🔥 MAELSTROM — PHASE 5 IS HERE 🔥

Maelstrom by Millenium-Servers is a progressive WotLK 3.3.5a server focused on phased leveling, meaningful progression, tuned content, and a mostly Blizzlike experience.

UBRS is waiting for you..

🌊 Quick server overview:
• Selectable XP rates : up to x3 from 1–49, then x2 from 50–59
• Crafting x2
• Gathering x1
• Everything else stays close to Blizzlike
• Progressive level caps & content releases
• International NA / EU / OCE community

⚔️ PHASE 5 launches TODAY : August 21 at 20:00 UTC

🔓 Level 60 unlocks Saturday, August 29 at 16:00 UTC

🌋 Molten Core will open 3–6 weeks after the Level 60 unlock (6 weeks maximum )

Phase 5 is the final push before true endgame begins.

Gear up. Finish your preparations. The road to 60 starts now.
Website: https://maelstrom.millenium-servers.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/BPy8ca2XC6

A couple of weeks ago, we shared our plans for Patch 1.12.4 and the World Discoveries system.

Today, we have a release date.

Patch 1.12.4 launches Wednesday, August 26th at 8:00 PM UK time.

There has, however, been a change to what will be included in the patch.

When we announced World Discoveries, we knew filling Azeroth with handcrafted Discoveries would take time. What we underestimated was just how much time.

Every Discovery is manually designed, placed, scripted where necessary, given appropriate rewards and tested. As we've continued building them, it became clear that properly populating the world to the standard we want would take considerably longer than originally anticipated.

We don't want to hold back the entire update until Discoveries are finished, but we also don't want to rush them simply to get 1.12.4 out the door.

Instead, World Discoveries will remain in development while Patch 1.12.4 moves forward with other new content and features.

We'd rather take the extra time to make Discoveries worth finding while continuing to give players new things to do in the meantime.

So, here's what's coming on August 26th.

Guild Banks

Patch 1.12.4 introduces fully functional Guild Banks to Project Legacy.

Guilds will finally have shared storage for crafting materials, consumables, equipment and anything else their members want to contribute.

We've deliberately kept the initial cost low because we want Guild Banks to support communities as they form and grow on the server, rather than becoming something only wealthy and established guilds can afford.

The costs are:

• Tab 1: 50g
• Tab 2: 50g
• Tab 3: 100g
• Tab 4: 200g
• Each additional tab continues to double in price

This gives even a relatively new guild an accessible way to get shared storage, while additional tabs remain something guilds can gradually work towards as they grow.

A New Challenge in Gadgetzan

Something new is waiting in Gadgetzan for players around levels 45-50.

Inspired by Ring of Blood style encounters, players will step into the arena and fight their way through five increasingly difficult rounds.

Each round rewards a substantial amount of experience, and players capable of surviving all five will finish with a choice of powerful new blue-quality rewards appropriate for the level range.

The Gadgetzan arena is likely the most heavily scripted quest encounter in the entirety of Vanilla WoW.

Rather than five ordinary kill quests chained together, the whole thing functions as a scripted arena event. Each victory progresses the encounter into its next round, new opponents enter the arena and the challenge continues to build towards the final fight.

A significant amount of work has gone into making the sequence feel like an actual event taking place around the players rather than simply another series of kill quests.

It's the kind of content we want to keep adding to Project Legacy: something completely new that gives players another reason to visit an existing part of Azeroth while still feeling at home in Vanilla.

Talent Inspection

Patch 1.12.4 also brings a smaller addition that we think will be useful to just about everyone.

You can now see another player's talents when inspecting them.

You'll be able to see exactly how another player has chosen to build their character directly through the normal inspection interface.

Simple, useful, and something that feels like it could have always been part of Vanilla.

What About World Discoveries?

They're still coming.

World Discoveries have not been cancelled or abandoned.

The underlying system is already implemented and functional. The bottleneck isn't the technology behind Discoveries, it's creating enough good content to properly populate Azeroth with them.

Every Discovery is manually designed and placed, and many require their own scripting, rewards and testing.

We don't want exploration to consist of hundreds of copy-pasted objects scattered around the map just so we can say the feature is finished.

The entire point of the system is that wandering away from the road might lead you to something interesting: a forgotten camp, a profession interaction, a strange relic, a hidden quest, a temporary buff, a secret area or something else you weren't expecting.

That only works if the things you find are actually worth finding.

Rather than rushing them, reducing the scope of the system or leaving the server without an update for an extended period, we've chosen to separate Discoveries from the release of Patch 1.12.4.

Development will continue after the patch releases, and our plans for the system haven't changed.

We're simply giving ourselves the time to do it properly.

Patch 1.12.4 - August 26th

Patch 1.12.4 launches Wednesday, August 26th at 8:00 PM UK time.

The update will include:

• Guild Banks
• A new five-round Gadgetzan arena challenge for levels 45-50
• Large experience rewards and new blue-quality arena rewards
• Talent inspection
• Further fixes and improvements

Project Legacy has now been live for just over a month, and we're continuing with the same approach we started with: one persistent Vanilla realm that keeps growing through new patches rather than seasons and resets.

There's plenty more we're working on beyond 1.12.4, including the continued development of World Discoveries.

If you've been watching Project Legacy from the sidelines, August 26th is a good time to jump in.

Website: https://projectlegacy.pro

Discord: https://discord.gg/SY7EmETusW

Questions, criticism and suggestions are always welcome. We'll be around in the comments.

I’ve been playing this hand since the beginning. I could be considered one WoW’s grand old men. I want to say something to the WoW community, because I’ve seen every aspect of human nature displayed in just a simple game.
Show kindness, friends.
I’ve always been a tank, because it fits my personality…I’m a protector. I fight and die for those I care for. In real life, and even in this game. I’ve seen other players say the rudest things to others, over a simple mistake. Guys…it’s just a game. Showing kindness doesn’t cost anything, and you never know what someone’s going through. Please keep this in mind.
Just this morning I said goodbye to my dear Lilly. My 20 year old fur daughter. I played WoW for a few hours right after, because I needed to have a way to escape. I knew that I still had to take her down to get cremated before the day was over too.
As I played, I knew I wasn’t quite as effective as a tank as I usually am. My mind was not in it. That God I didn’t have active criticize me, but I did witness them harshly criticize another dps…calling them names. Of course I defended them, but it made me realize how horrible it is to insult people. It’s always unnecessary. There’s never an excuse to be rude. I don’t care what is going on in a silly game. It’s never acceptable. But keep this in mind, you never know what another player is going through.

Please show respect and courtesy. Not just in this game…but in life. Your kindness and patience might very well be what helps another get through a serious trial.

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

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!

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

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!