How do WoW private servers work and why I hate most of them

- Original article by Francesco Borzi aka Shin: github.com/FrancescoBorzi/why...
- AzerothCore open-source development project: azerothcore.org
- ChromieCraft open-source server: chromiecraft.com
- ChromieCraft Discord: / discord
Music:
World of Warcraft - Teldrassil
LEMMiNO - Encounters
Paganini - La Campanella Vanessa Mae
LEMMiNO - Blackout
Exurb1a - The Dog Wrestler Waltz
Exurb1a - Blueshift version 2
World of Warcraft - Arthas My Son
LEMMiNO - Melancholy
LEMMiNO soundcloud: / lemmino
Exrub1a (Exrub2a) KZbin : / @exurb2a114

[@Painbow9553]

Thank you. I made a tutorial video on how to get Azerothcore up and running and the response it's received so far was unexpected - it's at 30,000 views in one week. Way more people are interested in running their own WoW server than I thought! Thanks for all the work you and other developers have done, and especially sharing the source and keeping it open. That is the spirit of the internet!

[@saxxonpike]

Licenses keep honest people honest, but let's actually be honest for a moment, pserv fixes never come back to Mangos or TC. That's never going to change. It's about premium features and cash flow. That said, I appreciate what you have to say about this situation, and thank you for operating ChromieCraft as such. I just started publishing my fixes to TC and AC. Tired of the pserv jank that could be fixed in one spot as opposed to just one server ever.

[@TC86]

Super thankful for all those who contributed to the open source project collaborations - would never have this option to enjoy with my sons to this day. BIG thank you to any and every one of them that contributed and continue to contribute to them!!!

[@jrobertlysaght]

I knew none of this. Thank you for laying it out in such an understandable and fascinating way.

[@Davixxa]

I really don't care about WoW private servers, I maintain an active subscription on the official service at the moment, but I absolutely care about Open Source. Thanks for calling out the widespread server admin practice of violating the licenses these are shared under.

[@davidd9707]

Must respect to ChromieCraft, this is how things should be done. Volunteering all of the work to make the community better as a whole. Great video, thanks for sharing this philosophy

[@uistaee7426]

Amazing video, didn't know about whole open-source core's stuff. Thank you for this video and for ChromieCraft server, keep it up!

[@civildisorder]

Basically it's like people wasting time re-inventing the wheel, when they can instead work together to have the wheels going to work on other parts.

[@Jarlaxl.Baenre]

I have so much love and respect for the devs at Chromiecraft. Thank you so much for the hours and hours of nostalgia

[@torinzhou2626]

Modules, That's the reason why I'm into the AzerothCore at first sight. Imagine if all devs do cooperate on a same project, that would be a mess of code all over the place. in my opinion modules make cooperation with a large group of devs possible.

[@serijas737]

This is something I catched up with in Epsilon WoW. Being elitist about what they do and very hostile to anyone trying to assist them. I got banned for asking to fix an .m2 model and told that I was "trying to stirr shit up" We need a new form of Private server called Open-Source Server or something like that with a more free philosophy. This is pretty exciting and I'd love to get into this.

[@sabinekatsavrias4422]

leaving turtle wow after playing there for years as it has turned into an utter shit show and im sick of being banned anytime i voice a single opinion about anything.

[@propichovac7818]

Thanks, I started contributing to AzerothCore thanks to this video. I really would like to join Chromiecraft.

[@marco1941]

This philosophy doesn’t only apply to open source or private servers, but it also applies to the real world. In my opinion, humanity stays way behind its potential, because of unnecessary rivalries between each other. If we would work together as one species on a global level (I actually think, that should be our goal right now), we would accomplish many more things and much easier! Climate change, hunger, world peace, all those topics would be much more likely to overcome, but instead, we rather throw bombs at each other, because of some weird believes of some individuals. Think about it. Cheers and merry Christmas!

