The history of how Divine Window came to be

Divine Window was born out of an earlier personal project. In early days, I already was interested in how add-on development was working. So I started creating a paladin addon which was called "Master and Commander". This was a Paladin add-on that was able to help you tank. It was in Vanilla (not to be mistaken with the current Classic), when a paladin could 'just' started to tank. I was one of the few paladins who actually tanked in some raids and dungeons when there wasn't anything like a taunt ability, or a sustainable way of keeping aggro. Fun right?

Blizzard updates

So I thought, let's put that in an add-on. I worked on quite a bit, but it was a hassle. As you may know, whenever Blizzard releases a new expansion, or a big content update, you most likely need to update all your add-ons. Some keep working, others are just broken and will be fixed within a few days, and others may just be broken indefinite. The latter was also for Master and Commander. The changes were too severe to get it done. So I abandoned it.

Rebooting Master and Commander

After I stopped working on Master and Commander initially, I also stopped playing. Because life. I was about 19 when I started to play World of Warcraft (beta) at that time. When World of Warcraft came out of beta and was launched, I played in one of the top guilds at the time doing Naxxramas in Vanilla (when it was still hard). I ended my journey halfway Wrath of the Lich King. Mostly because I simply couldn't keep up anymore and there were other things that needed my attention at that time. Years passed, we're talking about more than a decade here. The corona pandemic hit the world, and so there wasn't a lot to do around here. I played some Guild Wars in between, but it lacked the depth in the storyline of World of Warcraft that was so aquint to me.

So I decided to start playing again. It was at the end of Battle for Azeroth.

As the game was more casual, and my profession actually became a front-end developer (programming interfaces), I thought to have a go at this again

Re-Rebooting Master and Commander

I got back at my tanking paladin; and I noticed that the game has so many special effects and timers that my mind sometimes couldn't process all the things that were going on. With a wide screen, there's too much happening, and I don't like flashy things contineously having everywhere that some other people do. So I decided to reboot Master and Commander and change it to something it can show a status. As I'm mostly playing a protection paladin, I've decided to put it all in one small area to focus on. While I was thinking on how I best put it together, a random thought crossed my mind: "Why not something in stained glass?". I remembered the cross-stitched 'Windows of Chagall' at my late grandmother's place. As kid I was always inspired. There was always something happening, but it was also putting me at ease at the same time.

So I created it. It was a statically mapped window that had a few variations when some may have chosen a different talent.

As I mentioned earlier, when Blizzard changes something, you could just start all over again. And that happened again. After Shadowlands, the way we are using talents completely changed again. I stopped for a moment again with it.

From Master and Commander to Divine Window

I was close of never creating something like this again. However, I couldn't let the idea go. So I decided to make Divine Window. Basically, a re-creation of Master and Commander, however, with a different perspective: "It should be dynamic, so when things change, I can change the addon without too many problems".

Right now, we're here. And it works, it's expandable and it can be used for every player who likes to put their timers on a focussed area.