QuestHelper

What It Does

Questhelper tells you how to finish your quests in the easiest, fastest manner. It includes a database of quests, monsters, and items, telling you the exact location of that dang Perfect Satyr Horn you can't find. It also computes the fastest path to complete all your quests - and gain experience - as quickly as possible.

Contribute To Development

QuestHelper survives on your contributions and donations! Below you'll see the major categories that I want to work on. Contributions fill up the pretty blue bar, and once the bar is completely full, I'll finish the feature ASAP. Think I'm taking QuestHelper in the wrong direction? Now you can tell me where it should go! QuestHelper makes your $15/mo World of Warcraft subscription more enjoyable, and if you're willing to share a little of your enjoyment, you can ensure that QuestHelper is kept running forever and does what you want it to do.

Every donation helps.

Want your character or guild listed ingame as an official QuestHelper Supporter? Leave a message and let know! I'll add the feature if there's interest.

Data

If you can't afford to contribute (It's okay! I still like you) then I also need your data. QuestHelper records monster positions, questgiver locations, item drops, and all manner of fun information that I use to build QuestHelper's database. There's no personally identifiable information involved - I can't get your username, your character name, your friend's names, or anything of that sort. The file I need is stored in the following location, assuming you're using Windows XP and didn't change the installation path:

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT_NAME\SavedVariables\QuestHelper.lua

Some have reported that for Vista and Windows 7 their path is one of:

C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT_NAME\SavedVariables\QuestHelper.lua
C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT_NAME\SavedVariables\QuestHelper.lua

I've heard that on OSX, the path is:

/Applications/World of WarCraft/WTF/Account/ACCOUNT_NAME/SavedVariables/QuestHelper.lua

To make things even more difficult, it seems that Windows might try to "help" you by hiding file extensions. This makes 'QuestHelper.lua' appear as "QuestHelper". Warcraft makes backups of all these files, so there is a "QuestHelper.lua.bak" file in there as well, and without its file extension, it appears as "QuestHelper.lua", but it isn't really and it's not actually the file I want.

Be careful not to descend into the realm / character directories, we specifically want the SavedVariables directory. There are QuestHelper.lua files in the other directories as well, but they only store which flight routes your characters know, and aren't actually useful. On a similar note, I also don't want the file named SavedVariables.lua, which contains your UI preferences and is entirely unrelated, or the file named QuestHelper.toc, which is a small part of the QuestHelper code and not anything I need.

When in doubt, look at the file size - if it's less than 100k, it's probably the wrong file.

You can email it to me at:

qhaddon@gmail.com

This address is NOT the proper place to direct inquires about the addon. that should be done in the comments below. NO messages sent to this address are EVER read as it receives more than anyone could hope to read. The only thing that logs into that account is an AUTOMATED script to download all the attachments. Every once in a while I happen to glance at a few messages when deleting attachments, and there are consistently month-old pleas for help. These get deleted and not responded to. Do not email questions to this address. Seriously, stop doing it, I don't know why people keep emailing me here.

Many have asked how often to send in data. My personal preference is basically this: Send stuff in every month or so, or when you remember. Thanks!

Please note that the above has nothing to do with installing this AddOn. You install this AddOn the same way you would install any other AddOn, by unzipping it into the "Interface/AddOns" folder.

And, of course, a huge thanks to everyone that has sent me their data so far. It's very much appreciated.

READ THIS BEFORE POSTING AND ASKING FOR HELP

If you're confused by how to make it work, use the Curse Client. The Curse Client pretty much just works now. It is your friend. If you want to install manually, more power to ya, but if you just want to make it work, consider the client. Seriously. I really mean this.

It doesn't show me any objectives on the map: Type "/qh hidden" and see why they're hidden.

It reduces my framerate too much/uses too much CPU: You could try reducing "/qh perf" (for example, "/qh perf 50%".) Some parts of what Questhelper does just intrinsically use a lot of CPU. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. This problem should be largely fixed in the current version.

It uses too much RAM: You could try "/qh purge" (please submit your data first!) but, fundamentally, the things Questhelper does also use a lot of RAM. There is not much I can do about this.

Pretty much any issue with it not running: "/qh hardreset" should reset it to "factory install conditions". Try it!

FAQ

How can I help?

Donations pay my rent and buy me food. I'm very attached to rent and food, I find them good things to have. Even a few bucks will help more than you'd expect - look at the top of this page for more information.

You could also submit your collected data to me, which is free and helps Questhelper's database. Check out the top of the page for that as well.

It doesn't work. What can I do?

Three things. First, if there's a major issue with QuestHelper, you can type "/qh error" and it will show you the first error it ran into. If you post that in the comments here, one of the people who helps regularly may be able to solve your problem. Please post the entire error, not just parts of it. We really, really want the see the whole thing, even if it's long.

If it just doesn't work, "/qh hardreset" will reset all your accumulated data and preferences, hopefully getting rid of weird problems. If you still can't see the quest tracker, "/qh treset" will try to force it into a visible position on your screen, with "/qh treset center" jamming it uncomfortably into the center of your screen. It can be moved from there by dragging the small gray box at the top-right of it. If you're not seeing quests at all, even on your main map, "/qh hidden" will tell you why and let you change it. The combination of these three fixes most problems.

If none of those help, disable your other plugins as a test to find incompatibilities.

My framerate is low. What can I do?

If you have any addons that enabled CPU profiling, turn it off, it greatly increases the amount of work WoW has to do. The command to do that is: /console set scriptProfile 0 /console reloadui

If that doesn't make a difference for you, there's a slash command, /qh perf, that can scale the amount of work QuestHelper does per frame. Example: /qh perf 50%

QuestHelper uses a lot of memory. What can I do to fix this?

QuestHelper intrinsically uses a chunk of RAM. You can currently expect about 15m of usage. There's really not anything anyone can do about this, but that small amount of RAM usage also shouldn't be much of an issue.

Why aren't my quests showing up?

/qh hidden will list everything that isn't being shown, along with the reason for it being hidden.

If I send you my data, should I delete my copy?

You'll save hard drive space and RAM, but lose any preferences you had saved. I don't recommend it, but if you want to, it's fine. You can type "/qh purge" ingame to get roughly the same effect without losing your preferences.

How can I get rid of that arrow over my character's head?

First, try right-clicking it and looking for a "hide" option. Second, try /qh arrow, /qh cartwp, or /qh tomtom, depending on which arrow it is. Try them all - at worst, you'll end up with extra arrows. The same command will disable it again. If you'd rather move it instead, you can drag it around by left clicking . . . unless it's been locked, in which case right click on it and unlock it first.

How do get that 3D arrow pointing where to go?

/qh arrow.

If you'd prefer integration with Cartographer Waypoints or Tomtom, try /qh cartwp or /qh tomtom respectively. I don't really officially support these options, but they seem to work.

The Icons on my map are huge! How can anyone see anything?

If you find the icons are too big for you, you may enter /qh scale X%, replacing X with some reasonable scale. I'd start with 80%, depending on how that looks you can try bigger or smaller numbers.

Author(s)

ZorbaTHut is the current maintainer of this project. Any bugs are probably either his fault or Blizzard's.

Smariot is the original developer of the package.

Nesher and Vipersniper both made improvements while Smariot was still maintaining it, and are worthy of praise.

Lonadar and Divinewind420 haven't actually written any code, but they've been helping out with customer support for many months now, and their assistance has been invaluable. <3

How to avoid getting your account stolen.

