WoW Vanilla Emu - Emerald Dream

Felmyst

I began this project roughly four years ago and last year when Blizzard began taking action more seriously it weighed heavily on me as not only was I already heavily invested into the work but others around me were as well. Because of my health situation I wasn't in a position to cut losses and start over on something different, at least not something that would take four years to make. Last year's news of what Blizzard was doing came at the absolute worst time for me, frankly, with so many years already invested. To explain what may appear as an odd series of decisions it seems worthwhile to disclose my condition, muscular dystrophy, which only one other person in the online sphere knew of until now.

Of course, that is why I'm not able to pick up and move to another country as an alternative means to host the server since I'm not really able to live on my own. That is also the reason I've been able to work mostly full time on this project as I'm unemployed, though I have sacrificed much of my well being dedicating everything I have to this. Why am I disclosing this? I'm not really sure, but I feel compelled to.

So the question instead becomes: why host it yourself? The problem with that is our popularity snowballed way too fast once the release date was set.

Before the release date was declared, most people expected the server to flounder with a small population, the irony of which quickly became a meme. Therefore, months ago I saw no reason to hand all of our work over to someone I didn't know when the project had a reasonable chance to stay small enough to avoid the need. Though I have no problem contributing to honest developers, the market to wrongfully profit from this stuff is much too lucrative to hand it out on a whim. Had we time to smooth out the release, this certainly would have been something to explore. The warning signs to expect notice from Blizzard were there but receiving it that quickly was something I don't think many expected.

So why did I make this project? I love the game and community, especially the community. The old game was a great way to meet people and see new faces. It makes me happy, and programming makes me happy. Of course, I am sad that things didn't turn out the way I'd hoped but I don't think I'd change any of the decisions I made. I gambled that we could cap the servers at 3k and enjoy a close community. Sadly, I did not win that gamble, though on some level it was nice to see so many people eager to enjoy something I worked on. This project gave the last four years of my life a sense of purpose that I thoroughly enjoyed.

So why not tell people of that plan ahead of time to stifle hype? The problem with private servers is that there is no middle ground. If people expect a server to "only" have 3000 (real) players then they just won't play and you'll instead end up with 300, which isn't playable.

A lot of people are of course asking for the source code. Although it may not be in my best interest to distribute the whole thing in its entirety at this point, I'll see what I can manage that would be beneficial to other programmers who are still learning.

Gummy

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Rabkorik said:

Any Vanilla/TBC Servers worth playing on at the moment?

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Reht said:

This server still alive/viable? Elysium just imploded spectacularly. More info: What a clusterfuck.

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