Belmont Labs  /  Experiments  /  WhoCHAT
EXPERIMENT // 05  // BL-005
⚠ UNSTABLE / ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT

WHOCHAT

A custom chat interface for WoW 3.3.5a, forged in the fires of ambition and tempered by the cold bucket of water known as "memory management." It speaks to every channel. It listens to every whisper. It does not, at this time, do so indefinitely.

LAB-SERVER-05>$ // BL-005 // WHOCHAT // FIELD REPORT — PROCEED WITH CAUTION
Researcher Notes // Field Observations

The standard WoW chat interface is, as the Mads have long observed, a crime. A cluttered, tab-riddled, scroll-wheel-dependent relic that was designed by someone who had clearly never been screamed at in Trade Chat while simultaneously receiving three whispers and a raid warning about a boss no one mentioned pulling. Experiment BL-005 was the answer to this crime. Whether it is also a crime remains under review.

WhoCHAT replaces the default chat window with a unified, multi-panel interface — a single frame that elegantly segregates your Whispers, Guild, Battleground, and dynamic channel tabs into their own views, each populated in real time, each navigable without the intervention of a scroll wheel and three fingers. The Glance dashboard — first among the views — aggregates your most recent mentions, whispers, and raid announcements into one compact, panicked overview. It knows what matters. It surfaces it immediately. It does not make you hunt.

The laboratory is proud of what WhoCHAT attempts. The laboratory is also, with characteristic scientific honesty, required to disclose what it does not yet do gracefully. WhoCHAT suffers from a memory leak. Not a polite, theoretical, you-might-notice-eventually memory leak. A memory leak of the loud and ungraceful variety that will, after approximately an hour of sustained use, begin to render the addon sluggish, then heavy, then quietly catastrophic. A memory manager has been deployed. It helps. It is not a cure. The lab is working on this. The lab is always working on this.

⚠ Active Development — Memory Leak Warning

WhoCHAT is functional but unstable for extended sessions. Memory consumption grows over time in ways the current cleanup routines cannot fully contain. Expect performance degradation after roughly 60–90 minutes of continuous gameplay. A /wcclean command is available for manual cleanup, and /wcstats will show you current memory usage — but these are mitigations, not solutions. Use with awareness. The lab is not responsible for what happens to your raid.

⚠ Chief Science Officer advisory: "WhoCHAT is a proof of concept wearing the clothes of a finished product. It does not know this about itself. Please do not tell it. We need it cooperative while we fix the leak."
DOWNLOAD WHOCHAT
Designation WhoCHAT
Experiment No. BL-005
Status UNSTABLE / DEV
Type WoW Addon — UI Replacement
WoW Version 3.3.5a (WotLK Private)
Wrath Classic NOT SUPPORTED
Hazard Rating ELEVATED
Memory Behavior LEAKS
Session Stability ~60–90 MIN
Disposition AMBITIOUS
Observation Log
BL-005-1A Initial build. Glance view operational. Memory situation: unclear.
BL-005-4C Channel routing functional. Memory situation: now very clear.
BL-005-9F Memory manager deployed. Leak rate reduced. Still leaking.
BL-005-12B Frame pool implemented. The leak has opinions about this.
BL-005-?? Root cause: unresolved. Investigation: ongoing. Coffee: low.
01

What It Does
In Plain Language

The following is a simplified account for those who prefer their mad science without excessive caveats. Note: the caveats are still there. They're just at the bottom.

◈
Glance Dashboard
The default view. Aggregates your most recent mentions (messages where your character name appears), incoming whispers, and raid/boss announcements into a single consolidated panel. If something important happened while you were staring at a loading screen, Glance noticed.
◈
Dynamic Channel Tabs
As you join channels in-game, WhoCHAT detects them automatically and creates a dedicated tab for each one. General, Trade, LocalDefense — each gets its own view, its own message history, its own input box. The navigation bar rebuilds itself as your channel list changes.
◈
Whisper View
All incoming and outgoing whispers routed to a dedicated tab. No more hunting through general chat to find what someone said to you five minutes ago. WhoCHAT isolates the conversation. The embarrassing whispers are your own business.
◈
Guild & Officer Chat
Dedicated views for Guild and Officer channels, populated in real time including guild achievement announcements — with deduplication logic so the same achievement does not echo through your chat six times in succession. The system has strong feelings about message spam.
◈
Party, Raid & Battleground
Party, Raid, Raid Leader, Battleground, and Battleground Leader messages are all captured and routed to the appropriate view. Raid warnings and boss emotes are additionally surfaced in the Glance dashboard so you cannot claim you did not see them. You saw them.
◈
Nearby Chat (Say & Yell)
Local chat — Say and Yell — is captured in its own dedicated view. Particularly useful in cities and hubs where local chatter is constant and often entertaining. WhoCHAT does not filter by quality. That is your responsibility.
◈
Default Chat Replacement
WhoCHAT can optionally hide the default WoW chat frames entirely and intercept the Enter key to redirect input into its own input box. When this is enabled, pressing Enter opens the WhoCHAT input rather than the default chat. Both behaviors are configurable and can be toggled without a reload.
◈
Memory Management
A dedicated memory manager runs periodic cleanup cycles — trimming message history in inactive views, flushing aged deduplication maps, and releasing pooled frames. /wcclean triggers an aggressive manual cycle. /wcstats reports current memory usage per view. It tries. It really does.
◈
Slash Command Integration
Standard slash commands continue to function normally within WhoCHAT's input box. Typing /g, /w PlayerName, /raid and other prefixes route to the correct channel as expected. The addon handles input routing. WoW handles the actual sending. Division of labor. Everyone is fine.
02

