Murloc Census Bureau

# Murloc Census Bureau

One panel that tells you everything about your character: gold in and out, kills, deaths, quests, travel, dungeons, professions and achievements. Flip it between lifetime and this-session numbers, or check the Account tab to see all your characters added up.

## What you get

Open it and you'll see:

- **Header:** your name, level, class and guild, plus gold on hand, time played and how long you've been in this session.
- **Gold in:** total gold acquired, then the split by looted, quest rewards, vendor sales and auction earnings. Also your average per day and the most gold you've ever owned.
- **Gold out:** flight paths, barber shops, postage and talent respecs. Plus an **Everything else (approx.)** line for what the game doesn't itemize (see the notes below).
- **Progress:** creatures killed, deaths, quests completed and quests abandoned.
- **Travel:** flight paths taken, times hearthed, mage portals and summons accepted.
- **Auctions:** auctions posted, auction purchases, biggest bid and biggest sale.
- **Dungeons and raids:** 5-player dungeons and 10, 20 and 40-player raids entered.
- **Professions:** your current skill levels.
- **Achievements:** your first achievement and the two most recent, with dates.

### Lifetime or session

The button in the top right flips every number between **Lifetime** and **Session**. Session means since you logged in or reloaded, so it starts blank and fills up as you play. A dash just means nothing new this session. Biggest bid, biggest sale and most gold ever owned only show up in session mode if you beat your old record.

### Account tab

The **Account** tab adds up every character that has logged in with the addon, so alts show up the first time you play them. It's lifetime only. Records like most gold ever owned take the biggest number instead of adding, and "average per day" shows a dash since adding averages doesn't mean anything. The achievements section shows the earliest first achievement and the two most recent across your characters, with a character's name next to ones only that character has.

## Opening it

- Type `/mcb` or `/census`
- Or click the minimap button (drag it to move it around the minimap)

Drag the panel itself to move it. Esc or the X closes it.

### Other commands

| Command | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| `/mcb` or `/census` | Open or close the panel |
| `/mcb played` | Ask the server for a fresh time played |
| `/mcb debug` | Print some troubleshooting info (see below) |
| `/mcb help` | Short command list |

You can also click the "Time played" line in the panel to refresh it. It says "click to check" until the first time you ask, and after that it shows the last number it got, so click it when you want a fresh one. The addon doesn't ask on its own because that would drop a `/played` line in chat every time you log in.

## Where the numbers come from

Almost everything comes from the game's own statistics, so existing characters are already filled in on first login. The addon doesn't have to be running to have counted your kills or your gold. It just reads them.

The only things the addon tracks itself are the session numbers (current value minus the value when you logged in), the time you've been playing this session, and the exact moment you earn an achievement (more on that below).

## Good to know

- **"Everything else (approx.)"** is total gold acquired minus what you're holding, minus the spending the game itemizes (flights, barber, postage, respecs). Repairs, vendor purchases, auction purchases, mail and trades all blur together in there, so treat it as a ballpark.
- **Achievement dates have no time of day.** The game only says which day you earned something. If two were earned on the same day, their order is a best guess, unless you earned them with the addon running, in which case it remembers the exact order.
- **Achievements scan about 5 seconds after login**, so you may briefly see "Checking your achievements..." when you first open the panel. A new achievement shows up a couple of seconds after you earn it.
- **The Account tab fills in as you play.** A character only shows up after it has logged in at least once with the addon, and its achievements fill in the same way.
- **Long achievement names** get cut off with "..." so the row doesn't wrap.
- **The minimap button doesn't use any libraries.** That keeps the addon self-contained, but button-collecting addons that look for the usual library may not pick it up.

## When it saves

The Account tab reads from a snapshot of each character, which the addon refreshes:

- every 15 seconds while you play
- when you open the system menu (Esc), which is how most people leave the game, so it's effectively the last save before you log out or exit
- when you close the panel with the X, the slash command or the minimap button (closing with Esc skips this one, but the 15-second save has you covered), when you level up, or when time played comes back from the server

There's deliberately **no save at logout**. A save during logout crashed the client on exit during testing, so the addon leaves shutdown alone and relies on the saves above.

### Changing the save interval

Open `Core.lua` in a text editor and look for the "Settings you can tweak" block near the top:

```lua
ns.SAVE_INTERVAL = 15
```

Change the number (in seconds), save the file, then `/reload` in game. Lower numbers keep the Account tab fresher, higher numbers do less work. Anything under 1 is treated as 1.