The best WoW Classic addons are a different animal when compared to the rest of the features players will encounter in their time-traveling trip back to Azeroth's humble beginnings. While other features, like class mechanics or quest design, are ripped straight from 2006, addons are user-designed complements to the base game that are meant to improve the player experience in some fashion. As such, they're up-to-date - some of them are new spins on old favorites, but they're all developed using modern day tech.
That's already a little controversial. WoW Classic addons fundamentally change the game in some pretty meaningful ways. Even making questing easier goes against the philosophy of WoW Classic, which is to preserve a moment in time and accept its shortcomings. For that reason, WoW Classic addons don't come recommended as a necessity, nor are they required to improve the experience of the game. At its core, WoW Classic succeeds as a mirror back into a time that has long since passed, and anyone wishing to relive that will likely find the challenges that some of these addons eliminate as part of the game's appeal.
With that said, not everyone wants to fully relive the vanilla WoW experience right down to the brutal UI and unforgiving quest routing. For those players, the best WoW Classic addons are the ones that help mitigate some of the design decisions that modern MMORPGs definitely don't revisit in 2019. Here's our list of the best WoW Classic addons available to players after the game's launch.
WoW Classic Addons - How To Install
The best way to download and install WoW Classic addons is to use the Twitch App's built-in support for the game, which allows players to manage their downloaded addons and acquire more. It even has a built-in search function that will help players find if there's something that suits exactly what they want.
For those who don't want to use the Twitch App, players must first download an addon from one of the usual libraries - CurseForge is the one we'd recommend - and then extract that addon into their WoW Classic folder. It's usually under the Interface sub-folder labeled as "AddOns", but that folder won't appear if a player hasn't accessed the WoW Classic client on their computer yet. If this extract is successful, the player will get a new button on their character screen just above the "Menu" button that is labeled "AddOns" and will display all the ones that have been successfully installed when clicked.
Best WoW Classic Addons - General
- Leatrix - Leatrix is meant to enhance the user interface's default settings. Players can set up some seriously helpful script, such as automatically selling the gray items they pick up - commonly referred to as "vendor trash" by veterans. Other incredible features include being able to auto-accept, select, or turn-in quests without having to navigate the in-game menus (a useful tool for veterans who've been through it all before and want to hit end-game fast) and auto-accept resurrection requests, minimizing the amount of downtime and maximizing the amount of time players can spend spamming party chat with 2006 memes while they're down.
- WeakAuras2 Classic - Players get more control with this WoW Classic addon, which allows them to create auras to track different elements of the game that the default UI doesn't. Players also have the option of importing other players' auras by visiting archive sites for them.
- MapCoords Classic - A simple WoW Classic addon that is designed with one goal in mind - to add coordinates to both the map and minimap, allowing players to easily reference their own position and also provide other players with their location in an exact method.
- Vendor Price - Another simple WoW Classic addon that will simply display the price an item sells for to vendors in its tooltip.
- AtlasLootClassic - An addon that allows players to check all loot tables from WoW Classic. This is especially useful for players looking to improve their gear, as it lets them know which dungeons it can be found in and to plan accordingly.
Best WoW Classic Addons - PvE and PvP
- OmniCC - This WoW Classic addon adds a timer over a player's cooldown abilities. This lets players know exactly when key abilities will come back up, allowing them to time their use perfectly. This is useful for basically any class, too. DPS will want to use this to maximize their ability to damage bosses or other players, while healers will need to know when their most clutch heals are available to be able to time them right and not waste time. For tanks, crowd control and aggro management will always be crucial, and OmniCC helps smooth out rotations and help on-the-fly planning when things inevitably go south.
- HealComm - A vital addon for healers who are working the end-game of WoW Classic and attempting to work as part of a multi-healer team. HealComm broadcasts when other healers are using their spells and who they're using them on. An entire team of healers with HealComm will avoid the tragic - and sometimes wipe-inducing - use of multiple different heal spells on a target that only needs one, and for that reason, it's an easy pick-up for anyone looking to up their game and reduce their frustration.
- BigWigsBoss mods - Another simple addon that is nevertheless one of the best available to WoW Classic raiders. This addon introduces timers and notifications for boss mechanics in dungeons, ensuring that players who are unfamiliar with end-game mechanics won't get completely wiped out by them as they're learning. This even applies to dungeons over the leveling experience, which can help expedite the grind to level 60.
- Deadly Boss Mods - Classic - Another modification that adds timers and notifications to boss fights. Deadly Boss Mods is one of the most popular iterations of addons in current WoW, and it has a loyal following for a reason - the quality is always there and it's been reliable over a span of many years.
Best WoW Classic Addons - Questing
- Questie - By far one of the most useful WoW Classic addons across the entire list, Questie dramatically upgrades the questing experience. It adds many of the quality of life improvements that Blizzard itself would later add to WoW in subsequent expansions and updates. Ultimately, this is the most impactful WoW Classic addon in the game - it's the one that makes the 2006 version of the game closest to the current version of WoW, and it saves the most time for players during the leveling process. It comes highly recommended, but it's also the WoW Classic addon that distances it the most from its intended appearance and functionality, so people looking to preserve their experience as closely to the 2006 version of Azeroth as possible will want to give this one a pass.