Here’s my list of some of the more popular mods that can help make playing WoW more efficient and, also, more fun.

Auctioneer

Auctioneer is a plug-in that helps you find great deals in the Auction House. It includes a database of vendor buying & selling prices and you can use it to look up trends in pricing. With this information, you can take advantage of opportunities to buy low and sell high. It also provides information on values for a huge list of common items in-game. Auctioneer is one of the first add-ons that any good gold farming guide would advise you to pick up. It will improve your gold making significantly.

MetaMap

MetaMap is a great mod that adds tons of features to the regular World of Warcraft map. It basically allows you to arrange the interface however you prefer it to appear. You can adjust window size, opacity and position on your screen. It also contains databases for bosses and mobs . If you are leveling your character with a leveling guide like Zygor’s Leveling Guides, you can import all of John Cook (of Zygor Guides) waypoints right into the MetaMap module. It is a very feature rich mod.

Gatherer

Gatherer is an add-on designed for the gathering professions – herbalists, miners and treasure seekers. It will keep track of all the different places in game that you’ve found valuable commodities and provide you with the actual map coordinates. It also lets you know whenever this item is in range during your future game play.

All in One Inventory and Bank

So you’ve been out looting and you’ve got gold distributed throughout various bags. Instead of clicking each bag, you can use the All in One Inventory mod to combine your bags together. This is another very popular Warcraft mod that saves you time in-game.

Clear Fonts

Hate the fonts in Warcraft? If you feel like sometimes you are going blind from staring at the screen for hours on end, you can use the Clear Fonts add-on to brighten up all of the fonts so they pop right off the screen.

There are literally tons of World of Warcraft mods and this barely skims the surface of what’s available to adapt WoW to your needs and preferences. So take some time to explore all your options and make sure you have plenty of room to download them all.

Since they are free, I recommend that you go ahead and install each of them and give them a trial run. Keep the ones you like and uninstall the ones that you don’t find useful. You should be able to find all of these at Curse Gaming (Curse.com). Now, let’s get on with the list.

Atlas

You will probably find Atlas to be a crucial map mod that really should have been part of the game in the first place. For some curious reason, Blizzard doesn’t have the instances mapped in Azeroth. Fortunately, Atlas solves this problem. It adds a map for every instance in World of Warcraft and it includes the boss locations too. There are also a variety of map pack plug-ins made for it so you can use those to add additional maps for things like dungeon locations, raid bosses (outdoors) and battlegrounds. This comes in extremely handy and you only have to install the ones that you need.

Cartographer

The Cartographer addon adds coordinates to Warcraft world map, but it also does a number of other cool things as well. You can use it to add notes, or change how the map looks with scale and transparency adjustments, etc. It also keeps track of herbs and minerals. In addition, it also shows unexplored locations on the map, which you may find pretty useful.

MobMap

Looking for lots of easy quest mobs? Then MobMap will prove indispensable. It adds the positions for all NPCs and the known mobs to your in-game map. MobMap also comes with quest and merchant databases. This map mod is also available in German.

QuestHelper

QuestHelper is another map mod that will help you out with questing. It adds all the waypoints for the quests in your quest log to your map and sorts them by shortest distance between quests in order to cut-down on how much walking you need to do between each quest. This will prove to be a real time saver.

MapMod v2 leveling addon

MapMod v2 is the only addon here that isn’t free, but I’m including it because if you are interested in leveling fast, whether for Alliance or Horde, you are going to find it useful. It’s made by the Team iDemise crew. Like Questhelper, it adds waypoints to the in-game map, but it does a lot more than that. It basically provides a leveling walk-through so you can just follow the arrows from one quest to the next. Also installed with it are step by step written instructions and hint and tips that are all accessible from both the Mini-map and the world map.

If you want to get the awesome MapMod v2 leveling addon, you can get it as part of the iDemise leveling guides. iDemise now has two guides available, one for Horde and one for Alliance, and they both come with the MapMod v2 addon.