Simple explanation:

Don't run any programs attached to UI mods. Just decompress them into your addons directory. The major site installers, like the Curse.com installer, are probably safe. Be suspicious of everyone and don't give out your password.

There's a much longer and more detailed explanation here, which I recommend everyone read at least once.

Despite persistent rumors, Questhelper does not contain anything that can steal your password. Such a thing isn't even possible.

Usage

For the most part, you just install it and leave it alone. It should hopefully be smart enough to do The Right Thing, and not require you to meddle with it.

The task QuestHelper thinks you should do first is displayed on your minimap, which you can mouse over for a description. If the task isn't in your current zone, then it will point towards where QuestHelper thinks you should go to get there, such as a flight master or the zone border.

World Map

All the tasks QuestHelper wants you to do are displayed on the World Map. There are 'marching ants' connecting the objectives, showing you the order QuestHelper thinks you should complete them in.

You can right click on an objective to get a list of options for it.

Menus

Using the menus should, hopefully, be obvious. The only catch might be that they don't automatically disappear if you click on something else.

You can right click anywhere on a menu to hide it, or select the Close Menu command from the end of the menu.

Priorities

There are 5 different priority levels an objective can have: "Highest, High, Normal, Low," and "Lowest".

Most objectives default to "Normal". Objectives for timed quests default to "High". User created objectives default to "Highest". QuestHelper will try to arrange the objectives so that higher priority objectives get done first.

You can use priorities as hints to get the objectives in an order you'd prefer, without the need to micro-manage the route list.

Filters

There are 7 filters you can use to automatically ignore quest objectives, which you can turn on and off using the slash command /qh filter.

The first filter is "level", which by default is on. It will cause QuestHelper to ignore any objectives that your current party probably isn't high enough to complete. You can adjust the level offset used by this filter with the command /qh level "offset".

The second filter is "zone", which by default is off. It will cause QuestHelper to ignore any objectives that aren't in your current zone.

The third filter is "done", which by default is off. It will hide objectives for any quests that aren't complete. You can use this if you don't want to quest and just want to turn the quests you do have in.

The fourth filter is "blocked", which hides blocked objectives, i.e. ones that can't be done yet, such as quest turn-ins for incomplete quests. This is probably most useful if you prefer to hide the "ant trails", as the route it will compute will be somewhat of a lie.

The fifth filter is "watched", which hides objectives that you are not currently tracking via WoW's built-in quest tracker. This gives you a lot of control over which quests QH shows, but may limit you to fewer quests tracked at once.

The sixth filter is "group", which by default is on. It will cause QuestHelper to ignore group quests while you're not in a group. By default, it permits 2-player group quests, but not more. This can be adjusted with "/qh group".

The seventh filter is "wintergrasp", which ignores Wintergrasp PvP quests if you are not actually in Wintergrasp at the time.

You can force QuestHelper to show an objective that otherwise would have been filtered by typing /qh hidden and selecting "Show" from its entry in the menu.

Sharing

Sharing allows you to share your objectives with other party members, allowing you to combine your routes and work together effectively.

Note that sharing only tells your peers what objectives you have, your completion progress for them, and the priorities you have assigned to them. Information such as item drops and monster locations are not shared.

Each peer will take this information and calculate their own route from it. Assuming you stay together and work cooperatively, which was the whole idea behind this feature, your routes should end up being almost completely identical, and you can follow it and rest assured that nobody is getting left behind. Objectives shared by multiple users won't be removed until everybody has completed it.

Slash Commands

(May be very out of date. If you'd like to volunteer to update it, let me know.)

• /qh help: Lists all the QuestHelper slash commands.
  • /qh help "command": Tells you about a specific command.
• /qh settings: Opens the Settings menu at the current cursor location. Note that not all settings can be changed through the menu.
• /qh track: disables/enables QuestHelper's Quest Tracker, which provides status on your nearest objectives, in place of the default Tracker.
• /qh hidden: Displays a list of all the hidden objectives, why they are hidden, and depending on the reason, will allow you to unhide them.
• /qh ftime: Toggles the display of the flight time estimates.
• /qh locale "locale": Sets the locale to use for displayed text., or lists possible locales if no argument is given.: Defaults to your client's locale the first time you run QuestHelper. The only locale that is complete right now is "'enUS"'. Missing translations will be marked with red text.
• /qh share: Toggles objective sharing on and off. When on, will share quest objectives and progress with other party members that are using QuestHelper 0.17 or higher, and also have sharing enabled.
• /qh solo: Will disable quest sharing and ignore anyone you might be partied with, basically assume you will receive no aid from your party members.
• /qh comm: Toggles the display of the data sent between peers. I use this for debugging, but some people just love to stare at streams of meaningless data. It's really quite hypnotic. . .
• /qh hide: Hides QuestHelper's minimap arrow and World Map icons and paths, and suspends the calculation of routes.
• /qh cartwp: Toggles using Cartographer Waypoints to display your current objective.
• /qh tomtom: Toggles using TomTom to display waypoints for your current objective.
• /qh button: Toggles the QuestHelper button on the World Map frame.
• /qh level "offset": Sets the level offset used by the level filter. Can be positive or negative. Invoke with no arguments to see the current offset and your effective level at various party sizes.
  • /qh level 0: Only show quests at or below your own level.
  • /qh level +2: Show quests up to two levels above your own level. This is the default.
• /qh nag: Prints counts of all the new or updated quests, objectives, etc, that you have found that aren't in the supplied database.: Note: To reduce memory usage, QuestHelper deletes static quest data that doesn't belong to your faction. So, if you play both sides, it will always think the quests you did for the opposite faction are new.
  • /qh nag verbose: Displays the specific differences between your data and the static data.
• /qh find "category" "query": Allows you to create custom objectives by searching for known items, NPCs, and locations. The queries allow fuzzy string matching, and so should happly accept typos and partial matches.: Note that if you attempt to create an objective twice, it will instead hide it.
  • /qh find item "item-name": Search for items.
  • /qh find npc "npc-name": Search for NPCs or monsters.
  • /qh find loc "zone-name" "x" "y": Search for a location in a zone. You may also use a comma, should you feel the need to.
  • /qh find loc "x" "y": Search for a location in your current zone.
  • /qh find "search-string": Searches in all categories.
  • /qh find: Invoking the find command without any arguments will instead display all your current user created objectives, allowing you to easily turn them off.
• /qh filter "filter-name": Toggles objective filters on or off.
  • /qh filter level: Shows or hides objective that you probably can't do. Note that this considers the the levels of everyone in your party, not just you. If you're partied with somebody higher than you, it might not hide a quest that it otherwise would have.
  • /qh filter zone: Shows or hides objective that aren't in your current zone.
  • /qh filter done: Shows or hides quests that aren't complete.
  • /qh filter blocked: Shows or hides objectives that are blocked, i.e. require something else to be done first, such as turn-ins for incomplete quests.
• /qh scale "value": Scales the map icons by this amount of their default size. Will accept a number or a percentage, in the range of 50-300%.
• /qh perf "value": Scales the CPU workload for QuestHelper's route calculation routine. Will accept a numbere or a percentage, in the range 10-500% (although we don't recommend going above 100%).
• /qh recalc: Recreates the world graph and location and distance information for the active objectives. You probably don't need to worry about this.
• /qh purge: Deletes all your collected data. I'd prefer if you avoided using this any time other than immediately after sharing your collected data.: Requires that you to enter a randomly generated 8 character case sensitive alphanumeric password, to hopefully ensure that people read the message that gets displayed.
• /questhelper: Alias for /qh.
• /find, /qhfind, : Alias for /qh find.
• /qh find monster: Alias for /qh find npc.
• /qh find location: Alias for /qh find loc.

