Wrath of the Lich King

[Jonathan5]

New World of Warcraft expansion announced. Check it out on GameSpy, http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of-wa.../810373p1.html . If you ask me it seems like they're popping these things out awfully fast. As we all here know, expansions seem to be the downfall of MMO's .

Biggest features:
- New class, "The Death Knight".
- New battlegrounds, including the highly anticipated warfare engine.
- New profession, the Inscriber who can add permanent buffs to players and equipment.

[Teppen]

Kewl,

Ill wait until Mangos supports it. Currently running the current Burning Crusade release (private server setup).

[Jonathan5]

Ahh, cool. I played on one of the top emulated WoW servers, and it was pretty damn laggy. I don't play the game anymore (live). If I was to play again though, it'd most likely be on a private server.

[techguy84]

I think its amazing how far along the WoW Emu scene has come along, and the player base behind it. The only question I have though is why are some of these servers able to host the amount of players that they have without incurring wrath from Blizz. You remember how blizz did when people made private Warcraft 2&3 servers, they had a shit fit. I just dont get it..... just dont.

[Jonathan5]

I think it's because back then Blizz was such a smaller team, but now they've gone so huge with WoW it's unbelieveable. They have many other things to worry about, and a 9 million player count. I don't think they're worried about something like this, lol.

[John Adams]

Not to start a debate on which WoW Emulator is better, but I have been following the Ascent (previously Antrix) emulator scene. Though I was majorly disappointed at the dramafest they recently went through with WoWScape and something about donations for favors (kinda sounds like dating to me...), I still think that emulator has the most potential for scalability. I've run both, and I just like the way Ascent is put together from the inside out.

Anyone here is welcome to try it out if you like. Follow the link in my profile to create an account blah blah. If I like you, I might even give you elevated rights (since there is no support whatsoever, it's just a dev/test server). I usually update it when time permits.

[techguy84]

Pfft... WoWScape. I really dont like them. The simple reason, which is becoming bigger and bigger in that emu scene is the overpriced server cost. Does it really cost 700-1000 bucks a month for a dedicated host. I looked at this and I found one host that was charging that, but thats it. And that was even for a more advanced config than the one they are running on. They take in massive amounts of donations monthly, way beyond the cost of the hosting, so I just wonder were all that extra money goes (not really but you get the point).

Its bad tactics as you shouldnt make a rediculous profit off of something that you did not build yourself. Their 14-15 year old CEO just had to run a few things as root on the dedicated host and away they went. When I was there, they used someone elses DB, the Antrix Emu, and that was it.

Anyhow, I could go on and on but I chooses not to. I put my WoW trial in my deep dark past and never look back.

[John Adams]

Originally Posted by techguy84

Does it really cost 700-1000 bucks a month for a dedicated host. I looked at this and I found one host that was charging that, but thats it.

To echo an older sentiment of mine; if you cannot afford to host your own shit, don't expect others to pay for your hobby. I pity the people who pay out the nose for "professional hosting" when 1/2 the time, a cable modem will do the job.

WoWScape and their ilk, I imagine, require tons of bandwidth... so in that respect more than your residential service is required. But still. How can anyone turn an emulator (read: half-assed, half-finished, bug-ridden, unprofessional "copy" of something else) into a profit machine and sleep well at night? It boggles the mind.

My god, I am opinionated.

[techguy84]

Well, I never took bandwidth into account, but i belive that a $1000 month host will surely meet and well exceed their bandwidth issue. I just know that they are taking a fuckload (pardon me) of extra donations in that could easly pay there house bills and dinners at mcdonalds. If they restriced and stop donations at a certain point, that would eb cool, but to exceed that and not give something back to the group of devs that made your little dream server possible is just plain stupid.

If EQ was a bit more popular, and you were makeing $2-3k per month on donations, wouldnt you think some of the devs here should get part of those donations. Thats just me though.

My god, I'm opinionated!

[CrabClaw]

I feel the next WoW x-pac will be another boring faction grindfest with some pop culture references thrown in. (The reason I left in the first place. Plus they totally ruined PvP, starting with BG's and crashing and burning the rest of the way with 'Arenas'.)

I feel if you want fun PvP try out Warhammer Online. I still feel instances are the social bane of MMOs though.