When you get started in Northrend, the breadth of content is pretty large. You have two starting zones to choose from with more than 130 quests each for each faction and a whole lot of different reputation factions, tons of new instances, and a whole lot of new professions, gold grinding spots, and even an option to go back north to the classic continents of WoW and start a Death Knight. If you haven’t played yet, trust me when I say that you will be overwhelmed when you first set foot into the new content.

So, what does my tool have to do with all that? Well, what I’m talking about is WotLK Secrets. You may have heard about it already – a lot of people are talking about it because it’s been incredibly helpful to a lot of players. Basically, it’s a complete starters guide to Northrend and all things WotLK with in depth strategies, secrets about the game and everything you need to know about every ounce of new content.

Trust me when I say I’m not overstating anything here – this guide truly does cover every bit of the new expansion with more than 240 pages of detail on what you’re going to see and do. And when I was just getting started, it helped me not only figure out where I was going and what I was doing – it showed me what I needed to go back and redo and what I was skimping on. If you’re just getting started in WotLK, check out WotLK Secrets and if you’re already a ways in, give it a look anyways – it can’t hurt to check out what you could be missing out on.

Check it out now: WotLK Guide

Joana (or Mancow, the male character he uses) has gotten to level 80 in under five days played time and has been the first to level a character to 80 on six different servers now. Because of this, he was invited to play in the Burning Crusade beta. This means his new guide will be out soon after the expansion is released! What’s even better is that you get the expansion guide for free when you purchase the his leveling guide, as well as any updates to the guides.

This WoW Horde leveling guide shows you exactly where to go and what to do. Using this guide you will be doing about 90% questing and 10% grinding, which is excellent since you don’t have to mindlessly kill monsters all day long. Questing is also a lot faster than grinding alone. Joana captured on video the whole leveling experience from 1 to 80, which took him a little under five days playing time.

The actual video run time is 115 hours but even when sped up, the combined time of these videos is 35 hours! This amazing feat caught the attention of The Escapist Magazine, which wrote about it in their speedrunning article. Fortunately, these videos are divided nicely into levels and zones and are integrated into the guide.

You also get pictures and maps showing you exactly where to find the quests that are listed in the guide. The guide lists the UI mods he uses and also tricks for playing a hunter and the order in which he uses his talent points. No exploits were used to get to 80 in this World of Warcraft Horde leveling guide and everything is completely legitimate.

The Horde side has more quests to do so you won’t even need to bother with instances unless you want to grab the occasional piece of armor. This guide is designed around soloing so time won’t be wasted finding a good group, which is nice since you’ll probably be leveling up faster than your friends anyway.

2. Make sure you grab quests every chance you get. You can easily gain additional exp, gold, items and faction while you’re leveling. You may even complete some of your quests with out even knowing because they normally require you to kill off mobs or require you to travel/speak to other NPCs. The quests of World of Warcraft are more player friendly than other MMORPGs. 

3. Don’t spend any money buying World of Warcraft items, equipments and other accessories early in the game. Low level characters from 1-40 are not gear dependent. Along with that fact, you’ll get a nice load of items from just completing quests. 

4. While you’re out leveling, there are certain monsters that has better drops than others. An example would be humanoids. They tend to drop more gold and items than any other creatures in the World of Azeroth.

5. This is the advice I give to friends. When setting up your character, be sure first to read about the characters plus, and minuses; then set up for the strong and weak points. Take in consideration how the character supports himself and how the character can keep going and keep on track to level without losses. 

6. Don’t spend money on items at the auction during the first 10 levels of your character. Almost everything you will need will drop to you from the quests. Keep your activities balance in the amount time of questing and making products. Then, as you gain money from making and questing you will see your pocket grow.

7. The usual, your character does by the skills he has, whether it is mining, leather, or tailoring. You make and sell your products. This is how you gain, the more you practice your trade, the more gold you have in your pocket, when you sell the items. The higher the level your character is the higher the prices in the prices of your products.