How You Can Help

Most importantly, check out the top of this page, under "We Need Your Support".

Translations

Translations can be easily edited at http:smariot.no-ip.org/translate. More translations are good!

Development

There is a Git mirror for this project's code: git://cams.pavlovian.net/questhelper.git

Note that you'll need to copy several files from a released version to make it work, most notably the ChatThrottleLib plugin, the Art directory, and every file starting with "static". These are all dynamically generated and not included in the repository.

Future Releases

Everything in here is "planned" and not "guaranteed". Do not yell at me if things get delayed or shuffled. Pushing versions back happens extremely frequently if unexpected new bugs crop up. You may also notice there are no dates listed - that's intentional, if I knew how long it would be I'd have fixed it by now. This is just to give you an idea of what my next major plans are.

Right now, most of the work is going on behind the scenes. You won't notice any significant QuestHelper improvements because I'm adding backend code to support eventual major improvements, and to keep the entire thing from melting down. New features are coming, but don't hold your breath.

Major features that may be upcoming:

• /qh find
• better settings dialog for preferences
• limited achievement support

Tasks

Things I'd like to do that may take a long, long time:

• Rewrite pathfinding to be aware of mountains and other obstacles.
• Track drop rate of quest items, estimate the number of kills you'll need to complete
• Better path optimization, prioritizing "easy experience"
• Addition of "quest-like goals", including achievements, vendor recipes, unadded flight paths, weapon/skill training, repairs/vendors, reagent/ammo restocking, and so forth
• Automatic tracking of followup quests
• Remembering quest priorities after logout
• "Too Tough For Me" button, temporarily ignoring a quest until you've leveled

• 

  Author

  ZorbaTHut

  (Project Manager)

  Downloads

  • QuestHelper
  • Baggins_AltLevel
  • Champion's Purse
• 

  smariot

  Downloads

  • Chess
  • KillsToLevel
  • VendorTrash
  • LibDebug
  • FunctionProfiler
  • LibSundry
• 

  vipersniper

• 

  nesher

• 

  lonadar

• 

  divinewind420

Version 1.3.11 2/26/2010

• Database update
• The following enormous wall of words

Okay, clearly it's time for a State of QuestHelper.

Short version: QuestHelper isn't being updated much anymore, for a variety of reasons. I'm going to keep it working, but aside from a few interface improvements that I've been meaning to put in for months, you're probably not going to see many big changes.

Long version:

QuestHelper's always been kind of an odd project for me. I picked it up because it looked like a challenge, because I wanted it to work better for my own purposes, and because I saw a lot of potential for what it could become. Since then, we've seen a lot of changes in WoW. I started back in the days of 2.4.0, when we were eagerly awaiting Wrath, and today we're largely finished with Wrath and eagerly awaiting Cataclysm.

As WoW has changed, so has my situation.

• I don't quest anymore. I always enjoyed dungeons more, and with the 3.3 LFD changes, pretty much all of my playtime is now spent in dungeons. I imagine I'll level up a Worgen through quests once Cataclysm comes out, just to see the new quests, but that's about it.

• On top of that, I don't really play much anymore. I've got other huge projects on my plate (come visit http://www.mandible.net). I originally picked up WoW to play with friends and to learn from Blizzard's design expertise. All the friends I originally joined have quit, I started raiding and then stopped again, and, minus the changes coming up in Cataclysm, I feel like I've learned everything I'm going to from Blizzard, and learned quite a few things that Blizzard could stand to learn.

(Hey, Blizzard. Hire me to balance your classes. You want me. Trust me on this. I'll make your game sing.)

• QuestHelper was actively worked on as long as it was, largely thanks to the donations. Without those, I would have had to dump it much earlier - your generous donations literally kept QuestHelper running. With the 3.3 quest map changes, QuestHelper doesn't have nearly as many users, and those who still use it don't donate as much. I simply can't afford to put a lot of time into it anymore.

Note: This isn't an attempt to throw blame on people or anything of that sort, I don't want you to feel guilty for not donating, I'm not trying to make a last snatch of cash off this thing. It's just what happened. Sometimes the economic truths change.

• Along with that, QuestHelper doesn't have as many users as it used to. QH was partially useful as a vehicle for learning how to deal with large userbases (done, mostly) and, I'll admit, for advertising my other projects. Both of those, obviously, aren't as useful anymore.

• Along with *that*, I had a bunch of neat ideas on how to turn QuestHelper into something truly huge and spectacular. Unfortunately, Blizzard's addon development rules, coupled with the 3.3 changes, pretty much killed that project. If I were to do that - and I'd still like to do that - I'd need a level of funding that I simply don't have potentially available anymore. If you're sitting out there with a few million bucks burning a hole in your pocket, lemme know - I might have a good way to spend it - but without that person showing up, my ultra-long-term plans are pretty infeasible, and I already burned a month trying to come up with alternatives. Turns out not all business plans work out :)

• Most importantly, though: QuestHelper is done. It works. It's got a few glitches, it's got a few missing features. Fundamentally, it accomplishes what I wanted it to accomplish. I'm proud of what I've built, but I don't see anything to add that seems worth the time.

I don't yet know what the future of QuestHelper brings. Obviously, there's some question about whether it will continue working in Cataclysm. I really couldn't say - the Cataclysm conversion might be simple, it might be a major redesign of QuestHelper's interface. I'll let you know when I find out. This will happen once I get my hands on a Cataclysm beta code. :)

If someone would like to take it over, they're absolutely welcome to. I don't *really* expect this to happen - QuestHelper is a beast of a UI mod, and I firmly believe it is the most complex UI mod in WoW. But if someone would like to try, take a look at the sourcecode and go add something moderately major.

But beyond that: it's been a good ride, thanks for coming along. I've had a lot of fun working on this thing, and that's largely thanks to the people who donated, the people who encouraged me, and the people who helped out with tech support. You're all awesome.

Go kill Arthas for me.

Version 1.3.10 1/26/2010

• More instrumentation, more DB update. I'm hoping to get some of these bugs squashed but I still need more debug reports, so keep 'em coming.

Let's have it for another game! Mr. McDougal's Marvelous Upside-Down Electrotree took far longer than I'd really expected, but it is here now and so you should play it.

Version 1.3.9 1/20/2010

• More instrumentation for a few more weird bugs I'm seeing. Keep reporting 'em, I'm not quite sure what's going on yet
• Standard DB update
• Been slacking off waaaay too long on updating translations, so I updated 'em. Sorry 'bout that.

Version 1.3.8 1/12/2010

• Fixed a bug caused by slightly odd out-of-order loading
• Add some debug instrumentation for a consistency failure in data collection
• Trying to track down the missing-tooltip glitch
• DB update, I'm just doin' one of these every week now clearly

Version 1.3.7 1/4/2010

• Just a database update today, but with luck this'll include a good chunk of the 3.3 quests

Version 1.3.6 12/29/2009

• Well that was a bit longer of a delay than I'd intended
• Fix a bug involving ignoring quests through the arrow
• Somewhat improve the smoothness of the loading system
• Add some instrumentation so I can, in the future, strip out race-specific and class-specific quests from /qh incomplete

Made another monthly game! Andre Copperman Picture Panic! is now available for free download. Come give it a shot! Destroy my webserver with your downloads.

