[Need Suggestions] Working on a WoW Lan Project

[DrakeFish]

Hi there. I recently decided to get back into emulation by creating a WoW server that will be used by about 30-40 persons in a LAN "party" for a few hours. The server will obviously be oriented to PvP action as this is probably the best thing to do in a LAN. The idea I have for now is to make players play battlegrounds that will be either voted for or randomly chosen by the server (successive games). I'd like to make it really easy to just login and play if you just want some fun, and easy to choose your gear if you're a serious player. Everything will be free and available on vendors where you spawn.

There won't be any horde-alliance balance problem as the teams will be randomly generated. Since I don't want players to feel like they're never teamed up with the friend(s) they came with, there will be a possibility to switch team for 1-2 minutes after each game starts (I'll probably make a queue system where you need someone else from the other team to request a team switch in order to join other side).

There will probably be a big screen showing the current game progress (with scoreboard and such). This is planned but not the main thing I'm working on.

This is a serious project I will be working on on next month and I require your suggestions/ideas/thoughts/scripts/SQL Query/ect. in order for it to be enjoyable for players. If you want to help in any way feel free to reply to the post or send me a PM. I could even open up my local server if you want to help ingame.

Thanks for any contribution you will make.

I'm also looking for your suggestions on the Server core. I'm currently running under Trinity for 3.3.5a, which seems stable and pretty much bug-free, but i haven't been around private server scene for two years so I'm not sure where the progress is at.

PS. I already know about the legal aspect of the project, but we're probably going to do it anyways. I'll have more info about this soon.

[Dr. Doom]

I don't see there being anything wrong with this project, because if you're just using it to LAN with friends, it's particularly harmless, and since Blizzard is a bunch of greedy asshats, they wouldn't ever think of allowing a LAN type game in WoW, LET ALONE SC2. I doubt they will even have LAN for D3, so stupid. But before I go ranting off about blizzard I think this is a great idea, and if you can get it off the training wheels and actually code it and get it setup, that'd be sick. I know a small amount of 3DS Max, it was my major before I realized it wasn't for me. So I could help make the scoreboard and etc, make it look neat. I don't know much about textures, so you'd have to find someone else :P

I think this will be friggin awesome, it's almost like Quake or Dune, which just spawn and you hack/slash/shoot at each other! And if you give everyone equal gear that'd be sick. The queue system would be interesting to hear about, maybe rather than a queue system, why not have it switch factions each game? and use some tpye of RNG to assign each team member randomly. Or make it so the winning side gets to choose who they play with or something like that, just my ten cents. Hopefully I helped!

[Harambeqt]

Go Mangos or Trinity because Arcemu is pretty much junk atm - alot of bugged spells & such.

[stoneharry]

What core you go for depends on your coding capabilities.

ArcEmu has Lua support, which is very easy to pick up and work with when you have no previous coding experience. The ArcEmu Lua engine is also quite powerful now, much better than ever before. For a LAN server, this would be the perfect solution as you could script everything quite easily without any issues.

ArcEmu also has a very easy DB system that is highly customisable - if you go with Mangos/Trinity you may find that things you want to do require core edits/DBC edits. Something no novice should take on really as you will end up breaking it.

Trinity and Mangos have much, much more game content supported. Trinity especially focused on getting the game mechanics and features working, such as spells/talents/vehicles/raids/dungeons etc etc. ArcEmu alternatively worked heavily on their emulator base rather than the features, hence why most new spells do not function and a lot of spell effects are hacky fixes.

Trinity and Mangos are generally regarded to be more 'stable'. However it really depends on what your doing - the NCDB based databases for ArcEmu are still often filled with corrupt and out of date data.

You can have a fantastic idea that will dazzle and amazing, however you can't bring it to life without knowing whether it is actually possible with someone of your skills doing it.

Also don't even consider legal issues, Blizzard won't care less even if you go public. The only times they have ever taken action is because servers were making a -large- revenue. It takes a lot of money to take somebody to court, especially for Blizzard being such a large organisation. They would rather spend that time and money on other things. The WoWscape case they didn't even do anything with for the last 6 months before a outcome was produced.

There are much more complex/bigger projects than this, projects that actually charge money for people to play. There is no threat of legal action for you.

[DrakeFish]

Thanks for the info and help guys. Since I want something stable over something easy to code with, I will go with Trinity. Most players who will play will already have a retail account and will feel like it's boring if the game is full of bugged spells. I didn't code for private servers for some times but I'm pretty sure I can get something working good with C++. I will re-code some of the battlegrounds and factions code so players feel like the game(server) is made to be played in LAN. I have about a month to do this, so I'll try to make it good but keep it simple.

