Latest news from 2009-12-22 is wowuse dead?
Simple answer no!!!
I simply decided that i wont use the news anymore, as soon as I know what to put on the start page it will be replaced, instead I will use the blog category “WoW – Tools” to post news and it will be only in english, sorry for the german users, but all the stuff on the german site will be still german, expect the news which will be only posted on the blog in english.
So everyone using currently the rss feed from the main page should use the one from the blog.
So what happened since the last news?
- added the new ptr talent calculator for the incoming 3.3.3 patch
- added a compare between ptr and live
- changed some layout stuff
- fixed some bugs
- added some more information like required shapeshiftforms,weapons (currently only ptr, will be added soon to live)
Additionally Blizzard like to change from time to time some stuff in their dbc files and due my way generating the databases was kinda a lot of little steps,I completly rewrote that part which allows me to update the talent calculator with 1 key press and also allows to easy find changes in the files.
Next on my list is to add glyphs to it which is long time overdue.
I also got quite some other plans, but dont wanna talk public about them yet for the case they never make it live, but be surprised what is coming next.
Guild recruitment and stuff like excellent applications will always be considered …
Almost every guild got a sentence like
“excellent applications will always be considered regardless of our recruitment status”
“Well written applications are always considered”
“please note that we always welcome outstanding applications from any class”
in there recruitment threads, but what does that mean?
MPQ-Extractor by WRS
That extractor I use since day 1 to get the files I need from the database files of the WoW client, to parse them and build the data for the talent calculator.
When I extracted the data for the latest live patch I had a problem that I got old data, so I started to search for a solution while doing so I found the source code of the program, which is written in c#, so I had a look at the source code.
Didn’t take long and I figured the problem when used with the option “/p” which uses the patch files when extracting data to have the newest, it just get a list of file matching “patch*.MPQ” the problem with that it don’t sort the files so it was extracting in the following order “patch-enGB-2.MPQ”, “patch-enGB-3.MPQ”,”patch-enGB-1.MPQ” and finally the file you want to extract.
The problem is that it extract first the 2nd and the 3rd (which is the newest), every file in the 2nd patch file wont be extracted from the 3rd so all file which are in the 3rd and 2nd file wont be extracted and not being uptodate.
So i wrote a little fix which will extract the files in the right order and also print out which file it is extracting just to be sure it is working right.
For anyone with the same problem i offer the download either as binary or as source code:
Ever wondered if the GM Island really exists and why?
There is finally a official answer about it:
In a recent thread someone asked:
also i would like to hear you say this…
Is GM island real? And if so what the heck was the point of making it?
and the answer is:
Yes. The game masters who respond to you in the game are doing so through a separate chat/support tool. They’re not actually using the game client to whisper you, however, logging into the chat client means the character they use to contact players with is logged into all of the realms they need to. While GM invisibility exists, it makes it safer and easier to have a simple storage/port point to keep all of these characters out of the normal game world.
The original post can be found at:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425463647&sid=1&pageNo=5#91
Can you trust public Combat Log Stats ?
I see it a lot that people show off how good they are on dps or compare it to other people, using one of those public Combat Log Stats like wws, worldoflogs, wowmeteronline etc, but i don’t think alot of peopls ask themselv, can I trust those stats?
The short answer is simple: NO!
The problem is › Continue reading
Get Time-Lost Proto Drake with the NPCSearch Addon while not being in-game
Install the addon mentioned here .
Fly to Storm Peaks and leave your char somewhere in the red marked area, showed on the following picture:
Next go into the sound option of the game and enable Sound in Background, set the master volume to 100% and all other to 0% (that way you dont hear annoying in game sounds).
Now you can go out of the game, do something else with the computer or go afk and watch tv etc, when the Time-Lost Proto Drake appears you will hear the alert sound of the addon and know its time togo in-game.
Dont forget that you have todo something in-game from time to time to not get a logout 
A way how todo it at work:
If you are lucky enough and can run a WoW client at work, but have to pay attention to not get caught, you can get yourself a program to hide the WoW window.
Some examples of those programs can be found at Sourceforge
If you got a problem with the standard sound the addon does and need some sound which is more work like, you can copy your favorite wave file to the addon folder and then open the _NPCScan.lua file.
Search in it for PlaySoundFile, delete the 2 lines and add
PlaySoundFile(“Interface\\AddOns\\_NPCScan\\<name of sound file>”);
Et voila the addon will use your own sound.
Good luck in getting your Time-Lost Proto Drake 
Little update:
After only a few hours camping at the marked area I got really lucky and got the Time-Lost Proto Drake.
Almost lost it to someone else, because I was out of the game and was wondering what the heck the sound is coming from, when I figured it was the addon I swapped back into the game and took me a while to find him the bastard was flying over my head all the time 
The screenshot is taken by the kill point not where I camped, I kinda camped in the middle of the marked area.