8. Resale, this happened during the holidays. I know of a character that went out and bought snowballs and after collecting many, was selling them at a higher price to others. Later, bragging about the profit. Take advantage of this.

9. Once you level some you can charge others to guide them through lower quests that you can whiz threw. There are many ways to make money, for example you can protect and kill for lower characters.

10. In the group playing, be sure to express your wants and needs, to keep the character going. Drink and food on hand before; so your character can keep going till the quest is completed.

*special note: (if you are looking for leveling specs, these raiding specs will work, just add points as you level.)

#1 Needed Shaman WotLK Spec – Restoration 0/16/55

When you first decide that raiding is going to be for you at level 80 as a Shaman the one most needed spec that will pop out is going to be restoration. Most if not all guilds need a good strong resto shaman in wotlk for both 10 man and 25 man raids. You can find the best raiding restoration specializations online, just know that you will want 16 points in enhancement for the 3/3 improved shields and 3/3 elemental weapons. Also remember that intellect is one of the more important stats to go for, yes spell power is nice, but adding intellect will not only raise your spell power if speced correctly but will also raise your spell critical chance and the size of your mana pool.

#2 Needed Shaman WotLK Spec – Elemental 57/14/0

This is just one spec that many elemental raiding shamans choose, but unlike the resto shaman spec this talent build can be tweaked and modified a little to your own liking. One of the major talents you will want to grab from the enhancement tree is the skill called shamanistic focus, this skill will lower the mana cost of all your shocks by 45%. Anything that lowers your mana cost of core abilities as a raider is a must to pick up for any class. You may also want to take ancestral knowledge for the 10% increase to intellect.

Here is your raiding dps rotation;

Flame Shock > Lightning Bolt > Chain Lightning > Lava Burst > Thunderstorm
Water Shield (Only when it wears off)

#3 Needed Shaman WotLK Spec – Enhancement 16/55/0

One of the more favored talent specs back in Burning Crusade has now seem to taken a little fall in the raiding charts because of the way buffs now work in raids and wind fury totem not being as important for melee classes like it used to be. Still enhance shamans are always welcome and if played right can bring a strong dps/buff makeup to any raid. Always remember when raiding as an enhance shaman to have the max amount of hit raiding percentage which at the moment is 17%. Maxing hit will raise your dps far faster and make you more consistent that any other stat. One thing you will quickly notice is that the talent spec of Enhancement is that which can not be modified much. Almost all talents will need to be speced into if a shaman wants to max out his dps potential.

I hope that my little WoW Shaman WotLK guide will be of some use to the newer shamans out there. Do not forget that a lot of what raiding has become is trial and error and learning from your mistakes.

Want to make 500 gold an hour, or level your toon from 1-80 in less then 7 days /played?

Check out the #1 Guide for leveling in WoW — Shaman WotLK Guides & More…

“When Activision Blizzard CEO (ATVI) Bobby Kotick said yesterday his company needed to work on penetrating the Chinese market, he wasn’t kidding. The company’s World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, a blockbuster hit in the West, has been banned from sale in China by Chinese government censors.
China-based JLM Pacific Epoch: The government has rejected two applications by the second expansion for The9’s (Nasdaq:NCTY) licensed MMORPG World of Warcraft, “Wrath of the Lich King,” since China’s Spring Festival (January 25 – February 1), reports Sohu quoting unnamed sources. The applications were rejected due to content that didn’t meet requirements, including a city raid and skeleton characters; the submitted version did not contain WLK’s Death Knight first hero class, said the insider.

WoW game developer Blizzard Entertainment recently deleted a link on the game’s North American site to the site’s simplified Chinese version, said the report.

Where to go from here? Activision is recruiting firms to mange its brand in China, and maybe help handle the Chinese government too.

Navigating the Chinese bureaucracy can be difficult, but we hope Activision figures it out. For all WoW’s success, it seems unlikely the Warcraft revenue machine will grow substantially unless the company can break into virgin markets.”

