Reflecting on a Decade of Warcraft Logs
Keep up with Warcraft Logs
Today, March 5th marks the 10th anniversary of the Throne of Thunder release! The ninth boss, Dark Animus, inspired Kihra to create Warcraft Logs all those years ago. While we're not quite at our own 10-year milestone, we wanted to take this opportunity to remember the past and talk about the road ahead.
A Decade of Warcraft Logs
For almost 10 years, Warcraft Logs have played a significant role in the World of Warcraft raiding scene. Being the go-to resource for analyzing and improving performance in raid encounters, and shaping the way people approach the game.
In 2013, when the idea of WCL first started, it was to better analyze various raid encounters, as there was a lack of resources to do so. It quickly became apparent that there was potential for more than just a combat log parsing site. It didn't just stop at Warcraft Logs though, Kihra found a passion for combat log parsing and started supporting more sites, such as FF Logs, ESO Logs, Rift Logs, and WildStar Logs.
Warcraft Logs and the other projects have turned into a business and a community over the past few years. We are incredibly proud to support and inspire other resources and tools in the community through our API, by working with talented community members through WoWAnalyzer, providing data analysis, stream tools and widgets for the Race to World First events, and more.
Wayback Machine
We've had a great time going through the internet archives at Wayback Machine and seeing the various versions of the site, and how we've grown over the years. Browse through some of the pages below for a throwback!
This is the first real snapshot of what the site looked like back in 2013.
Looking back on Warcraft Logs in Battle for Azeroth shows how much we've changed in just the past 4 years as well. We've added a welcome tile, a new header and navigation, a new footer, and more. We've launched exciting features such as Recruitment and Multiple Report Analysis.
Here are some other interesting snapshots:
Expanding
From adding new combat log sites for other games to acquiring sites like Wipefest, WoWAnalyzer, and Mythic Trap, we've grown rapidly over the last few years. We currently support FF Logs, ESO Logs, and SWTOR Logs, in addition to WoW Retail, Classic, and Vanilla.
As the sites and workload have grown, so has our team. Kihra's first helper joined in January 2018, and since then we've grown to 14 employees, from 8 different countries.
Thoughts from the Team
To give you some insight into the team, we interviewed a few of our Warcraft Logs employees about their backgrounds, the biggest challenges they face, what their favorite things to develop and create are, and of course which upcoming feature they're most excited for. While we can't yet reveal the most exciting upcoming features, there are some great things coming up!
When did you join the Warcraft Logs team and what's your background?
I joined in April 2021 and I was a US 15th raider before I became a boomer and couldn't raid anymore. I enjoy helping people so support work is great.
- Azrael, Support
I joined the Logs family in April 2021. I've been playing FFXIV since 2013, and have been raiding somewhat casually since the days of Coil. I have since dabbled in WoW, and would like to eventually start raiding! Before working here, I was designing scalable multi-modal route optimization algorithms for transportation networks, but when I saw that my favorite website was hiring, how could I say no?
- Magnus, Software Engineer
I joined in February 2022 and play Vengeance Demon Hunter in WoW around seasonal mythic+ title cut off. I'm a self-taught software engineer, only really because of WoW introducing Artifact Power back in Legion, which made me curious.
- Xepheris, Software Engineer
What is the biggest challenge in developing and maintaining Warcraft Logs?
One of the toughest challenges is finding the balance between spending time on new features (that we'd desperately like to develop) and the constant flow of maintenance that comes from supporting the games themselves.
- Sildri, COO
Re: Developing new stuff: My background is WoW, so one challenge is testing and ensuring whether/how a feature might look cross-games.
Re: Maintaining: Some boss phasing support, especially in Classic, was quite challenging. That's also where a good part of the fun comes in as you have to try to work around the given limitations (or the absence of those).
- Xepheris, Software Engineer
Prioritization. Warcraft Logs has an astounding number of existing features, as well as a constant stream of user requests, game updates to support, and our own internal product ideas. Right now, our issue tracker has over 600 issues open (and over 2400 closed). There's probably at least 1000 more things we want to do that aren't even written down yet! It's difficult to ensure that we're always working on the most valuable things at the right time, but it's also an interesting and nuanced challenge.
- Yax, Software Engineer
What's been your favorite thing to develop/create at Warcraft Logs?
Definitely the Dragonflight talent trees. There was a ton of work to get it all set up, but now that it is live, it works great! I use it a lot, and I see others using it all the time.
Followup would probably be Classic tank detection---which has also been a lot of work, but with a lot more emphasis on working with the community to figure out detection rules than on pure systems & code.
- Emallson, Software Engineer
Dragonflight Talent Trees are/were lots of fun despite their intricacies! Shadowlands Season 4 Bounty pick rate highlighting in rankings, sneaky dungeon count progress bars (more to come!). General boss fight support, both simple like Terros or complex with moving variables like Illidan or Mimiron.
- Xepheris, Software Engineer
I've really enjoyed the journey over the past few years of growing the team, maturing the codebase, and improving iteratively on our processes to help us all deliver quality new features quickly whilst keeping a handle on the different maintenance requirements for each game. We regularly take the time to reflect on our work and how we can improve as a team, and it feels great to look back on how far we've come. So... everything everywhere all at once?
But also RWF!
- Yax, Software Engineer
What upcoming feature are you most excited for?
Definitely Report Components, which we just opened up sign-ups to the alpha testing for. It will be a huge step towards a more user-friendly interface and community collaboration for whatever you want to analyze.
- Vel, Community & Content Manager
I am excited about the potential of Report Components. It is a really cool feature that even users without coding experience can take advantage of by using components made by others. It really puts a lot of power in the hands of the user and I'm curious to see what cool stuff they do with it.
- Magnus, Software Engineer
The one I'm most excited for we're not actually ready to talk about yet! But believe me: we've got plans - big plans! I would say Report Components, but I see that my colleagues have mentioned that plenty already. So I'll actually go with "improving support for showing damage mitigation, especially in healing metrics". I think that could be a game-changer for understanding the value of different raid cooldowns in WoW.
- Yax, Software Engineer
Road Ahead
As we look to the future, our team is committed to building on the success of Warcraft Logs and continuing to innovate to provide the best possible experience for our users. Our long to-do list includes a range of new features and tools designed to help players improve their performance, including more personalized analysis, advanced metrics, and more user-friendly interfaces.
Thank you for your support, and stay tuned for more exciting developments to come!
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As always, send us an email at [email protected] if you have any queries.