Version 1.3.5 12/15/2009

• Fix "/qh help" to display all the text instead of its previous behavior, namely, not displaying all the text
• Strip a ton of private server data out - should eliminate some of the crud showing up in "/qh incomplete"
• Database update

Version 1.3.4 12/8/2009

• Bump TOC for official 3.3.0 support
• Fix up the "/qh help" text for "/qh find"
• Tweak the worldobject support code
• Database update

Version 1.3.3 12/2/2009

• Alright, let's make this official. Achievement support out of beta! There may be bugs, please report. You know the drill by now.
• Disable radar if target is dead
• Database update

Version 1.3.2-beta 11/24/2009

• Sorry for the slow bugfixes, life has been incredibly busy. Another pile of bugfixes in this version - once again, please report anything that's problematical.
• Database update, also.

Version 1.3.1-beta 11/18/2009

• Many many small fixes and tweaks. If you had an error in 1.3.0-beta, please try to reproduce it and report on success or failure. Every error report I received had been handled one way or another, but some of them may still be live, as I was unable to reproduce some of them. Also, if you can give solid reliable instructions on how to reproduce any error, it's much appreciated!
• Made the objective menu a little smarter - it will no longer prompt for "ignore this location" if that location is the last one it knows about for that objective
• Added some better error handling for "/qh find"
• Commented out a pile of dead code, will remove it in a future version if it proves to actually be dead and not just staggering along in some horrifying abomination of diseased unlife, moaning for cerebral matter and dripping on your carpet
• I think the carpet is a metaphor for your computer's memory but I sort of lost track somewhere in there
• ALTERNATE PUNCHLINE: that carpet really tied the room together
• I came up with a neat idea and some guys told me it was impossible, so I did it. "/qh radar" attempts to triangulate the position of your current target and shows its likely location on your minimap. It may be buggy and/or have performance problems - at the moment it's largely a proof-of-concept, and it's already proven invaluable at helping me track down a few rare monsters. I may improve it in the future.
• If you want a one-line description of my life, just go up one bullet point from here and read until you hit a period.

Version 1.3.0-beta 11/16/2009

Hey hey time for a major version

Major feature the first: Achievements. QuestHelper will now help you with various achievements directly in the UI, including exploration, monster/critter slaying, and fishing node achievements. Merely go into your existing Achievements pane and look for a little checkbox on the bottom-right of some achievements next to the QuestHelper symbol. Check the box and follow the path!

Want an easier way to find achievements QH can assist you with? Look at the dropdown in the topright of the achievements window, and choose "QuestHelpable". Bizam! Now it only shows QH-compatible achievements.

Caveats:

First, there are some achievements that QH claims it can help with that, in reality, it's pretty much useless for. At the moment this includes just about everything in the PvP category, many things in Raids, and the entire World Events category. Conversely, there are some achievements that QH could help with that it currently doesn't, mostly all the Classic and BC dungeons, but also some of the World Events. (Yes, Bonfires and Candy are . . . uh . . . unsupported, I guess? They should be back before next year, along with Elders.)

Second, if you add a lot of achievements, Questhelper may get somewhat slow and memory-hungry. Adding all the Exploration nodes to a new level 1 character generates approximately 1,400 individual locations to visit, burns around 150 megs of RAM, and takes something like twenty minutes to finish the setup phase. Its path generation may suffer under this kind of load. Luckily, it's reasonably easy to remove and add things, but if you say "I added World Explorer to my level 2 hunter and it got slow, how can I fix this" my answer is going to be "turn off World Explorer".

Third, there's no way QuestHelper can know where rare mobs are at any particular moment, so it just routes you to where they probably are, and if they aren't there, well, ignore the node (right-click the item on your minimap) and come back later. In my testing you've got less than a 2% chance of any particular location containing a spawned rare monster, so, I mean, there's a reason they're called "rare", and it's not because they're so dang easy to find.

There may be bugs. That's why this is a beta. Report away.

Major feature the second: THIS FEATURE WILL ONLY WORK IN WoW 3.3. Seriously. It is not going to work right now. The option will not do anything. However, once 3.3 is released, QuestHelper will now optionally show dots on your map for quests that you haven't done. "/qh incomplete" to activate it, then look at your map.

There may be bugs, including quests shown that shouldn't be shown and quests not-shown that should be shown. It does give the quest name and the quest ID number to help track down info about that quest. Again, go ahead and report bugs, but remember, THIS FEATURE WILL ONLY WORK IN WoW 3.3, if you tell me it doesn't work right now I am just going to laugh at you.

• Various improvements to make it more immediately responsive to new objectives/finished objectives/completed achievements.

Version 1.2.7 11/16/2009

• Database update
• Hey, why are you reading this, go read the 1.3.0 entry instead

Version 1.2.6 11/10/2009

• Fix some bugs involving the Tracker button visibility
• Shrink the Tracker button a bit
• Calling it now: people are going to complain that the tracker button is too small
• Lots of work going on behind the scenes! Magic will occur shortly.
• New database

Version 1.2.5 11/2/2009

• Fix an initialization bug that nobody but Zorba would ever notice nor care about

Version 1.2.4 11/2/2009

• Fix some data collection issues keeping me from adding game object support
• Added a progress indicator for route changes that are taking an uncommonly long time
• Cleaned up some bad behavior with the tooltip
• Fixed a bug causing unnecessary info to be built into the compressed datafiles

Version 1.2.3 10/28/2009

• Well that was a silly bug. I have no idea how that got through my testing. Fixed.

• There is still a new game available to be played. It is about numbers and counting - two things which everyone finds fun. Correct me if I am wrong! (I am not wrong.)

(I wish I could stop releasing new bugfix versions, I'm going to feel pretty silly spamming this six times in one week)

Version 1.2.2 10/28/2009

• Fix visual issue with the modified tooltip
• Fix some irritating consistency issues with the tracker button

• There is still a new game available to be played. It is about numbers and counting - two things which everyone finds fun. Correct me if I am wrong! (I am not wrong.)

Version 1.2.1 10/26/2009

where doing it man where MAKING THIS HAPEN

Reimplemented "/qh find". For example, "/qh find murloc", "/qh find loc 50 50", "/qh find loc stormwind 20 80". It may be slightly faster than it used to be. It may also have issues. Issues with a capital Issues.

First, I currently don't have support for items, only for monsters and locations. Does anyone care about items? Note that it won't include everything - a full database is huge, and QH currently only includes stuff that's useful for quests. So I can track known quest items. Alternatively, I can include a certain set of things (like reagents) into the database explicitly. Are those useful? I really don't know. You tell me!

I'm not releasing this as a beta version, since everything but "/qh find" is stable. "/qh find" itself should be considered beta. There are probably missing features that I'm not aware of, and there may be bugs. Please report any issues or unfortunate behavior!

• New database, obviously :D
• Tweaked the rendering order on the tracker handle. May not show up on top of your bags anymore. May still work properly. May not! It is an adventure to all.

Oh yeah I went and made another game. This one's about numbers! You like numbers, right? Come play with numbers. Come play with numbers.

