It's been a long time since I made Private Servers, can some one get me up to speed?

[Nicholas Aranda]

I used to run a private server back when magnos was just starting to be developed for Burning Crusade.

I spent many months gathering files from many different servers, building on massive Private Server which I ONLY offered in the FunServer variety.

I don't think I ever got that big but I was one of the only servers who were able to go past 255 and hold more than 32 people, my max was 200.

I believe my server was called SkypeWow although, I'm not 100% positive, I was 15-17 back then and I'm 24 now.



I want to get back in. I want to gather files from all over to build the most complete / most offering server. I want to make FunServers again.

I have an ASUS G7VX | Intel i7-3630QM 2.4 - 3.2 GHz | 16 GB RAM | nVidia GTX 670MX 3 GB GDDR5 600 Mhz Core 1200 MHz Memory gaming laptop on Comcast 120 mbps up 12 mbps down:

What are the best "cores" to use, what is my expected connection limit, what are the servers using now a days? MySQL? C++?

[jimmys96]

"I was 12/13 back then and I'm 24 now."

So you're claiming burning crusade was out 11-12 years ago? Burning crusade in 2002...?

[Corthezz]

Very serious question:
Are you a troll?

[stoneharry]

"I was 12/13 back then and I'm 24 now."

So you're claiming burning crusade was out 11-12 years ago? Burning crusade in 2002...?

Very serious question:
Are you a troll?

He probably guessed his age, which would still be fairly accurate. TBC era was 2008, which was almost 7 years ago.

On topic, see: TrinityCore Requirements - TrinityCore - KPsN Collaboration Platform

[jimmys96]

he probably guessed his age, which would still be fairly accurate. Tbc era was 2008, which was almost 7 years ago.

On topic, see: trinitycore requirements - trinitycore - kpsn collaboration platform

24-7=12 :d

[Nicholas Aranda]

Man, I make one mistake and everyone bats an eye. I edited my OP to reflect a more accurate timeline. I guess I thought BC came out shortly after the release of WoW. I played WoW for about 3 months when it went live, 14 years old, and bought the game that 3rd month after release. It's hard to keep track of time when you've been playing so long. Looking back, I was about 15/16 when I did the private servers, could have even been 17 when I did the private servers. I just don't remember 100% geeze: I'm sorry. Go easy on me. I just want to bring my idea of a server back to the community.

[T0mm]

24-7=12 :d

you dont know your Math you noob? ofc 24-7=12, duuuuhh <.< everyone knows that ... ;D

[Nicholas Aranda]

So, is any one going to help me get started? Maybe answer some of my questions?

Very serious question:
Are you a troll?

And by the way: no I am not.

...see: TrinityCore Requirements - TrinityCore - KPsN Collaboration Platform

Checking on this now! Thanks!

[zerobane]

heh; well you can ignore the "the internet is serious business" loonies

Some of these wow guys are getting as bad as DOTA2...

Have been doing much the same as you; ran a prvite server mannnnyy years ago. From what i cant gather something like this happened; mind you this is based off or reading countless pages of forums; so could be seriously off.

1. wowmeu took over the scene and basically had the best emulator; the rest kind of fell behind
2. blizzy went after them and shut it down; something about a 80 million dollar lawsuit was referenced a couple times.
3. Many of the others have gone zombie
4.. Most seem to be just repacks of the older mangos/arc/ etc...

Currently have gotten two running; basically I would start with any of the repacks to get a quick start; rather then roll your own.

Versions i've come across:
1. 3.3.5a - seems most current for some reason
2. 4.3.4 - most of these are from 6 months ago
3. 5.4.8 - sandbox / betas; not sure if you can get a full server up yet

Emu's
Looks like trinity and skyfire are the non-zombie ones.

This is based off of couple hours of forum poking; so; again; defintly could be off.

[Leonak]

Trinity Core is what i Used. Really easy to use.

[stoneharry]

heh; well you can ignore the "the internet is serious business" loonies

Some of these wow guys are getting as bad as DOTA2...

Have been doing much the same as you; ran a prvite server mannnnyy years ago. From what i cant gather something like this happened; mind you this is based off or reading countless pages of forums; so could be seriously off.

1. wowmeu took over the scene and basically had the best emulator; the rest kind of fell behind
2. blizzy went after them and shut it down; something about a 80 million dollar lawsuit was referenced a couple times.
3. Many of the others have gone zombie
4.. Most seem to be just repacks of the older mangos/arc/ etc...

Currently have gotten two running; basically I would start with any of the repacks to get a quick start; rather then roll your own.

Versions i've come across:
1. 3.3.5a - seems most current for some reason
2. 4.3.4 - most of these are from 6 months ago
3. 5.4.8 - sandbox / betas; not sure if you can get a full server up yet

Emu's
Looks like trinity and skyfire are the non-zombie ones.

