Room For One More

A word when your group ends

Finishing or calling off a group posted a note in the thread and then locked the thread in the same breath, so unless you were watching at that moment you found out by noticing nothing happened. Everyone who was in it now gets a DM. Same for a group that gets called off before it starts because the numbers were not there, which previously only told the person who made it.

Redraw an old group post

Older posts kept whatever shape they were born with, because the redraw only ever touched live ones. `/manage refresh-embeds post:18` now rebuilds a single group by the number in its footer, whatever state it is in, and `closed-days` sweeps up recently finished ones in a batch.

Groups are open to strangers now

You no longer need a verified character to join a group. Type the name you are bringing, Hootus checks it exists on the armory across our realms, and the group leader gets a DM to wave you through. Tick 'Open to PUGs' when you make a group and it gets its own card in the perch with a join button and an invite link that expires when the group does.

A Manage button that actually manages

Start, Edit and Finish used to sit on the group post where everyone could see them and only the leader could use them. They now live behind one Manage button: start, edit, finish, cancel, answer people waiting to join, and take someone out of the group. Officers get the same panel apart from Start, because when you pull is the leader's call.

Pings that reach an actual owl

Grab a ping role from the Notify me button on the pinned group board, from /tags, or when you verify. Post a group and Hootus tells you how many owls he woke up, or says plainly that nobody has pings turned on yet, which beats the old silence.

Setup is one command and a web page

Setup had grown thirteen subcommands quietly duplicating pages the website already had, and drifting from them. It is now a single command that hands you a link. The tools that were genuinely Discord-side, posting the welcome panel, minting a PUG invite, tidying PUG roles, setting the WoW guild, and the member role and promote actions, moved to /manage where they belong. /begin-setup has gone; /setup does that job now.

Cancel means cancel

Cancelling a repeating group used to quietly set it up again for next time. If you cancel it now, it is gone and you make a new one. Finishing a repeating group still brings it back, because that is the point of it.

Retired the daily heroic reminder

It was built, never switched on, and never used by anyone. Rather than keep polishing something nobody wanted, it has gone. Put a group up for a heroic the normal way and it works the same as anything else.

Say when in one go

Setting up a group used to walk you through a day, then an hour, then the minutes, three screens to say Tuesday at nine. Now it asks once and you type it, the same way you would for a raid. Now and drop-in is still one button for anyone who cannot be doing with typing.

The group wizard stopped talking in three voices

Each step asked in a slightly different way, and the difficulty step showed you a value as though you had already picked it. Every step is a plain question now, the group name leads once it is known, and nothing pretends to be chosen until you choose it.

Applications land somewhere the leader will see

Someone applying to your group used to reach you by DM and nothing else, so if your DMs are shut the application just sat there. It now goes into the group's thread with you tagged, which gets through whatever your settings are, and the DM comes along as a bonus. The threads are private, so nobody outside the group sees who applied or what you decided.

Closed groups say the word, not the story

A finished group announced itself with This one ran, which is a sentence where a status belongs. It now says Finished, Cancelled, or Nobody joined. The two different ways of ending up with an empty group were a difference only Hootus could see, so they read as the same thing now, which is what they always were.

Finished groups tell you how they went

A closed group used to say COMPLETED and leave you guessing. It now says whether it ran, was closed out because nobody else signed up, was called off after people had joined, or simply sat there until the clock beat it. The role slots, the spots counter and the buttons all go once there is nothing left to do, and the roster becomes a plain list of who was actually there.

Group posts that read like a group

The post now leads with what you are running rather than why. The guild name appears once instead of twice, the goal once instead of three times, and everyone who signed up sits in one tidy list rather than a three column grid built for forty people. The two blank lines nobody could explain were padding for that grid, and they have gone with it.

Raids belong to /raid

The group finder offered raids as a content type even though it never made a real raid, which meant two systems pretending to overlap. Groups are for five mans, scenarios, world bosses and PvP now. Old raid groups still read correctly in the archive, you just cannot post a new one.

