In-Browser Quest Helper for Vanilla

[Strafir]

Hey! For the past few months I’ve been developing a browser based questing guide for vanilla wow. It takes a relatively easy to write json route file and renders it’s contents to a map and keeps track of your progress automatically, so technically it can work as a platform for anything map related that’s customized and written by someone other than me.

Project address: https://www.vanilla-questing.me/
Github Repository: https://github.com/wickstjo/vanilla-questing

I’m decent at taking ideas and converting them to code but lack the imagination to figure out what could make the application better, and this is where you come in. I’ve posted a few threads on reddit and people there have suggested numerous things that are now part of the core experience so I figured it could be beneficial to reach out on other forums.

Leveling is a marathon that spans over multiple weeks and includes the completion of more than 800 quests in every zone. To encourage exploration, pre-quests and breadcrumb quests are very cryptic and more often than not there won’t be any indication that something new is available. Particularly for people who aren’t ready to brute force their way to 60 and have a limited amount of time to play the game, whether you’ve played vanilla before or not, I recommend following a start-to-finish strategy someone with more experienced has figured out. I guarantee you’ll have more fun and reach endgame in half the time it would take you alone.

The problem with most guides is their static nature. Even tho vanilla only has a set amount of quests available, the route changes drastically depending on what patch is currently live. For a true blizzlike server release valuable zones like Searing Gorge and Hinterlands are empty and you need to compensate for it elsewhere. Based on developer posts we’re getting some kind of franken-patches that even they don't know the content of yet. Having a text-based guide you can just copy/paste and move entire blocks effortlessly without breaking things is essential for accuracy.

An in-game addon is possible, but improbable. None of the infrastructural comforts of the modern game (like having quest items being stitched to your quest log) exist. Because of how cryptic and weird quests frequently are, you’ll just end up alt tabbing and reading the comments of some database site anyway. Modern browsers are very efficient and smart while blizzards LUA API is a decade old bandaid fixed nightmare that’s being backported in some warped way. Anyhow, the route is written in a format that the in-game map system understands so the majority of the work is already done if that day ever comes.

Any questions or suggestions of how to improve something are greatly appreciated. Feel free to message me publicly or privately here or on Discord at Strafir#9133.

Thanks for your time!

[Bhanzai]

Cool! Do you know if it works on those servers we aren't supposed to talk about? If so I will definitely try it over the weekend.

[Strafir]

Cool! Do you know if it works on those servers we aren't supposed to talk about? If so I will definitely try it over the weekend.

It's routed with the 1.12 database on a local server at 1x XP rates so it should be mostly accurate. Let me know if you find inconsistencies!

[The Stormbringer]

Good luck! I hope you have enough time to adapt this to Classic when it comes out.