NPCScan a really nice addon for finding rare mobs
Today i found an really nice addon called NPCScan, it allows you to scan for NPCs without the need of pressing all the time a target macro, which make it a really nice solution to find rare mobs, all you need todo is run arround or stand at a path at which the rare mob will cross and wait for the notifcation.
The addon makes use of the creature cache, whenever you meet a mob which isnt in your cache it is loaded into it and when that happens with an mob you are searching for the addon will give an alert.
The only little drawback is when you have an mob already in your cache, you need to delete the cache before.
The alert will flash the screen, play an sound, show the model of the mob and shows an frame with the name for targeting it.
Test alert
You can get the addon on http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12995-_NPCScan.html
PTR 3.2 Talent Calculatur tonight
Tonight the PTR Talent Calculator for the upcoming version 3.2 will go online, at the moment i am still busy with downloading the PTR Client, as usual the Blizzard downloader is very slow for me.
Also very soon the Talent Calculator Archive will be added, it will contain the 3 .0.3 and 3.0.9 version and all future versions will be achieved.
Additionally I am planning to add User Profiles which will show some basic info about an user, like how much Talent Builds he posted, comments added, abbreviations added etc
Update: The PTR Talent Calculator is now online.
Some plans for the future
Since it was some while i posted last i thought it is time to post something new, this time i gonna write a bit about future plans.
First something coming really soon in the next couple of days, i will bring a PTR Talent Calculator so you can play around a bit with the new talents.
You want be able to save them just due the fact that the PTR can change things fast, only maybe i make a own Talent Build section for posting PTR Builds which will be up as long the PTRs up.
The next thing i gonna implement is that old Talent Calculator versions are achieved and you can access them all the time if you want, that is something i got alot of requests for. That also means Talent Builds after major changes wont be wiped anymore they stay intact and you see them in the version they were created with, to not spam the categories there will be also a filter available to only see builds made with version X.
I also know alot of people would like to see the old talents from vanilla WoW and TBC, but that would be way too much work to realize, the biggest problem is that Blizzard database format changes alot and i would have to figure out all those change for many patches.
Other planned changes (not sorted after priority):
- Talent Calculator for Hunter pets
- Adding some features to the Level Talent Builds
- Allowing to publish Level Talent Builds
- BB code for description and comments
- Public Talent Builds needs an description
- Semi public modes for saved Talent Builds (other can see but they wont be listed under Talent Builds)
- own url format for the import of Talent Builds so you can open them directly (e.g. /<armory>/<server>/<charname>)
- Import of Guilds from the Armory
- Autocheck if some changed his Talent Build with notification about it
Thats just a few of the stuff i have in mind for the future, if you have any suggestions to them or have ideas for something completely different which could be useful for other feel free to leave a comment here or use the Feedback Form to let me know.
Feedback is always welcome and will be usually always answered!
How WoW Tools was born
The time i started WoW Tools was when i got into arena and wanted a nice way to calculate how much arena points i get for my rating, at that time there were already arena calculators out, but i didnt really like them at that time the idea was there.
I started to write an Arena Calculator in Javascript because it allows to calculate stuff in real time without the need to push something to the server and then wait another few seconds before getting the result, also i like to share stuff i made primary for myself thats why i did it as a webversion.
After a while i thought it would be a bit less to just have an Arena Calculator, so i thought what else i could make and because i like challenges i came then up to make a Talent Calculator which was alot to work, the most time was spent into understanding the World of Warcraft database file, it took me several weeks to understand them and build a parser which can get all the data i need.
Because i find the Armory often slow, i directly added the feature to import talent builds of other from it to see them and have a quick way to edit them, for the case i wanna adopt them partly, that brings the other feature on the road the Set Talents addon.
I wrote that Addon because as someone who plays alot of classes i was sick of outtabbing and look where i wanna set my points and by fault maybe set a point wrong, so a Addon which set automatic all my points as i want them was the best solution.
At a later point i figured then with playing alot of classes its kinda annoying to save alot of different urls for all my classes and speccs that was the day the idea was born to save the Talent Builds directly on the site and get a nice overview of all of them and i thought if allow to save them private why not add the option to publish them to the public so other can see and give feedback about them.
Thats it the main story behind WoW Tools, even its mainly all build because i wanted such stuff, i am always open for suggestion from outside for new features which maybe wanted (even i dont need them )
Search
Links to the main site
Recent Posts
Categories
- Addons (2)
- General (1)
- Misc (1)
- Tools (1)
- World of Warcraft (4)
- WoW – Tools (4)
Archives
- March 2010 (4)
- September 2009 (1)
- June 2009 (3)
- February 2009 (1)
- January 2009 (2)