Chat
mods are defiantly not a must have. They will not make the player
play better, or more efficiently, nor will they
help you complete quests, or down that uber hard boss you have been
working on for weeks. Chat and Communication based mods are usually
nothing more than cosmetic changes that really won’t improve
your overall game play in the bigger scheme of things.
Despite all that I wouldn’t play without my chat mod. I
dislike most of the standard Blizzard frames and the chat portion is no
less disappointing to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game
and in my opinion it will probably be years before someone manages to
create something close the amazing enigma that is World of Warcraft,
but I can’t help but feel that Blizzard leaves a lot to be
desired in their standard frames. With this in mind it is no surprise
that from almost the very beginning of my World of Warcraft career I
have had some sort of chat mod. Most recently my mod of choice has been
Prat (see Messiah‘s
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/uimods/reviews/prat"
target="_blank">review on Prat),
and I love it, I really do. So I was a tad bit hesitant, but even more
intrigued to have the chance to review another chat mod that I had
never even head of before.
Mod
Name:
style="font-style: italic;">Chatter
Category:
style="font-style: italic;">Chat and Communication
Authors:
Antiarc
and Grum
Version
Reviewed:
style="font-style: italic;">v1.1.2
Homepage:
style="font-style: italic;"
href="http://www.wowace.com/addons/chatter/" target="_blank">WoWAce
Chatter much like its chat mod counterpart Prat, is a chat enhancement
addon that grants the user tons of features that enable them to modify
their chat frame to their hearts content. The real appeal of Chatter is
that it is supposed to be much more lightweight then Prat, without
sacrificing too many features. Since I have used both Chatter and Prat
I was excited to see if I could actually see a difference in game play
while using it since Prat is a rather hefty mod and now that it was
uninstalled I should notice some sort of difference, right?
Unfortunately with relatively the same features enabled I saw no real
difference in my game play experience. However, I am going to withhold
judgment on the matter, because my personal computer is a pretty decent
system if I may say so. Players with less than stellar systems may
indeed be able to benefit from the lighter package Chatter offers.
Chatter is basically useable upon install, with just a few tweaks
needed to make it fully functional, which should appeal to those
players who have little to no experience with mods in general. I
personally have some control issues when it comes to my U.I so I of
course opened up the options menu (/chatter) and began browsing. This
was probably the part I had been most looking forward to as I had no
idea what to expect. I have always found Prat’s options menu
to be lacking, and misleading in some aspects. I also had concerns that
being a lighter weight mod Chatter may be missing some of the
modifications that I so adored in Prat.
My fears in these matters were completely unfounded, as the Chatter
options menu is very user-friendly
and is filled with options that allow great customization.
Don’t be worried about the amount of things to customize
though, everything in the options menu is very straight forward and
easy to figure out and configure. I was pleased to find that almost all
the options I previously had with Prat (and some that I had never seen
before with Prat) were still available, and I was able to make my
Chatter look and behave just like my Prat had done before it. I even
like some of the fonts available more than the ones that come standard
with Prat.
Here is some of the features available with Chatter taken straight from
the developers website (to see the entire list visit the website listed
above):
- Hiding buttons
- Linking items, enchants,
spells, and quests in custom channels - Custom aliases for channel
names - Coloring of player names by
class or deterministic HSV formula, and player levels next to names - Custom font and font size
for your chat frames - Custom background, border,
and positioning for the edit box - Option to let the edit box
border color match the color of the channel you are typing in - Channel colors remembered by
name, rather than by number - Scrolling your chat frames
with the mouse wheel. - Sticky channels, configurable
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses for me though while trying
out Chatter. I do have a few gripes with the mod and you can decide for
yourselves if they are a big deal or not. My first annoyance was upon
install, when I first logged into my game (and every time after that)
Chatter instantly popped me two errors. I am not sure if the errors had
to do with the program itself or if it was just conflicting with one of
my other add ons, but still anything that pops me errors annoys me to
no end. It should be noted that once I had closed the errors after the
initial log on that the mod did not produce any further errors, so it
defiantly could have been worse.
My second (and larger) gripe was the fact that the chat box itself was
largely unmovable. Sure you can pull the chat box up and down by either
the top or bottom (making it in
essence larger
or smaller), but I just
could not find an option that would allow
me to move it around the
screen. Perhaps I’m just missing something, but I went
through the options menu many times and saw no box to uncheck or slider
to slide that would allow me to do this. Needless to say if indeed you
cannot chose where to place the chat box that may severely limit the
mods usability for some users. Being able to move the chat box exactly
where you want it on the screen is a very simple feature, but one that
every chat mod should have.
In a nutshell this is a great mod, with the positives far outweighing
any negatives. It’s very user friendly, is lightweight, and
allows excellent user customization. Does this mod stand up to Prat? I
think it does, the mods are very similar and honestly I saw very few
differences. I would suggest to all users in search of a chat mod to
try out both mods before making their finial selection to see which one
works best for them, or as suggested previously, for a quick
review on the addon check out Messiah‘s
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/uimods/reviews/prat"
target="_blank">review on Prat.
I personally will be sticking with Prat, it’s my tried and
true chat mod and I’m slow to change, but if asked I
wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Chatter as Prat’s
unquestionable equal. Join us on our forums and share which chat mod
you prefer Prat or Chatter, we would love to hear from you!
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