WORLD OF WARCRAFT · ADDON · MIT LICENSED · AUTO-UPDATED DAILY

RETURNER

The welcome-back panel that catches you up before you alt-tab.

You log back in. You see 47 mail icons, three currencies you don't recognize, and a quest hub on the map you've never visited. Guild chat has scrolled past 200 messages of jokes about a boss you've never heard of. You feel old.

Returner fixes that.

40+

NEWS ITEMS

0 ms

COMBAT IMPACT

12 kB

TOTAL SIZE

DAILY

AUTO-REFRESH

What it looks like in-game

Caption suggestion : "The actual panel after a 23-day absence. Color-coded cards, clickable URLs, scrollable history."

Why this exists

WoW has too much. Daily quests, weekly resets, monthly events, seasonal patches, expansion drops, hotfixes every Tuesday. If you skip a week, you've already missed three things. If you skip three weeks, you no longer remember which faction is mad at you.

Wowhead and Reddit and the official forums all live in a browser tab you have to remember to open. Returner brings the news directly into the place you already are : in-game, exactly when it matters, exactly the moment you log back in.

Features

Feature	What it does
Smart auto-popup	Triggers only after your absence threshold and only when there's actually something new. No spam. No popup-fatigue.
Color-coded news	Each item is tagged : PATCH, EVENT, HOTFIX, NEWS, ESPORTS. Skim what you care about.
Per-account memory	Catch up on alt 1, alt 2 stays quiet. The "last seen" timestamp lives at account level.
Lightweight	Pure Lua, zero library dependencies, ~12 kB on disk. Runs only at login. Zero ticking timers in combat.
Auto-updated content	A daily GitHub Action regenerates the news data, tags a release, and ships it to CurseForge. You auto-update overnight, your panel stays fresh forever.
Hackable	The data is a plain Lua table. Add your guild events, custom dates, internal raid notes. Reload, done.
Open source	MIT licensed. Source, scripts, scraper, CI workflows, packager config : all public.

Commands

Command	Description
`/rt` or `/returner`	Open the panel anytime.
`/rt threshold <N>`	Days of absence before auto-popup. `0` disables, `/rt` still works manually.
`/rt on` / `/rt off`	Toggle the auto-popup without losing your threshold setting.
`/rt reset`	Clear the read state. Next open shows every item again.
`/rt status`	Print current settings, threshold, last-seen, seen-until.
`/rt simulate <N>`	Preview the panel as if you'd been away N days. Pure testing tool.

The plumbing (for the curious)

Most addons need a developer remembering to update them. Returner is different : the bundled news file regenerates itself every morning via a GitHub Action, then auto-publishes to CurseForge. The dev does nothing. You auto-update through the CurseForge App. Your panel is always current.

    WoW News RSS  →  GitHub Action (cron at 06:00 UTC)
                              ↓
                       Python scraper / parser
                              ↓
                       Data.lua regenerated
                              ↓
                       Auto-tag if changed
                              ↓
                       BigWigsMods packager
                              ↓
                       CurseForge auto-publish
                              ↓
                       You auto-update overnight

If Wowhead's feed format ever changes, the maintainer gets a GitHub email about a failed run and fixes the parser. The whole pipeline is public, audit it, fork it, run your own.

Want to hack it ?

Adding your own custom news item is one Lua table entry. Open Data.lua in the addon folder and append :

    {
        timestamp = 1762000000,
        title     = "Guild raid night, Friday 21h CET",
        body      = "Be there or be benched.",
        url       = "https://discord.gg/your-guild",
        category  = "event",
    },

Reload, done. The panel picks it up automatically.

FAQ

Will it slow my game down ?
No. Returner has zero CPU cost outside of one panel popup at login. No combat-time logic, no ticking timers, no event handlers in hot paths.

Will it spam me on every alt ?
No. The "last seen" timestamp is shared across your account. Catch up on one character, the others stay quiet.

What if I never want the popup ?
Run /rt off or set the threshold to 0. The panel stays accessible via /rt manually, and your settings persist across sessions.

How fresh is the news ?
Refreshed once a day, max 24 hours after a story breaks. Old items roll off after one year so the panel stays focused on what's actually recent.

Why not a Discord bot or a website ?
Because alt-tabbing is the friction that made you skip the news in the first place. Returner is in-game, exactly where you already are.

Found a bug ?
Open an issue on GitHub. Pull requests welcome. The maintainer responds.

« Don't read the news. The news reads itself to you. »

Source & license

Source : github.com/axelrodd123/Returner

License : MIT. Fork it, mod it, ship your own variant.

Issues : github.com/axelrodd123/Returner/issues

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AxelRodd · still chasing the perfect corner hit