WOW: Comparing WOW AddOn creation tools

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If you like to play WOW, then you might want to add on some tools to make your game. 

In this blog I will contrast the two excellent tools, the WOW Addon Tools from the Blizzard Site and the AddOn Studio for WOW that is an open source project on Codeplex.

Keep in mind that even though the Visual Studio Shell (isolated mode) is used, the language is XML and Lua, the same languages that is used on the Blizzard site.  These are not CLR connected languages, but many of the helpful tools are used, and some people think that the Lua is a .NET implementation.  That is not the case.

Here are the contrasted approaches, personally I like the AddOn Studio for WOW from Codeplex, as it is similar to the Visual Studio environment that I am use to.

 

Tool and link Comments about the tool
WOW Addon tools

Pro:

  • The WOW team at Blizzard has done a great job of creating forums and support (without providing support, sort of a zen thing) for developers.
  • Great forums
  • Must do to be able to be involved in the whole situation
  • Installation is smooth

Con:

  • Got to memorize a lot of stuff to make things work, extending existing items can be difficult

Overall:

Excellent
Addon Studio

Pro:

  • Excellent use of the Visual Studio Shell in the isolated mode, this means that if you are using VS 2005 or VS 2008 std/pro/vsts, it won’t merge with it, and will stay separate (a good thing in this case)
  • Intellisense helps with the development and understanding of the programming language Good help support
  • Forums are good
  • Installation is clean and works well
  • Your tools are compiled directly upon build and if you have WOW on your machine then it will run directly on your system

Con:

  • If you are used to the handholding the Visual Studio IDE does for you when you are using VS std/pro/vsts, then occasional missing capabilities are annoyning

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