are strange bars on your screen or why you can’t open your professions windows when you turn on dozens of addons at once.

To start checking out updates for your addons, check out the Curse addon client or the WoWinterface addon client. Both of these scan your addons and make installation and updates of addons much easier. When an addon updates, test it out and make sure it does what you want it to.

This may be a good time to invest in a “bug grabber” addon. If your addons give you a lot of errors, an bug grabber will suppress the windows and put them in a different place where you can opt to view later. I use tekErr for being lightweight and working well. I don’t see any addon errors anymore.

On another note, this may be a good time to lighten up your interface. Clean out those addons you don’t use and see if you see a performance increase. I was reminded of how fast WoW can load when all my addons are off!

How is everyone’s interface? Did you bite the bullet and jump into Ulduar with a broken interface, or are you fine-tuning it before your adventure?