Right off the bat I feel it prudent to mention that I know nothing of scripting of the how-goings behind making an AddOn, or else I'd have tried this myself. Infact I did start to try, but then I saw Lua and XML and thought to myself, "You know you'll just spend days getting nowhere and eventually frustrate yourself to the point of defeat. Why bother?" SO Here I am, pleading to you, the community of wow.curse.com, to help make my dreams come true!

I'd LOVE to see an addon that will check, either automatically or by command (Say the press of a button) for the presence of rare monsters in the vicinity.

I was thinking it would actually be fairly simple, with the active tracker changing depending on the zone you've entered to one that, when prompted would perform a "/tar *monster*" scan of all possible rare monsters in the zone. For instance, a player flies from Eversong Woods to Ghostlands and the addon would set the tracker to the Ghostlands version, which would only have "/tar Dr. Whitherlimb" in it's database, and, when prompted, would search.

Now if this were to return true (being that Dr. Whitherlimb became an active target, thus meaning he's nearby) it might add a raid marker icon and then announce, either in party chat or as a note (which can be toggled in a simple settings area) that said monster is nearby!

The only snag I can see in this is if a player (not likely) or a player's pet (possible) shared a name with a rare monster. However, call me naive if you want, I assume there must be some way of having the addon differ between user characters and NPCs.

So if anyone could manage this, they'd be a hero in my world and in the world of anyone else who loves the thrill they get when they see that silver dragon along a monster's portrait! Thanks!

/tar has a limited range and that is the only way to scan for mobs. There is no way to /who a zone for NPCs. You can keep an eye on SilverDragon and see if it gets updated for Wrath since this is as close to the functionality that you described as you will get.

I guess I didn't quite make myself clear enough. I understand that /tar has a limited range, I wasn't expecting a miracle mod.

What I'm hoping for is an addon that will perform the automated /tar search of your immediate area (ie. all of the mobs in your range) either periodically or on call (when a button is pressed).

In the absence of an updated SilverDragon, I would just make a macro. Yes, that's a pain in the butt, but it is the only way to make what you want work. As Magnum found out, there are no APIs for targeting. And automation was taken out of the APIs that addon authors could access way back around patch 1.10 or maybe even earlier.

Sadly, I think either your eyes, or a macro are your only options right now, mate.

Just to build on what myrroddin said about macros. If you can find a list of all the rare mobs in the zone(s) you can make a macro with multiple names as a target such as the one I use for rares in Outland and the Medium Rare acheivement:

/tar Fulgor
/tar Mekt
/tar Vorak
/tar Martic
/tar Bog Lurk
/tar Coilfang Em
/tar Crip
/tar Doomsay
/tar Okrek
/tar Goretoo
/tar Voidhunt
/tar Morc
/tar Hema
/tar Speak
/tar Nura
/tar Ever-Core
/tar Chief Engineer L
/tar Collid
/tar Kraat
/tar Ambassador J

I just have that as my macro and just span that key while I'm flying and it will pick it up if you are in range.

Thanks to everyone who figured out what I meant, and I did manage to cross-handedly manipulate a mod into doing what I want. Very similar to what teek5449 suggested, because that was what I had been doing before I originally posted this thread.

I took the addon "I Have Macro Lol!" which stores pre-defined macros in a separate area and when you come into certain zones (Or Boss Fights) it automatically switches the text inside the macro, while still using the same macro slot.

So essentially, I have a macro for every single zone in the game doing the "/tar mobname" list, and it only uses one macro slot.

Now I'm simply looking for an addon similar to the now out-of-date RareTracker, which tells you when you're in the same sub-zone as a rare spawn and records information such as locale and drops etc etc about rare mobs when you discover/down them. (I know MobInfo3 does most of this, but MobInfo3 just isn't to my liking most of the time.)

I wrote an addon to notify you when you find a rare mob. It scans your combat log, current target, mouseover target and nameplates and you can target the latest found mob via a macro it creates.

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12758-ESNRare.html

Well for yuor reference SilverDragon has now been updated for Wrath and works wonderfully.

In point of fact it doesn't work perfectly as of this post.

The import button appears to be missing from the application preventing you from loading data from the DB.

_npcscan is all you need... just fly around and if it detects an npc, it'll notify you.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/npcscan.aspx