New Addon: AuctionLite

Last week, the magnificent Lady Jess recommended a new addon to me. You can read the article that inspired her here.

The addon is AuctionLite.

I've been using various iterations of Auctioneer for years. Unfortunately, Auctioneer has grown increasingly complex over that time. Yeah, it has more bells and whistles and can do things too complicated for me to comprehend, but at what cost? The tooltip displays so much information now that i can barely tell what an item is worth any more.

AuctionLite has a very simple layout, and simply adds a couple lines to the bottom of the existing tooltip, instead of blocking out half the screen with each mouseover.

Then there's the scanning time...

Back in the day, Auctioneer took 5-10 minutes to scan the Auction House. With the lates versions, that has ballooned to 20-30, with an additional 5-10 minutes of "Processing" time, varying depending on how many other programs you have running on your PC at the time. Auctioneer's latest update includes a "Fast Scan" option which cuts the entire process down to approximately 10 minutes or so.

The first time I used AuctionLite, I thought it was broken.

It scanned the entire Auction house in 12 seconds. The "Slow Scan" takes about 6 minutes.

Posting auctions is about the same between the two, but buying is where AuctionLite really shines. Let's say you want 20 Infinite Dust. AuctionLite will find the cheapest way to buy that 20. Perhaps it's buying a stack of 20. Perhaps it's buying a stack of 10 and 2 stacks of 5. Or maybe... just maybe it's buying a 12 stack, a 6 stack and a 5 stack and SELLING the extra 3. That's just genius.

Don't get me wrong, I love Auctioneer. It got me through many, many years of auctions. It still has a VERY robust set of features that someone more interested in the game's economy than I am could put to some real use. That being said, for a casual player, AuctionLite is perfect.