When the good people that play the World of Warcraft get their hands on the Wrath of the Lich King getting to level 80 suddenly became very doable because the level cap was raised from 70 to 80. It’s not an earth shattering increase by any means so it basically turned into a small leap and voila, what used to take players months to achieve, reaching level 80, was suddenly attainable in about a week or so.

So how exactly were WoW players doing it? They are using a Horde leveling guide which in effect exponentially increases their skill level practically overnight. The reason a Horde leveling guide is so important is because it greatly cuts down on wasted time by pointing the player in the right direction as far as quests, add-ons and macros, etc., etc go.

It’s like stepping out of a Volkswagen and stepping into a Lamborghini. A quality Horde leveling guide can be purchased online and downloaded instantly to your computer in PDF form so you can take advantage of it immediately. You can either use it by keeping it open on your monitor and referencing it when needed or you can print it out and place it in a 3 ring binder as a handy guide.

While the PDFs are great I prefer in-game guides. In-game guides appear right on your computer and gives you real-time instructions on such things as choosing the best quest for your character, showing you the most effective macros, advising you as to what the next step you should make and so on.

Horde leveling guides have basically become indispensable, most especially for beginners to the game of World of Warcraft. As all veteran WoW players know It can be a rather complex game to learn and is most difficult when you are first starting out. A quality leveling guide flattens that learning curve out considerably and gives amazing results, even for total newbies.

It is quite important however, that you choose a guide that is easy to understand and follow. It could be an incredibly precise guide that will get your character to level 80 with the instructions it gives but if it’s overly complex or not easy to understand then it pretty much defeats the purpose of its existence.

You should go after a Horde leveling guide that has an in-game GPS system. Many of us are familiar with GPS (global positioning satellite) systems now because they are used in many newer automobiles. Well they happen to basically work in the same way in the World of Warcraft as well. They guide you to level 80 in the most expeditious way possible. That is one of the true hidden secrets to leveling up your character quickly in the World of Warcraft.

The system actually computes the quickest route and has arrows pointing you toward your next objective. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a challenge, but now at least you have a fighting chance of success as a beginner to the exciting universe of the incredibly popular role-playing game, World of Warcraft.

Maximum damage can be inflicted by using their ranged attack and ranged skills complemented by their beast pet that protects them from their enemies. Hunters are stalkers in the wilderness with the ability to locate their prey just like their animal friends. They have the ability to get in touch with nature and tame some of its fiercest beasts as dependable allies.

Hunters use their guns, bows and arrows, or crossbows to inflict great damage to their opponents from afar. Ammo or arrows are required for the hunter’s ranged weapon and enhance the DPS of their weapon. It is advised that lower DPS ammo/arrow (low-cost stuff) should be used for general attack while the higher DPS ammo/arrow (more expensive) for special kills of leader boss or monsters. There are special ammo/arrow pouches that increase attack speed and hold larger number of ammo/arrows than Hunters could otherwise carry.

This WoW Hunter Guide categorizes the hunter’s skills into three areas or trees. These are Marksmanship, Beast Mastery, and Survival. Marksmanship concentrates on dealing ranged damage, beast mastery deals with the hunter’s pet, and survival skills focuses on various melee and trap abilities. Spells in marksmanship include Auto Shot, Multi-shot, Arcane shot, Wyrven Sting, Scatter shot, and Aimed shot. Marksmanship has more advanced skills such as Hunter’s Mark and Distracting shot. These spells increase the hunter’s chance to slay its enemies easily.

Beast mastery spells involve expertise in affecting animals and beasts which will cause to enrage the hunter’s pet or scaring beasts. One of the basic spell under this tree is Eagle eye, which allows hunters to scout for enemies lurking around.

The hunter class is a perfect choice of character for a team player who wants to assist and save his allies from its enemies. This WoW Hunter Guide is a perfect guide to get acquainted with one of the exciting and finest character in the World of Warcraft.

Get your copy of the UltimateWoW Hunter Guide.