First time setting up a Discord bot? Here is everything the wizard will ask, in plain words, before you touch a single button. No jargon, no assumed knowledge.
Read the ones you are unsure about and skip the rest. Every term below is something the setup flow will put in front of you.
Which version of WoW your guild plays.
There is more than one version of WoW running at once. Hootus supports four: Classic Era (vanilla), The Burning Crusade (TBC), Mists of Pandaria (MoP), and retail. You pick the one your guild actually plays.
This one choice sets the classes, specs, and raids Hootus knows about, so signups and roles match your game and not somebody else’s. Play both? Pick the main one now, the rest is a setting you can revisit.
Where in the world your characters live.
Region is the broad slice of the world your account sits in, like EU or US. Realm is the specific server your characters log into, like Mirage Raceway.
Hootus uses both to find your guild on Blizzard’s side and pull the real roster. Get them right and verification just works. Some realms are connected to neighbours, and Hootus handles that for you, so you only need your own realm.
How a member proves a WoW character to earn their roles.
When someone verifies, they tell Hootus which character is theirs and he checks it against the roster he pulled from Blizzard. A match hands them their class role and their membership roles automatically.
It needs no password and nothing linked to their Blizzard login. Nobody hands over an account. It is a name check against a public roster, not a sign-in.
The wizard’s most-mixed-up trio, sorted out.
Discord roles are the coloured tags you already see next to member names. That is all a role is: a label Discord paints on people.
Who is in charge maps those Discord roles to what they can do with the bot. It is where you say your Officer tag can run admin things and your Member tag cannot. You are pointing existing tags at powers, not making new ones.
Status roles are the tags Hootus hands out on his own as people verify: member, raider, guest, PUG, or unverified. You do not click these onto anyone. He keeps them tidy as folks come and go.
New arrivals land limited until they prove a character.
Fresh joiners get an unverified (new-arrival) status role and see a trimmed-down server: a welcome channel and not much else. That is the gate.
The moment they verify, Hootus swaps the unverified tag for their real roles and the rest of the server opens up. No stranger wanders into officer chat by accident, and nobody has to babysit the door.
A pick-up group guest, in for one raid.
PUG is old raiding slang for pick-up group: someone from outside your guild you bring along to fill a spot for a single night.
Hootus gives a PUG a guest role and access to the PUG channels, nothing more. If they drift off and never come back, the tag lapses on its own. If you like them, recruit them properly and they verify like anyone else.
Hootus can build a starter layout for you.
Channels are the rooms in your Discord: a welcome room, a raid room, an officer room. The wizard can lay out a sensible starter set so you are not staring at an empty server.
It only adds what is missing. It never deletes a channel you already have and never makes a second copy of one. Already set up? It quietly skips the ones that exist and adds nothing you did not ask for.
Why the bot’s role has to sit high in the list.
Your Server Settings has a list of roles, top to bottom. Discord’s rule is simple: a bot can only hand out or move roles that sit below its own in that list.
So drag the HootusPlootus role near the top, above your Officer and Raid lead tags. Leave it near the bottom and he cannot give people their roles, which looks like the bot is broken when it is really just the ordering. Top of the list, and he can do his job.
Nothing in the wizard is permanent. Flavour, realm, channels, which tags do what, all of it lives behind a button on the settings page. Pick something now, get it moving, and tune it once you see it working. Hootus is patient. He is an owl.
