An addon for WoW: Forever
Boulder
A UI for WoW: Forever that learns the game while you play. Every drop, every mob, every vendor, every node, written down for you.
Pushing the boulder so you don’t have to
Sisyphus spent eternity rolling a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. Writing down loot tables, vendor prices and where the herbs spawn is the same job, and every patch it starts over. Boulder does that part. You play; it takes notes.
It collects
What mobs drop and how often, mob levels and locations, quest pickups and turn-ins, vendor stock and prices, trainer spells and prices, and every herb, ore, fishing and treasure node. Game content, the same kind of thing a wiki holds.
It shares what it finds
A small companion program, the Harvester, sends what you collected to one place so everyone’s notes add up to one picture, and brings the newest shared numbers back to you. Uploads are on by default. Delete one file and they stop, and nothing breaks.
It keeps up with patches
Every record is tagged with the game build it came from. When Blizzard retunes something, Boulder knows what changed and when. A database scraped once can’t do that.
The interface
It’s out, and every piece is a bubble you can drag anywhere, resize, fade or turn off, or shift-click a few and move them together. Target Info: click a mob and see its abilities, what it drops and how often, and which of your quests it counts toward, from everyone’s data on the current build. Each drop gets a colored dot for its tier once there’s enough data to tell.
Self Info covers you and your pet: your frame, XP, reputation, durability, cast bar and pet bar. Combo points sit on your target’s portrait. Then buffs and debuffs, yours, your target’s and your pet’s; your action bars, menu and bags; and the chat windows, dressed to match.
Tracked Quests takes over from the game’s quest tracker, with a button for each quest’s item. The big map and the minimap show what everyone has found: rings where ore, herbs, chests and fishing pools turn up, a “!” where a quest you can take is given, a “?” where yours are handed in, pink circles where your unfinished objectives’ creatures are, and on fished water, what it gives. The minimap can be round or square, and the big map wears Boulder’s look too.
Photo mode clears the whole screen for a screenshot. Five built-in themes: Modern, Classic, Void, Frost and Ember.
Next on the list: quest chains, so the map knows which quest in a series comes first. Your own colors, and skins you can import and export, come later.
The big map in Boulder’s look, with everyone’s ore and quest marks.
Fished water: point at it to see what it gives.
Pink circles where an objective’s creatures are, and the Boulder marks panel.
Tracked Quests, with a button for a quest’s item.
The square minimap, with the water’s edge drawn in.
The round minimap: rings where everyone has found ore.
Self Info: durability, Auto Shot, reputation, XP and the cast bar.
Where it stands
The beta is over. WoW: Forever launches November 4.
Boulder 2.0.0 comes out for launch: the interface and the Harvester in one download. Everything is stored by game build, and before launch every beta number is deleted, so nothing from the beta can skew the live numbers. That means the shared numbers start empty: drop rates, abilities and map marks fill in as people play and the first launch database is built.
Help build it
Run Boulder while you play. The more people collecting, the faster the numbers get good.
I don’t want your money unless you can actually afford to help and want to. A donation won’t buy you an in, and I won’t make special exceptions for donators. This isn’t Patreon; you don’t get extras by paying me.
If you want to help and can afford it, I appreciate any funds that help pay for Google data storage, website fees, domain fees and the like. Boulder will never ask you for money in game.
I do not need your money to make this happen, but if you would like to contribute, please donate here.