[@therider990]

What a dumb philosophy

[@alexaw373]

capitalism

[@deeznutssz0]

im working on a really badass vanilla + repack with gameplay mor a kin to skyrim. obviously i willl give credit where its due. i wish others were like this aswell. very interesting video and topic! good job! and thank you for spending so much time and effort to make this for us!

[@Lornext]

At this point if you play Blizzard's WoW, you have no right no complain at all.

[@calebfairchild3247]

Honestly this is the best private server I've ever played. So cool to see a stance like this in the pserver community. Thanks CC!

[@ancresty69]

Hello, your video inspire me to make my own wow server and create a diferent experience than the normal wow, i have a ton of questions, im new, but everything ill do will be public for everyone to enjoy and tweak to their desire, so if you could help me, or point me in the correct direction, ill thank it for life, also i love your content and the server youve built. Keep it up kings

[@JohnDoe-tt4fm]

Great video, I agree with this philosophy. I think I will try out ChromieCraft.

[@samu999]

Interesting video!

[@danieldors1075]

Everything on this article make a lot of sense to MANY of us, don't you think it's just a fistful of weirdos who share your philosophy. I was able to enjoy Chromiecraft for quite long and contributed as much as I could to improve things. However, I dislike all the adjustments and custom modifications that started appearing, turning it into a different game. Let me explain: I understand spells and talents from 3.3.5a are not meant for playing 1.12.0 content and there were many unbalances, specially when content was released on brackets. I believe some actions were necessary, particularly on the PvP side, but not the ones that were taken. Crossfaction Auction House, crossfaction BGs, crossfaction raids, crossfaction dungeons, crossfactions guilds, constant modifications on PvP behavior (resilience, critic, heals), players exploiting bugs, farming bots, BG textures exploits, lack of global chat moderation, adding TBC items prior to release, adding custom npcs... way too many things. I wish you guys all the best luck and I hope you succeed with the server, hopefully some day after all testing and implementation is done there will be a complete, bug-free, balanced fresh realm in which we can play. I'm totally for x1 and a type of custom hardmode progress (needing to complete specific quests to be able to enter a dungeon, having to complete dungeons to be able to enter a raid, having to complete raid before accessing higher level content...)

[@commracAlekk]

What is ur paper called? I'm interested in reading it e.e

[@SirMalorak]

I totally get why people don't share their code. They wanna make money. That's fine. But they're hurting themselves as no single private server is without bugs let's be real here. I truly hope you'll continue your work even beyond Wrath of the lich king. I love MoP for example, and the closest thing to a solid MOP server is still filled with bugs and "gotta live with this" moments that could easily be fixed if all devs worked together

[@Davixxa]

> I totally get why people don't share their code. They wanna make money. That's fine. But they're hurting themselves as no single private server is without bugs let's be real here. I also get it, although even if we ignore the questionable legality of private servers in the first place and purely focus on the server software used to run the servers, it'd still be illegal, given the licenses used for most server cores (most of them CMaNGOS derived, so therefore, the GNU General Public License) state that modifications to the software must be made public

[@antonioamaral400]

@@Davixxa Absolutely the respect and integrity for the license must be preserved.

[@juanrollel3693]

@@Davixxa ppl really like stealing ips now a days with the " fuck blizzard" but dudes literally want everything for free assest , free code , free pathfinding if it was done out of love they would strat doing their own assest

[@leonbishop7404]

damn I love open source... keep it up!

[@YannMetalhead]

Good video.

[@keyboardking8008]

some people don't like to share , it is what it is , especially true if money is involved - i guess in time more people will join the open source model and eventually over time things will be fixed , at a slower rate

[@Tyrvana]

Me trying to learn c++ also me who spent 4 hours past 7 days cause i cba doing anything because i dont have fun in anything anymore. Me unhappy

[@michaelturner2806]

While I agree that it would be good if private server operators were motivated primarily by a love for the game and the good of the community, it's clear that a lot aren't. If someone is motivated by greed or fame, which I'm guessing a lot of these private servers are, then they have no reason to share their findings and improvements, simple as that. Also, unless I'm misunderstanding something about the private server scene, this seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of open source licensing. Anyone can take something open source, modify the code, and use it without releasing the extra code, as long as they don't release the modified product. If they then packaged up their modified code and released it for others to use in the form of compiled binaries or whatever, then yes they're obligated to release the code as well, under the license. But if it's just for use running on their own server, no code disclosure is required.

