Things are not quite looking good for Blizzard Entertainment's giant MMO, World of Warcraft. First, expansion The Burning Crusade was delayed for a couple of weeks with the developer saying it needed some more time. The players gave in, thinking it's for the best. Then weeks after weeks, the updates being done to the game became public and sad to say, the fans are not liking it.

To be quite frank, thinks like these leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Sometimes it makes a player so disappointed, that he just want to call it quits. If you ask us, it makes us go back to the time when WoW was just released and the gates of Azeroth just opened. It makes us remember what it is exactly about the game that we love in the first place.

When you think about it, WoW holds three qualities that help endear an MMO to a player. The virtually unlimited dungeons and raid runs were designed for achievers, while the PvP enthusiasts have a world and battlegrounds set aside for them. Then you have the casual players that were pulled in and eventually became hard-cores themselves. Interlocking quests, smooth level transitions, goal-driven gameplay. Everything a player desires is there.

If you really think about it, WoW in its own way deviates  from the norms of MMORPGs. Certain games require you to join groups and clans. Not require in a sense that you won't be able to play but require meaning "let's see how far you can go alone." WoW allows a player a moment of solitude, the freedom to be left alone whenever he wishes it.

Yes, those are all the things we love about World of Warcraft. Blizzard boasts of its 7.5 million active fan base. While it is true, we hope they begin listening to its people before their number dwindles down.

There is an old saying among martial artists that goes "Your body is only as strong as your weakest link." The mantra isn't just limited to disciples of the ancient arts, though - modern military doctrine teach the same principle, and every fire team in conflict is only as good as their slowest man.

That seems to be exactly what Gharuvy over at the WoW boards had in mind when he discusses his lamentations. According to his experiences, while it takes at least 25% of any current group in a raid/encounter to perform exceptionally well to get the job done, he's realized that it only takes one poorly performing member in every group to screw the whole thing up.

The raid leader's lament then is that they can never expect majority of the team members to perform extremely well, but at the same time, they can expect most of their members to at least perform reasonably well - there's just that gamble of a "weak link."

Interestingly enough, Mike Schramm over at WoW insider makes some remarks about this statement, adding his own personal experience of getting his rag-tag team across Deadmines, and how they barely survived their encounters there based on his own initiative - though he admits to making fumbles himself, ending up being the "weak link" on other occasions.

So, what's this all say? With the number of raiders per party now growing into the 40-man mark, we're hoping this little bit of wisdom gets itself passed on to the other raid leaders out there. We're not telling you guys to be suspicious of every noob that comes along - just be careful of the people you're drafting the next time you set your eyes on areas like Naxx, and make sure everybody receives clear orders before you march off.

Today's batch of WoW mods include these nifty apps: Kisk's PVPCooldown Reborn v2.9, totalpackage's ImproveDressingRoom, and Razzen's Grim Riders - Target Tools.

Kisk's PVPCooldown Reborn v2.9 shows the time remaining on your PVP status or shows PVP zone-info. Razzen's target tools provides a visual target and raid icon assignment for both the main tank and raid members through network communication and GUI. The installation instructions for both combat related mods can be found in the readme files in their respective folders.

The odd mod out for this batch is totalpackage's ImproveDressingRoom as it's something for the aesthetically anal among you. The ImproveDressingRoom mod allows you to zoom, reposition, and rotate the dressing room models so that you may get a better view of how things look on your avatar. It works with the Auction House dressing room.

Enjoy the mods folks!

Download [WoW Mod Pack]

Shandrai has update his World of Warcraft AV (Absolute Vikings) mod pack for PvE, PvP, good for all classes + more for all you AV guild members out there. This addon pack can give you some advantage in battle plus a lot of info about fights, flights, timers for different things or adding some features.

Addons, says Shandrai, can make playing WoW more "laggy" especially if you have an old or slow computer so he says don't add too many add too many addons. He recommends that you use only the addons that you think are the best ones. But if you a powerful PC Shandrai strongly recommends you to use all addons in this pack.

The easiest way to update to this addon pack is to delete all addons in your addons folder and drag all addons from the 'other addons' folder and the ones you want from the 'class addons' folder into you addons folder. It should be located here: C:ProgramWorld of WarcraftInterfaceAddons. If you haven't got a addons folder then create a folder and name it addons. place it in your interface folder. Got that?