Also when I talked about legal aspect, I said that because the project will actually take place in my school, they're doing a LAN event and plan to have about 150 persons (30-40 should use the server) and wanted to offer more than just shooter games. That's why I proposed a WoW LAN, something that I didn't hear about before. The event may get mediated (on local news or something like this), but like you said, I don't think Blizzard will even care about this.

I have a question about Trinity though. Are the battlegrounds working correctly? (I'll need WSG/AB/EotS). I just tested a Warsong game and a AB game and both seemed to have some bugs that were mostly visual (like the AB flags already having an alliance banner when the game start but that didn't count for an alliance base in scoreboard). I could probably fix those little errors but I'm wondering if Trinity devs actually worked on battlegrounds as much as raids/dungeons?

[myran2]

Make sure you get some sort of a "beast-master" for hunters, so that they can actually use pets. If its a rather long play-time, maybe you should consider letting everyone start with the lowest-rank gladiator gear. They can scale up through kills or with tokens.

These are just ideas to make the server a bit less monotonous. :P
If you need any help with the trinity API, I can try to help out. (You're probably a much better programmer than I am, though.).

[stoneharry]

There are people who have used this in school before - I don't know how strict your schools are.

In the UK if I held a WoW LAN private server event I would have the police knocking down my door, quite literally.

If it's in the local newspapers anonymously, I'm sure it would be fine. The BBC etc are always publishing articles about the 'hidden' side of WoW (emulation) and various server owners being interviewed.

It really depends on how strict your 'system' is to be honest.

[myran2]

About battlegrounds working correctly, TrinityCore has done a pretty solid job getting everything working, but there are still some odd cosmetic issues that they haven't bothered fixing. If you do fix them, maybe you should consider submitting the fix after your LAN server is done?

[Sonic Waffle]

In the UK if I held a WoW LAN private server event I would have the police knocking down my door, quite literally.

Seriously? The police in my area wouldn't give the slightest care... In fact, they wouldn't understand and ignore it. Either way, if DrakeFish's school will allow WoW on the computers, I doubt they will give much concern for the server.

[stoneharry]

Seriously? The police in my area wouldn't give the slightest care... In fact, they wouldn't understand and ignore it. Either way, if DrakeFish's school will allow WoW on the computers, I doubt they will give much concern for the server.

Well, if I did it in school I would. As a private thing round a friends/at my house etc it would be fine.

[b2zeldafreak]

Good luck to you!


Are you going to host it on your own computer or a school computer?
I think as a LAN project it would be cool if you could make it a LAN repack, so that anyone with a LAN could use it (instead of a server that is specific to your computer and it's settings).


I hope you would consider releasing it when your done.

[h4llryd3r]

Amazing idea Drakefish =D But looks like you have a fair bit of work ahead of you. And you could still have a horde-alliance fight, but at the end of each battle, make their faction change, but you have to make sure the class doesnt change, thatd be really annoying.
And tokens to go up the PVP gear ranks would work nicely. You just have to find a way to work out who gets how many tokens. based on kills or team wins??

[DrakeFish]

I will probably release it when it's done. I may also submit fixes to TrinityCore if I make interesting ones.

And tokens to go up the PVP gear ranks would work nicely. You just have to find a way to work out who gets how many tokens. based on kills or team wins??

Exactly what I were thinking about when coming to see updates on this thread. I need to think about how much "tokens" they will need based on the number of time they will play for. (4-5h ?). Anyone has more ideas about this? Else I'll just go with rough numbers and maybe get some friends to agree or disagree with it.

edit:
After some thoughts, I guess I'm going to use the honor system. It's already coded and will be very easy to code vendors for it. I'll make 3-4 ranks and I'll have tier/season vendors (a different vendor for each ranks) and getting up in honor will lead to being able to buy the last tier/season set and weps. I want everyone to enjoy the game even if they arrive late and want to keep up on others.
Another advantage of using the honor system is that completing objective will also make you rank up.

Amazing idea Drakefish =D But looks like you have a fair bit of work ahead of you. And you could still have a horde-alliance fight, but at the end of each battle, make their faction change, but you have to make sure the class doesnt change, thatd be really annoying.

I thought about this too. The problem with this is that I don't want their racials to change. Maybe make them keep initial racials with simple unlearn/learn spell codes?

[Ballwinkle]

In the UK if I held a WoW LAN private server event I would have the police knocking down my door, quite literally.

No they wouldn't. Police have bigger issues to deal with than wow servers.

[stoneharry]

No they wouldn't. Police have bigger issues to deal with than wow servers.

They don't, believe me... At least, not in my area. If I held a WoW LAN event in school, and they found out it was illegal to do so and not part of the default game, they would call the police, the police would take me, I'd prob get released on bail but you get the idea.

My friend who has done much less had the police raid his house overnight, because of something trivial he did in school.