r/wowservers

Hey everyone,

For the last few months I've been working on a side project that got way bigger than I originally expected.

A few months ago I had some free time and I was messing around with a few projects. I also work a lot and at the time I was thinking about how annoying it is when you're on a laptop where you can't really install/download wow or anything like that.

At some point I had the stupid idea of basically, why not just make World of Warcraft run in the browser instead.

So that's what I've been doing.

This is a custom client for WoW 1.12.1 Build 5875, written from scratch in TypeScript. It's using WebGL2, Three.js, HTML5 Canvas, Web Audio and WebSockets and it runs directly in Chrome/Firefox without plugins, cloud streaming or running WoW.exe through WebAssembly.

For the backend I'm using a normal vMaNGOS 1.12.1 core, movement validation, combat, quests, loot, inventory, NPCs, persistence etc are still handled by the real server.

The browser is basically just a modern client.

Because browsers can't connect directly to the TCP socket WoW expects, I have a small Node.js WebSocket to TCP bridge in the middle. The actual protocol is still handled by the browser client itself, including the SRP-6 authentication, encryption, packed GUIDs, UpdateTypes, movement packets and so on.

One thing that took me way more time than expected was the graphics layer.

If you just load the old WoW assets into Three.js and use normal modern lighting it kinda looks like WoW, but at the same time it doesn't. The colors, fog and lighting feel wrong.

So I ended up comparing a lot of it with the original client and going through reversed/disassembled WoW.exe behavior.

Terrain uses the original MCAL alpha maps with 4 texture layers on the GPU, I'm matching the older gamma-space lighting as close as I can, WMO vertex colors are there, day/night lighting, distance fog etc.

I'm not really trying to remaster the game. I actually want it to keep that old look for now, this engine is highly capable to be customized.

Characters are GPU skinned from the original M2 bones and all 8 playable races with both genders are working. Weapon animations also use the original AttackAnimKits and AttackAnimTypes, so different weapons actually use their proper attack animations.

Transports are working too, which was honestly annoying to get right.

Right now I have 33 elevators using around 630 original animation nodes, and ships/zeppelins running over 8 routes.

When you're standing on a ship your character is actually moving relative to the transport, so you can walk around the deck, jump etc while the whole thing is moving.

Most of the UI is also drawn directly using HTML5 Canvas instead of having hundreds of HTML elements sitting on top of the game.

I've been recreating parts of the original Interface 11200 FrameXML/Lua UI in my own canvas system, so bags, action bars, character screen, chat, quests, merchants, stack splitting and a lot of the normal interface is already there.

At the moment I'm calling the build Alpha 1.0.

I currently have 584 tiles covering the Level 1-40 areas I've implemented in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, the major cities and also places like Deadmines, Scarlet Monastery, Wailing Caverns and Deeprun Tram.

Combat, spells, projectiles, quests, loot, vendors, trainers, professions, inventory/equipment and most of the normal PvE stuff is working now.

Audio is also there with around 3,887 sound entries and 11,514 spell sound references, plus zone music, day/night transitions and different weapon impact sounds.

Also just to get this out of the way because I know people are probably going to ask, yes, I used AI quite a lot while building this.

I'm one guy and realistically I wouldn't get anywhere near this amount of work done in a few months without it. I still review and test the code myself and I've built a lot of custom systems/pipelines around the project, but AI definitely helped me move much faster.

I recorded around 15 minutes of completely unedited freestyle gameplay where I basically just walk around, cast some spells, show random parts of the client and explain what I've done so far.

Youtube Video <- Any updates about the project will be posted here on youtube for now.

I also plan to open source the project once I clean up the extraction/build tools enough that somebody besides me can actually use them.

Just to be clear, I'm not distributing WoW.exe, Blizzard game files or game assets. Everything currently runs locally from my own files, and any future GitHub repo would only contain the code/tools I've written. People would need to provide their own game files in order for the browser client to extract its graphics layer.

There's still a lot left to polish and probably a lot of things I'm going to find are completely wrong, but at this point it's actually playable and not just another WoW browser map viewer/demo.

I'm curious what people think about it.

I'm also curious what kind of QoL changes or custom features people would want, and honestly if you think I should keep working on this.