Shandrai included a very long and very useful explanation about this addon pack which is a must-read if you're thinking of using it.

Full details of the AV Mod addon pack after the jump.

Download: [AV Mod Pack Update]

Humanity may have been having a hard time looking for life beyond out planet, but already we're witnessing the transformation of a new world. It might be virtual, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's less realistic than aliens. Being almost as real as planet Earth, Azeroth has it own share of hardworkers, such as Rivotti who has just released a World of Warcraft addon that helps Priests, Druids and Shamans with the following spells:

• Healing Touch and Regrowth(Druid)
• Greater Heal
• Heal
• Flash Heal
• Lesser Heal(Priest)
• Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave(Shaman)

If you decide to install RSavedHealer, Rivotti says players occasionally can't use the auto-target function of the mod. The function SpellCanTargetUnit has a bug that sometimes doesn't return the correct value. He says he can't fix this bug because it's a base game function and there's no way get over it. For now, that is.

Download: [RSavedHealer]

You can read the full details of RSavedHealer after the jump.

Grinding can quite often be a pain, and a pretty boring kind of pain at that. We all have our own little ways to help lessen the dampening effect that grinding has n our will to live. Some people read a book, some listen to music, and some people play poker. If the aforementioned ways just don't float your boat, then maybe you'd like to take a stab at trying to answer a few trivia questions.

That's what today's World of Warcraft mod is for. Aptly named TriviaBot, this mod is a fun and engaging way of distracting yourself from the tedium of grinding, raiding or random idling. With almost 3000 WoW-related and non-WoW questions, it's sure to add a whole lot of brain activity to your WoW experience. Plus, it gives you a chance to show off that collection of useless knowledge that's backing up the pipes in your grey matter.

Authored by Guri, TriviaBot is based on the RaidTrivia mod by Psy. Right now, there are 2,632 normal questions and 312 WoW questions included. The normal questions are from Psy's RaidTrivia as well as some parts of the code. Some of the WoW questions are Guri's while some are user-submitted questions. The mod maintains a list of top scorers which is printed out after every fifth question. It also keeps speed-records for the quickest answers and allows you to play in any channel. How do you use it? Here's a list of available command line options:

/trivia channel [SAY|YELL|PARTY|RAID|GUILD|] - Sets the trivia channel.
/trivia start - Starts the trivia game.
/trivia stop - Stops the current game.
/trivia skip - Skips the current question.
/trivia shuffle - Reshuffles the questions (restarts from beginning)
/trivia clear - Clears the scores.
/trivia qlist [wow|normal] - Select the question list.
/trivia help - In-game help display

Click on the download link below to get TriviaBot and let the games begin!

Download: [TriviaBot v1.4]
Buy: [World of Warcraft | WoW Expansion: Burning Crusade ]

Lonekeeper will need to change his username because he won't be alone anymore if he keeps on doing this for the World of Warcraft community. He just collected some great addons that most might like. Here are just some of them:

Ace, AceGUI, Atlas, AtlasLootEnhanced, BuyPoisons Remix, CTMod (Master, Mail, Party, Raid, RaidBosses, Unit (frames), DamageMeters, EnergyWatch_v2, Fontabulous (I used Myriad at size 78), GBars, KLHThreatMeter, MobInfo(Includes MobHealth), ntmysFixLoadingTimes, Natur's , EnemyCastBar (NECB), Nurfed (Combat Log, HUD), Outfitter, RangeColour, SCT, Titan Panel (Includes all the default ones), UberQuests (Modded).

Installing them is a cinch. You should first exit the game, unzip the files to default folder: C:Program FilesWorld of WarcraftInterfaceAddons, then run. If you'd like to modify some of the addons you can follow the instructions below:

Atlas - Click on minimap button
CTMod - Click on the CT/RA minimap button.
Fontabulous - /ftab
EnerygyWatch_v2 - /ew off, /ew on, /ew unlock, /ew lock
GBars - /gbars
NECB - Click on minimap button
ntmysFixLoadingTimes - /nFLT
Nurfed (Combat Log, HUD) - Click on minimap button.
Outfitter - Click on minimap button.
RangeColour - /rc
SCT - /sct menu
Titan Panel - Right click on it.

