Addon of the Week: Ace2

The cognoscenti among you are probably going "huh?" Strictly speaking, Ace2 is not an addon; rather (from the WowAce Wiki) , "Ace2 is a collection of libraries intended to: improve modularity, improve performance, and simplify the addon and library creation process."

So what does this mean for non-developers like you and me? Or, what’s in it for the players? It means we can have a whole bunch of addons using common libraries, which decreases the chances for addon conflicts and error messages. It should also mean that a half-dozen Ace addons should use less memory than a half-dozen non-Ace addons, but that’s not always true.

For example, I looked at Cartographer vs. MetaMap. Both are very popular world map addons, with a lot of added functionality. MetaMap has over 768,500 downloads from Curse Gaming alone, while Cartographer is no slouch, with almost 723,000 downloads from Curse.

MetaMap is a standalone addon, and consists of 238 files, or 22,140KB of disk space. Cartographer is an Ace2 addon, with 110 files and only 3,242KB of disk space–or about 1/7th the size of MetaMap. But when only FuBar (an Ace addon) and its performance monitor are loaded, together with each of the two mapping addons (one at a time, of course), addon use is 1MB lower with MetaMap, the non-Ace addon loaded. However, I do get a FuBar error when MetaMap loads (I suspect a hook into FuBar from MetaMap has changed; functionality is not impacted).

Notwithstanding (remember, you can prove anything with a sample size of one), I will always look for Ace addons if I’m looking for a particular function, in addition to non-Ace addons. Generally, I will try a couple or more, just to see which one does more of what I want, with less extraneous stuff going on. And looks count. (Fortunately, I have a system that doesn’t really care how much I throw at it: Those FPS numbers you see are in Shattrath, with EVERYTHING maxed.)

So, how do you install Ace2? You don’t, actually–the needed libraries and functions are installed with any Ace-enabled addons. Since it’s a common-use, open source project, you are pretty much assured of having the most current files. So what’s available with Ace? Lookie here! Literally score, if not hundreds, of addons are available. Some are outdated or no longer supported, and due to an unfortunate server snafu a few months ago, the Ace project got somewhat out of whack. But for the most part, things are in good shape now, and maintenance of older addons, as well as maintenance of new ones, continues.

One last recommendation: Unless you are an experienced and/or confident addon user, I recommend going to Curse Gaming Addons or WoW Interface and putting "Ace" in the search window. Otherwise, you could very well end up grabbing less-stable beta versions.

Stay tuned for a comparison of Titan Panel and FuBar–coming soon to a blog near you!

Post-Patch 2.2 Edit: I should point out that while Curse Gaming was pretty much brought to a post-patch halt due to everyone trying to upload/download updated addons, the WoW Ace site was easy to access all day patch day and beyond–and this, despite the fact addons were being actively updated throughout patch day and the days that followed. Just one more point in favor of Ace addons.