Operation code question.

[lweid]

I'm asking this here because quite frankly most of the posters in the emulators section seem quite brainless, and I am trying to understand in my head how the core of wow emulation works.

I see these giant datamined 'opcode' lists and obviously the word opcode is contextual here, because an actual operation code, as far as machine language goes - is "the operation to be performed on a set of operands, blah blah".

So I left it to guessing, that WoW communicates with the server using these opcodes, and requesting them? For instance SMSG and CMSG?

I'm pretty familiar with winsock api, and I would really love to expirament. This may sound completely retarded but I was wondering if someone could give me a rundown on how this system works.

thank you.