[@supermeuhmeuh]

I am still a firm believer that official classic used MaNGOS too 😅

[@Davixxa]

It pretty verifiably doesn't. Official Classic, when it launched, wasn't actually based off vanilla - it was based off Legion, 7.3.5 at the time, I remember them mentioning. Nowadays it's probably based off Dragonflight, given some of the shared assets (Dungeon Finder uses Dragonflight Icons, and the Settings menu is pretty obviously the dragonflight one). I remember watching one of the developer panels where they explained how they ported the old map files to the new formats that they'd developed along the line. Under the hood, Classic is much more similar to live than it ever was to MaNGOS.

[@MagicMushies]

Good points

[@chikuman6224]

love is everything. yes 95percent of the world humans are evil now. but even for them to exist, love is the source.

[@Proditae]

Thank you

[@Gilltrick]

Someone whants me to find this. I red your comment on github a few months (I guess) ago. I remember the quote. I can remeber my fist private server I hostet almost 10 years ago^^

[@MisterDevel]

Great video. But I'd stay clear from using gratis terminology, it's freedom or libre. Some projects released under the GPL do charge, like red hat. So gratis isnt exactly a perfect form for the analogy. Still, very well done!

[@xakiri4577]

Ascension WoW is a great example of this, has really good foundation of being fun and entertaining but they've been really digging into the dumb cash shop lately, purposely making daily quests boring to get you to spend money and other reason to spend money on there cash shop for DP, which I think is the scummiest thing to do lol. if anything have a donation button and make everything earned with in-game time and currency.

[@caysoft9823]

I earned a living by working for private servers from 2009 to 2014. This type of work can be quite lucrative, especially when working for multiple projects at the same time. While I did contribute to TrinityCore, most of my efforts were focused on private source repositories. Additionally, your understanding of the General Public License (GPL) seems to be a bit off. The GPL allows for modifications to be made without necessarily making them public. What you're referring to is the requirement to provide source code when distributing binaries of the software (such as publishing repacks). Since private servers do not distribute binaries, it's permissible not to publish changes. Also, it's important to note that major projects like TrinityCore have stringent standards. They typically reject bug fixes or features that are implemented in a suboptimal or 'hacky' manner. So, if a bug fix is effective but not implemented correctly, it will likely be turned down.

[@PerryCS2]

Sounds like Rextroy ...

[@keepgoing7533]

I wouldn't say hate, more like loathe, it's literally the character and mob movement. It feels rigid.

[@strajke_ofc2487]

Was this the same video posted like 8months ago?

[@gn2853]

Yeah, but that one was on my channel, so I decided to upload it here instead.

[@strajke_ofc2487]

@@gn2853 :ofc: :tea: :ofc:

[@jeffsaffron5647]

I played on many pservers and they all mostly suck. On Fresh ones raids are poorly tuned, mobs behave differently every week, you never know what kind of policy they gonna come one with next. And eventually you going to lose your character because server is going to die. Reason they even exist is because blizzard a) does not have classic on 3 year life cycle. b) can't reproduce vanilla experience c) can't fix bottling and gold buying d) won't make era for TBC and WOTLK

[@celguar]

Devs splitting and working on their own unique core (based on leaked private core) instead of working on mangos or trinity to make one great thing hurt more than private servers. Private servers actually made it possible for vmangos to appear, as well as Azeroth core

[@Klaceyes]

9:58 imo there's a misunderstanding on that last quote, any changed to the base core means as long as they do other changes that weren't shared with that core they don't have to publish anything. Like, adding a boss script is still an add, not a modification as the base one wasn't there or wasn't really expoitable at all. Thus it also means that this rule would only apply if they had released anything publically and not keeping the core for them just to run servers... am i wrong or?

