Oh Noes, My addon hasn’t been updated!

Don’t panic!

I do this as a matter of course normally, but I do not recommend it for major content patches. If the addon hasn’t been and isn’t going to be updated for 4.0.1, you’re just asking for trouble if you continue to use it with reckless abandon. It will break eventually. You should start looking for a solution now, while everyone is having to revamp addons, rather than having it suddenly break on you when you boot up for raid night.

Seriously. Some get their updates faster than others, depending on the addon.

• Curse.com: Has most major addons and an installer.
• Wowace.com: contains alpha and beta versions of addons as well.
• Wow-interface.com: selected addons available. It puts a lovely (4.0.1) next to addons that were updated for 4.0.1, making it easier to find the recently updated ones.  Plus – check out the CATACLYSM page for a list of addons that are cata-ready.

WowAce has a lot of alpha/beta versions for download, including the beloved GRID.¹ I’m not going to wait for release. I need grid NOW.

Scan the comments for the addon that you are in love with. Is the author promising to fix it over the weekend? Or has the author abandoned the project? It might be worth simply waiting a few days if a fix seems to be imminent.

If there’s no update in sight, you may want to consider replacement. Ask people what they use for that UI aspect, particularly if they used to swear by your old addon.

There are definitely upsides to replacement with an actively-updated addon. For example, I found that Bartender was updated very slowly after a patch, but Dominos was usually updated right away. The switch was annoying, and I confess I don’t like the configuration interface for Dominos as much. But when I went to log in on patch night for 4.0.1, there was a Dominos update ready for me. When I first booted up the game, Dominos was all set up and ready to go, just like it was the day before patch day.²