I know some people will probably see it as pointless compared to just playing the real game, and I get that. For me it's mostly a fun and challenging project, and I still think having WoW run on basically any device without installing anything could have some interesting uses in the near future.

https://preview.redd.it/inb0ew6p4bkh1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=29764aec81359a31be263bb0241064d222884b9b

The Goal:

💀 Hardcore without progression changes

Create a place for Hardcore players where server changes never invalidate or alter your progression.

🛡️ Clean 1.12.1 compatibility

Stay compatible with an untouched Vanilla 1.12.1 client while providing the key features expected from a Hardcore experience.

⚖️ Death Appeals

Allow players to submit an appeal when they believe their character died due to an unfair circumstance, such as a bug or disconnect.

🌲 Evergreen HC

It's a small and relatively new project, so the current population is very low. If the concept interests you, feel free to join, take a look, and share your feedback.

💬 Discord

Account registration is currently handled through Discord: https://discord.gg/vMTMGHxCz

hey everyone, can anyone suggest some servers for me to play? I'm happy with classic i just want one that isn't going to get insta shut down and perhaps has people i can play dungeons with? if someone could suggest one or 2 that would be great, AI based on my preferences is suggesting chromie craft? wondering what the consensus is on that?

many thanks!

I read about the lawsuit and september 8th hearing, but how long can it possibly take before anything happens?

I’m looking for a populated Classic server that plans to progress through Vanilla → TBC → WotLK.

I’ve tried a few servers recently that are aiming for this, but the population just isn’t there. I don’t need a mega-server, just something active enough that the world feels alive and it’s easy to find groups.

Any recommendations?

Project Ebonhold was actually fun at first. I played for a couple weeks and enjoyed it. They have this roguelike mechanic where you draft one of three random "echoes" every level up, which make your character more powerful, to the point that you can solo content.

I say this server was fun, because the devs just abruptly made a bunch of changes last week that the player base do not like. They made the game far more grindy, and deleted a core game mechanic to get perfect echo drafts to make your character powerful. They replaced it with a new mechanic that will take new players literally months to get the same level of power veteran players achieved in days.

The worst part is they let all the veterans keep their overpowered echo builds, creating an almost insurmountable gap between established players and new players. This is of course because a group of influential veterans are friends with the devs and refused to give up their power.

After being swamped with negative feedback by the community, the devs mostly refused to listen and their answer was just to start handing out dozens and dozens of silences in game and on discord. I messaged a GM to discuss the issues, and he basically told me "Don't message me again or you're banned". 75% of players in a poll voted to revert the change to echoes, and they just ignored everyone.

Cool concept, but very toxic dev team. Would not recommend this server.

Like the title says, what's the best true vanilla 1.12 server I can host that has the best bots. I want to be able to do bgs, dungeons, all of the raids, mara 1 pulls on a mage with t2, etc. by myself with bots or me and the kids and a bot or 2. Of course I want bots out in the world leveling, fighting, and filling the AH as well. What's the best option for me?

I know there was a similar post about this topic, but it was just broad discussion among everyone, but here I would like to emphasize more on what actual ex-twow players think about playing official classic+ (likely releasing in couple months from now). Does it matter for you what features will official classic+ have? What sort of criteria would you go with for choosing official classic+ or playing pservers these days? I am interested in all sorts of opinions coming from people who had played turtle before.

I personally will try out classic+ for maybe first couple days to maybe see if some of old friends decided to join it, but don't have any long term plans on staying there if it is not of my taste

Hey people, here's the latest on hosting your own TurtleWoW with bots: this is automatically rebuilt Docker server, open source and linked to Shyalya's fork, so everyday it gets newest fixes, which you can apply with one click using my scripts

I rebuilt it for any CPU, so as soon as you have enough RAM, you will always get newest, stable, safe TurtleWoW 1.18.1 server with bots, which are quite advanced. Also I added scripts to start\stop the server, create account, repair database if needed, and also backup and update it all, so you don't have to use a single command - get it and run it!

You will need extracted data files, which you can get from my previous version of the server, all the links are on YT, because there are too many of them to post here, there are client, server, github, docker links, so check them out there

If you have any suggestions about tweaking default config values - feel free to send them anywhere! I have never done any repacks myself, but would be glad to tailor a good twow repack for everyone to enjoy!