Bring the alt, sign as what you can heal

Joining a group used to grab your main and offer you exactly one role. Now you pick any of your characters, or type in one that is not on your list, and the roles offered are whatever that class can genuinely fill. Resto druids may now sign as DPS, which they have been asking about for a while.

A PUG list you can actually read

/pug pool showed twenty names in no particular order and hid everyone who had not opted in. It now groups everybody into opted in, never answered and opted out, with how many raids they have done and when they were last around. /pug remove takes someone off the list without banning them.

Syncing your roster syncs your roster

Asking Hootus to sync the roster quietly synced every server he looks after, not just yours. It does your own now, and tells you what it found. Anyone running the whole lot at once needs to be a bot admin.

Hootus notices when he has been shown the door

Being removed from a server left no mark, so every background job carried on as though he was still there. He writes it down now, and clears it if he is invited back. He also stops greeting arrivals and handing out roles in servers where nobody has set him up yet.

Group pages check you are allowed to see them

The group list and the browse page both checked whether you had access. An individual group page did not, so anyone signed in could open one by guessing the number in its address. It checks now, and landing on a group from another server tells you so and offers to switch you instead of showing a blank not-found page.

The setup link now checks who is holding it

Every setup page trusted the link alone, so anyone who came across one could rewire roles and channels. It now checks with Discord that you actually manage the server, and the link is never posted anywhere public. Installing the bot also stopped accepting a server id from whoever asked, which meant a valid login could mint a setup link for somebody else's server.

Hootus stops forgetting servers he is sitting in

A server that installed Hootus and did not finish the wizard could have its settings quietly deleted a couple of days later, including one that had been configured through the website instead. He now checks whether he is still in the server before forgetting anything about it.

Setup is for people who run the server

The setup command checked that it was being used in a server and then checked nothing else, so anybody in the server could run it. It now needs Manage Server, like the rest of the admin tools.

Ping roles you made yourself finally ping

Only the suggested ping roles ever worked. Anything an officer created by hand quietly matched nothing and notified nobody, with no sign that it had not taken. Tags now say which content they cover, so make whatever you like and it fires.

Voice turns up nearer the time

The voice channel appeared half an hour early announcing that the group was starting, which it was not. It now opens fifteen minutes before and says what is actually true. Drop-in groups no longer claim voice is ready before anyone has joined.

The website and Discord agree about groups now

Making, editing, joining or leaving a group on the website used to do its own slightly different version, with a plainer post and a few steps skipped. It now asks Hootus to do exactly what he does in Discord, so you get the same post, the same thread, and the same messages whichever way you came in. Joining on the website also gets your character checked properly, the same as joining in Discord.

Promotion notices point somewhere real

Every promotion notice sent to officers linked to a page that does not exist, and has done for a while. It goes to the promotions settings now. A handful of other notices were quietly pointing at an old address or a domain that never resolved, and those have been straightened out too.

Web links land where you clicked

Opening a group on the web while signed out sent you through Discord and then dropped you on the group list instead of the group you asked for. It takes you to the right one now. Group links also stopped pointing at a domain that no longer exists whenever the bot was missing its web address.

Groups say what kind of thing they are again

Tidying the group post last release took the word Dungeon out with the clutter, leaving an emoji to carry it alone. Difficulty and type now read as one phrase, so Heroic Dungeon says so in writing. A start time that had already passed also stopped claiming the group starts fifteen hours ago.

Finished groups stop counting down

A group that had already wrapped still cheerfully announced that it expired twelve hours ago. Finished and cancelled groups now say what happened and leave it there.

Groups that know when to stop

A group whose leader pressed Start never closed on its own, and a group that ran without pressing Start got filed as cancelled. Both are sorted, there is a Cancel button for the first time, and an expired group now tidies its own post and thread instead of leaving live buttons lying about.

Saying no to DMs no longer shows you the door

Turning off raid pings could remove you from the server while telling you Hootus would simply go quiet. That is gone. Opting out now opts you out, nothing more, and it saves properly even if you have been away and come back.

Rename a channel without breaking it

Hootus recognised a few channels by their name, so renaming one quietly stripped its lockdown the next time an officer ran a permission fix. He goes by channel id now. Raid signups has become the perch, and nothing minded.