Last night I decided to play with a couple macros, doing some reading, I saw that you can do everything from change gear, use trinkets and use spells. Since I use an addon to change gear, I didn’t need that, but the other things interested me.

   After reading on the WoW Forums and BorkWeb some different examples of what you can do, I jumped right in and started my macro experience. My first try I wanted a macro that would, when I’m in stealth, I would pick pocket my target, activate my 2 trinkets, and then attack with one of my skills. This doesn’t work, OK it worked but I would pick pocket and when I activated my trinkets, I would be unstealthed, which defeats the entire process. Moving on, I decided to break my macros up, one for trinkets, one for stealth pick pocket and attack and one for hack and slash.

   The trinket macro was easy, just use the trinket spot on your character:

/use 13
/use 14

Next I worked on my Pick Pocket, again a very easy macro:

/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Cheap Shot

Then the hard part, How was I going to make my hack and slash macro, after further reading I saw a command called /castsequence in which you add what ever attacks you want in a row and then each time you mash that button it will do the next attack and better yet if you use the ? icon, it’s suppose to show the next attack you’ll use along with the cooldown timer. Sounded exactly what I wanted.

/startattack
/castsequence reset=target Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Eviscerate

Not exactly what I used but close enough. My first problem was I started to test it and as i’m mashing the button I see nothing happening, then I notice I’m completely spamming my guild channel with the entire macro like 10 times. Yes I was called a noob! I had a space in fromt of one of the slashes and it decided I wanted my guild to know what I was trying. Second problem, My icons never changed, so it only showed me my first attack and didn’t change after that, so I was flying blind on cool downs. Final and biggest problem, You don’t always want the exact same attack, for a rogue, you may sometimes miss or not get a CP for an attack, in which then you want to wait or add another attack, it takes the smart out of the attack and really isn’t much fun either.

   I ended deleting the last macro and keeping the first 2, I’m not sure how often I’ll use the trinket one (I always forget the extra help) but the pick pocket/attack macro is nice, one button to do a couple things, I can then take over the attack from there and do what I need to do to bring the beast down.

Past Post on other blogs about Macros

• Writing macros, a series of lessons
• Trinket Macros
• The Zen of Mage Macros

   One thing I need to sit down and do is clear out any old quest i’ve done and get rid of any old quest materials I have in my bag. I’ve wondered why I feel like I can’t carry very much, So checking my bag I see I have about 20 slots taken but quest objects, So time for spring cleaning.

   Using ArkInventory Found here you can split your bag into different sections, then with a quick glance of your bag, you know exactly what you have. I’ve split my bags into sections that show just food, soulbound objects, items for trade skills, mounts and then a large open section for what’s left, usually things to sell on AH. With this system, I no longer search each square finding what i’m looking for, I usually know which section to look into and find things fairly easy.

   I know this just became a addon post and not about me hitting 60 but I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.. oh wait.. doesn’t everyone say “don’t go toward the light!”

   I figured the best way to test the quest guides was to try one. So a little research and 35.00 later I have the download of a questing guild in my hands (yes, I could have gotten it for free or others for free, but I wanted to test one of the paid for guides) This guide has quest for level 1-20, 20 – 60 and then 60 – 70.

   Opening the 1-20 guide, the author has grouped together quest that can all be done at once, optimizing your time and has even left out some of the quest that are a waste of time. Telling you exact cords and the names of the quest along with a link to more info for the quest insures that if you get lost or have a question, you’ll always have an answer.
So how do the guides work? Well my hunter is at level 20 now and I’ve played a total of 24 hours.. but I will say at least 3-4 hours was me playing around finding that special pet that noone else has, which means I went out of my way and off the beaten path the quest guide was telling me to do. So with almost 1 level per hour, you be the judge, but I feel that it was well worth my money if all I’m wanting to do is level. Again this isn’t for those wanting to get into the story line, you hardly have time to sit, read and think about the quest, it’s bang bang bang, ding next level.

   What are your thoughts on the level guides?