This is based off of couple hours of forum poking; so; again; defintly could be off.

In ~2008-9, patch 2.4.3, all the top servers received C&D letters from Blizzard. All shutdown apart from WoWScape which renamed to ScapeGaming. Blizzard took them to court, said Peyton (the owner) made $1.5 million through donations and that they should be awarded damages, cost of the lawsuit, as well as ScapeGaming shutting down with immediate effect and all files handed over to Blizzard. Blizzard won the case and were awarded $80 million

Since then no private server has been targeted by Blizzard.

3.3.5a is still the most popular patch because TrinityCore have pretty much perfected this patch.

With Cataclysm the game became a lot more harder to emulate, because the entire networking structure changed, and well... pretty much the entire game changed. Everything was redesigned, more advanced features used, it made it harder for amateur developers to emulate (indirectly, Blizzard have not done anything direct to prevent emulation). This killed off interest in the patch, and nobody really cared to emulate MoP either. PandaShan was formed from a group of paid experienced developers taking advantage of an internal leak at Blizzard making emulation much easier.

With WoD there has been another internal leak at Blizzard which makes emulation much easier. Although it was mid-alpha when this leak happened and much has changed since then, it gives a good foundation on the various structures and databases. TrinityCore have announced their master branch (all their main development) will be focused on WoD and is currently being developed, which should mean we can get WoD emulation in the future.

I would like to stress how different a game WoD is to WOTLK. It's an entirely new game engine, the backend has changed drastically, GRUNT has been discontinued completely and removed from the client, in favour of the only used protocol Battle.net 2 now. Many more advanced features are needed to be emulated with all in game content needing to be redone as well.

Emulation is mainly made up of amateur developers. It is rare to get good developers who know what they are doing and have worked in the CS industry who also want to take part in emulation and get used to a difficult ~300 thousand line code base. That is why no modern emulation has really happened until this point, and now there is a more coordinate effort.

Also the existing code base is quite bad as well and poorly designed. There are also many hardcoded features. It uses outdated code practices too. It is good for open-source software and is impressive how good it has become, but it is still bad compared to professional software following correct code standards and it makes it hard to adapt.

[zerobane]

Makes sense; thanks for the details!

Imagine most people in this biz (especially your senior devs); you have to sign NCC/CNC and NDA; which severely limits on coding in the eco-sphere. Officially any code I write belongs to company "x" and blah blah blah legalize... Even worse if your in the gaming industry; tends to be a small world.

As stoneharry mention, have had the best luck with 3.3.5a; I used a repack from jeutie that was simple to get running out of the box. Basically just change the Auth/realmlist table with my public ip and it was good to go (used a AWS server for testing).

Seems like the 90% is working with quest lines / areas; haven't hit any serious issues yet.

Tested a couple cata 4.3.4 builds; lots of borked quests; worldserver was spewing lots of errors; had some funny looking graphic glitches; fell through map, etc... You could probably dump alot of hours in and get a decent cata going; but don't think its going to be a "just add water" type of server.

Do have a quick question; all the re-packs have vmaps, maps, mmaps, and dbc; then the core server. Typically all separate d/ls; followed by cut and paste magic. Is there some type of legal reason for this somewhat painful packaging?

Something like a AWS snapshot/image, docker package or even a vmware image would be fairly easy to distribute and make a great release vehicle.

[wowpup79]

You should be able to get a repack and start from there.
I know where the 3.3.5 repacks are, dunno about Cata stuff.

[Nicholas Aranda]

Wow, so much information gained so far!

So 3.3.5a servers are basically perfect and is why they are abundant.

Well I'm going to focus on making a more current server 5.4.8

I'm just using a repack and hopefully will get some help with it.

[spleee101]

good luck finding a decent 5.4.8 source the only one that exisists officaly is from the skyfire team, and it is very unstable, many things from creature tables to vendor item tables are so out of whack it is not even worth trying to correct right now, IMO the easiest thing to work with is ottomons repack for 5.4.8 which can be found in the emu section here at owned core. as previously stated when cata came out in made emu very difficult and put the scene in a nasty lul because no professional devs wanted/ could be found to work on it, and the code was just too daunting for newbies on the scene. and while the exploits where found for MOP emu they came a bit too late and again the interest of capable devs just was not there. Now that 6.X has be released the main dev teams Skyfire and trinitycore have picked them up. Trinitycore has acutally archived is 3.5.5 branch and its 4.0.6 branch to focus on WOD. After being on here for many years now i got a pretty good eye of projection for this stuff and from what i can see over at the TCC forums, 6.X is the future and its going to be your best bet at future emu. 3.5.5 is so perfect now adays its basically dead for development. All capable persons should be putting all effort into 6.x and 6.x ONLY