Ringer

Your next teammate just listed.

Ringer is a live arena recruiting alarm for WoW Anniversary (TBC). Set a rating range and the specs you need; Ringer watches the Looking For Group tool while you play and alerts you the moment a matching player or team lists - sound, raid-warning banner, screen flash, and a starred row. No
more staring at the LFG window.

Why you want it.

You're 4/5 for your 5s team and the healer you need lists in LFG for ninety seconds while you're mid-BG. Ringer catches it: an alert fires, the row is starred with their rating and spec, and one click
whispers them.

Features

Automatic fresh sweeps of the LFG tool while you play - new listings are detected without touching the refresh button. Alert latency is Blizzard's own search cooldown (typically under a minute).

Ratings on every name, sourced from a bundled armory snapshot, ratings witnessed in your own ArenaAnalytics matches, and the rating claimed in the listing text.

Full group intel: every listing's roster - member names, classes, roles - read directly from the LFG data, with per-member ratings, bracket tags (multi-bracket listings show every bracket they cover), new-players-welcome icons, and exact leader identification. 

A recruiting workbench: filters on the left (rating range, bracket toggles, per-spec checkboxes for all 27 specs), live results on the right - matches on top with sticky stars, then groups looking to fill, then solo listers. Whisper, favorite, dismiss, and per-player notes on every row.

Self-diagnosing: the footer shows database vintage and the fresh-sweep heartbeat; one-line amber warnings appear only when setup needs a step and retire once satisfied.

Quick start

Install, then in game: `/ringer` - set your rating range, tick the specs you want.

That's it. Opening Ringer starts the sweeps - the LFG window is never needed. The footer heartbeat begins on your next click.

Realm coverage

Armory ratings currently cover Nightslayer and Dreamscythe (US). On other realms, Ringer still works — spec and bracket matching, ratings claimed in listing text, and ratings witnessed in your own ArenaAnalytics history all function everywhere — but the armory database layer will show "no armory data for your realm." More realms may be added based on demand; say so in the comments or Discord.

Coming soon: armory-fresh ratings (Ringer Sync)

Ringer ships with a ratings snapshot from the release date and works fully out of the box.

Ringer Sync - a companion that refreshes the database with live armory data daily and recovers real ratings for every player Ringer sees in LFG, even far below Blizzard's ~top-5000 leaderboard export cap - is coming soon for supporters. Want to be first to know (and help shape it)? Follow the project on Patreon - the follower tier is free: https://www.patreon.com/c/wowringer

FAQ

Everyone shows "unranked"?

Check `/ringer dbinfo` - the database needs a full WoW restart the first time (not just /reload).

A player shows no rating?

They're below Blizzard's leaderboard export cutoff (~top 5000 per bracket) or under the games-played
minimum. Their claimed rating from the listing text is shown when parseable; Ringer Sync (coming soon) will recover their real rating.

Some listings show no comment?

Blizzard redacts some listing comments from addon code (they render on screen but are unreadable by
addons). Those players simply show no claimed rating.

Does this automate anything against the ToS?

No. Ringer uses only Blizzard's sanctioned addon API. Searches ride your normal gameplay input within Blizzard's hardware-event rules, and alert latency is bounded by Blizzard's own server-side search cooldown.

Why am I seeing a "blocked action" line in BugSack?

If you run an error-catcher addon (BugSack/BugGrabber), you may very rarely see an ADDON_ACTION_BLOCKED line naming Ringer. It's harmless: the client declined one background sweep, which simply retries on your next input. The default UI shows nothing. Errors naming another addon's file (or a Blizzard file) aren't Ringer's code — check that addon's version for your client.

Slash commands

`/ringer` window - `/ringer db <name>` rating lookup - `/ringer why <name>` diagnostics - `/ringer help` everything.