Things people ask before they add him.
Permissions, your data, which flavours run, what happens on raid night, and what it costs. Answered straight, with no fine print hiding behind a help desk.
Adding him, and undoing it.
The questions officers send before the invite: what he asks for, how long it takes, what you need to keep open afterwards, and how to show him the door if it does not work out.
- Permissions
What permissions does the bot need?
Posting and reading in the channels you point him at, roles and nicknames so verification can hand out Member and class roles, plus voice and thread permissions for raid night. Never Administrator. The full list sits on the how-it-works page with the reason for each one, generated from the same code that builds the invite link, so it cannot quietly drift.
- Setup
How long does setting it up actually take?
About five minutes. One click to invite, then a web wizard your leadership gets by DM: pick your flavour, point him at your channels, say which Discord roles reach what. No YAML, no config repo, no hosting tutorial, and every answer can be changed later on the settings page.
- Web dashboard
Do I need the web dashboard?
No. The bot is fully usable from Discord. The web planner exists for the officer who would rather drag a name into a group than type, and for looking at attendance on a phone. It is a companion, not a tax.
- Multiple guilds
Can one bot run more than one server?
Yes. Each server gets its own config, roster, raids, and roles. Run as many guilds as you can stand, and nothing leaks between them.
- Leaving
How do I remove the bot?
Kick HootusPlootus from your server like any other bot and he stops. The Discord roles he made stay on your server for you to keep or delete however you like. No lock-in, no exit fee, no hard feelings from the owl.
Who sees what, and where it comes from.
Nobody hands over a Blizzard login, and no guild can see another guild's roster. The one page that is meant to be seen is the one you publish yourself. This is the plain version of both, without a legal paragraph in the way.
- Isolation
Is my guild data safe?
Each server is its own sandbox. Your roster, raids, signups, and settings belong to that server and are not shared with another guild. Character data comes from the Blizzard API, and no telemetry gets sold sideways. The one thing that leaves the server is the guild page you publish yourself by opening recruitment, and the next answer says what is on it.
- Publishing
What goes public when I open recruitment?
A guild page and a listing in the directory at /guilds, both readable with no login. They carry your guild name, realm, region and faction, your raid nights, the seats you are recruiting, your roster size, the raids you ran in the last 90 days, the opening lines of your blurb, your Discord invite, and every boss your raid logs credit you with. Never a member name, an application, an attendance mark or a loot roll. Search engines are let in by default, and one switch in settings turns that off without breaking the link for anyone you already handed it to.
- Verification
How does verification work?
A member verifies a character, not an account. Hootus looks the name up on the armory, connected realms included, and ties it to their Discord. You never link a Blizzard login and nobody hands over a password.
- Privacy
How is my privacy handled?
He stores what running your guild needs: who verified which character, the roster, your raids and signups, attendance marks. Character detail is fetched from Blizzard rather than hoarded. Guilds stay isolated from each other, and nothing is sold or shared on.
What actually happens on a Tuesday.
Flavours, attendance, loot, and the honest answer about coming from another bot.
- Flavours
Which WoW versions are supported?
Classic Era, TBC Classic Anniversary, and Mists of Pandaria Classic. The bot is built per flavour, so the raid list, the specs, and the buff coverage all match the game you actually play. Totems only show up where totems exist. When new realms land, support gets added then, not promised now.
- Attendance
Is attendance pulled from combat logs?
No. It comes from raid voice. Join the raid voice channel and Hootus checks you in with a timestamp, and slipping out before the last boss gets flagged as left early. The raid lead can edit any mark by hand, because the alt-runner and the raider with comms off are both real.
- Loot
Does it handle soft reserves?
Through softres.it. Drop your link on the raid and Hootus carries it onto the signup post, the reminder nudge, and the lock DM, so nobody gets to claim they never saw it. A built-in reserve list exists in beta, but it has not been through a real raid yet, so the link is the one to trust tonight.
- Switching
Coming from Raid-Helper?
Raid-Helper is a good general event scheduler. Hootus does one thing: WoW raid night. He knows your class, your spec, and your Blizzard roster, checks the composition on every signup, and scopes PUGs to the raid instead of the whole server. There is an honest point-by-point comparison if you want the detail.
Free at the core. Not a trial, not a countdown.
- Cost
What does it cost?
Nothing. There is no card, no trial timer, and nothing for you to buy. The core is free and plans to stay free, because the everyday raid-night stuff is the whole point of him.
- The bill
Is it really free, and who pays for the server?
The dev does. A VPS and a database charge by the month the same way your sub does, and that bill is his, not yours. The Blizzard API behind your roster is free. If a paid layer ever lands it would be for heavy extras, never the raid-night basics, and you would know well before anything changed.
Three places the rest of it lives.
The answer you came for is probably one of these, and none of them need an account.
The fastest answer is to run it.
Add HootusPlootus to your Discord, walk the wizard, and post your first raid with one command. Five minutes, no card, and the owl can be kicked the moment he stops being useful.