One raider, one guild, one bot.
Hootus was not spun up in a startup. It was built by someone who raids with his friends and got tired of posting the night the slow way. The story is short and it is true, so here it is straight.
The Night Owls wanted one command, not a menu.
Born in a TBC guild, built by a raider on the bench, not the one running the night.
Simen plays in The Night Owls, raiding with friends, not as the raid leader. He kept hearing the same gripes from the people who did run the nights: creating a raid meant clicking through menus while the guild sat waiting, and nobody wanted to do that twice a week. So he built the fix and made it custom for them. One command to post the night, signups that knew a Druid from a Mage, a roster that kept itself honest.
That is the whole origin. It was never a product looking for a guild. It was a guild's complaints turned into a bot, by someone sitting in the same raid.
Mists made it multi-flavour and more than raids.
A second guild, a more social one, pushed Hootus past the weekly pull.
When Simen rolled into Mists of Pandaria, he made the bot multi-flavour and folded in every annoyance he had collected from other bots along the way. His Mists guild leans more social than hardcore, so they wanted Hootus to do more than raid night. That is how it grew past raids into groups for dungeons, heroics, scenarios, alt runs, and the rest of what a guild actually does between Tuesdays.
Same bot underneath, two flavours on top. The per-expansion bits are deltas, the core loop is shared, and the things that annoyed him about everything else got left out on purpose.
No team, no roadmap deck, no investor update.
The honest size of the operation, owl be straight with you.
There is one person building this, after his own raid night, fixing what breaks and adding the next flavour when it is ready. No team standing behind a logo, no roadmap deck, no quarterly update for backers who do not exist. When something ships it is because it annoyed a real guild and got fixed.
That is also why the core is free and means to stay that way. There is nobody upstairs asking it to grow a paywall.
One raider, two characters, a couple of guilds.
The most honest thing on the site, and the credibility Hootus spends.
I’m Simen. I play HexusPlexus, a Warlock in The Night Owls on Thunderstrike, and Sykepleier, a level 90 Shaman in Muppets Inc on Mirage Raceway.
I built Hootus because creating a raid in Raid-Helper meant clicking through menus while the guild sat waiting. I wanted to type one command and have the night posted, the signups checked against class and spec, and the right people pinged.
It started in The Night Owls, where I raid with friends, not as the raid leader. I listened to what ours kept griping about and built it custom for them. When I rolled into Mists I made it multi-flavour and folded in every annoyance I had with other bots. My Mists guild leans more social than hardcore, so they wanted Hootus to cover more than raid night, and that is how he grew past it.
No team, no roadmap deck, no investor update. One person, a couple of guilds, one bot.
Built for a real guild. Yours can use it too.
It started in one guild and grew because others asked to borrow it. Add HootusPlootus to your Discord, walk the wizard, and post your first raid with one command.