Social Forever
Social Forever remembers the people you meet while playing World of Warcraft: Forever.
While you quest, the same players often cross your path again and again. Social Forever keeps a small list of those people above your chat so they are easier to recognize, target, invite, and remember the next time you meet.
Over time, strangers can become familiar names.
Built by Babunigaming for World of Warcraft: Forever (Interface 16001).
Current version: 0.4.6-beta
What it does
Social Forever keeps track of players you encounter and gives you a simple social history for them.
You can:
- See recently encountered players in a small movable window.
- Click a name to target that player.
- Invite them directly from the list.
- See how often you have encountered them before.
- See where you have met them in the past.
- Mark players as Green, Yellow, or Red based on your experience with them.
- Add flags such as Really friendly, Generous, Weird, or Bad behavior.
- Create your own custom flags.
- Mark someone as Kill on sight.
- Rate party members after a group ends.
- Exchange marks with nearby players who also use Social Forever.
- Quietly notice familiar faces again (blue or purple names) with a soft chat thought.
- Reset one remembered player, or all of them, from Settings → Memory.
Your social memory is stored account-wide in SocialForeverDB.
The player list
The window is split into two kinds of players.
Nearby
Players the addon has recently detected around you appear at the top.
A nearby player can stay up to 3 minutes after the last sighting, but Social Forever also checks presence every few seconds. If the client can prove they are more than 50 yards away, they leave the list right away. If they simply stop showing up on any unit token, they leave after a short grace period (about 15–30 seconds). Seeing them again clears that and keeps them.
Out in the world, moving into another subzone removes players from the previous subzone immediately. Capital cities are treated as one larger place, so walking between areas of Ironforge or Stormwind does not clear everyone from the list.
Party and raid members remain while they are still in your group.
In this zone
In this zone lists people who are on your General channel roster (you must be joined to General — you do not need to speak). People who speak in General, and people who yell, are added the same way.
They remain there for 10 minutes after speaking, or while they stay on the roster.
You do not need to say anything yourself. Roster-only and yell names do not raise familiarity. A real encounter (mouseover, buff, nameplate, and so on) still can.
A player who is already in the Nearby section is not shown twice.
When you change to another main zone, players left over from the previous zone are cleared after about 30 seconds.
How players are ordered
The list tries to keep the most relevant people near the top.
It prioritizes:
- Players in your current zone and area.
- Players marked Kill on sight within their section.
- People you have encountered more often.
- Players seen more recently.
The order refreshes every few seconds rather than constantly jumping around.
New names fade in, departing names fade out, and names that change position briefly fade before moving.
Targeting and inviting
Click a nearby player's name to try to target them.
If the target does not resolve to that player, Social Forever removes them from the nearby list rather than pretending they are still there.
Your current target is highlighted with a gold frame.
The button beside a player can show:
| Button | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Invite | Ready to invite them. |
| Invited | An invitation has been sent. |
| Declined | They declined. You can click again to invite them once more. |
The invite button disappears while that player is already in your group and returns after they leave.
If the other player is still in combat, their invite popup waits until they leave combat — that can look like a long delay even when your click already went through.
Familiar faces
Social Forever remembers how often you encounter each player.
A “Been nearby” count rises when someone enters Nearby in a new place (subzone, or whole city in a capital). If they leave the list and return in the same place — including after a reload — that does not add another count.
Names gradually change color based on how familiar that person is compared with the player you have encountered most often:
| Color | Familiarity |
|---|---|
| White | First encounter, or up to 30% of your highest count |
| Blue | 31% to 80% |
| Purple | 81% to 100% |
Players of the other faction use a dusty war-red instead of the familiarity colors, so they read as hostile without looking like a Red mark.
A Green, Yellow, Red, or Kill on Sight mark overrides familiarity and faction color.
Recognition
When a blue or purple familiar appears on Nearby (not only on the zone tab), or when you target them, Social Forever may print a quiet gray thought in chat, such as:
I've seen this Human Paladin before.
It waits a few seconds after they join Nearby so the list can settle first. Each person has a 20-minute cooldown that survives reload and logout. Party or raid members do not trigger it. There is no sound and no popup.
Hover over a player to see more of their history, including:
- Last seen: the place.
- Seen before: other zones or dungeons where you have met them.
- How many times they have been nearby.
- How many times you have grouped together.
- How many times they declined your invite (in red, when it has happened).