Version 1.1.23 10/18/2009

• Remember how the last version was supposed to have 3.3 compatibility? Yeah well uh
• 3.3 compatibilty for real this time
• (crosses fingers)
• Fix minor display irritation in tooltips

• QuestHelper now has a logo. You'll notice it in tooltips and in the quest tracker. I've done my best to make it noticable but unobtrusive - I've noticed that a lot of people seem to have a hard time distinguishing the line that separates Questhelper and World of Warcraft, and I'm trying to make this line a little more obvious (both for my sake, and for Blizzard's.) Let me know if you've got suggestions for improving either the logo or its placement, or if you really really really hate it.
• Also let me know if you want it on a T-shirt :D

• Support for Hallow's End candy buckets! "/qh buckets". It behaves just like the old Midsummer Fire Festival bonfires did, since it's based on the same code. Performance may suffer while this option is on, as it's nowhere near optimized, it's just a dirty hack. I don't yet have support for Northrend buckets. (Just like Blizzard! ha ha, burrrrrn)

Version 1.1.22 10/11/2009

• 3.3 compatibility
• Add a new filter "/qh filter raidaccessible". If the filter is on, and you're in a raid, it will filter out quests that you would be unable to make progress in.
• By now you should realize that a significant number of QH features exist because I keep screwing things up, so you can probably guess why that feature exists
• Fix the director_quest.lua crash (I hope)
• Add debug instrumentation for a few more bugs

Version 1.1.21 10/5/2009

• Make Cartographer stop breaking Questhelper. At least, breaking it as much.
• Add support for quest items contained inside containers (alright this mostly exists because I got tired of the Bloated Monsterbelly daily directing me to Dalaran)
• Make Questhelper stop resetting the chat font on startup. Why did it used to? I do not know. There are nooks of this code that I still do not fully comprehend. If this causes your computer to melt into a small puddle of radioactive slag**, please let me know.
• Fix an issue causing the load progress indicator to be displayed despite the user indicating a clear preference that it should not be
• Initial quest-update will again be reliably included in the progress indicator
• Stop an annoying flicker when tracking/untracking quests

** Questhelper is not responsible for your computer melting into a small puddle of radioactive slag, nor responsible for proper disposal of the aforementioned slag.

Version 1.1.20 9/29/2009

• Fix some glitches in the database build code that may have produced Unexpected Output in 1.1.19, probably including flighpath errors and possibly including dang near any wacky behavior imaginable
• Found and fixed a mistake in data gathering that was causing excessive data to be recorded
• Implemented a quick cleanup to go obliterate everything that was mistakenly recorded (okay most things not everything)
• Moved some initialization from the loading screen to post-load. WoW should start a little faster, though QH will take a little longer overall to be "ready". There may be some obscure bugs if you use /qh commands early in the load sequence, please report these if you run into them. There also may be some little framerate hitches during the early load sequence, I'll deal with those later.
• Possibly fix a minor compatibility glitch with ClearFont4
• Database update again, this time without problems, fingers crossed
• Translation update

• Hey guess what I did! I made another game. Come give it a try and let me know what you think.

Version 1.1.19 9/22/2009

• Database update, hopefully including Brewfest quests
• Translation update
• yeah alright this is a pretty crummy version, sorry, life's been busy

Version 1.1.18 9/15/2009

• Fix the crash when exiting Isle of Conquest
• Update translations

Version 1.1.17 9/14/2009

• Remove some debug output
• Fix a small potential glitch allowing people to accidentally break QH
• This might be my fastest version update ever

Version 1.1.16 9/14/2009

• Fix bug with misnamed flightpath links
• Simplify the description of interzone links
• Add more debug output for a new bug that seems to be related to leaving battlegrounds (please report any "/qh error" crash you encounter when doing so)
• Improve speed of adding new quests and objectives yet further

Version 1.1.15 9/07/2009

• Added the error catching system to /qh purge, which honestly should have been in there for quite some time
• Turn some data gathering off, turn some on
• Further speed improvements. Something like a 50% improvement (or more) to picking up new quests and new objectives. This is a good thing.
• Disable some old 3.1 compatibility code which may be incorrectly triggering in some situations

• PAX was awesome. You were there, right?

Version 1.1.14 8/31/2009

• Increase the standard-flying-mount internal speed to 150%
• Add a special case to not take flight paths, ever, if you have an epic flying mount
• Restrict the Dark Portal warps to only exist at level 58. Unfortunately this means that if you hit 58 during a play session, they won't show up until you reload your UI. I'll fix this later, I don't have full access to my dev environment right now.

• Why not? Because I'm at the Penny Arcade Expo this weekend! If you are also, come say hi! I'll be in Tabletop for most of the event. That is all the hinting I will give you to find me.

Version 1.1.13 8/24/2009

• Add new portals to Blasted Lands from each faction city
• Fix right-click on arrow, add objective submenu to arrow
• Fix crash with the new zone system
• Update a few quests and monsters that changed in 3.2
• Add new option for minimap icon transparency, "/qh miniopacity". My lord do I need to set up a better settings dialog at some point
• Make the error reporting system a little more durable in case of wacky versions
• Fix glitch on login where the blocked filter might miss items

Version 1.1.12 8/18/2009

• Fix bug causing a little debug spam on startup, and possibly some other startup issues
• You should still play the new game.

Version 1.1.11 8/17/2009

• Try to handle installation errors better, part 1/2. Stopping here so I can make sure the current code works - if it does, I'll be doing some more work in the next version.
• Minor performance boost
• Tweak to the tooltip to avoid showing unnecessary clutter
• Update database, all new quests should be working just fine now
• Made another game. You should play it.

Version 1.1.10 8/10/2009

• Fix issue causing error messages to not be displayed properly
• Redisplay tooltip entries that are not actual objectives
• Disable some ancient old code that probably wasn't working but definitely was crashing
• Maybe fix the new batch of fascinating performance issues (or maybe not! Who can say? It is a mystery!)
• Update database, dealing properly with another pile of quests that were changed in 3.2 (let me know if you find more)
• Why can't I catch this last stupid terrorfish
• Oh there it is

Version 1.1.9 8/6/2009

• Fix mouseover tooltip for monsters
• Fix group filter to filter out heroics
• Remove the option to disable Blizzard map icons, as Blizzard got there before I did and made it mandatory (seriously blizzard, what happened? this is not that hard to get right)
• Deal with unknown quest objectives properly, where properly is defined as "not by putting them north of Azuremyst in the ocean"
• Fix some issues with 3.2 building causing Icecrown quests to end up in Sholazar

Known bug: if you're Alliance, doing the Taking Battle To The Enemy quest, it will show your quest monsters in the wrong place. I made a typo and it's a 2-hour rebuild to fix, so I'm pushing now - just live with it until either next week or until I run into another build that requires a thursday or friday push. (I know about this bug because I have the very same quest, so I feel your pain.)

Version 1.1.8 8/4/2009

• Fix error in error handling causing non-serious errors to incorrectly be handled as serious errors, thus causing a serious error to occur, which, itself, was handled incorrectly.
• Yep.

