WoW file extraction

[ShasVa]

This might seem silly, but how exactly are the WoW files extracted?

Assuming there is a way to do so, why have the 4.22 files not been extracted, or even those of the latest PTR build? Why the delay/difficulty/etc?

Now assuming that such extraction was possible, what difficulties would there be, if any, as far as integrating them into a repack and having them actually work?

[stoneharry]

The client only contains a partial amount of the data required to get the server-side stuff working, and even then you need to reverse engineer it out and slowly debug it. It's slow, painful, it doesn't always give that much information.

The server-side stuff required, must pretty much all be hand-written. Hence why it takes ages. Trying to work out how features are implemented and how to enable and handle them is slow, requires lots of debugging, and a high understanding of the programming language you are using.

The way the server and client communicates, through the use of packets, is now randomised each patch (minor or major). It took emulation from patch 1.x to 3.3.5a to reverse that much information, and now they randomise every single patch. So you can see why some people just headbut the wall and walk away.

It's a huge task not many attempt, and progress is slow because of these new limitations.

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If you're talking about extracting information from the MPQ files, then that is simple and most have done it. Getting the file structure and manipulating it is harder.