While part of the appeal of World of Warcraft Burning Crusade Classic is the chance to relive one of the best expansions in WoW history, the truth of the matter is that World of Warcraft has improved in some significant ways in the 14 years since Burning Crusade was first released. The ideal WoW experience is arguably somewhere between “Classic” design and modern innovations.
Well, the best Burning Crusade Classic addons essentially help bridge that gap. By improving some of old-school WoW‘s most annoying shortcomings, they allow you to enjoy a version of WoW that some will argue is close to the best way to experience this legendary MMORPG.
So unless you believe in a “pure” classic experience, be sure to download these arguably essential addons before you start your Burning Crusade journey.
While vanilla World of Warcraft occasionally required you to be “attuned” to enter a raid or dungeon, TBC took that concept to another level. You simply won’t be able to access some of the game’s best content if you haven’t completed the necessary (and sometimes complicated) steps.
Attune won’t quite do all the work for you so far as that goes, but it comes pretty close to completing that tall task. Along with telling you exactly what you need to do to get attuned to each dungeon and area that requires it, Attune keeps track of your progress and even offers quest completion tips. Even better, this addon supports guild-wide tracking, which is perfect for guild masters who need to know which of their guild members are ready to enter dungeons and raids.
You may not love World of Warcraft‘s auction house, but at some point, the odds are good that you’re going to have to use it to find that one elusive item or just spend some excess gold. That makes it all the more unfortunate that the old versions of the WoW auction house often…umm…sucked.
Auctionator helps fix the old auction house’s worst problems by streamlining the AH UI and making it significantly easier to find what you’re looking for or even just window shop. This app is nearly essential for anyone who regularly sells items on the auction house, but its extensive UI improvements make it an arguable must-have for more casual auction house users as well.
To be honest, the “in-combat” retro WoW interface isn’t that bad for most players. That being said, it’s loaded with minor annoyances that do start to add up over time once you get into more advanced endgame content.
That’s why Bartender is such a great tool. While not the most extensive UI addon in the world, this brilliant tool will allow you to modify your on-screen action bars and customize them so that you’re able to cleanly analyze significantly more information at a glance. Check it out if you just want to tweak the existing UI rather than demolish it.
It probably won’t be long into your WoW journey before you find yourself wishing that you could just view all of your inventory at once rather than have to open all of your individual bags. That UI problem only gets worse as your inventory space grows.
While there is no shortage of viable bag addons available for TBC Classic, Bagnon is certainly one of the best available options. In its simplest form, this addon lets you view all of your current bag inventory on one screen, but it’s this addon’s advanced features that will impress any WoW player who has to manage multiple bags, multiple bank accounts, and even multiple characters.
You can certainly get by with TBC Classic‘s default map, but it probably won’t be long until you find yourself wishing that you had more control over it.
That’s basically what Cartographer brings to the table. Not only does it make managing your map size and the information it displays easier than ever, but it even allows you to quickly view maps for TBC‘s dungeons and raids. It’s just one of the best quality of life addons that you should install without hesitation.
Some addons improve the core WoW experience in such a fundamental way that you’ll never be able to stop using them once you’ve given them a shot. Deadly Boss Mods is absolutely one of those addons.
Deadly Boss Mods is your one-stop-shop for WoW‘s various dungeon and raid boss encounters. Along with offering a suite of information that makes those boss fights so much more manageable than they would ever be otherwise, DBM comes with a preset series of alerts that immediately let you know when crucial moments in a boss fight are about to occur.
Anyone who has ever run a dungeon or raid in older WoW expansions knows about the significance of the threat mechanic. As the mechanic that typically determines which party member an enemy is currently attacking, threat is also what often separates a successful run from a wipe. That makes it all the more shocking that WoW‘s default UI doesn’t include a useful way to consistently track threat.
While the Details addon is one of the more popular threat tools out there, Omen distinguishes itself through a series of advanced tools that not only tells you who has the most threat but how close the next player is to pulling threat from the leader. It’s one of the surest ways to keep party and raid members from instantly hating each other.
Damage meters are a contentious topic among some WoW players. While some see the ability to check how much damage you’re doing relative to other party/raid members as an invaluable resource, others believe it’s a “tattler” that only encourages unreasonable levels of optimization.
If you believe in damage meters at all, though, then Recount is probably your best addon option. This simple tool adds a clean group damage tracker to your interface that so happens to also offer advanced analytics should you need them. While arguably more useful during raids where damage check bosses make tracking this information much more important, this is still a great overall addition to WoW‘s base UI.
In WoW Classic, reputation was little more than a novelty that primarily appealed to the most dedicated players and completionists. In BC Classic, though, even casual players will likely find themselves grinding for rep at some point.
That’s why the RepByZone addon is so special. This incredible tool automatically updates your reputation progress bar to match whatever zone you’re in, which is the kind of feature that becomes significantly more appealing once you’ve tried to do things the other way.
Questing in older versions of WoW is an experience just short of a nightmare for many gamers accustomed to such modern novelties as clear directions and efficient information tracking. While TBC improved questing quite a bit in comparison to Classic, it can still be a lot to keep up with if you’re just relying on the base UI.
That’s why so many players consider Questie to be an essential part of the TBC Classic experience. By helping you keep track of your progress on your current quest as well as the status of all your accepted quests, Questie eliminates nearly every significant annoying element of the retro WoW questing experience without entirely diluting the flavor of the journey.