I play around with Mangos and it's really really good, is very open source, updated sometimes twice a day, and has gotten a lot better since TBC was released. They recently re-did all their world code and it runs much better. Plus, I like compiling my own code and contributing SQL to the project to help fill things out. Like I do here with quests when I can. It has a good community behind it as well.

Recently they have begun adding support for PostgreSQL (I am set up with 8.4 and am working to port my stuff over.) as a nice open source alternative to MySQL, which is wonderful.

WoWEmu is very bad, most everything does not work and :P I don't want to have to hack my client to get it going - which is a big no-no.

[Blakine]

Originally Posted by CrabClaw

I still feel instances are the social bane of MMOs though.

I agree, I miss camp checks. Nowadays gamers would not have it though. They are to spoiled. I played warcraft for awhile, and the younger members of my guild laughed at me when I said we used to do raids in EQ without ventrillo and mods. They said it was "impossible". Lol...

[CrabClaw]

Yes totally!

I remember the days of some of my guilds Kael Drakkal events I led. We would enter the zone, and before heading out to one of the spots in the place to set up we would go:

"36-Raid, inbound to Tormax, camp check!"

Then we would do a check to see if any of the raid spots were taken, and *gasp* actually have to negotiate with other real live people! Or choose our backup event site - usually ToFS cause' it was close. Most of the time we had to wait a bit while some other group finished up, so we would grind for loot in the bank/central area while they made their way out.

I did like hearing the solo-kiters complain when we brought our 36 person raid through Dulak/Nadox though, but hey we helped some healers get their Temp quest done quickly so....

-We had to make adjustments though to our plans based on other players activities.
-We had to keep good relations with other guilds so that they would give us lane choice when there was a competition for a spot.
-We often combined groups with other people in the zone to share the camp.
-Due to these good relations, off-raid schedule 'Ubers' would often come along to help us out looking for some fun to do. Their PoFire level egos matched their gear for sure, but they taught us a bunch about things so I made sure we treated them with respect and thanked them for helping, which led to more opportunities later.

If I log into EQ today there are still people around on my old server that remember me. I had such a good rep I was guaranteed help for any reasonable request and I never had to buy gear off the AH I could loan it off people I knew and I would give it back when I was done with it.

*Stands amazed at the value of good social skills and building that thing we used to call 'your name'.*

In a weird way even the Uber guilds had to worry about their rep too, they really needed new members because the content required so many good people to do well. If your were elitist jerk, it would be hell if you could get anyone to join you, our in most cases you would only attract more jerks, to your guild.

The only trouble we got into was when our guild had 'raid guild appreciation days' and handed out very potent beer to the raiders camped outside places like PoV while they were setting up...hehe. But we only did it to the jerks, much to the anger of the raid leaders. ^.-

/raidchannel "Nobody drink the f-ing beer they are handing out! Who is their guild leader!"

(I would feign 'oh sorry I didn't know' in my best family guild style. It was all in fun though, and the good guilds actually laughed about it.)

Ah, good times.

All this led to your guild rep being very important and the actions of your members being important too. No one wanted to be 'blacklisted' for being jerks, and I did /gkick people for being bad to other people and tarnishing our name....man, how far we have come from those days....

Damn you, WoW. *shakes fist*

Instancing took a lot of this social interaction away. You don't have to be a good-boy anymore to get a shot at some nice gear, nor does your rep mean anything either. This is where I feel WoW lets bad players advance where in another world they would not.

Now lets see, what are MMOs supposed to be about anyways?


((Oh and we did this all without Vent....ya' lazy bums!))

[Jonathan5]

Originally Posted by Blakine

I agree, I miss camp checks. Nowadays gamers would not have it though. They are to spoiled. I played warcraft for awhile, and the younger members of my guild laughed at me when I said we used to do raids in EQ without ventrillo and mods. They said it was "impossible". Lol...

I agree with you, too. Definetly.

[sfisque]

as a retired WoWer as well as having done the original eq-live tenure, i can say this...

on a WoW raid, you can tell the difference between someone who started on WoW and someone who migrated from EQ.

granted ventrilo and various mods made things less cumbersome. i would have loved having ventrilo on PoFear and "original PoHate" break ins. would have made things less messy by far.

[John Adams]

PoFear break ins...

~gets misty eyed~

Those were some of the best times of my EQ life...