Description
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