Contribute what you see in game

ForeverDiff reads the game client's own data files, and they carry ids and numbers — never quest text, never where a creature stands, never what it drops. On the Classic Era line that gap is filled by pfQuest. On World of Warcraft: Forever nothing like it exists, so the only way this database can describe the new world is if the people playing it record what their own client shows them. That is what the collector addon does.

Two ways in

The addon, if you can run it

ForeverDiffCollector writes down what your client already showed you — quest text, who gave it to you, where a creature stood, what a vendor sold, what dropped — and you upload one file when you are done. It is the better of the two by a distance: the game wrote it, so nothing has to be read back off a picture, and one file can carry a whole evening.

A screenshot, if you cannot

If the addon will not load, will not install, or you only saw the thing once, send a picture of it instead: a quest window, an NPC tooltip, a vendor window or a loot window, up to 5 MB. No account either way. A screenshot is read by a vision model, checked against this build's own tables by the same rules everything else here is checked by, and published only if both agree — and the picture is published beside it as the evidence. The first 3 screenshots of one thing are read; after that they are kept and queued rather than read again, because reading them costs real money.

Get the addon

Download ForeverDiffCollector.zip

The download includes the current list of items the site still needs and the /fd command to copy an item's link.

1. Unzip it into Interface/AddOns so you have Interface/AddOns/ForeverDiffCollector.
2. At the character screen, open AddOns and enable Load out of date AddOns.
3. Play. Read quests, talk to vendors, loot things — the addon writes down what the client shows you.
4. Type /reload or log out: the game only writes SavedVariables to disk then.
5. Find WTF/Account/<ACCOUNT>/SavedVariables/ForeverDiffCollector.lua in your WoW folder and upload it below.

/fdc prints what has been collected so far; /fdc reset clears it.

What it records

• Quests: title, description and objectives, the progress and completion text, the creature or object that gives and ends the quest, where you stood, and the rewards offered — items, money and experience.
• Creatures: name, level, classification, creature type, reaction and faction, and up to twenty places you saw one.
• Objects: the name in the tooltip and where it stands. The client never says which object id it is, so the name is the key until one is learned.
• Vendors: the items a merchant sells, with price, stack size and stock.
• Loot: which items came off which creature or object, and how many of them you looted, so a drop chance can be worked out from enough kills.
• Dungeon entrances: the dungeon entrance you walked through (the last outdoor position before an instance loads). The client's own tables carry no entrance for most instances, so this is the only way the map can show the door — and because it is the doorstep rather than the door, every page that draws it says the position is approximate.

Uploads are public game data. No account, character or player name is collected or uploaded: the file holds the realm you played on, the client build you played, and game facts. It is published as part of this site's data exactly like everything else here, so do not upload a file you would not want read. Contributed observations are published under the same terms as the rest of the site's data. The same is true of a screenshot, and more so, because a picture shows whatever was on the screen: crop out your character name, your guild and your chat before you send one. Where a file records where it was taken — a photograph of a monitor does — that is removed before it is stored.

Upload

One file at a time, up to 4 MB — a real collection is far smaller. 10 uploads an hour from one address, and 60 an hour shared between everyone a deployment cannot tell apart.

Send a screenshot instead

For when the addon is not an option. Tell it what the picture is of if you know — the Contribute this button on a record's page fills that in for you — and it is read against that record's own client tables. A picture nobody can tie to a record is still kept, and is simply not evidence about anything.

A picture can be about a quest, a creature, an object or an item. A screenshot of a zone or a dungeon shows scenery — there is nothing in it this database keeps — so those two are not offered here; the form above is the door for them.

What happens to what you send

Everything contributed here is submitted to a queue, not to the site: nothing you send is published as you send it. Each contribution is then checked twice — by rules that read this build's own client tables (the id has to exist, a position has to be on a map this build draws, an item has to be one the build names, and quest text has to read like this game's own), and by an AI reviewer that is shown the entity as the client describes it beside what you wrote and asked whether the two can be the same thing. A contribution both agree on is compiled into the database and published within the hour; one either of them refuses is kept with its reasons and never published, and one the reviewer cannot judge is simply looked at again on the next run.

A screenshot takes the same road with one step in front of it: a vision model is shown the picture and the entity side by side, and is asked what the picture says. What it reads is then put through those same rules — so a picture with an advert or somebody else's quest text written into it is refused by exactly the code that refuses one somebody typed. A picture the model cannot read, or says is not a game window, is refused with its reason kept. Reading a picture costs real money, so only the first 3 screenshots of one thing are read; the rest are kept, queued, and never charged for twice.

What has arrived so far

Nothing has been contributed yet. Forever pages show the Classic Era world until something does.