Addon love: Altoholic

I don't tend to talk much about addons, because I honestly don't find them that interesting. I use a couple that provide major functionality that the base game doesn't currently provide, like Healbot, but otherwise I use the default UI for everything I do. I know for some people configuring their UI is an art of its own but for me personally it's just not something that I enjoy or care about. (I believe the last time I posted a screenshot with my UI up on my guild's forums, people broke out in hives at the sheer horror of it, to their eyes at least.)

Today I'd like to talk about an addon however, my favourite of them all in fact. Funnily enough this wasn't inspired by the recent discussion about addon-less healing, but rather by a comment on a completely different subject over at the Pink Pigtail Inn. Leah from One rant at a time went off on a bit of a tangent about why she loves Altoholic and said the following about it:

I'm kinda embarrassed to say but I'm hugely dependent on it in game and I wish it existed in real life (wouldn't it be nice to be able to get a remote look into your pantry to verify if you need a articular obscure item, you forgot to add to your shopping list and then saw on huge sale in a store and cannot remember how much of it you still have left - real life experience here O_O)

It's funny because it's true! But to avoid confusing those who don't actually know the addon, basically what it does is catalogue everything there is to know about your characters (gear, professions, inventory, currencies, achievements etc.), and it makes this information accessible on any of them without forcing you to relog.

Ever been offered a recipe for an alt's profession and had to relog to check whether the character didn't already know it? With Altoholic you see that kind of information included in the item tooltip.

Ever been asked by a guildie whether you had a certain crafting material to spare and had to relog repeatedly to check on all your alts? Worse if you ended up saying no, just to realise a week later that you actually did have one stashed away in your low-level rogue's bank? With Altoholic you just enter the item name in the search box and you'll immediately know for sure.

Ever wanted to do a slightly more involved piece of crafting for one of your alts and ended up relogging a gazillion times just to get it all sorted? Well, Altoholic won't save you from relogging completely, but at least you'll know for sure which character you'll have to check for which parts.

Ever been on an alt instance run or raid, just to realise with a bit of regret later on that you probably should have taken a different character that could have used the loot and emblems more and didn't have the achievement yet? Again, with Altoholic you can see all those things for your whole stable of characters at a single glance, which allows you to make better decisions.

I could go on and on, but suffice to say that I really love this addon very, very much. It doesn't make me better at playing the game, and I wouldn't even necessarily say that its functionality should be included in the default UI (for a new player it might be a bit overwhelming and create clutter), but if you've been playing WoW for long enough to have accumulated a fair amount of alts, this addon is simply amazing and you'll never want to play without it ever again.

And no, I didn't get paid for this in any way; I just felt like gushing.