Warcraft

Like the script? Keep it updated by sending me a buck or two!

I've released a new version of my World of Warcraft Quest Tracker today:

• updated to the latest version of Allakhazham's site.
• fixed bug where level filters missed -1 leveled quests.
• ignore a healthy dose of broken "Seasonal" database entries.

You can see the latest output for my level 60 Troll Shaman, Morbulin, here (which I'm no longer playing, but that's OK). Thanks to one of my users for letting me know it stopped working - he's been working on finishing every quest available, becoming the first in the world to do it (or, at least, track it). This new version of the script should be more reliable when it comes to new categories and zones being added (i.e., it will hopefully learn of all the new Wrath of the Lich King areas without requiring new code changes).

I've released a new version of my World of Warcraft Quest Tracker today, bringing it to version 1.2:

• removed "Unknown" categories/zones.
• checks reported quest IDs vs. active quest IDs.
• 30 second wait, then re-request, if zone URL returns no data.
• removed "Updated" images that showed up next to quest titles.

You can see the latest output for my level 60 Troll Shaman, Morbulin, here. One of the new features, "check reported quest IDs vs. active quest IDs", will probably fail more often than not: for my Horde character, there were a number of quests that are flagged as only Alliance, so I got about a dozen bogus reports there. Otherwise, a very basic incremental release - I was surprised to see it still worked since the last release a year ago.

Yes, I bought the Burning Crusade. No, I've not played it for more than a few hours. Sigh.

I've released a new version of my World of Warcraft Quest Tracker today, bringing it to version 1.1:

• we now keep track of quests available per zone and total.
• added initial support for Allakhazham's "Special Category" quests.
• added support for some of the unlisted "Unknown" categories/zones.
• print current zone to STDERR so we have a progress report.

You can see the latest output for my level 60 Troll Shaman, Morbulin, here. Today's update brings the quest count available to Horde members up to 2128. Unfortunately, due to some oddness in the Allakhazham backend, there are a large number of duplicate quests and, more disconcerting, a large number of unlisted quests (for example, Un-Life's Little Annoyances is in the database, and is even assigned to a zone, but you'd never find it by going through the Quests by Zone list, which the script depends upon.) I don't know how to solve this (how do I list a quest no one knows about?), and I'm attempting to contact Allakhazham's developers to see what I can do to help.

As you can see in the notes above, I've also added support for four or five of Allakhazham's "Unknown" categories. These appear to be categories that have yet to be "properly" inserted into the database, and are usually time-relevant, such as the Ahn'Qiraj War Effort or the Lunar Festival. Others, however, have been assigned to crazy categories (like Unknown (-367)). Regardless, these types of quests seem to have many duplicates and very little information (as evidenced by the ?'s in the latest outputs). It's becoming a bit of a problem, and I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to solve it yet.

I've released a new Perl script today, wowquests.pl: a World of Warcraft Quest Tracker, which collects quest and zone data from Allakhazam's site and tabulates it into a small and compact list, suitable for printing. You can see the quest output for Morbulin, my level 58 Troll Shaman, here. Quests with asterisks next to them, I've completed.

How's it work? Welp, this is largely because I looOove collecting stats. Ever since I started playing World of Warcraft, I've been keeping track of what quests I've finished, on paper. Now, with this script, I just print out the master list, circle the ones I finished, and feed those quest IDs back into the script the next time I run an update (every couple of months or so). Those IDs are then asterisked and counted: so far, I've finished 526 quests available for the Horde.

Yes, there are in-game-client, user-contributed, mods for this. However, none of them allow you to enter in previous quest data, before you started using the mod. So, until I start a new character (probably a blood elf, though, if sbp ever gets on, we'll be Alliance), this is more than adequate. I looVe lists, I do.

I play World of Warcraft, as does everyone else. For some odd reason, I've just decided "hey! screenshots are fun!" even as those who said that years ago are now groaning in despair. Attached is a screenshot of the Wickerman Festival near Undercity (click on the image for Satan-sized version.) which'll be ending shortly; this is also my submission for this year's Halloween screenshot competition. Wicker man festivals really DO happen in real-life, and have been, for a long, long time. I first encountered them when I watched the insanely excellent THE WICKER MAN many years ago.