Getting Started With Warcraft Logs
Welcome to Warcraft Logs! This page will help you get familiarized with the Web site and all of its features. You will need an account to upload logs to the site, so if you plan on uploading logs, first create an account. You do need a valid e-mail address, since we verify it via an activation e-mail.
Battle.net Integration
After you have signed up for Warcraft Logs, you can integrate your account with Battle.net. This gives WCL access to your characters and guilds. You can go to your user settings to integrate with Battle.net.
What is a Combat Log?
A combat log is a file created by the game that contains a series of events. These events contain information such as what abilities your team used, what damage they did and to whom, and what healing was received.
The idea behind combat logging is pretty simple: record what happened so that it can be sent to Web site for analysis.
Enabling Combat Logging
Before doing any logging in World of Warcraft, you need to make sure that Advanced Combat Logging is enabled. This is required in order for logs to be accepted on the site. Go to the Network pane of System preferences in-game.
Advanced Combat Logging must be turned on before you do any logging!
To enable combat logging in World of Warcraft, just go to your chat window and type /combatlog. That's all you have to do! Now everything you and the players and enemies around you do will be written to a file called WoWCombatLog.txt. This file can be found in the Logs subdirectory of your WoW installation. When you're all done, you can just exit the game or type /combatlog again to turn logging off.
I turned logging on and am hitting a target dummy, but nothing is being written to that file! What gives?
Outside of raids, the combat log file is only written to when a certain number of events have been generated. This means it can be very slow to update if you are just doing solo content out in the world.
Are there add-ons to help me with combat logging?
Yes. You can use add-ons like Loggerhead, DBM or Ask Mr. Robot to have logging turn on automatically in raids and turn off when you leave. It is very important when using Warcraft Logs that you log the entire raid though. DBM's auto logging feature, for example, only logs bosses, and this will cause it to not log pet summons. This can lead to problems where pets won't be connected with owners.
If possible we always recommend that you log the entire raid night. Do not leave trash and events that occur outside of the combat out of the log.
Uploading Logs
In order to upload logs to the Web site, you use a client application. This application can be obtained here. If you have any issues getting the application to launch or install, we encourage you to go to the forums for assistance, since it's likely someone else has encountered the same issue and can help.
Two Kinds of Logging
There are two ways you can choose to log. The first is to upload the entire log file after your raid is over. The second way is to do what we call live logging. In this model, the client monitors the log file and whenever it sees new events tacked on to the end of the file, it sends those events up to the Web site. The live logging mode is great for when you want to study wipes right after they happened to see what went wrong.
Where Do Logs Go?
You have two choices for where to upload your logs. Every user on Warcraft Logs gets a personal log space just for them, so you can always upload your logs there without ever joining a guild.
The second option for log uploading is to upload your logs to your guild's area. When you do this, everyone in the guild will be able to see the logs. Think of it as a shared space for official raids by your guild.
Before you can upload logs to a guild, you must first join the guild. If the guild does not exist, you can also create a guild.