So there you go. If you got some great collections as well. Feel free to share it with us and the WoW community. Comment below if you like what you received.

Download: [Chiploxie U]

There are a lot of ways you can show your support for the particular guild that you belong to in World of Warcraft - be on top of the raid schedules, make machinimas, we could go on and on. But probably the simplest way to show some guild loving is by making a User Interface. And we got just the tool you need for this.

Sanctuary Raid UI is a mod pack put together to help Sanctuary guild on silvermoon server. Shintahimura authored this mod and it has been getting some lovin from WoW-anatics so far. To check what the buzz is all about, download the file below and give it a go.

Download: [Sanctuary Raid UI]

Somebody just screamed "more World of Warcraft mods!" Or maybe that was just the wind. Either way, we've got another mod for you guys today. This time, it's Urshurak's MetaHud, a little add-on that adds a HUD to your UI, showing all the info normally displayed by the Player and Target frames and more.

This mod is based on Drathal's HUD. Says the mod author: "Always thought it was a shame that Drathal's HUD was given up on the way it was so, I have taken the core of that code and MetaMorphed it." Urshurak (who is a nice guy and gives full credit to the mod code's original author) also added quite a few features which he thought were pretty useful and also did some spring cleaning to remove some of the excess stuff.

Here's a list of features:

• Health/Mana Bars colour levels
• All Bars are animated
• Shows Level, Name, Class and Elite/Boss, Pet, NPC
• 4 Alpha Settings for: Combat/Target selected/No Target/Player is regging
• 4 Display modes for Health/Mana
• Many positioning and Scaling Options
• Hide Blizzard Player/Targetframe
• Target Menu with Left click on Targetname
• Player Menu with Right click on Playername
• Castingbar with Cast-time
• Option to hide Petbars
• Option to hide Targetbars/Text
• Load-on-Demand configuration display
• Target's Target display - click to switch to that target
• Aggro alert - audible and visual warnings
• Target PvP status
• Self PvP status
• Status icons for Rested, Combat, Raid leader, and Loot Master
• Target distance display
• Support for Mobhealth, Mobinfo2, and Mobhealth2
• FlightMap support
• myAddons Support
• FuBar Support

Click on the download link below and check out MetaHud.

Download: [MetaHud mod for World of Warcraft]
Buy: [ World of Warcraft | WoW Expansion: Burning Crusade ]

"Concentrated Coolness" is the an important part of Blizzard's game design philosophy as said by Rob Pardo in the Austin Game Conference. He continued by saying to not try to do everything at once and start small, start "cool" - address problems as the pop up, determine what gamers like, and build from there in logical steps. That way, unwieldy situations like having to fix major problems in a wide range of big areas can be avoided, reducing player frustration. Go for Depth first, then Accessibility - but don't forget that both are required.

As an example, he spoke of a dev team who  kept a dungeon classified - then had to redo it because they had forgotten about the accessibility when designing the depth. Passages in the high level dungeon were too small for the large raid that would have to pass and fight through them. The Scarlet Monastery content, on the other hand, is an example that clearly illustrates Pardo's "donut" metaphor. Hard-core gamers could blitz every wing in one session, while casual gamers can just to a single wing.

What connects Depth and Accessibility is Pacing, says Pardo. In WoW, Blizzard provides a well-paced leveling curve and re-playability.  "In WoW you can Solo to Sixty if that’s what you want to. Then most of our players play another to sixty and then another."

Finally, Pardo emphasized that Blizzard will "release no game before its time."

"What we found in every review of WoW was the word polish. How well polished the game is. That polish has to permeate every aspect of a game. You may not notice the one polished aspect of the game, but you sure notice it when 1,000 polished aspects come together," Pardo said. Like the dating game or a Broadway opening, you get one shot to impress your audience. "You publishers out there. Listen up. You don’t get a second chance."

While Blizzard's philosophy seems like a brilliant business plan, it is - like most great ideas - based on simple, common sense principles.  Decide what it is you're doing, determine your market, create a philosophy - then start small and build from there.

As a Chinese philosopher said over two millenia years ago, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."