Setup &
Known Issues

Installation is simple. The complications come later. The lab appreciates your patience.

01
Step One
Download & Extract
Download whochat.zip using the button above. Extract the WhoCHAT folder from the archive and place it into your WoW addons directory:

World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\WhoCHAT\

Ensure the folder name is exactly WhoCHAT and that WhoCHAT.toc is at the top level. WoW is not forgiving about folder structure. It will simply pretend the addon does not exist.
02
Step Two
Enable & Log In
At the WoW character select screen, click AddOns and confirm WhoCHAT is listed and checked. Log in. The WhoCHAT frame will appear in the lower-left region of your screen, overlapping where the default chat normally lives.

The default chat frames remain visible initially. Use /whochat hide to suppress them if desired. The main frame is draggable and resizable.
03
Step Three
Navigate the Interface
The tab bar across the top of the WhoCHAT frame shows your available views. Click any tab to switch views. The Glance tab is always present. Channel tabs appear automatically as you join or receive messages from channels.

Type into the input box at the bottom of the frame. Use standard WoW slash commands to specify channel targets. Press Enter to send. The addon will not send to a channel it doesn't recognize. It will tell you if it doesn't.
04
Step Four
Monitor Memory Usage
During extended sessions, use /wcstats to check memory consumption per view. If the addon memory climbs beyond 8–12 MB, WhoCHAT will notify you automatically in the default chat frame. Run /wcclean for an aggressive manual cleanup pass.

Realistically: plan for a UI reload (/reload) every hour or so of active play. Not ideal. The lab is aware. The lab apologizes. Partially. The lab remains proud of the concept.
⚠   Version Compatibility — This Is Not Optional Reading

WhoCHAT is built exclusively for World of Warcraft 3.3.5a — the Wrath of the Lich King private server client. This is not a coincidence. This is a deliberate, load-bearing choice. The addon hooks into specific API behaviors, event signatures, and chat frame internals that exist in this version and no other version the lab has chosen to care about.

The lab is aware that Wrath Classic exists. The lab is choosing, at this time, not to support it. Wrath Classic is a different client, with different API behavior, different event argument ordering, and different opinions about what constitutes a proper SavedVariables flush. The lab has enough problems.

If you attempt to install WhoCHAT on Wrath Classic, it will likely load without error and then behave incorrectly in ways that are difficult to diagnose and entertaining to observe from a distance. The lab does not recommend this as a debugging strategy, but acknowledges it has happened.

WhoCHAT has no external dependencies beyond the WoW 3.3.5a API itself. No libraries. No additional addons required. No network connectivity. It is self-contained and suspicious of help.

✓ WoW 3.3.5aSupported (with caveats)
✗ Wrath ClassicNot supported
✗ Other VersionsNot supported
      BL-005 WHOCHAT: STATUS — FUNCTIONAL BUT PLEASE WATCH THE MEMORY  ⋮  GLANCE VIEW: ACTIVE — MENTIONS DETECTED — WHISPERS QUEUED  ⋮  MEMORY MANAGER: RUNNING. DOING ITS BEST. SINCERELY.  ⋮  CHANNEL SCAN: COMPLETE — 4 CHANNELS REGISTERED — TRADE STILL TRADE  ⋮  BL-005-??: ROOT CAUSE OF MEMORY LEAK REMAINS AT LARGE  ⋮  /WCCLEAN: AVAILABLE. RECOMMENDED. SLIGHTLY EMBARRASSING TO NEED.  ⋮  REMINDER: WRATH CLASSIC IS NOT WOTLK 3.3.5A. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.  ⋮  SESSION TIMER: APPROACHING 60 MINUTES. CONSIDER A /RELOAD. JUST CONSIDER IT.  ⋮  BL-005 WHOCHAT: STILL HERE. STILL TRYING. MEMORY: UNCLEAR.  ⋮