Guide: Preserving macros when transferring servers

He didn't have his macros. Do you want to end up like him?

As you may have noticed in my earlier blog posts, I've changed servers on a couple characters recently. Upon logging into both of those characters I realized something horrible. The worst thing possible had happened. All of my macros were gone. For the first character I transferred, my priest, this wasn't a big deal. However, when I transferred my druid, this was a massive deal. My bottom left action bar was filled with macros that changed the ability they displayed every time I changed form. Recreating all of those would have been an absolute mess to figure out.

I thought, "There must be a better way." Lo and behold, there was.

If you find yourself transferring servers and missing your macros, there is an easy fix. While logged off, go to your main World of Warcraft folder (for me in Windows 7, it's C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft), then go into the "WTF" folder, then "Account" and then into the folder for the account the character was on. Then go into the folder for your old server and into the character's personal folder. For example, the full path for the folder that I'm in is "C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\(account name)\(old server)\(character name)".

Once there, copy (or cut) both of the files named "macros-cache". One of them is a '.txt' file and the other is a '.old' file. I don't know if both are necessary, but I copied both and it worked. Now go to the folder for your character on the new server ("C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\(account name)\(new server)\(character name)")and paste these files into there, overwriting any version of these files that is already there. Once you've done that, all you have to do is log in and all your macros will be there, on your bars, where they belong.

This will definitely put all your macros in your macro book. If you have action bar addons, I don't know if they'll automatically be on your bars. I use the default UI for my action bars and all of my macros showed up there when I logged in.

In short:

1. Go to the folder for your character on the old server
2. Copy macros-cache.txt and macros-cache.old
3. Paste those files into the folder for your character on the new server

You have to be logged out of that character for this to work. World of Warcraft loads your macros when you log in, so if you do this when you're already logged in your macros won't show up. Then when you log out World of Warcraft writes what macros it has to those files. So if you put those files there while logged in, it won't load them and it will take what macros it has (none) and overwrite the files you just put there (with empty files).

I hope this helps!

A while back I wrote a guide on how to get your addons to stop talking to you, especially on log in. If you hate your addons welcoming you when you log in, go check it out.

20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 7 - Why the blog's name?

The seventh day of the 20 days of WoW blogging challenge wants to know, "How did your blog get it's name?" Well, a long time ago, Sarah wanted a pet name. After much thought, I gave her the name of my favorite number, φ. φ, pronounced 'phi', is also called the golden ratio, the ratio of width to length that allegedly produces the most appealing rectangle. It's a Greek letter that produces the 'f' sound. Mathematically,

Some of the unique properties of φ is that

and

φ is a lovely number that shows up in many places, such as pentagons and the Fibonacci sequence, and it frequently appears in the natural world, too. For these reasons and more φ is my favorite number, so I made it my pet name for her. 

Later, she wanted a pet name for me. She asked me if there were any other good Greek letters to use for my name. After some thought, I came up with τ, pronounced 'tau'. τ is another letter that is used for the golden ratio, although less frequently. 

The first characters we leveled together, the paladin and the shaman, were named 'Phi' and 'Tau', respectively. When we transferred servers, those names weren't available so we changed then, and 'Tau' became 'Tauf'. My guildies started to call me 'Taufmonster' and so the name became my twitter handle and, eventually, the first part of the name of this blog. 

The other part, 'log', came from "captain's log." I chose this because it identified the blog with myself, and I felt it scanned well. So that's how my blog got it's name. The subtitle, "More than you care to know.", comes from the obvious fact that I will often blog about stuff that seemingly nobody would ever possibly care about.

The images for this post were created by using the Online LaTeX Equation Editor, a fantastic tool for making images of equations.