Ohai! No problem.
This is the first time I’ve had this issue.
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How did your folder get deleted?
Wait what? What caused this? Seems like a very nonchalant thing to comment, and an equally nonchalant reply from kaivax.
Isn’t this some huge issue with the game if it’s deleting your files randomly? Was there something that actually caused this to happen to you?
The benefits of not using addons?
Dunno, Windows 1809 update deleted files randomly. Maybe it’s an up-and-coming feature of programs these days to just randomly purge files. Keeps you on your toes!
Geez well you scared the crap out of me with this, especially with how everyone’s like “Oh ya, it happens all the time.” Backing my stuff up for WOW, and now I’m backing up stuff for other games too hah!
Where is the best place to back them up?
Google drive is what I went with, but maybe there is a better option?
An external harddrive maybe too?
None here either. Just to much of a pain to maintain.
I use onedrive and have a junction ( mklink /j “%UserProfile%\OneDrive\Example Folder” “F:\Example Folder” ) that way my wtf folder stays updated.
External backup drive where possible. Either via enclosure or a bare drive you keep in a secure location that can be put into a drive dock for temporary connection for backups. I use this option for both my hackintosh and my PS4 Pro. Only storing your backups online in the cloud has two disadvantages:
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Requires internet. If it’s out, you can’t restore. No bueno.
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Counts against your data cap. Twice if you have to restore during the same month you backed up.
Offline backups that are physically present are the best hedge against failures for most home PC environments.
For WoW, you can even do a multi-backup like I did when I was able to play: backup to a drive kept otherwise offline, and backup copy the WTF, Screenshots, and Interface folders to another location either on the same drive or another drive in the computer. The advantage of the local backup is that you can also easily revert to a known working addon if a new release breaks for any reason and be on your way in less than a minute.
I am going to knock on wood before I say this…knock on it a lot…but my TRP profiles have never up and erased themselves or gotten lost. I know other people, though, that have it happen regularly. I’m not sure why it does for some, doesn’t for others.
The rest of my addons whatever, it usually just takes a minute or two to set everything right, but most roleplayers live in constant dread of having to rebuild profiles from scratch.
It’s definitely possible to do without one. It’s what we used to do in the Before Times, where you just had to keep an eye out for RP Walking as a signal that someone was really a roleplayer and not just a lookie-loo. We all have stories from the old days, I think, of approaching what turned out to be strolling NPCs. But yeah, these days people without at least a RP addon installed, even if they don’t make an active profile, tend to get ignored on the assumption that they’re off-server trolls or people who like to be on RP servers because of friends or because they tend to be a little less jumping-in-a-circle-spamming-LOL-in-yell but aren’t interested in participating. Both tend to be thick underfoot.
I myself was a late-adopter of TRP that can do expansively coded multi-page profiles with embedded images, music, first-looks, etc. over MRP/XRP that had some basic one-page settings and I still think it’s kind of amusing that people think that they need all that stuff. Some of it is pretty cool, but back in my day we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways and we liked it!
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How about Blizzard automates it for everyone?
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I wrote a PowerShell script that does the following:
- Creates a new versioned and dated folder in a folder where I store backups.
- Backs up /WTF and /Interface folders to this versioned folder
- Deletes the /cache folder
- Starts the Blizzard Launcher
I also have a script that allows me to revert back to any previous UI version if I do something that blows up my UI.
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Ok so I’m not the only one who got wrecked by this Tuesday…
That crazy. Like WTF crazy. Went ahead and backed up mine and a few other folders just in case.
i have a triple-layer back-up system.
1: i make a copy in a back-up folder on my computer hard drive
2: i keep a copy of my hard drive(s) on a 1 TB USB external SSD HD
3: i burn a copy of the aforementioned back-ups to DVD-ROMs
i also keep the really important info backed up in hard-copy format (i write it down in a notebook)
Sudden power loss can cause a full or partial loss of WTF files. This is partially a Blizzard/WoW issue, but it’s extremely hard for them to replicate and test solutions. I’ve chatted with the UI devs about it in the past, and they’ve done some testing and work to try to ensure that the .bak files remain in place (for a few years, the .bak files were never updated properly - that’s been fixed by now).
The problem is that sometimes the game doesn’t restore itself from these .bak files after a power loss, instead creating new .lua files. After a reload/logout/exit, then the .bak files with the proper data will be wiped too and replaced with a backup of the new, empty .lua files.
This means that starting up WoW immediately after losing power (before checking the integrity of your WTF files) can leave your files in a state where they can’t be recovered anymore. If you do happen to remember to check them before booting WoW after a power loss, remove the ‘.bak’ from any ‘.lua.bak’ file that does not already have a matching ‘.lua’ file. That should fix the issue.
As far as I know, this problem has not been fixed. I live in South Florida and brief power loss/flickers usually happen once every week or two. Last time this happened while playing WoW was mid-Legion, and I ran into this issue and experienced the same problem (and was trapped because I started up WoW before thinking about it, so the .bak files were already replaced).
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I have my Interface and WTF folders in a git repo on gitlab dot com
Auto commit every day in a crontask (I play on Linux, this is an easy task to do on that system), push to repo. I can rollback to any day since 2012 (when I first started the repo)
Basically everyday at 2AM, I have my addon updater (custom made) run, update everything, then send all that to gitlab (addons + configs)
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ive used 2 maybe 3 add ons back in Vanilla required by guild for raiding. i see the usefullness of them but personally meh.
As a reminder, TRP (Total Roleplay 3) has documentation on how to back up your files. https : // totalrp3 . info/documentation/how_to/backup_and_sync_profiles
This sounds great, its just really hard to justify spending all this time on something that I change very frequently. Like, if I backed up my Weak Auras stuff at the start of the expansion I would still have to do a LOT of work on all the changes I made since.
Even just the start of the season!
Hopefully this just never becomes a problem haha