To get an edge in an eSports competition, I wrote Guild Manager — a Lua addon for World of Warcraft that automated recruiting and activity tracking for Order of Athene, the 1,000-member guild I led to a realm-first finish. It continued the work of my earlier addon, Guild Recruiter, which earned more than 172,000 downloads in its own right.
The Challenge
A competitive leveling bracket rewards the guild that grows fastest and stays most active. Managing a rolling 1,000-member roster by hand doesn’t scale — recruiting, onboarding, and pruning inactive members had to become automatic, so the leadership team could focus on leading.
What I Built
Lua automation
A custom addon written in Lua — the continuation of my Guild Recruiter addon, with 195,000+ downloads across the two releases.
Recruitment engine
Automated lead generation kept the roster stocked with enthusiastic, active players.
Activity tracking
Monitored member activity so nobody sat inactive for more than 30 days on a 1,000-member roster.
Realm-first result
First place in our bracket: Realm First! Guild Level 25, ahead of every other guild on the server.
From the Addons
Left: Guild Manager’s promotion & activity panel. Right: its predecessor, Guild Recruiter, in action — both live in-game.
See It in Action
Project References
Real links from the project — see the work for yourself.
The Result
We reached maximum guild level before every other team in our bracket — the in-game achievement [Realm First! Guild Level 25], earned on Uldum, a server of roughly 100–250k players, before the guild later transferred to Lightbringer.
Skills & Tools
The stack behind this build — tap any to see related work.
More Than a Trophy
I’m proud of these achievements because they aren’t mine alone — they’re a testament to positive leadership, inclusive problem-solving, and genuine team effort. The same tooling instincts that kept 1,000 players organized now keep businesses running.
What People Say
From people who have worked with JD.
★★★★★I had the privilege of working alongside JD as he dreamt up, designed, and implemented the guild recruiter add-on that is now ubiquitous in World of Warcraft.
JD automated countless hours of recruiting members for, promoting, and maintaining a thousand person guild in the cataclysmic expansion.
Furthermore the addon was instrumental in helping us achieve our goal of being the first guild on the server to reach level cap.
A goal which very likely would not have been possible without his code.
This project made a lasting impact on me my guild and countless other guilds across countless other servers.
In fact all these years later I was recently playing a new character and I received a very familiar message from someone running guild recruiter.Kj Boyce, Co-GM, Code Tester, Order of Athene
