5 Must-Have World of Warcraft Add-Ons

Auctioneer installs into your auction-house interface and your tool-tips to give you up-to-date information on the economic situation on your server. Just go to the auction-house and set it to "scan" to populate the database. From that point on, every item's tooltip will have the price of the item when sold to a merchant, the average price of the item on the auction house, and how many of the items were for sale the last time you scanned. A full-featured panel on the auctions screen allows you to find the best price to set for your items and to figure out bidding strategies, while the logs allow you to track your sales and keep records of both good people to buy from and good customers.

This little add-on has successfully turned me into an auction-house tycoon on every character I have played past level 30. The reason I say past level 30 is because the add-on isn't magic. It gives you an edge, but you still need to figure out the strategies yourself. If you have a head for business and a keen sense of markets, however, this add-on gives you all the data you need to get rich and have fun doing it.

Ever been guilty of standing in the fire? Having a hard time paying attention to your own positioning, line-of-sight issues, AND a boss's special abilities? Then Deadly Boss Mods is for you. No matter what dungeon, raid or battleground you're in, DBM will help you avoid looking like a noob in front of pugs and guildies.

You can set DBM to give you both audio and visual cues for just about anything from environmental dangers, your proximity to your healers and every boss's mechanics and abilities. DBM will also store important statistics and information for you including kills, deaths and wipes, all of which will help you and your guild overcome the more difficult challenges in WoW.

Titan Panel is one of the more subtle and interesting add-ons in WoW, because it can itself have add-ons plugged into it. The add-on gives you a small horizontal toolbar across the top or bottom of your interface. On these bars are various pieces of information, such as your location, how much gold you have, your ping and frame-rate, and the current looting rules for your group. The size, font, and transparency of the bar is configurable, as is what information it shows.

What is so interesting about Titan Panel is the add-ons for it that give it greater functionality and keep track of other statistics, such as damage-per-second, warrior's stances, and buff durations. Because of this, almost any piece of information you can think of has an add-on for Titan Panel available, which makes this the add-on that keeps on adding on. You can even set both the top and bottom bars up for added room and fill both of them with useful functions and statistics.

Overall, Titan Panel is the kind of add-on you put in and then take for granted, only realizing how useful it was when you don't have it enabled. No installation of WoW should be without it.

If you, like most players, get sick of the time-sinks involved in playing online games, this is the add-on for you. QuestHelper tracks the waypoints for each quest and lists them in the shortest possible order. This allows you to complete your quests with the least amount of travel possible, which saves an incredible amount of time for questing addicts.

This add-on really proves itself once you have your mount--or travel-form if you play a druid--because you can just run from waypoint to waypoint without worrying about checking the maps or asking guards for directions to important NPCs. Even better is when you have warlock friends who can summon you when you find out you have a waypoint near them. Undoubtedly, this is a serious quester's dream add-on that will save untold hours of trudging around Azeroth.

This add-on saves high-level players amazing amounts of time and effort in building up their characters. Atlasloot Enhanced allows you to pull up and browse the loot table of any boss in the game. It shows the stats, drop-rates, and allows the item to be "tried on" in the dressing room function. You can also use Atlasloot to link weapons and gear in the chat interface in order to show your friends.

Atlasloot Enhanced allows players to plan their characters and go after the gear for a planned build so that they can maximize their character's potential, all from a single interface. There need be no more hunting through webpages and fansites. Hardcore and casual players alike can benefit from being able to plan their gear this way, and this add-on makes it as easy and fun as going through a Christmas catalog and making a wish list. This is a useful tool for any player who wants to get the most bang for their buck without the randomness factor.

A bit of warning: any add-on can cause problems in some configurations. Always install add-ons one at a time and login to make sure nothing breaks. That way, if you do have a problem you can uninstall the most recent add-on rather than having to try to figure out which one is the culprit. You will also need to update your add-ons with each new build of the World of Warcraft client.

If you receive UI errors of any type while running third-party add-ons, disable them one by one from the character selection screen until you identify the culprit. You may also need to check the "enable outdated add-ons" box in order to load your add-ons, if a new update is not yet available.