Managed to get a private World of Warcraft server running on my own machines lately, which is fun.

The official Blizzard Warcraft game involves a client on your own PC (which I’ve bought and got ‘cos I’ve played Warcraft) and a server and database which your machine interacts with (which you don’t get to see). Some clever geeks have managed to work backwards to figure out what the Blizzard servers must be doing and provide a duplicate you can run on your own machines. Then repointing your client to your own server and not the official one gets you a private server.

Setup First stop is which server? Several groups have done this, argued with each other, produced new versions blah, blah. Selected Trinity simply because plenty of people seemed to mention it and it seemed well maintained. Server setup involved pressing an old P750 back into service, cannibalizing a 20Gb hard drive from elsewhere to have enough space and rebuilding the machine with latest Ubuntu Linux. Then it’s download the server code and compile it which went smoothly once I’d got all the right code libraries installed. The BIG issue was the database side. It details the characters and contents of the world and getting a coherent data set was messy but eventually figured out. It helps being happy with things like SQL and databases :) An excellent walk through is here. Finally re-point the client to my own server and voila! login and create a character.

Playing Given what a mess Warcraft has become for higher end characters, creating a new character and running them up through the first 8 levels was really fun. Brought back so many good memories of why Warcraft is such a stunning game. However being a private server with a player count of one it did feel very “cold” and strange. Deserted cities when your used to them being packed out is quite unsettling. It’s also, being a best guess copy, not exactly the same as the official version. Tiny things such as monsters being in odd places or behaving differently.

Being GM No, not genetically modified, but a Game Master. Since its my own server I can change settings as I see fit. Want a wealthy character? Easy, just type “.modify money 1000000000” Of course when you can have anything in the game with a few commands, it all ceases to have value. Nothing is really notable when you can always win. The big problem was that although I could give myself every wizarding spell in the game, it actually makes the character near unplayable! Not to mention that not having played for a fair while meant struggling for correct moves. Clunky doesn’t describe it. It actually makes you realize how well Blizzard step-by step “train” you as your game character progresses.

So what to play? Well first I’d like to go the many areas I’ve not seen in-game. I’ll have to make myself super-powerful or I’ll get chewed up, some of these places expect entire teams of top-rank players. But my big motivation was to use it as a film-set for some machinima I’ve got in mind. I’m never short of great stories to tell. And the second was to perhaps use the code-base to explore some ideas I’ve got about how these Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games should work. Anyone with a few million to invest, please get in touch :)