[Dream BIG] Is there a WoW emulation guide for dummies?

[dutamulia]

Greetings!

I have a big dream and I have the desire. I want to setup a high quality WoW private server and I will to run it professionally.
I literally know nothing about programming or anything related to WoW emulation but I am willing to learn and work hard and pay whatever the cost is, I am determined to achieve success.
I believe consulting experts here would be the best thing I can start with, I humbly ask for general direction on baby steps and advancement.

For now, steps I think I should go with are:

1. Pick a core (mangos, trinity, or arkemu, etc)
2. Find out which programming language that core was written with
3. Learn saith programming language
4. Download necessary software, install and try to run it.
5. Learn how to fix bugs
6. Learn how to add custom contents
7. Recruit GMs
8. Buy a server cpu
9. Find a hosting service
10. Beta launch
11. More fixes
12. Grand Launching

My end goal would be a flawless WoW server where all spells/skills/talents working as intended, all quests doable, and everything else works normally.
Please let me know what you think.

-duta

[stoneharry]

1) TrinityCore for 3.3.5a.

2) C++ server powered by a MySQL database back end.

3) Learning to program is not something that can be accomplished in a short time frame.

4) TrinityCore Home - TrinityCore - KPsN Collaboration Platform / How-to_Win - TrinityCore - KPsN Collaboration Platform

5) Also on wiki.

6) Read code, change to work how you want, understand WoW client through reverse engineering and experimenting...

7) Find people interested.

8 ) What? You generally rent a server from a hosting company - it is not worth it to ship your own hardware out unless you are a bigger business.

9) ^

10) Okay.

11) How are you going to fix this when you cannot code? It takes years to become a good programmer (a WoW server is not the easiest piece of software engineering).

12) Have fun because emulation will be a very much dead I think by that time. It's a shrinking market at least, WoW is an old game. This is quite a slippery slope statement but it's my view.

[dutamulia]

Thanks for replying Stoneharry. As a green naturally I will have hundreds of questions, hope you willing to share your knowledge.
WoW indeed is an old game and it's true shrinking on certain region, but still is the overall best MMORPG available for picking. In my country there's none any good wow private server albeit demand is high. If those low quality korean mmorpgs can reap nice profit here, certainly WoW will flourish.

• I did more research and found I could pick a repack for starter so I can begin beta hosting soon while learning basics on the go. Btw is this Jeutie's repack a good choice?
• Can we create a new zone or a custom instance?
• Is it possible to add a more recent feature like AoE loot?

Ideally if I have enough capital, maybe I can just find someone who have enough experience with wow emulation and set an agreement so he/she can do the core job while I take care of external stuff like forum, administration, server maintenance, bandwidth, etc. But I don't really like being completely depend on someone. Haha.. lotza homework to do but I'm determined to keep going.

[stoneharry]

Thanks for replying Stoneharry. As a green naturally I will have hundreds of questions, hope you willing to share your knowledge.
WoW indeed is an old game and it's true shrinking on certain region, but still is the overall best MMORPG available for picking. In my country there's none any good wow private server albeit demand is high. If those low quality korean mmorpgs can reap nice profit here, certainly WoW will flourish.

• I did more research and found I could pick a repack for starter so I can begin beta hosting soon while learning basics on the go. Btw is this Jeutie's repack a good choice?
• Can we create a new zone or a custom instance?
• Is it possible to add a more recent feature like AoE loot?

Ideally if I have enough capital, maybe I can just find someone who have enough experience with wow emulation and set an agreement so he/she can do the core job while I take care of external stuff like forum, administration, server maintenance, bandwidth, etc. But I don't really like being completely depend on someone. Haha.. lotza homework to do but I'm determined to keep going.

A repack is just a compiled emulator where the binary files are distributed instead of providing the source code. This has many limitations and is not feasible for any live server really. Compiling is actually quite easy, see the articles I linked in my previous post.

You can create new zones and instances - depending on which route you want to take there are various methods to do this. This forum has a lot about client side editing: Modcraft - The community dedicated to quality WoW modding! - Index page

AoE loot might be possible to implement but it would be very difficult and not behave brilliantly. It is not a feature even worth thinking about trying to implement really.