Version 1.1.7 8/4/2009

• Bump TOC so it works on 3.2 without tweaking
• Can't currently test it for obvious reasons, so, crossing fingers, praying, etc
• TWO JORMUNGARS

Version 1.1.6 8/3/2009

• Improve the CPU usage system. Should no longer hugely drop framerate for about a minute after login.
• Add option to disable the Blizzard map points in 3.2

Version 1.1.5 7/28/2009

• Re-introduce the per-player objective progress on the map
• Fix Acherus (again)
• Re-introduce the "quests are hidden" message, since it seems like it's needed
• Small bugfixes
• DB update

Version 1.1.4 7/20/2009

• Hopefully fix an issue with high-FPS systems not providing QH with enough CPU
• Hopefully fix an issue where the blue zone may persist even after its objective is complete
• I sound very confident in this patch don't I
• Back to my own projects for a bit! (for real this time)

Version 1.1.3 7/19/2009

• Add a new reminder to submit data
• Fix a possible conflict with other UI mods where we both did something horribly wrong
• Fix a bug causing menus on the bottomright part of the map to sometimes end up truncated
• Add "/qh zones", currently a toggle to remove the blue zone display on the map
• Add "/qh traveltime", a toggle to add or remove display of the "travel time" counter on tooltips
• Back to my own projects for a bit!

Version 1.1.2-rc 7/17/2009

• Fixed a conflict causing missing QH tooltips with some UI mods installed
• Crop the new zone data to the edge of the map properly
• Update database
• Update translations

Version 1.1.1-beta 7/15/2009

• Found and fixed a bug causing excessive RAM and CPU usage after the map was opened. Thanks to all who reported it!

Version 1.1.0-beta 7/13/2009

• Major new feature: Questhelper will now show graphically on your map where objectives can be accomplished. It displays the next objective in blue, and any objective you mouseover in red.

• Increase the cost of the Dalaran/Violet Stand so it stops recommending it as a precursor to flying (even though it may actually be faster)
• Add some instrumentation to hopefully help debug Northrend flying mount errors
• An attempt at a compromise between CPU and memory. Should result in significantly faster routing on startup and not too much more RAM usage
• Fix issue causing QH to try synchronizing quests with people in battlegrounds
• Possible detection of whatever is causing people's systems to entirely stop CPU processing

There's a reason this is beta. There's a lot of changes and some of them might be flaky. Please test it and let me know.

Version 1.0.29 7/3/2009

• Take 2 with the new rare issue bug

Version 1.0.28 7/2/2009

• Rare issue ain't fixed yet! Added more debugging info, please report any crashes you get with this version.

Version 1.0.27 7/2/2009

• Hopefully rather rare issue with quest objectives and, man, I'm not even sure. Groups? Maybe? It's more solid now, at least. Fingers crossed!
• Preliminary 3.2 support

Version 1.0.26 6/30/2009

• Hopefully fix the issues with uncached quest objectives

Version 1.0.25 6/30/2009

• Defer to Blizzard tooltip hints when available, resort to the database entries when tooltip hints are unavailable
• Fix some bugs related to the minimap right-click menu
• If the user is dead or flying, do routing from the user's corpse or flightpath destination, since that's where they're probably going to be next anyway
• Re-enable quest-sharing-related settings menu options
• New filter: "/qh filter wintergrasp". This filter will automatically filter out Wintergrasp PvP objectives unless you are actually in Wintergrasp. (Though, if you're walking around Wintergrasp staring at your Questhelper arrow, you're doing it wrong anyway.)
• Improve the behavior of the new CPU code again
• Cull some old dead code left over from the 0.x line

Version 1.0.24 6/25/2009

• Add a new filter, "/qh filter group". Group allows you to dump group quests and instances regardless of level. The group cutoff can be changed with "/qh group 3", for example, to allow 3-person group quests but no more. It automatically disables when the player is in a group or raid, and defaults to 2-person groups at most.
• Tweak the new CPU code to reduce CPU usage after being alt-tabbed
• Update translations

Version 1.0.23 6/23/2009

• Possibly fix that old routing paradox error. Why did it take me this long to come up with that fix? It is a very, very simple fix. Sigh.
• Rework QH's CPU usage significantly.

Old QH would use a certain amount of CPU time per frame (about 2 milliseconds by default). This meant that on high-FPS systems it could use 20% or more of the system CPU (reducing framerate heavily), and on low-FPS systems it could drop to 1% of the system CPU. Bad all around.

New QH tries to use a roughly constant amount of CPU time (by default, it's 7.5%.) This should result in roughly the same CPU usage on systems that get 40FPS, with increased CPU usage with lower FPS and decreased CPU usage with higher FPS.

On top of that, New QH tries to smooth out your framerate a little. If it notices that the last frame took a very very long time to render, it'll actually halt calculations for that frame, increasing your CPU. Conversely, if the last frame was extremely fast, it'll do more calculations since you probably won't notice. It's possible that WoW with QH installed will actually feel smoother than with it not installed - "/qh perf 500%" not only uses more CPU on my system than it used to, but it feels like only a slightly increased drain on resources.

It turns out that, in many situations, the "use more CPU during higher framerate times" code will account for the majority of QH's CPU usage. That's pretty neat.

As a side note, I reset everyone's "/qh perf" setting. The old numbers have basically no relevance to the new system.

Lemme know what it feels like.

Version 1.0.22 6/22/2009

• Added right-clicking objectives on the minimap
• Remove the annoying "Too Many Stored Objectives" error

- INCREDIBLY EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE -

Enjoying the Fire Festival? Want some way to easily path between all the bonfires? Now you have one! Type "/qh bonfires" and Questhelper will add an objective for each bonfire in the game! It's just that simple, right?

No, it's not that simple.

The bonfires are a thing I hacked in in about an hour. As such, it is a highly unpolished feature. On top of that, it exposes some scaling issues with the Questhelper core (issues that I knew existed, but haven't really been important until now.) On top of *that*, I put basically no effort into making the interface good.

So:

• Questhelper may take several minutes to display the bonfires in your route. Along with that, it may update the player location very infrequently.
• Questhelper's initial route will be quite crummy. It may take several minutes for it to become good.
• Questhelper will use significantly more RAM.
• Questhelper will not detect which bonfires you've already completed, nor automatically remove the bonfire objectives after you complete them. You'll have to do that manually, with "ignore".
• Performance issues will probably remain until you log off.
• There may be other issues. This is a *highly experimental feature* and I provide no support for it - it's sort of a sneak peak into what's coming.

Enjoy the Fire Festival!

Version 1.0.21 6/15/2009

• Tired of Cartographer being broken, hideous ghastly hackjob to make it stop causing problems in instances. With luck, it won't make Cartographer explode badly. With further luck, if it does, nobody will blame it on me.
• Database update
• Next week's update will be similarly small, with luck the one after that will include, you know, useful things

Version 1.0.20 6/10/2009

• Fix compatibility issue with UnicodeFont
• Database update

Version 1.0.19 6/4/2009

• Move event handling around quite a lot to make it possible to debug stutters and performance issues a little better
• Added <tt>/qh metric</tt> to toggle between metres and yards, thanks to smariot
• Various small bugfixes in the quest sharing code

Version 1.0.18-beta 5/22/2009

BACK TO BETA

So, why's it beta? Because I've got an experimental implementation of group quest sharing working. See, normally, when I do big nasty things, I go and test it for a few hours on my own. I bet you can figure out the problem with testing "group quest sharing" on my own!

So I'm posting it here. Want group quest sharing? Try it out, you've got the weekend. Barring bugs, it'll be released as a non-beta on Monday. And if it then turns out to be buggy I shall be very cross indeed.

That's the only change of note in this version.

Version 1.0.17 5/21/2009

• Fix the issue with QH crashing inside Ulduar and Naxxramas (and, in the process, fix some truly stupid decisions I made with the pathfinding. seriously, what was I thinking. can someone invent a time machine so I can go back and kick myself in the shins?)

