Welcome to one more World of Warcraft add-on spotlight! Today we're covering BelowAverageItems, by gmz323.
The Addon
Having an hard time trying to keep track of which items you need to upgrade? After dealing with countless quest givers and gear quartermasters, selecting the correct reward can become a tedious task.If you share in the horrors of replacing gear, then BellowAverageItems is a must!
This addon adds a small icon to each item in the character frame when it is below your current average item level. No more scooping tooltips!
Interview
We also had the opportunity to have a chat with the add-on's author, gmz323:
Hi gmz323, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is Greg. I've played World of Warcraft for many years but I consider myself a very casual player. I enjoy the questing, achievements, 5-mans, and battleground PvP parts of the game the most.
I feel that a lot of WoW's success is due to the fantastic UI Blizzard has created. As great as the default UI is there are many cases where it feels like something is missing. There are so many great addons already available that there is usually something that can fill those gaps. The addons I've made I feel fill some gaps I ran into while playing the game. And I like the default UI so much I try to make my addons look like they belong as a part of the default UI.
Why did you decide to create this add-on?
The idea came to me while standing at the honor gear merchant and wishing for an easy way to see which of my characters gear needed an upgrade the most with just a quick glance of the character sheet. BelowAverageItems adds small yellow and red indicators to the items on your character sheet that have an item level below your character's average item level.
So instead of mousing over every slot to look at stats and item level the indicators can narrow things down for the player quite a bit. And then mousing over the small indicators will show the player the item level details vs the current characters average.
In which situations do you find it most useful?
I find the add-on most useful when at the Justice/Valor/Honor gear merchants and working out what gear I need to upgrade. Or also at the auction house while looking for upgrades.
How was the experience? Did you come across any problems?
BelowAverageItems is a very simple mod. The problems I encountered were very minimal but I suppose also similar to issues with all addons I work on. That being finding the appropriate events to "hook" after the client loads so the API calls do not return nil values.
Could you tell us about any other mods you are working on, or planned for the future?
Over the last year I've released 2 other addons: Tabard Addict and Faction Addict.
Tabard Addict is intended for those that really like tabards or are trying for the tabard achievements. While Faction Addict give players a bit more detail and logging for the reputations they are working on. I continue working on both of those addons and they are available on curse.com.
I have no additional addons planned at the moment. But I really hadn't planned the BelowAverageItems add-on either. So I guess it will just depend on what I find missing while playing the game.
Do you have any advice for others who would like to start modding?
My main advice would be to start simple! Don't try to make a hugely complicated mod that will just frustrate you to quitting. It's much easier to start small and make continual changes over time as you see how your mod gets used.
Also, the Whitehead/Roe WoW Programming book and wowprogramming.com are fantastic resources!
Thank you to Greg for answering our questions and developing this add-on.
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