And how can you trust that a developer is writing correct and good code and making changes that are good if you do not have a clue what they are doing?

edit: And this is a good read though dated: http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...knowledge.html ([17 point Guides] The Ultimate GM compendium of Knowledge)

[dutamulia]

Thanks for those great links, read some of them, bookmarked and will digest them gradually.

I have more questions concerning cost for setting up and maintaining. Assume 1k players actively online at all times:

• What is the recommended server cpu spec?
• How much bandwidth in term of uplink/downlink speed is needed?

Renting a server is not viable choice here, I have to get my own server CPU and subscribe to a dedicated connection.

[stoneharry]

Thanks for those great links, read some of them, bookmarked and will digest them gradually.

I have more questions concerning cost for setting up and maintaining. Assume 1k players actively online at all times:

• What is the recommended server cpu spec?
• How much bandwidth in term of uplink/downlink speed is needed?

Renting a server is not viable choice here, I have to get my own server CPU and subscribe to a dedicated connection.

Well when you get that big you have different options. The TrinityCore server with 1000+ players only uses around 4GB RAM with a 100mbp/s dedicated connection. However the MySQL server is using 8GB RAM to keep it responsive and fast. We have the MySQL server stored on a different machine but local enough to have no latency delays. You will need to analyse how your server behaves and react to that when you do eventually get that big. Don't expect peaks of more than 100 players for a longgggg time. You can run a TrinityCore server on very, very low specs while still small.

[dutamulia]

The TrinityCore server with 1000+ players only uses around 4GB RAM with a 100mbp/s dedicated connection.

This will be the major cost, internet connections are generally expensive yet here. By that's figures you gave : 100mbps / 1000 players = 0.1mbps/player or 1mbps for every ten players. Are those numbers under context of worst scenario? Sounds rather high to me.

[stoneharry]

This will be the major cost, internet connections are generally expensive yet here. By that's figures you gave : 100mbps / 1000 players = 0.1mbps/player or 1mbps for every ten players. Are those numbers under context of worst scenario? Sounds rather high to me.

When renting or even shipping hardware off to be hosted elsewhere, this is usually a standard included feature. Trying to obtain such a connection at home would be very, very hard and have a lot of ToS restrictions probably.

You won't even need to consider this as you won't have this many players to deal with.

It is nice to have this much flexibility as you can deal with malicious traffic easier.

[dutamulia]

Just made some more pricing research and found an interesting offer:

Server spec:
+ Dual Xeon E5-2620 CPUs (24 HT Cores x 2.0 Ghz)
+ 128GB ECC-Certified DDR3 RAM
+ 8 x 1TB Seagate Constellation ES 6 Gb/s 64 MB w/ RAID10 Hardware
+ Supermicro Branded Server

My package:
VDS IIX 4GB
Disk Space : 50 GB
RAM : 4 GB
Core : 2
Dedicated IP : 1
Price : $40/month
Bandwith : IIX up to 1Gbps unmetered, IX up to 5Mbps unmetered

This is a pure local connection 'dedicated' server.

And now I start to understand what you have said on you post above.
I'm astounded that they can provide up to 1Gbps (local)bandwidth, I never explore this area before. Now I know it is not extraordinary for a dedicated service.

Btw how much HDD space I am going to need? Judging from the repack size it is less than 100MB.

[stoneharry]

Just made some more pricing research and found an interesting offer:

Server spec:
+ Dual Xeon E5-2620 CPUs (24 HT Cores x 2.0 Ghz)
+ 128GB ECC-Certified DDR3 RAM
+ 8 x 1TB Seagate Constellation ES 6 Gb/s 64 MB w/ RAID10 Hardware
+ Supermicro Branded Server

My package:
VDS IIX 4GB
Disk Space : 50 GB
RAM : 4 GB
Core : 2
Dedicated IP : 1
Price : $40/month
Bandwith : IIX up to 1Gbps unmetered, IX up to 5Mbps unmetered

This is a pure local connection 'dedicated' server.

And now I start to understand what you have said on you post above.
I'm astounded that they can provide up to 1Gbps (local)bandwidth, I never explore this area before. Now I know it is not extraordinary for a dedicated service.

Btw how much HDD space I am going to need? Judging from the repack size it is less than 100MB.

