Interview with Shadowed, a mod writer.

Hello Shadowed. You're an author of a number of popular add-ons such as SSPvP, Afflicted and SSArenaframes. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your wow/programming background?

Hey. I'm 18, and getting ready to start college to study law eventually. I started programming a few years back for a resource site as an Admin and moved to WoW due to some friends. Most of my programming background was self taught off of things like Blizzard's code and other people's mods. Started due to the 1.9 (?) patch that added multi-battleground queues that broke a mod called CQPVP that auto joined/left matches.

So what inspired you to start writing addons?

Back when the battleground system came out, there weren't really any other mods that did things like auto join/leave, or they were fairly basic and didn't offer much configuration. As I mentioned above when CQPVP broke I started to modify it to my own needs and sent it off to some friends, they said I should submit it and so I did and that became SSPVP. Hence where the name SSPVP came from actually, just took "S" from Shadowed and added it in place of "CQ" never expected it to be a popular mod so it was just a quick name.




Some of the popularity of your original add-ons might be because they were used to compliment BG afk bots. What do you think about this?

Not much I can do about that, if I hadn't made it then someone else would specifically for bots. So while some people may use it to help break the ToS, there are still others who use it because they like/have to play battlegrounds.

Many of your addons complete functions that seem to be missing from the PvP system. For example, SSPVP shows us arena points gains, timers on towers in AV, etc etc. Why do you think that information is missing in the default UI?

Not really sure, probably because Blizzard doesn't want the default UI to do everything, while battlegrounds are popular not everyone does them or cares about timers. Maybe at a later time Blizzard will implement it by default like they did with raid frames and ready checks, but who knows. Possibly WoTLK will see timers due to their new pvp stuff.

SSPvP is a popular add-on that displays extra information about Arena and BGs.

What made you decide to pick up Afflicted (previously Magictrack)?


Pre-2.4, working with the combat log was cause for insanity but I didn't really like NECB/Antagonist so I was already planning on starting my own timer mod, so I decided to pickup MagicTrack when the author abandoned it since 2.4 was coming soon. At this point, Afflicted isn't really close to magic track at all. The basic timers/dispel/interrupt alert ideas were kept but they have either been redone or improved over the couple of months that I've been working on Afflicted.

Mods are controversy sometimes. Tournaments in general don't allow mods -- people feel that allowing mods will let the players with the best mods win. But some say that some comps/classes (Such as mages/locks) really need mods to perform (Specifically to CS their focus target) Do you think that mods are a big advantage -- and playing without mods is a disadvantage?

I can understand Blizzard not allowing mods from a legal standpoint, why deal with the hassle of someone arguing that X mod is unfair and they lost because of it. As you mentioned a lot of it is based around class and the player itself, it'd be nice if Blizzard had "approved" mods like a basic cast bar one for focus bars, focus unit frames, and a timer mod but I don't think that would happen. Timer mods are a pretty nice advantage for things like Intercept or Shadowstep, or short CD interrupts like Kick/Pummel and knowing you can safely cast is a decent leg up but it's nothing you can't do yourself by mentally keeping track of time, it just means you have one more thing to focus on.

An easier way of putting it I suppose is, mods help reduce how much you to pay attention if I get a new bar whenever my focus target casts I don't need to have their character on my screen or them targeted, if you have an arena frame you can track what your team mates are doing and if you have class that does AE damage like a Warlock you know when to switch easier then looking at nameplates and so on.

Just having a mod that tells you the timer does not mean you will focus on it.

True, but at a certain point you'll use it or glance at it. Otherwise why run it in the first place?


The wow mod community is huge. We've seen a number of collaboration projects, Ace being the most known. Do you interact with other mod writers?

Certainly, while I haven't collaborated on a mod with some other authors for a while people still talk, screw around or ask questions if someone else knows a section of the API better because they made X mod. IRC has a few communities like WoWI and WoWAce that authors can talk to each other.


Why do you mostly write mods for PvP?

Mostly because I haven't needed mods for PvE, some point I'll release a mod to try and make Lifebloom rolling a bit easier but beyond the basics like BigWigs I haven't needed more mods for PvE that someone else hasn't already done.

Do you get people logging on your server to talk to you about your mods?

Not really, once every few weeks someone may ask about a problem they are having, but it's not common.


Does your family/friends know you've developed something hundreds of thousands of people use?

Nope, they don't care much about WoW.


To me people like shadowed are the unsung heroes of our community. While we remember players mostly by the movies they put out on WCM, we are mostly affected by mod writers. Remember that they put countless hours into developing add-ons and releasing them for the public to use. These are the guys that have to rewrite code each patch and put it up ahead of time so you may play without interruption. Next time you decide to make an alt to talk to a famous player go and talk to your favorite mod author instead of the guy sitting at the #1 spot on armory. After all, one of these guys is sincerely out to help you.