Version 1.0.16 5/18/2009

• Fix for a series of possibly-related problems - table-too-large errors, ridiculous loading times, and excessive memory use
• Hopefully fix issue with quest items vanishing from the tracker
• Undo the possible optimization in 1.0.14 since I decided it was a bad idea
• Update translations

Version 1.0.15 5/14/2009

• Fix a very silly mistake causing QH to crash on login if the user decompressed over the old version (this does nothing useful if 1.0.14 works for you, but if it doesn't, try this out)

Version 1.0.14 5/14/2009

• Take a shot at a fix for routing in non-enUS locales
• Make the arrow and textsize configuration stick through restarts
• Reimplement the tracker color and level options
• Optimize routing a little bit

Version 1.0.13 5/11/2009

• Lucky number 13 is the official release.
• kmcguire pointed out that a bit of QH was using far more memory than I'd thought, and gave a suggestion for how to improve it. It's now a lot more efficient. Memory usage reduced by 5mb.
• Handle one or two this-should-probably-never-happen errors more cleanly
• Possibly remove some jerkiness issues people were having

Version 1.0.12-rc 5/6/2009

• Attempt to fix the too-many-tables error in several different ways
• Let's call this a release candidate, I either need to do that or push a new version of 0.x and I really don't want to push 0.x (yep that's right, "release candidate" status is based solely on how lazy Zorba is)

Version 1.0.11-beta 5/6/2009

• Fix the obj-null-arrow error that's been plauging a lot of people
• Better-instrument the too-many-tables error. If you've been running into this error, please make it happen again and report it
• Increase performance a bit when using flying mounts

Version 1.0.10-beta 5/5/2009

• "Done" filter was mislabeled as "zone" filter in /qh hidden
• Fixed dumb mistake in the code to clear out ancient collected data
• Add hooks to allow QH to be reset to point at a custom minimap object, thanks to Antiarc
• Maybe fix that recurring crash in the arrow
• Make it slightly more emphatic about rescanning filters when they're likely to change

Version 1.0.9-beta 4/30/2009

• Instrument some errors that people are running into - I haven't fixed them, but this should give me more information on how to fix them properly.
• Fix a bug causing the routing code to essentially stop routing new things when a large number of flightpoints are discovered
• Allow the tracker to grow up again

Version 1.0.8-beta 4/29/2009

• Change how the too-many-objectives-for-this-quest error shows up - hopefully I'll get reports without it breaking people's QH now
• Remove a lot of old 0.x saved variables
• Better support for mods that embed the quest level into the quest name
• Highlight quest-turn-in spots gold
• Many tweaks to handle WoW tooltips properly
• Update the route in realtime as you gain/lose objectives, instead of throwing all the work away and starting semi-fresh
• Store new flightmasters properly
• Fix a minor issue with tracker spacing on quests that have special items
• Add loading progress percentage
• Fix issue with arrow and minimap dodad not unhiding properly
• Add settings menu and button

Version 0.106 4/27/2009

• Provide scaling for the arrow and the arrow text
• Re-insert the map button in a less conflicty place, hopefully
• Add a feature to generate error reports on-demand - "/qh error full" to get a version and addon dump, which may be useful for debugging issues.
• Provide the rotating-arrow-pointing-down thingy, now people are going to leave comments complaining about the existence of it instead of the nonexistence of it, I CAN SEE THE FUTURE AND IT'S FULL OF EMO

Version 1.0.7-alpha 4/22/2009

• Not quite sure where to start here.
• Full rewrite of the routing core, pathing core, filters, quest director, data collector, data compilation, and database systems. Probably more. Consider this essentially an entire new UI mod, that merely happens to behave identically to QH 0.x.

Version 0.105 4/22/2009

• Fix a bug in the Cart-arrow-autodisable, hopefully before too many people have looked at two arrows and said "oh hey I think I'll turn this one off" and picked mine (sigh.)
• Get rid of an old useless error, because, why not

Version 0.104 4/22/2009

• Questhelper now includes a built-in arrow. "/qh arrow" to disable or enable, "/qh arrow reset" to reset its position. I've turned the Cartographer and Tomtom arrows off by default, but you can turn them back on with the old /qh cartwp and /qh tomtom commands.
• Possibly fix a small issue with the "special item" code
• Disable the map button. This is temporary - it's just kind of broken right now and conflicts with the default Blizzard UI. I'll come up with a solution.

Version 0.103 4/16/2009

• Fix up the errors more permanently with a fundamentally better system
• Give up on trying to be clever, brute-force the quest item thing

Version 0.102 4/15/2009

• Take 2 on suppressing that donglestub error
• Fix the textviewer for /qh changes and /qh help and the like
• Improve the behavior of the quest-special-item display so it actually, you know, displays the right item

Version 0.101 4/14/2009

• Fixed an issue causing the tracker to show up in the middle of the screen by default
• Suppressed an error caused by QH's overzealous error detection
• Of course there would be last-minute bugs, what else were you expecting

Version 0.100 4/14/2009

• Bump TOC so it works in 3.1 without having to check the "out of date addons" box
• Awaiting the inevitable complaints that 0.100 doesn't come after 0.99

Version 0.99 4/13/2009

• Add preliminary support for 3.1 dungeon maps
• Replace the minimap arrow for 3.1 compatibility (let me know if it breaks, it's written completely differently now although it should behave identically)
• Update translations

Version 0.98 4/7/2009

• Try another fix for the collect_quest.lua crash
• Make it a little more careful about stripping yellow text out of tooltips

Quick explanation of what's going on: The reason we're running into some new bugs right now is in preparation for 3.1. 3.1 involves a little extra code to deal properly with its built-in tooltips, and while the tooltips don't exist yet, I do have some of the code already rigged up to watch for them. Obviously there's a few bugs in that code, but I'd rather have the bugs showing up now - when you can downgrade to a previous version without issue - than later, when you can't.

Fingers crossed that this polishes everything off.

Version 0.97 4/5/2009

• Fix a bug with uncached quests on logon and with quests that have multiple identical objectives

Version 0.96 4/2/2009

• Support for special quest items in 3.1
• Support for reading from and suppressing Blizzard's 3.1 "questhelper clone" tooltips

First: I want to thank everyone who has donated. I've been getting a lot of donations from people saying that they sympathize, saying that Blizzard's actions suck, I've even gotten a few that explicitly said "don't consider this a requirement to keep working on Questhelper, consider this a thanks for all the work you've put in already."

You guys rock. While I don't respond to every message, I do read every one. Thank you.

Second: I'm still plugging away at 1.0. I'm hoping to get a beta release out before WoW 3.1 is released. There will be a few missing features, but I plan to eventually re-implement everything besides possibly "/qh find", which would either take a lot of memory or be painfully slow. (I guess I could choose the latter, if people want it a lot.)

Third: Does anyone know a reasonably-skilled artist who'd be interested in breaking into games? I'm looking for someone to do non-tilebased 2d art. Don't know if I can pay or not, but I do plan to release stuff frequently, and at least it'd get your name out there. Email me or leave a comment if you're interested.

Yeah that's right, if I can't make a living off this I can at least use it as a blurb space for my other projects :D

Version 0.95 3/20/2009

• Disable donation request.

Bad news, everyone. Questhelper's dead.

