Hi mattd86,
I'm going to number the issues to better organize the problems you had listed.
1. Required login? Simply choose guest button when prompted to login. Nothing requires you to login and that has not changed since the launch of Minion. The guest button is right below the register button where its always been.
2. Must restart for update? You are never forced to update Minion. There was a button to skip the update if you didn't want to.
3. Game detection? Minion prompts you if you'd like to scan your computer for other games for the first time. You must have allowed it to scan for WoW unless Minion detected Wow while you still had the old version installed. The new version prompts you for the first time but if the old version already found your WoW install then it wont ask you.
If you don't want WoW detected any more delete your minion.xml & restart Minion and it will act like new and when prompted to scan for games installed on your computer uncheck World of Warcraft and check the remember option. You can also try and right click on the game in the list and remove it but there is currently a bug that will some times re-add the game. So thats why I suggest removing the minion.xml.
Your minion.xml is located in your windows user folder under .minion (C:\Users\<your windows username>\.minion\minion.xml)
5. We're you having other troubles? The thread title suggests you might but I really didn't see any details about it in your post.
If you continue to have trouble please provide the information here:
http://www.esoui.com/forums/showthread.php?t=236
Thanks and have a great day!