[HN Gopher] AzerothCore: Self-Hosted World of Warcraft 3.3.5a Se...
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AzerothCore: Self-Hosted World of Warcraft 3.3.5a Server
Author : hugodutka
Score : 118 points
Date : 2024-04-10 11:39 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| sshagent wrote:
| I've hosted this software server (with and without mods) for
| friends and family a few times. Its pretty solid and the mods
| help bring additional fun or to fill in the gaps of low
| population. If you love WotLK, i'd recommend it.
| skerit wrote:
| It looks very interesting. What's the default content like?
| Looking at the SQL in the repository, doesn't seem like there's
| _that_ much quests provided?
| sebstefan wrote:
| Normally everything is there, the game's quests have been
| datamined a long time ago
|
| The question is more what's bugged and what's not
| mikedelago wrote:
| For what it's worth, most of the quests work fine. There's
| a _few_ that have issues, but the vast majority work just
| like they did in 2010.
|
| The largest issue I can think of that actually impacts
| overall gameplay is the thread system [0]. It definitely
| works, but currently threat at times isn't given or reduced
| in the correct amounts. The most common way this manifests
| is Growl from Hunter pets not properly taking aggression
| away
|
| [0] - https://github.com/azerothcore/azerothcore-
| wotlk/issues/5985
| nik736 wrote:
| I am not sure about AzerothCore, but back then with Antrix
| and Ascent the Database was always provided separately, while
| the emulator only offered the schema.
| mikedelago wrote:
| The repo represents a "BlizzLike" server in its' entirety.
| The 640MB of SQL actually does contain all of the quests for
| WoW 3.3.5a.
|
| A sibling commenter quipped about which quests are bugged and
| which aren't, but the reality of it is that the vast majority
| of quests work perfectly fine, including the quests that are
| heavily scripted (such as the Battle for the Undercity)
| sshagent wrote:
| Its blizz like. Last time i played was only some of the weird
| raid quests that we're a little iffy. But you could easily
| load this up and not notice it wasn't blizzard hosted (except
| on one about!)
| vsnf wrote:
| > MaNGOS
|
| I feel like MaNGOS never really got good enough, and instead all
| the solutions in use branched off it. At least, MaNGOS certainly
| had a reputation for being janky and inaccurate 15 years ago
| Valkryst wrote:
| I'm glad to see that the community is still going strong. I spent
| a lot of time working on private servers in the past, primarily
| on TrinityCore with a few modifications to add support for Lua
| and misc. features.
|
| Hopefully this project continues and adds support/tools for
| easier content creation and better documentation/customization
| than we've seen in the past.
| sebstefan wrote:
| How does it compare to CMangos?
|
| https://github.com/cmangos/mangos-wotlk
| mikedelago wrote:
| I'm not too familiar with CMaNGOS, but my understanding is that
| the original MaNGOS is the ancestor of AzerothCore (as well as
| most other C++ WoW emulators).
|
| The primary differences that come to mind between CMaNGOS and
| AC are AC's larger and more active community, AC's module
| system, and CMaNGOS has a relatively good bot (as in, non-human
| players) system [0].
|
| As an aside, AC does have a playerbots module [1], but my
| understanding is that it doesn't have the same polish as
| CMaNGOS's. It's also distributed as a patch to the upstream AC
| repo instead of a standard AC module, so that can be a pain for
| some as well.
|
| [0] - https://github.com/celguar/mangosbot-bots [1] -
| https://github.com/liyunfan1223/mod-playerbots
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I remember those glory days of Nostalrius before Classic was
| released so fondly. It was the first time I'd gotten that
| community feeling in a game again since the early 2000s. The
| state of multiplayer gaming in general is so toxic and horrid
| today that I don't bother. But they really had something right in
| that Vanilla WoW/Everquest/FFXI era. No dungeon finders, no
| flying mounts, no instanced PVP. Just people figuring things out
| together and being forced to cooperate.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I think that an underrated element in the success of early WoW
| is how it's not all that complicated or technical and generally
| didn't take itself that seriously (if even if some players
| did).
|
| Modern MMOs are almost the exact opposite, especially in raids
| where insanely complex encounter design has become the norm.
| That's great for the handful of people who enjoy that but not
| so great for the wider playerbase. Old WoW worked because it
| was playable for an absurdly wide audience -- back in TBC I
| regularly ran into everybody from teenagers to age 70+ retirees
| and other demographics that sit solidly outside the usual gamer
| crowd.