Blizzard just posted their new UI Add-On Development Policy at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/policy/ui.html. The important part is that I'm no longer allowed to ask for donations in-client. I know how much I got before I added the in-client reminder - it doesn't pay a significant fraction of the bills. And, as much as I like you guys, good intentions don't pay for my apartment.

So that's it. I'm going to be finishing up and releasing v1.0, and I'll keep posting incremental database improvements every month or two. I do plan to keep QH functional, at least through the end of Wrath, and probably further. I've got one or two features in mind that I want to do for my own sake - a few achievements, mostly - but besides that (and the v1.0 release) that's pretty much all there's going to be.

I would like to say: thanks to everyone who donated in the past. I enjoyed working on this quite a bit, and I always enjoyed seeing another donation come in - not just because of the money, but because it meant that people wanted to use QH and wanted to keep it going.

Let Blizzard know if you don't like it, and if I can get an exception, I'll start everything right back up again :)

Version 0.94 3/17/2009

• Update database.

HEY ZORBA WHERE'S 1.0 YOU SAID IT WOULD BE OUT BY NOW YOU SUCK AND I HATE YOU

Yeah, I'm sorry. I've been painfully busy. You have no idea how busy I've been. That said: 1.0.0 pre-pre-pre-alpha is sent out to a few good friends of mine to test. I'm hoping to get a pre-pre-alpha out for testing by the end of the week. There's a bunch of problems left, but most of them are reasonably easy to fix, just timeconsuming. Unfortunately, next week is pretty much 100% taken (thanks to GDC, look it up on Google if you're curious) so I'm not going to have a lot of time this month to polish it off.

It's close. It's *really* close. I promise it's really close. I'm not just slacking here.

But it'll be a little longer.

Version 0.93 3/3/2009

• Fix the minimap issue for real. Argh.

Version 0.92 3/2/2009

• There was never a bug with rotating-minimaps causing the routing arrow to point at the wrong place. This release is merely being done for fun. Hey look! Wasn't that fun!

Version 0.91 3/1/2009

• Full compatability with WoW 3.1 on the PTR. Let me know if it breaks again, I may not notice.
• Fix a small bug that caused hardreset to stop working
• Remove some error spam that was occuring with tooltips when QH didn't actually load properly

Version 0.90 2/25/2009

• Strip out more private server/test server/competition server data
• Make /qh treset actually show the tracker, instead of its current behavior, which is to cheerfully move the tracker to a good location and then not show it

Currently badly broken on WoW 3.1. I'll work on it for 0.91, I quite doubt they're going to be releasing WoW 3.1 this Tuesday. No worries, it'll be in fine shape by the time 3.1 is released.

Version 0.89 2/18/2009

• Fixed horrifying bug in object collection that resulted in a huge amount of missing data. Sigh. Please submit your files after you've quested a bit with this version, I can really use them. (/qh submit)
• Fixed mistake in the design for data compression that makes it a little tricky to update version numbers
• While I was at it, fixed up some issues with object collection causing it to collect things that weren't actually objects
• Took a shot at cleaning up the saved objects

Version 0.88 2/18/2009

• Compress old collected data. Should reduce memory requirements substantially, after a period of time in which it uses far more memory than it used to. May also improve load speed.
• Quick bit of documentation here, embedded in the changelist file like all good documentation:
• "/qh top" will tell you what it has left to do - it'll say (4 uncompressed IDs) at the end of the last line. If it doesn't say that, it doesn't have anything left to compress.
• "/qh top perf" will tell you if it's currently compressing - if it has uncompressed IDs, and it's spent any time in the "compress" function, then it's currently busy compressing.
• In general you shouldn't care, though memory use will spike a bit while it's compressing.
• Add some extra data I need to actually cull old data in the future, which should reduce memory usage further (once I implement it)
• Trying to track down and fix the collect_spec.lua issue. Do you use a PowerPC Mac? Get in touch with me! I want you to help me debug this!
• Maybe fix the tracker.lua compare-nil-with-number issue
• Standard db/translation update

Version 0.87 2/11/2009

• Update translations
• Update database
• Fix a bug in the merchant data recorder

I've heard reports of a new bug in 3.0.9. I can't duplicate it, and nobody's given me "/qh error" reports yet. Get those bug reports in if you're having trouble.

Version 0.86 2/2/2009

• Fixed a glitch in error recording that may have been causing excess CPU and RAM usage
• Cleared out old error data to save people's RAM
• Possibly fix the old tracker.lua assert error. Possibly make it worse! IT IS AN ADVENTURE TO ALL
• Rig it to be a little more durable versus InventoryOnPar
• More private server data removed :(
• Nag people to update significantly more rarely

Version 0.85 1/24/2009

• Fixed a large pile of small bugs.

At this point I'm mostly just maintaining this version while I do work on another branch. You won't see any new features for a while, but rest assured there's a lot being worked on. I do finally have my error collection code working properly, so I'm going to be patching up the most common bugs to make QH rock-solid.

Version 0.84 1/16/2009

• Add the concept of "default parameters" to preferences so I don't have to unilaterally screw with people's preferences again. This change may also screw with people's preferences. Go find that picture of Picard covering his face in frustration, that's the expression I'm making right now.
• Possibly fix that ancient nilposition error
• A few cleanups and improvements to the data collection code
• Maybe fix that reported lag issue with the third phase of Malygos. Maybe not. I don't have access to a raiding group, so I honestly can't tell you if it's fixed. I sort of wildly guessed at the problem, and then wildly guessed at a fix, so . . . yeah! Let me know!

Version 0.83 1/13/2009

• Filter out the "hidden quests" warning if you have the zone, done, or watched filters on. Still getting false positives on it? Tell me! I want to know what it is doing wrong. I'm trying to rig it so it Just Plain Works in 99% of cases, and then I'll add an option to disable it in the remaining 1%. If I add the option now, everyone will just be annoyed and use the option and I won't get the information I need. Tell me what you're doing to cause it to show up unnecessarily!
• Little extra debug code to try solving a problem
• DB update, of course.
• Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes! Trust me. It's there. I am *weaving code into bolts of awesome*

Version 0.82 1/8/2009

• More debug output for the "improperly installed" error so I can figure out WTF is going on
• Bump the default level filter for quests up to +3, and bump people's preferences to +3 if they're at the current default of +2 (if you really wanted +2, sorry, change it back after the first load, it'll only do it once)
• (unless there's a bug I guess, fingers crossed)
• Add a notification that there may be filtered quests if the tracker isn't full and there's quests filtered. I think it will work, it's a bit hacky. Will it annoy people? Who knows! Let me know if you find it helpful/annoying/attractive/corn-laden/whatever.

Version 0.81 1/7/2009

• Rip out more private server data (ffs stop submitting that)
• Add merchant tracking code
• Try to fix the excessive-diffs issue again (I think I got it this time)
• Small bugfixes
• Standard database updates

Version 0.80 1/3/2009

• Database update
• Translation update
• Move translations into their own directory
• Get rid of yet more private server data (stop submitting that)
• Possible fix of the excessive-diffs error
• Remove some accidentally-left-in debug output

Version 0.79 12/28/2008

• You can stop reading here, nothing below this line will be of any interest to anyone. Seriously. This is one of the longest and most boring set of changes I've ever done.
• Updated many translations
• Gathering a lot more data about quests
• Fix a potential minor bug involving not updating the player's level for an unfortunate amount of time
• Update some documentation
• Split out Bitstream into a file usable by Collect
• Add a timer notifier for Collect
• Record item-equip data
• Fix a lot of missing boot