Herald (Guild Recruiter)

Herald

Guild recruiting, without the busywork and without becoming a spammer.

Herald finds players who have no guild, helps you write one good message instead of twenty rushed ones, remembers everybody you have already spoken to, and welcomes them when they join.

Nothing is ever sent that you have not approved. Herald prepares; you decide.

What it does

Finds candidates. Filter by level range, class, race and zone. Herald turns that into a series of /who queries and keeps only the players with no guild. When a level band comes back full — which always happens at max level — it splits the band and covers it properly instead of quietly showing you the first fifty.

Reads the Guild Finder too. A separate tab lists the players who applied to your guild through Blizzard's own tool. They asked first, so they answer far more often than a cold whisper ever will.

Writes the message once. Templates with placeholders — [playerName], [playerClass], [playerLevel], [guildName], [guildLink] and more — and {Hi|Hey|Hello} style variants so two people never receive the exact same text. Live preview against a real candidate, with a character counter so you never accidentally split a whisper in two.

Never contacts anyone twice. Everyone you write to is recorded with the date, shared across all your characters. They will not appear in a search again until the cooldown you set has expired — six months by default. Guild members, friends and anyone on your ignore list are skipped automatically, and you can add anyone to a never-contact list.

Notices the replies. An answer stops the automation for that player and lands in a list of its own, so nobody is left waiting. From there you can whisper back, send a guild invite, or close the thread — including the polite "no thanks", which goes straight onto the never-contact list.

Welcomes them in. When somebody you contacted joins the guild, Herald can whisper them a welcome, announce them in guild chat, and write an officer note recording who recruited them and when.

Tells you what works. Whispers sent, replies received, players who actually joined, and the conversion rate for each class over the last thirty days.

Two ways to use it

The full window is for a recruiting session: filters and results in the middle, the approved queue, your numbers and incoming replies down the right.

The mini bar is for the rest of the time: a small strip with counters and a single candidate card, so you can recruit between quests without covering your screen. Press - in the window to shrink to it, ... on the bar to go back.

Both move anywhere and can be hidden or locked in place.

Please read: one query per key press

Current builds do not let an add-on send a /who on a timer — the client accepts it only in answer to a real click or key press. This is not a bug in Herald, and Herald does not try to get around it.

So a search steps: press Next query, or the key you bound under Options → Key Bindings → Herald, once every few seconds. The window shows a countdown so you can tap it without looking. A full sweep takes a couple of minutes of tapping while you do something else.

An add-on that scanned unattended would be routing around a protection that exists for good reason. Herald will not do that.

About whispering strangers

Recruitment whispers are advertising, and unsolicited advertising can be reported as spam. Blizzard acts on the behaviour, not on the add-on, so the person carrying the risk is you.

Herald is built to keep you on the right side of that line:

• Manual review is the only mode. Every message traces back to a click of yours.
• Nobody is contacted twice, ever, until the cooldown expires.
• Sending limits per minute, hour and day, with the queue paced so it never outruns them.
• A reply stops everything for that player immediately.
• Guild members, friends and ignored players are never contacted.

Write something a real person would want to receive, contact people once, and answer those who reply. That is the whole trick.

Commands

/herald            open and close the window
/herald compact    shrink to the mini bar
/herald scan       start a search
/herald next       send the next query
/herald stop       stop the search and the queue
/herald bar        show or hide the mini bar
/herald why Name   explain why a player is or is not a candidate
/herald who 88-90  send one raw query and print what came back
/herald debug      log every query and its result

Key bindings for opening Herald and for sending the next query are under Options → Key Bindings → Herald.

Your data

Everything Herald records — who you contacted, when, and what came of it — is stored in your own SavedVariables file on your computer. Nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing is shared with anyone.

Support development

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