- Your mark and the shared mark, when set.
- Flags, when you have attached any.
Their level appears to the right of the name once WoW has reported it through your target, mouseover, or group. It uses that player's class color. Between the name and the level is a small icon for their race and class together (including Skyborne). A chat message by itself does not reveal a player's level.
Marks, flags, and Kill on Sight
Right-click a player to add your own impression of them.
Marks
- Green — someone you would happily group with again.
- Yellow — neutral.
- Red — someone you had a bad experience with.
Flags
Flags are your private reminders. They stay on your machine and are never shared with other Social Forever users.
The built-in flags are:
- Really friendly
- Generous
- Weird
- Bad behavior
You can also create your own custom flags.
Kill on Sight
Kill on sight is personal. It is never shared with other Social Forever users.
Rating a group
When a party ends, or when someone leaves your party, Social Forever can ask:
How was this group?
Each player can be rated:
- Again
- Okay
- Bad
These become Green, Yellow, and Red marks.
Converting the group into a raid does not open the rating window.
Shared marks
If another nearby player is also using Social Forever, the two addons can quietly exchange marks only (Green, Yellow, Red) through WoW's addon-message system.
Nothing is printed in normal chat.
Shared marks use a simple score:
- Green = +1
- Yellow = 0
- Red = -1
Your own mark is included in the result. The tooltip shows how many good, okay, and bad marks contributed to the shared impression.
Some information always stays personal and is never shared:
- Flags (including custom ones).
- How often you have seen someone.
- Kill on sight.
- How many times you have grouped with someone.
- How many times they declined your invite.
Two-word character names are not contacted through the hidden addon whisper because this client can incorrectly report those players as offline even while they are standing nearby.
How "nearby" works
Social Forever does not scan every player within a fixed radius. WoW does not give addons a simple list of everyone standing around you.
Instead, Social Forever builds the nearby list from players the game has already exposed through things such as:
- Your target, mouseover, focus, or soft target.
- Friendly nameplates, if you have turned them on yourself (Shift+V). Social Forever never changes that setting.
- Someone who buffs you, when Forever still exposes the caster.
- A resurrection cast on you.
- Other players from the current damage meter after a fight ends, only while they are still online and present to the client.
- Party and raid members who are online and actually within range. Offline group members are not kept on the list.
- Say, emotes, craft lines, duel, and trade.
In this zone is broader and weaker. It includes people who speak in General, people currently on the General channel roster, and yell. Being on that roster alone does not count as an encounter or raise familiarity.
Because of that, a silent player standing beside you may not appear immediately if the game has not exposed them to the addon yet.
Social Forever does not enable nameplates or use /who to build the list. The combat log event stream is not used.
Window and settings
The window normally sits above the chat frame.
- The close x sits in the top-left corner, away from the gear button.
- Hover the x for a reminder that
/sfor/socialforeverbrings the window back. - Drag the title bar to move it.
- Drag the
..grip in the bottom-right corner to resize it. - Use the gear button to change grouping options, name size, background opacity, and Memory reset (one player or all remembered players).
- Use the mouse wheel to scroll longer lists.
- Press Escape to close the right-click menu or group-rating window. The main Social Forever window stays open.
Use:
/sf
or
/socialforever
to show or hide the window. The addon-compartment button does the same.
Installation
Copy the SocialForever folder into:
Interface/AddOns/SocialForever
Then reload the game:
/reload
Development
The version-by-version development history is in DEVELOPMENT.md.
Development documentation
- Concept · Roadmap · Changelog
- Architecture · Design evidence · Development journal
- AI collaborator rules
The journal distinguishes source-based reconstruction, author direction, AI assistance, and independently verified behavior.
Documentation audit #32 — 27 October 2026
The original development log and changelog remain the primary account of releases and corrections. The supporting design, content/provenance, architecture, decisions, development journal, and AI collaboration documents interpret them for the portfolio without inventing missing history.
Current documented state: 0.4.6-beta, Interface 16001. The Nearby/Zone split matters: names in General do not prove physical proximity or count as personal familiarity. The familiar-thought mechanic uses a 20-minute per-player cooldown surviving reload/logout. Flags, KOS and declined invite counts are personal; compatible nearby users may exchange color marks, not flags. The documentation audit did not execute WoW, send invitations, inspect real player data or test migrations. Functional and security/privacy acceptance remains separate from the historical source review.
Document information
Author: Babuni.dev