You shouldn't be buying this much powerful hardware when you haven't even got a player base yet. Honestly, 2GB RAM is enough. OVH has some very good deals that you might want to check out (they are cheap, Kimsurfi is even cheaper sometimes which is an OVH reseller).

As for harddrive space, you are going to need about 10GB to be safe. Movement maps, vector maps, normal map data, and the Database Client files (DBC's) take up a lot of space and need to be generated from the client data and uploaded to the server in order to achieve full functionality. The MySQL database can use up a lot of space as well. The actual server binaries do not use a lot of space.

I do not know an awful lot about the hardware side of things - I am more of a software engineer.

[dutamulia]

You shouldn't be buying this much powerful hardware...

No I am not buying the hardware, just renting part of it according to the package available. There's another package which is one level below I mentioned above with half of almost all specs and half the price ($20/month).

edit: Lol... just realized it... how do I level up from from being Lazy Leecher to something better?

[stoneharry]

No I am not buying the hardware, just renting part of it according to the package available. There's another package which is one level below I mentioned above with half of almost all specs and half the price ($20/month).

edit: Lol... just realized it... how do I level up from from being Lazy Leecher to something better?

Earn reputation by contributing. Answering questions/posting threads that others find useful will result in them +Rep'ing your post (on bottom left of every post). 5 rep gets you out of lazy leecher, 40 rep gets you access to the shoutbox, 80 rep gets you access to many hidden sections and so on. The amount of rep you can give is based on a number of factors including your reputation, post count, and date joined. http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/gene...-handbook.html

[Namor]

Greetings!

I have a big dream and I have the desire. I want to setup a high quality WoW private server and I will to run it professionally.
I literally know nothing about programming or anything related to WoW emulation but I am willing to learn and work hard and pay whatever the cost is, I am determined to achieve success.
I believe consulting experts here would be the best thing I can start with, I humbly ask for general direction on baby steps and advancement.

For now, steps I think I should go with are:

1. Pick a core (mangos, trinity, or arkemu, etc)
2. Find out which programming language that core was written with
3. Learn saith programming language
4. Download necessary software, install and try to run it.
5. Learn how to fix bugs
6. Learn how to add custom contents
7. Recruit GMs
8. Buy a server cpu
9. Find a hosting service
10. Beta launch
11. More fixes
12. Grand Launching

My end goal would be a flawless WoW server where all spells/skills/talents working as intended, all quests doable, and everything else works normally.
Please let me know what you think.

-duta

Basically what stoneharry said is spot on.

Those steps sound about right. Learning the language is near impossible starting with WoW servers. You're not going to understand any of it, that much I will guarantee you. I learned by starting with C#, mastering that and making a fully functional multiplayer game, then moving on to learn C++.

Good luck though. So far no one has been able to accomplish that goal, I don't think you'll ultimately be any different in that aspect. WoW is a HUGE game. Try minizing your goals to be, not a replica of Blizzard's MMO, but something unique you made yourself. Read TrinityCore's Wiki, I think stoneharry linked it in his post. It's extremely useful.

[dutamulia]

Not much progress these few days, spent bigger chunk of time at retail than learning stuff
But I've done more readings and learned a bit more stuff. Please clarify if my understanding is correct:
Many ps build their server using Trinity core for example. Ethically, aren't they supposed to contribute back if they made a fix their ownself? I don't understand how those cores could progress if those ps only leach and give nothing back? And if they do give back, aren't all ps should be roughly the same quality if they use the same core?

[stoneharry]

Not much progress these few days, spent bigger chunk of time at retail than learning stuff
But I've done more readings and learned a bit more stuff. Please clarify if my understanding is correct:
Many ps build their server using Trinity core for example. Ethically, aren't they supposed to contribute back if they made a fix their ownself? I don't understand how those cores could progress if those ps only leach and give nothing back? And if they do give back, aren't all ps should be roughly the same quality if they use the same core?

Yes, people do mostly only leech. Sometimes servers do contribute back. The emulators rely on some developers to continue contributing and for bugs to reported when found.

Yes, most server quality is almost identical. They offer different rates and policies to try and attract different markets. This is a simplified statement and there are exceptions.