[@SocialistDog]

Sooo im a dum dum kitty noob. I just wanna play classic with me and my wifu... any points in the rite step would be greatly appreciated

[@cira7937]

what is bro yapping about

[@SocialistDog]

@cira7937 running a co op server 4 me and my old lady

[@cira7937]

@@SocialistDog how do you planing on doing raids?

[@SocialistDog]

@cira7937 don't know... but just wanna play co op lol

[@cira7937]

@@SocialistDog why not playing on officaial or private servers?

[@OmDesk]

This video just said that a real communism is better than capitalism. Capitalism uses current material condition to benefits their own gains. The owner of forexample a metal rod industry does not own the patent of the metal rod on how to make one. It's the material conditions and our collective human knowledge that makes it even possible. Who owns the wheel ? If Humans didnt share the knowledge back than we wouldnt have cars today. So the things private server does is morally equally justified under this current society believes.

[@Magoflipante85]

howewe

[@sulfuras1985]

Ty CC devs

[@basedbarackobama]

Now you just need to work on power tripping mods and publicly shaming people who get muted, it drives away player base and escalates hostility rather than deescalates

[@irimusca]

I understand your point, but at the same time, think from the private server's perspective too. Why would I, a private server, pay money to developers to fix things if they're just going to release them to everyone for free? This way, other servers would just be able to take my open open-source fixes and won't need to pay for developers themselves. Yes, it would be nice if everyone shared everything, but it's still a business after all.

[@javiersaneiro6412]

Because if you do that, and every other private servers do the same, together between all devs we can compile a better private server infraestructura that will give better results to the players. And maybe you would have required to spend less money in making those fixes if they were already fixed in the open source version. Even something that has not yet fixed could be fixed by another dev and you can use it too. Everyone improves if they don't need to waste resources in fixing what has already being fixed multiple times. Just look at WOTLK. It was an expansion that ended in official Blizzard's server in 2010, 14 years ago. And yet even to this day there are many bugs in private servers that are unable to replicate everything than the official server did. For a game who is feature complete since 14 years ago. By this poing spending money in fixing things shouldn't be neccesary because every bug probably has been already fixed multiple times in multiple private servers. And even with that problem WOTLK works very well because it is technically a very easy sofware compared with more modern expansions and the open source version had enought time so there are every day less and less fixed required. But if we look at more modern expansions it is impossible to have a decent server, private or not if devs doesn't collaborate.

[@celguar]

Why do you base your work on chrome craft using leaked private server core instead of working together to improve trinity core. You hate private servers but without it Azeroth core would not exist at all.

[@MisterDevel]

Did you watch the video? It's not 'leaked' because they're illegally making it proprietary in the first place.

[@youbetu18]

completely agree with you. but you know the whole 16 minutes can be broken down to this: welcome to the real world of capitalism.

[@lufasumafalu5069]

please , this is just disgusting advertisement

[@Davixxa]

I won't deny that this is advertisement, because it pretty obviously is, but this kind of callout is important.

[@debonlr]

are you standing on the other side of the room from your mic this was unwatchable

[@lufasumafalu5069]

chromie is worst private server ever

[@MrDextrator]

Why

[@lufasumafalu5069]

@@MrDextrator have u played there ,

[@MrDextrator]

@@lufasumafalu5069 Yeah Im playing right now, dont see any problems so far so Im genuinely curious?

[@mercs7849]

Meh, who cares.

[@papercliphat4305]

Are there any other servers like this? I had so much fun on the come up from 1-60. Is chromie going to do another server where they level cap every 10 levels?

[@WuXxXx]

[@raunchysquanchy8026]