Forever Companion: Narrated Discovery Journal & Lore

## [3.2.0] - 2026-10-21

### Added
- Landmarks known in lore: 235 explored areas of the Classic world (towns, keeps, ruins, tombs, shrines, dungeon gates, battlefields) have a sourced account of their story, in five languages, with their sources under **Sources**. The moment a character walks into one for the first time ("Discovered: ..."), the narrator tells it; the Landmark entry shows the account in place of the generated "Explored for the first time" line, and an area read back from the game's own map memory shows it quietly. Of the 671 explored areas checked, the 436 that the sources only describe (a farm, a lake, a camp) keep their plain entry: nothing is made up.
- Deep accounts for 162 of the great figures and bosses of the Classic world: the faction leaders and the courts of Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Ironforge, Darnassus, Thunder Bluff and the Undercity, the raid bosses of Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub, Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas, the world bosses, and the bosses of Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock, the Scarlet Monastery and the other dungeons. Three to five sentences each, researched from the Warcraft Wiki's history sections and the Chronicle pages they cite, checked claim by claim by a second reader, Classic-era state only, quest twists left untold. 88 one-sentence notes grow into these accounts and 74 NPCs are new to the catalog (Onyxia, Nefarian, Kel'Thuzad, Hakkar, Azuregos, Lord Kazzak, the dragons of the Nightmare, Edwin VanCleef, Archmage Arugal, the Scarlet Monastery, Scholomance and Naxxramas bosses, Tyrande Whisperwind, Vol'jin, Eitrigg, High Overlord Saurfang, Anduin Wrynn, Lady Katrana Prestor and others). The catalog now holds 900 NPCs.
- All 2,463 English recordings ship with this release: every zone, landmark, cave, dungeon, rare and NPC known in lore is read aloud.
- Discoveries are told at once: a new zone's story starts together with its name on screen (it used to wait about three and a half seconds), a find with lore the moment it enters the journal (it used to wait a second), and an area explored during a fight is filed and told at once instead of after the fight. A zone and its first area found in the same moment are told one after another, the zone first, instead of cutting each other off; finds that come while a story is being told keep only the newest waiting, so a walk past many NPCs known in lore never lines up minutes of stories. The game's end-of-sound signal and each recording's length (now in the manifest) move on to the next.
- Bosses are told: a boss defeated is filed under its encounter's name and now gets the account of the NPC of that name (the game gives no creature ID there), read a moment after the fight like any other discovery with lore.

### Changed
- Narrator volume follows the game: each recording ships once, exactly as ElevenLabs produced it (no added gain, no re-encoding), and plays on the game's Dialog channel, so the game's own Dialog volume (Options > Audio) sets how loud the narrator speaks. The addon's 0-100% narrator slider is gone: the game lets an addon pick only the channel of a sound file, and the slider worked by shipping three quieter copies of every recording. *Settings > Narrator* now shows the game's current Dialog and Master volume and warns when dialog sound is switched off; the addon only reads these settings, never changes them. The download is about four times smaller.
- Three Classic place names missing from the bundled dictionary were added (Kargath, Dalson's Tears, The Decrepit Ferry), so their landmark entries are matched in every language.
- `Tools/research/lore-3.2.0-chronicle-citations.md` lists, for every new account, the World of Warcraft: Chronicle pages and the other books the sources cite, for checking in print.
- The 98 accounts that rest on World of Warcraft: Chronicle were checked against the printed volumes I to III: 68 read as the book tells it, 23 were corrected to the book's account (among them Karazhan, the Dark Portal, Zul'Gurub, Kel'Thuzad, Ragnaros, Hakkar, Malfurion, Tirion, Rend Blackhand, Thermaplugg and the Highborne of Dire Maul), and 7 had their page references corrected. The five high priests of Zul'Gurub are now the Gurubashi's own priests, as Volume III tells it. Report: `Tools/research/lore-3.2.0-chronicle-check.md`.

### Added
- A journal entry for every zone a character reaches (the new Zone type, private, never shared). The first time a character arrives, the zone guide opens (after the fight, if there is one) and the narrator tells a few sourced words about the zone. Flying over a zone, an instance or a city district is not an arrival; zones a character knew before the journal watched are filed quietly. *Settings > Discovery* (Zones you reach), *Settings > Map* (zone guide) and *Settings > Narrator* switch each part off.
- NPCs known in lore: 826 quest givers, bosses and other NPCs of the Classic world have a short account researched from Warcraft Wiki and Classic quest pages, in five languages, with their sources. An NPC entry of the journal (a creature, an NPC met, a vendor, a trainer, a flight master) shows it, and the zone guide's quest giver shows it in its tooltip. Nothing is written from guesswork: an NPC without documented lore has no account.
- 46 zones of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have a sourced account of their Classic-era story, shown on their Zone entry and spoken on arrival.
- The narrator reads discoveries with lore (NPCs, caves, dungeons, rares, zones) when you hover them in the journal list and in the zone guide, not only on the world map; a plain description stays silent there. Quest givers known in lore are read in the zone guide with the same recording as their own entry.
- The narrator tells a discovery's story the moment you make it: a moment after a new find with lore (an NPC, a cave, a dungeon, a rare) appears in the journal, or one new to the character you play, its account is read without any hovering (*Settings > Narrator*, on by default).
- The button on the world map can be hidden (*Settings > Map > World map menu button*): the zone guide stays a middle-click on the minimap button or `/fc zone` away, and what the map shows is set in the same settings page.

### Changed
- The addon's button on the world map moves with a plain drag (no Shift needed), lives at the same level as the game's own Map Pin button and steps aside by itself from the game's buttons laid over the map, so Forever's Map Pin button in the map's top-left corner no longer hides it. The saved position stays; a game button that goes away gives the place back.
- Creature and NPC tooltips name only the character you play by default: the grey line naming your other characters that did a quest is now an option (*Settings > Tooltips > Which of my other characters did a quest*), off unless you switch it on.
- Quest lines in creature and NPC tooltips say in words what the quest is for the character you play: Done, Ready to turn in, your progress such as 4/4, or Not started. Your other characters that already did it stand on a line of their own, Done by ..., instead of between the title and the progress.
- Checked against the Forever beta build 1.60.1.70425 (interface 16001), read from the client: every game function, namespace, enum and event the addon relies on exists in it (older names it tries only as fallbacks stay guarded), and what the update removed or renamed (mail info, reticle targeting, group-buff constants, the mail transfer confirmations) is not used. The level-up lines the chat now prints come from `PLAYER_LEVEL_UP`, whose first value is still the level the autobiography and the characters list record.
- The version the game shows is 3.1.0, the same as the CurseForge file (the 3.0.4 file still said 3.0.3 in game).

### Fixed
- The Temple of the Moon in Darnassus is named correctly in French, Spanish, Russian and German: the bundled place dictionary gave it the names of Pandaria's Temple of the Red Crane. Thelsamar, Northpass Tower and Snowblind Mesa lose a Latin letter that had slipped into their Russian names.
- The autobiography's request for the game's own time count (/played) at login no longer prints "Total time played" in the chat on Forever. The chat windows that show system messages stop hearing that one answer for a moment; the default UI's display function is no longer replaced (on this client the chat calls `ChatFrameUtil.DisplayTimePlayed`, so the old quieting did nothing, and replacing that function would taint the chat). A /played you type yourself prints as always.