| netbioserror wrote:
| The tradeoff has been in time investment. It takes very
| little time to get the gear and materials needed to start
| working on Mythic Dragonflight raids, while Heroic and Normal
| can get started even faster and are actually quite easy by
| comparison. Meanwhile in Classic, the skill ceiling is low
| but the time investment is through the roof. My first time in
| Classic was SoD and just leveling to 25 was damned
| exhausting. I can't imagine going to 60, and I can't imagine
| the materials and money I'd need to seriously consider
| raiding.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The thing about Classic is that it doesn't work well if one
| is trying to race to cap and raid readiness. Leveling and
| gearing up is as much "the real game" as endgame raiding
| is. As such, it works a lot better when played at a relaxed
| pace with less of a focus on the destination, as the
| majority of players did back in 2004-2010.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's the biggest difference - I played classic and
| there were entire guilds (including mine) who never even
| bothered thinking of trying to do an actual raid. We had
| a few raiders but they were independently contracting
| with bigger guilds as subs.
|
| And we were totally fine with it.
| mikedelago wrote:
| Hey, I'm on the contributor team for AzerothCore, mainly focusing
| on maintaining the docker images and linux build CI! Cool to see
| it here.
|
| AzerothCore's "killer feature" is that it has a module system,
| where the game server can use C++ code to hook onto events. It's
| pretty slick and works quite nicely.
|
| One of the things I've been interested in working on is setting
| up dynamic linking for the modules so it's easier to just
| download the compiled module and run it with the server instead
| of compiling the server with the module. The biggest problem I've
| run into with my implementation for that is the .so for each
| module ends up being on the scale of hundreds of megabytes, which
| seems incorrect.
| Sakos wrote:
| Man, this project looks great.
| https://www.azerothcore.org/catalogue.html#/details/64692616...
| This especially sounds amazing and I know what I'll be doing
| this weekend.
|
| How difficult is it to start contributing to AC?
| mikedelago wrote:
| It can depend - some things, like content related issues may
| require triaging which can take some time to do.
|
| Testing PR's and confirming that the behavior is correct is
| actually one of the best things people can do to help -
| that's something we're always short on.
|
| For most of the code, as long as you can justify the change,
| it makes sense, and it's in line with the style standard,
| it'll probably not be an issue
| lairv wrote:
| I can't wrap my head on own hard it is to make such a project,
| what's your view from the inside, is it a massive thing ? In
| term of complexity, lines of codes, people involved, etc.
| Rexxar wrote:
| Do you know if it would be possible to create a new client and
| create something completely different than wow or is it
| fundamentally tied to wow gameplay ?
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| Why so you can change the timeline and seize the crown from
| Thrall when he invited you to join him in Durotar and you
| declined? Because you have my axe if you do - the Horde
| should have stuck to its wild roots!
| dylanzhangdev wrote:
| I have downloaded and played with this on my computer many times
| and am very grateful to the great open source community for such
| a great product. There will be a period of time every year or two
| that I really want to play, and then I will get bored after
| playing for a while (the most likely reason is the lack of
| interaction with friends in the single-player mode). This is my
| reason. They support writing some scripts in Lua, which is
| interesting.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Nice! So this is WotLK? I'll try it out. I left WoW around
| Cata/Pandaria. Especially the panda thing I found stupid. It was
| so childish Kung Fu Panda style.
|
| Would be nice to go back and visit some of the forbidden areas
| like gamemaster island and the hidden area under ironforge
| bombcar wrote:
| I didn't mind the pandas as much as the continued ... wotlking
| of the world.
|
| It was all better when there wasn't as much of an overarching
| story that they really felt they had to force you into.
|
| And dailies. Fuck dailies. I already have a job.
| polski-g wrote:
| We call them wizard chores.
| bombcar wrote:
| I understand every single step in the progression to them,
| and I still hate it. Literally drove me away from the game,
| barely ever to return.
| jwells89 wrote:
| While the most common uses of cores like this is to spin up
| "blizzlike" servers or "funservers" that use the original content
| but with boosted XP, loot, etc multipliers, to me what makes them
| interesting is when combined with client modding, the possibility
| of custom content -- new zones, quests, loot, races, classes, and
| with some ingenuity even new systems.
|
| They're good foundations to build on. One would be hard-pressed
| to find an MMO client+server that's as polished and complete.
|
| The legal risks involved make it too risky for anybody within
| Blizzard's reach to do anything but private tinkering with,
| unfortunately. It makes me wish for legislation that makes non-
| commercial game modding and reverse engineering strictly legal.
| xandrius wrote:
| I agree but I do think copyright should apply here, so it
| should be open but in 20+ years, since the company is still
| active and making quite a bit of money off it.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| There are very vibrant, massive population private servers for-
| profit out there that have been around forever and seem to be
| doing just fine - see the Warmane project.
| w-ll wrote:
| I learned so much C# eary modding
| https://github.com/runuo/runuo an open Ultima Online server.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| I wonder if you can use the WoTLK Classic client to connect to
| this. IIRC there was a project to proxy WoW Classic client
| connections to server emulators like these.
