Thom

Some obsessive gamers scoff at those who play on a laptop, or play on a Mac, or etc. Oh well. I'm on a 1st-gen MacBook Pro (getting up in the years), and if WoW didn't play decently on a Mac or a laptop, I simply wouldn't play WoW. I'm sure Blizzard owes much of its userbase to its ability to support less powerful or less "optimal" computers.

I make quite a bit of use of macros, especially for situational combat choices. Never really thought to use them for screen space, but it's a neat idea.

One thing I didn't go into detail about in my submission was my choice for the sizing of the addons and the "utility" of each.
* The main action bar are all of my normal rotation and other major combat abilities.
* The right action bars are all of my "must-have" buffs and my major cooldowns.
* The half-size secondary action bars on bottom are my sometimes buffs, my "maybe I'll use this once or twice ever" abilities, my Mounted macro and other non-combat abilities.

Wasn't sure if I fell into the good or bad on your litmus test, as I do have all of my bars turned on, but they're not full-sized. Just thought I'd share. ;)

Too cool! The Addon & UI columns are probably my favorite on this site, so it's fun to get featured. Certainly not the most original UI in history, but I hope that maybe this helps a few others who were afraid they didn't have enough screen real estate to build a solid custom UI.

Mat: I'd never consciously thought about my decision to move the threat meter into the corner, but I guess you're right. Getting my start tanking in BC, I feel like Omen was probably my #1 most important addon. Hasn't been nearly the case in Wrath, so I guess it got pushed to the backburner in my mind. I'll be interested to see if I move it again to a more prominent position in Cataclysm!

A year or two ago, I never really "got" leveling alts. I tried, but I could never get one about level 30-35. But between heirlooms and the dungeon finder, I've gone a complete 180. Now that ICC is kinda stale, I spend the vast majority of my time on alts.

Anyhow, I'm a little more generous up-front with my alts. I'll buy them at least the 2-piece experience heirlooms and usually send them each 100g when I first roll them. If I don't like the toon, odds are I can just pass those resources back to my main, reroll another toon to wear the same heirlooms, rinse & repeat. I've never paid for dual spec for an alt so far, but I do tend to help them out with Cold Weather Flying.

As for my main, it was pretty obvious when to switch. I'd reached 70 in BC and was playing feral DPS alongside my wife's hunter. It was just too difficult to find groups, so I decided to try my luck at tanking. Meanwhile, my wife got her resto shaman to level and it quickly became her new main. The tank/healer combo (obviously) worked very well, and we haven't looked back. Heck, the majority of our experience with alts is now modeled on that setup... We're also working on a Tankadin/Tree combo; Priest/DK; and Warrior/Healadin.

I don't think this addictive property is limited to MMORPGs. I've observed friends call in sick from work way too often after a late night of playing Halo. I think part of it is the competitive nature of playing: the only way you can get better than the people who play Halo or WoW for ten hours straight is to yourself play it eleven hours straight.

I think Nintendo's on the right path regarding all this. Rather than stick with the "tobacco" formula--maintain a finite number of gamers and keep them addicted--they seem to want to go after would-be casual gamers (like myself) who just don't find the appeal in (1) ten hours of gaming per night, or (2) constantly getting one's ass kicked.

Actually, Metallica has been download-friendly for some time now... They just tend to stick with live recordings. (LiveMetallica.com has been selling concert recordings for at least a few years.) Yeah, they would appear to have mellowed--in a recent magazine article, Lars was quoted as "watching YouTube a lot", and says that of the videos floating around of their new, unreleased song, "the side view is best." :P

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I do think the whole Napster thing was brought on mostly because of an unfinished studio recording of "I Disappear" leaking out... I could imagine that freaking any band out a bit, people hearing your shit even before it's done.

John,

Sure the eBook market is very tiny. But then, the MP3 player market wasn't exactly of monolithic proportions until the iPod hit the market.

I agree that the shuffle/repeat features should be more accessible... I'd suggest putting those options in the middle-button rotation. Hit the button three times to see album art, so why not a fourth time to get to a shuffle/repeat toggle? For that matter, I'd like a quick way to play the current album/artist and what not. Why not make a sort of contextual menu within the song display? Even expanding the "Now Playing" root menu item into a submenu with these options might be a decent change.

If 30-second MP3 ringtones count as music, then yes, I definitely use my phone to listen to music. Sucks because every time I want to listen to Pete Townsend, I have to get my mother to call.

Hey guys... You guys are dorks. How much longer do you plan to keep arguing with the same information over and over again?

That said, I personally expect Apple to support both formats, if not immediately, sometime not far down the road. One of their big niches is content creators, i.e. indie filmmakers, videographers, etc., and those people are going to want the option of authoring in both formats. To forsake one format would be to forsake a lot of business.