ZugZugDB is a World of Warcraft Forever database: items, spells, NPCs, quests, zones, item sets and professions, read from the game's own files and from what players record in game, in the style of the databases of 2005. World of Warcraft Forever is the game players also call Classic Plus (Classic+): the classic game carried on with new content, which is what the Forever badges on this site measure. It is an unofficial fan site, not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment.
Start with the search box, or browse items, spells, item sets and zones.
Who runs this
ZugZugDB is a fan site. There is no company and no staff behind it, no ads and no tracking. You can reach the site through the contact page (a public email address is there), and in its Discord group.
Methodology
- Game files. Items, spells, zones, item sets, factions, professions, classes, talents and achievements are read from the client files of the loaded build, the same files the game itself shows you; names, stats and tooltips are rendered from them, not typed in.
- Play sessions. The client carries no catalogue of NPCs, quests, objects, drop tables, vendors, trainers or spawn points. Those are recorded by players in game (see Download) and loaded as observations: where an NPC stood, what it dropped, how many times it was looted.
- The vanilla seed. Until enough has been recorded in Forever, the gaps are filled from the patch 1.12 world data of the VMaNGOS project, labelled as vanilla reference. A recorded observation replaces the seeded fact the moment it covers the same thing.
- Forever badges. What is new or changed in Forever is measured by comparing the Forever client exports with the Classic Era exports of the same shape: a record is new when its id is absent from the Era export, changed when it is in both and a field the page shows differs (name, level, stats, damage, effect text, cost, cast time, pieces, bonuses, criteria), and the same otherwise. Icons, prices, durability, stack sizes and flags are never compared. For NPCs, quests and objects, which no client catalogues, the comparison is observation against the vanilla data: seen in Forever and absent from vanilla is new, seen and contradicting vanilla is changed, and a record the vanilla data alone knows is neither.
- Formulas. The formula pages state the long-established classic (1.x) rules; nothing there has been measured against Forever yet, and each page says so. Theorycraft collects the measurements players make.
Data provenance
| Source | What it provides | Label on the page |
|---|---|---|
| World of Warcraft Forever client files, build 1.60.1.70170 | items, spells, zones, item sets, factions, professions, classes, talents, achievements; tooltips and icons | none: unlabelled data is the game's own |
| Play sessions recorded in Forever | NPC and object positions, drop tables and their counts, vendors, trainers, quest givers and objectives | "Looted N times" / "Seen N times" under the table |
| VMaNGOS patch 1.12 world data (snapshot of 2026-09-28) | the same kinds of facts where Forever has none recorded yet | "Vanilla reference" on the section, "(vanilla)" on a row |
| Classic Era client files | the comparison behind the badges; nothing from them is shown on its own | FOREVER and CHANGED, with the Era value beside the Forever one |
| Blizzard's forums and news site | the official posts under News | "From Blizzard", the date and a link to the original |
| The theorycrafting forums of 2005-2006 | the formulas | "Last checked: unverified against Forever" |
| Players of this site | comments, suggestions, Theorycraft threads | the author's display name and the date |
Update cadence
The data is reloaded whenever Blizzard pushes a new game build and the pipeline has read its files; there is no fixed schedule, the game sets it. The footer of every page says which build you are looking at and the day its files were exported: at the moment build 1.60.1.70170, 1 October 2026. Each load that changes something gets a post under News listing what the build added, changed and removed; the official posts are synced with the same loads. Observations from play sessions and the comments arrive between builds.
What the labels mean
- Vanilla reference
- From the 1.12 world data, not yet confirmed in Forever: how the original game did it, shown because nobody has recorded the Forever answer yet. Replaced by the observation as soon as one exists.
- FOREVER
- New in World of Warcraft Forever: the record is not in Classic Era.
- CHANGED
- Changed in Forever: a field the page shows differs from Classic Era; the record page lists each one with the Era value beside the Forever value.
- Drop chances
- An observed drop chance is printed only after the source was looted 10 times; fewer than that is an anecdote, and the row shows no chance or the vanilla one, marked as such.
Vanilla reference data
The game client carries no catalogue of NPCs, quests, drop tables, vendors, trainers or spawn points: those come from play sessions. Until enough has been recorded in Forever, the pages fall back on the patch 1.12 world data of the VMaNGOS project, community-maintained server data published under the GNU General Public License v2 (snapshot of 2026-09-28). Everything taken from it is labelled Vanilla reference — from the 1.12 world data, not yet confirmed in Forever, and is replaced the moment a recorded observation covers the same fact. Our thanks to the VMaNGOS contributors for keeping that data open.
Blizzard's posts
The official posts in News are reproduced from Blizzard's public forums and news site so that they can be read and discussed here, each with a link to the original. The text and the pictures are Blizzard Entertainment's; the pictures stay on Blizzard's servers and are not copied. A post Blizzard takes down, or one we are asked not to mirror, is shown as an excerpt with the link only. Links that leave this site open in a new tab and are marked with a small arrow.
More
- Linking: addresses, short links and the tooltip script for your own site.
- Contact: corrections, account trouble, security reports.
- Tip the peons: what a tip pays for.
- Discord: the group behind the site.