   While walking around in IronForge with my turtle, showing it off, someone walks up to me and ask if I can unlock a box for him. Being a Rogue I have this ability but have never done it for someone else, but I’m a nice guy so I say ok. Correct me if I’m wrong but I figured he trades the box to me, I unlock and then he opens it, Correct? Well he starts the trade, I see our trade windows and his lockbox, it turns green, I accept and nothing happens (just like with the turtle). Thinking it was because I was mounted, I dismount and try again, still doesn’t work. Ok, Houston, We have a problem.. It seems that one of my addons is stopping trades, I can buy, sale and buy back from vendors but I can’t trade. The loot vendor in BB must trade the item to you instead of “sell” it to you.

   I love addons, they bring so much to the game, but I understand why many don’t use them or only use a couple, because when things go bad it can be a pain to figure out. When something like this isn’t working, how do you know which of your 20 addons is causing the problem? When a new patch comes out and suddenly only part of the addons work, you have to find all the updates, many devs stop working on their addon and you have to find a replacement and many times there are just objects sitting on your screen that you have no idea what they are, what addon created them or even how to move them. Do you feel addons are worth the troubles? I must because I keep debugging them.

   Now on to my problem, how do I test each addon? I can’t ask someone to stand there while I disable 1 addon, logon, try a trade with them, it doesn’t work, logout, reenable the last one, disable another addon, logon, test again… 20 times. I wouldn’t even do that.

   As I’m getting higher in levels, I’m starting to realize just how important quest are. At the lower levels, you notice, wow that quest gave me a boost, but you’re new to the game and killing is sooo much more fun than running around taking water or gems to another NPC. Then you hit level 20ish and things start to slow down. I probably grinded lvl25-32, I knew that quest would give me the needed XP but my problem was, finding the quest. Oh yeh you can look online and find quest you need but usually first you need to know the area that you are in, and since I had no idea where to head for my upper 20s and lower 30′s I roamed around in the lower areas, grinding and wondering if I like this game!

   To get to the new area that your level should be at Blizzard adds quest they call breadcrumbs, they lead you to where you need to go, but what if you don’t find this quest or you want to go to another area? Well Blizzard to the rescue, they’ve added an atlas of all the World of Warcraft and by going to customize you can choose region levels, this will list every area and the level of beast that roam that area. Another good tool is the addon for Fubar called Fubar-LocationFu, this addon will not only tell you info on the zone that you are in but will also recommended zones/instances you should go to based on level and friendliness of the area.

   After grinding so many levels, I never want to go back to that, I’ve now learned that you can sometimes easily level twice in one sitting with just doing quest, This isn’t to say you won’t be grinding to get that drop for the quest, but it gets rid of useless grinding.

Edit: Now that I’ve added lightbox to show images, I see how dark these are, either look at the larger size or this week i’ll add lighter images.

Large Sized	Large Sized

   I’ve added two buttons to my HUD so on the fly I can change back and forth, I laugh everytime I see the low rez, it makes me think someone is cutting all the grass in the world. Check out the link above to see other settings that Daniel has laid out for us. Here are the 2 main listings for the /macros

My “Min Detail” macro looks like this:

/console showDetailDoodads
/console showLowDetail
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console farclip 177
/console groundEffectDensity 256
/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
/console characterAmbient
/console maxLOD 2
/console SkyCloudLOD 1

My “Max Detail” macro looks like this:

/console showDetailDoodads
/console showLowDetail
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console farclip 777
/console groundEffectDensity 256
/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
/console characterAmbient
/console maxLOD 3
/console SkyCloudLOD 3

   Coming from other games where you could change the look and feel of the game with addons, one of the first things I did when begining WoW was checkout all the mods & addons. The image to the right is a screenshot of my current HUD, as you can see, I have all the info I need on my screen, any buttons I need are there and important ones have shortcut keys to them and I feel the layout works (for me).

   Now I’ve gone to some extremes completely changing things around, but usually players will just install one or two addons, such as, to show their current quest or their Aggro, but there are thousands to choose from. My favorites are Auctioneer (helps make me Gold!) and Fubar, which will hold many many other addons within it (see top and bottom bars in screenshot). I plan on adding a post every so often on differend addons and what they do, but till then, check out these sites for World of Warcraft Addons. http://www.wowinterface.com/ & http://wow.curse.com. For auctioneer check out http://auctioneeraddon.com/