Sorry for titling with Github link, but you MUST read that in case you're in terested in that project

Basically, they injected a license into the client so no one can play it on other servers than theirs. Is it Azeroth for all?(which is stated on their website)

Furthermore, even character list requires license lmao, so you definitely should avoid that

Aside from licensing drama, launcher asks you to install certificates, as they say, "to let you share files to other people". Guess which files and to whom, this is clearly "press yes to send your passwords to us"

And lastly, they didn't even care to remove russian word "release" in the game login screen, and they operate in that law-free zone, thinking they can suck money out of your "voluntary donations" in private bitcoin

Stay away and stay safe, dudes

EDIT: The dev(iThorgrim_exe) contacted me and he is NOT MMORPGDev, these are separate people for anyone confused in comments

A lot of self-hosting WoW with bots has come through my feed recently. But most of the stuff I've seen is for WotLK (including vanilla + BC). But I'm most interested in pet battles 😅 and flying around collecting all of the various pets.. And at this point in my life I don't have the bandwidth for the Online part of MMO so if I could load it up on my steam deck that'd be pretty great (ideally up to WoD (when I last played) so I can just use admin rights to add all of my pets from my real character and not have to "start over").

I dont know if anyone gives a shit about this post, but for about a year now im kinda obsessed with Single Player WoW cores.

It started with me paying some guy on Fiverr to set up an AzerothCore server for me because i wanted to understand how all of this actually works. Cost me around 50€ and honestly he was a really chilled guy, i could just ask him stuff while he was setting it up and learned quite a bit from that.

After that i started tweaking my own things. Custom legendaries, mounts, backpacks, items and all that stuff. But what really got me hooked was Playerbots.

My dream was basically to simulate a whole WotLK progression like you would have on a normal server. Leveling, Dungeons, Naxx, OS, Maly, Ulduar, ToC, ICC etc. I didnt want bots that just have insane gear and nuke everything either. For me it was important that they actually play good, do mechanics, have proper DPS rotations, heal correctly and generally feel like you are playing with decent players.

My base was a Playerbot module from a private server which was kinda similar to Warstorm.

After around a month i had Ulduar working surprisingly well. Hardmodes work, positioning works and even Algalon is playable right now.

And then things got a little out of hand lol.

I started changing basically every class and spec in the game.

Just some examples:

BM Hunter pets now cleave 2 targets with their auto attacks, have better stat scaling and BM has a custom 5 minute CD which summons 3 copies of your current pet for a short time.

Living Bomb from Fire Mage leaves a burning fire patch on the ground after exploding.

Chaos Bolt leaves a DoT which deals another 100% of the Chaos Bolt damage over 8 seconds.

Paladin got a baseline Whirling Hammer ability, kinda like the spinning hammers from Diablo. It deals damage and healing but the scaling changes depending on your spec. Holy does a shit ton of healing with it, Prot is a mix of healing/damage and Ret basically turns it into a pure damage CD.

Elemental Shaman has a chance while Flame Shock is ticking to make Lava Burst instant, and Chain Lightning has a 19% chance on the first target to spawn an Earthquake under it.

And pretty much every spec got stuff like this. Some are just small quality of life changes, others completely change how the spec plays.

Then i added M+ and later made my own little event module. It teleports you into Gurubashi Arena together with 10 Playerbots standing in a circle. Then its basically last man standing and the winner gets a Satchel of Gear. You can also trigger another version with mobs instead of bots and at the end it turns into a boss fight.

There were basically only two raid encounters where i never got the bots to behave as smooth as i wanted.

At some point i got really curious how far you could actually push this idea, so i started doing the same thing with Legion.

I found a decent Legion core on Github, got the server running and started building the Playerbot AI from there. For older/simple content its already working pretty smooth but holy shit Legion is another level.

There are so many movement mechanics, interrupts, target switches, ground effects, personal responsibilities etc. Even stuff that is easy for a normal player suddenly becomes a huge AI problem when you want 4, 9 or 19 bots to understand it without basically hardcoding every single step of the encounter.

So thats where im currently at.

Has anyone here actually made Playerbots work properly in Legion? Not just bots that follow you around and cast spells, but bots that can realistically do Legion dungeons/raids and react to mechanics?

Would be really interested to hear if somebody already went down that rabbit hole.