| jwells89 wrote:
| It might prove more challenging than one might expect, because
| the Classic clients are actually modern WoW clients patched to
| behave like the originals. Blizzard apparently evaluated using
| the original clients, but found that differences in server
| architecture and lack of security patches made that
| impractical.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I thought this was illegal? I tried using a private server Summer
| 2012 and it was shutdown by the end of the summer.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The light path is authoring AzerothCore.
|
| The dark path is fundraising from that audience of male 30-45
| year olds with massive disposable incomes to make your own game.
| prerok wrote:
| Sorry if this is a stupid question but I cannot really understand
| how it works. I get that this is a server and you can connect to
| it with a client... but what client can connect to it and speaks
| the same protocol?
|
| You still need to have the WoW client installed, right?
| kemayo wrote:
| Yeah, specifically you need to find a copy of the WoW client
| waaaaay back at version 3.3.5a and then tweak it slightly so
| that it connects to your custom server instead.
|
| https://www.azerothcore.org/wiki/client-setup
| prerok wrote:
| Got it. Thank you!
| spxneo wrote:
| is there something of AzerothCore calibre but not C based
| languages? something like Python or Javascript that can perform
| like it.
| TylerE wrote:
| That's literally impossible as they (especially python) is a
| fundamentally much less performant language. It's like
| expecting a clapped out rental car to beat an F1 car in a race.
|
| This is a multithreaded server supporting dozens to hundreds of
| players simultaneously. All the game logic runs server side
| (else the players cheat).
| whartung wrote:
| But why is this so performance bound, particularly for just a
| couple of users?
|
| I mean, sure, if you're hosting 1000 of your closest friends,
| I can see the potential issues. But for you, and a small
| party, it shouldn't be that awful.
|
| Large groups, close together, are the largest load factor on
| a server like this because of the explosion of interrelated
| event broadcasting. "Oops, Lulzmage just cast Blizzard on a
| pack of 10 toons in the midst of a two 40 man raids attacking
| Orgrimmar." WoW has never handled them well, and it's
| fundamentally why they rarely do "world events" anymore, even
| with the modern sharding tech.
|
| But a hundred folks across Kalimdor killing boars one on one,
| eh, not that big a deal.
| jwells89 wrote:
| All this is true, but naturally the projects that _can_
| scale are going to be getting the majority of dev attention
| since those can be used for large scale private server
| projects like Nostralius. There's not nearly as strong of a
| "market" for servers intended for small friend groups.
| TylerE wrote:
| Even on a tiny instance, that efficiency could be the
| difference between needing a $5/month server and a
| $50/month server. (or being able to run it on something
| like a Rasp Pi vs a server-grade computer)
| spxneo wrote:
| I see theres no way to avoid it then.
|
| is there some sort of performance benchmark showing number of
| online players per server compared to other similar solutions
| (paid and unpaid)
| _chimmy_chonga_ wrote:
| I've played around with ACore a good bit, mostly using their
| docker container builds. Which are amazing and I wish a lot of
| the other emulators would follow suite.
|
| One issue I did run into was with calling the WoW admin apis,
| which are soap. The documentation seems to suggest they just
| "work" after changing your server's configuration but I, for all
| my effort, could never get it too while using the container
| version
| w1nk wrote:
| These projects are awesome to see, there are similar efforts for
| everquest. Is anyone aware of anyone trying to create different
| clients/renderers for these MMOs? A VR client for any of these
| worlds would instantly be amazing.
| rolltrunhert wrote:
| For everquest, there's been some projects over the years. I
| dont know if any is very active at the moment.
|
| One is https://github.com/daeken/OpenEQ
|
| For more info, see the EQEmulator / ProjectEQ discord channel
| #project-open-eq
| Brainspackle wrote:
| so who wants to join the wow server I setup this weekend? ;)
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| I can't wrap my head the enormity of reverse engineering a WoW
| (or any MMORPG) server. It just seems like there are so many
| possible types of inputs to the actual server, with so much of
| the logic happening in Blizzard's black box, that it wouldn't be
| possible to come up with a decent server emulator. Impressive
| work.
| bombcar wrote:
| Surprisingly large amounts were offloaded to clients especially
| early on - iirc early pvp was a madhouse because "accurate
| correct line of sight" and other things you should never trust
| the client on were only done server side in instances.
| Zetaphor wrote:
| As someone who has reverse engineered an online games protocol
| (Anyland, admittedly much less complex in scope), I can provide
| a little insight. I started from a known point that would be
| easy to replicate and observe, and then just built out from
| there. Once you've got a foothold you can start to build up an
| understanding of how the various components interact, and with
| each new discovery you increase gain new insight into other as
| yet unmapped systems.
|
| This is still incredible work on their part that would require
| an incredibly deep understanding of the game mechanics in order
| to reproduce their artifacts by observation
| gotbeans wrote:
| Dmca in 3... 2...
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| NFT people: Now's your chance to prove your concepts.
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