An Addon to Look Pretty (XLoot)

WOW Insider's column on addons profiles XLoot today. XLoot makes your interface prettier. Depending on how much of a visual person you are, I can see this might make your UI look less cluttered or might give you visual clues to things. Note that there are plugins to add functionality although one is rumored to not be working.
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/20/addon-spotlight-xloot-and-friends/

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The Addon Maker Speaks

Fascinating interview with Tekkub who writes a lot of addons, just for us.
http://www.nostockui.com/2009/06/14-questions-with-tekkub/#more-829

Interesting that Tekkub wants to find a guild that does old raids, just for fun. Bet there are more folks who'd enjoy doing the original content....

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Track Addon Updates at This Site

WOW Insider clued me in to this site that tracks addon updates. You can subscribe to the database through Twitter, Google Reader, RSS feeds, etc. so it is easy to keep track of what has changed. If you don't want to bother with that, you can bookmark the site and use the search box at the top of the page to find out if your favorite addons have been changed. It appears you can register with the site and then customize and save the view you get when you visit but I haven't tested this. Thank you, Fin. This will be very useful.
http://fin.instinct.org/wowmods/

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VuhDo Instead of Healbot or Grid?

Big Bear Butt Blogger has been trying out the healing addon VuhDo instead of Grid or Healbot. His experiences are laid out in detail complete with screenshots at this link. Read the interesting Comments for more information.
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/06/18/vuhdo-is-da-bomb-for-healing/

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Guild Watch Wednesday (Starring Hitler Again)

Poor Hitler is having trouble with his guild. There's background you need to understand to fully appreciate the video. Last week Guildwatch reported about Enigma and how they didn't like the 25 man progression thread of their guild. Drama ensued, and this parody video was born.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG1z_0BQLLg

There's drama in guilds Hitler doesn't lead. Aluro has been looking for a guild. He transferred to a new server to join Preeminent, then after raiding with them three times he dumped them saying they were "pretty awful." After the public trashing, other guilds *Surprise!* don't want him, so he starts a guild of his own and poaches other guilds' members but that doesn't work out so he PUGs. Finally he makes it into a new guild and guess what, he's back on the forums trashing his new guild leader. Some folks don't know when to keep their mouth shut!

I can't top how Guildwatch describes Herding Cats' experience , so here it is word for word-- "This is probably the worst story of raid ID ninja-ing we've heard yet. Herding Cats of EU Venture Co. got a Naxx-10 run together, and PuGged four folks from On Se Kova on the same server. After some issues with the PuGs, they decided to kick them out of the raid, and On Se Kova freaked out -- they trained mobs to the raid, started griefing the raid, and trying to force people out of the instance. Even when the group filled their spots and they couldn't get in the instance, they stood outside and kept trying to get in and grief for over seven hours. Finally, the raid ended up at around 3 a.m. (after starting at 5 the previous evening), and Herding Cats went to bed. Only to discover the next morning that -- you guessed it -- On Se Kova had woken up early, ninja'ed the raid ID, and finished off Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad. 12 full hours of griefing, all for two bosses in Naxx 10. Good show."

There is lots of raid completion and recruiting (of course not on the Solo MMO Player's realm) which you can read about in full here. Many, many thanks to Mike for writing this column to entertain us each week.
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/17/guildwatch-were-not-even-in-his-guild/

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Wrought: Romance with a Sad Ending

WOW Insider pointed us to a nice piece of machinima telling a romantic tale that ends badly.
http://www.wow.com/2009/06/16/wow-moviewatch-wrought/

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Paladins and the 969 Rotation (with History)

Honor's Code has written a brief history of the 969 rotation for pallys and analyzes how it works. I believe Honorshammer plays mostly as a protection paladin but I don't think this effects how 969 works for other types of paladins.
http://honorscode.blogspot.com/2009/06/back-to-basics-969-paladin-threat.html

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The Modern Data Center

The New York Times looks at the modern data center in depth, providing a fascinating glimpse inside those mysterious and secure windowless low warehouses I see from the main highway occasionally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Thanks to Kotaku for pointing me towards this article.

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Twink Central

Thanks to the Greedy Goblin, I've found the twinks' website. There's lots of advice for the twinks themselves and as GG says, this is the place to find out what gear the twinks want if you are a seller.
http://twinkinfo.com/

For those new to the game, twinks are players (normally pretty low level) who pursue high level gear as their main focus of the game instead of raiding or running instances. They often compete in the Battlegrounds.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Twink

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BBB says Rawr

The Solo MMO Player and I were discussing Rawr this week. Obviously BBB overheard (or he's psychic) as he has a posting about using Rawr to compare gear and look for gear upgrades on his blog this morning.
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/06/12/as-long-as-im-repeating-myself/

Here is the Rawr website if you want more information or a download.
http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr

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