EmuHistory

[PolitisktNamn]

Ancient History of WOW Emulation It all began with Skull’s wish to get his hands on World of Warcraft Alpha, which was purely internal and wasn’t supposed to get out of Blizzard itself. Skull's main goal was to gather a team to hack Blizzard to get the Alpha client. He tried first and last, and finally at the end of 2003, Skull finally manages to get the Alpha from somebody inside. It was never told how and exactly when, but it was out…

This message was posted nearly everywhere…
Open-source proponents, crackers, and anarchists alike rejoice as an alpha version of World of Warcraft has allegedly been secured and is now supposedly making its way around warez circles. This news comes from Skull's Hack Site who says WarForge (infamous for their work in battle.net emulation for the War3 and TFT betas) is already working on server software for the WoW leak. Availability for those outside of cracking groups is limited at best and the situation has just now grown past rumor, but details and screenshots can be found here and here if you wish to judge for yourself. After this message the Alpha client started to spread thought torrents. People have been getting in great quantities, but there was no server to play on.

Blizzard’s response on leaking Alpha client…
"As many of you know, we are currently conducting an internal Alpha test for World of Warcraft. Our goal for this Alpha test is to provide the best possible experience for players when the Beta launches in early 2004. In order to accelerate the testing process, we recently allowed a small group of external testers to play the game. During this process, a collection of files was leaked to the Internet. While these files contain alpha content from the game, they are not fully playable and therefore do not convey the experience that World of Warcraft will provide when it is released. We are currently investigating this matter and will take serious action against those involved. As always, we appreciate the interest and enthusiasm that players around the world have for World of Warcraft, and we look forward to delivering a massively multiplayer game unlike any you have ever experienced. Until then, we ask that you refrain from sharing any content that doesn't come directly from Blizzard Entertainment.

Lax
At that time Lax started to reverse engineer World of Warcraft client without any clue what the original server looked like. He didn’t have packet logs, and nothing like that, since there was not public Blizzard server for Alpha. He managed to code an Alpha server (in C++) and add several features without the glimpse of official servers. It was named Abyss. Then Lax suddenly left and handed his work to dedicated devs who wanted to continue his code. Generin, _Psycho, TheUndying, TheDamned, Alita, Cain continued Lax’s work and developed emulator based on Abyss. It was named Stormcraft and became most famous emulator of all the time (in positive way, unlike WOWEmu).

I take no credit for this,It all can be found here EmuHistory - WoWDev

[ADAMZY]

A bit of random semi-useless information.
But interesting to know.

Thanks, nice post.