wow classic plus
a private server project Inspired by Season of Discovery
TL;DR Server Stats:
- Server name: WoW Classic Plus
- Realm name: Ashbringer
- Realm type: Normal
- Client: World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Lich King 3.3.5a build: 12340
- With HD patches – WOTLK/BC disabled
- Custom: Maps, quests, items, professions, dungeons, raids, spells, and more…
- All custom content aims to function in a blizzlike manner
- Max level: 25
- All rates: Blizzlike x1
- Cross-faction interaction
- All factions and races start in the same custom leveling area, with pvp disabled.
- High performance bare-metal server infrastructure
Introduction
World of Warcraft is the best MMORPG ever made! Development originally started on the Warcraft 3 engine, but quickly became its own completely new engine just for WoW. Today there probably isn’t a single line of code remaning from the original engine.
It is today a highly optimized and specifically developed engine to perfectly run WoW, and only WoW. The later in the expansions you get, the better the engine performs. Dragonflight and the War Within are in reality almost completely separate games from WOTLK, and certainly Vanilla – Not even comparable.
We all loved Vanilla, and most of us love Classic. I myself particularly enjoyed Season of Discovery, there are of course mixed feelings about it in the community. But Classic WoW is not Vanilla, and honestly I think very few people would like to play actual Vanilla seriously for any other reason than nostalgia. The truth is that the Vanilla client is not up to the standard of today’s gaming scene. It is badly optimized for new computers, it is filled with quirks and bugs and it actually has some weird performance issues today.
Remember, vanilla was released in 2004! When we were looking at CRT monitors and bragged about our Geforce 2 pro and 512 mb of ram. The Wrath of the Lich King client is leaps and bounds ahead of the original vanilla client in all aspects aside from nostalgia. It has been developed on in the private server community for a very long time, it is easy to modify and can even display some of the latest War Within models to an almost 1:1 replica.
Now, aside from all the positive aspects of the client itself – AzerothCore-wotlk (which is what we use) is probably the one emulator with the most contributed development hours there ever was, and as a result, the core has a ton of improvements over most any other (open-source) projects.
This is why we chose the WOTLK client – So we could leverage all of the hard-working hours people have put into this emulator, and thereby provide the best experience possible for YOU.
Preferably of course, we would like to 1:1 emulate the Classic WoW client, but that is not going to happen, probably ever. Unless some rogue at Blizzard decided to leak their entire dev repo. (Please don’t, we love Blizzard)
Season of Discovery
Many of us want to throw up from the latest expansions to retail wow. I think everyone has a “favorite” expansion, and I also think most of us who actually played retail vanilla, would say the game died after wotlk. Sure, there has been some great months in various later expansions, and some horrible in the previous ones. But generally I would have to agree that wotlk was the last “true wow” expansion – Where the essence of vanilla could still be felt.
Enter Season of Discovery; a masterful implementation and fantastic potential for the “Classic+” vision. Many players (me included) want the game to carry on within the Vanilla WoW world, but with updated graphics, performance and client optimizations. Imagine all the incredible stories that could be told, if we never went through the dark portal.
Honestly, I think everyone you ask will have a unique opinion on the details of any aspect of any feature and any implementation. It’s humanly impossible to create something that everyone will enjoy. And I am not here to claim that our version of WoW is the only way it should be played. It obviously is not, it’s not even exactly what I want – But we have our limitations, from cooperating and skill to client and server. It is never going to be perfect.
But, this is the best implementation we could feasibly accomplish. And development is not done, it never will be! From the day of release, we will be all-ears and open to suggestions and ideas. Just because we have our own thoughts about our implementations, doesn’t mean they can’t be changed. In fact, they will change, guaranteed. And so will yours, because we are all human.
WoW Classic Plus
So then, here comes “Classic Plus” – Just another private server? Well, maybe. To me, this is an implementation of a unique vision. One that may not be even be interesting or original to you. Maybe you shun at the thought of playing “Classic” on a WOLK client, and maybe you’re right, at least from your own perspective. And that’s perfectly ok, there are many fantastic servers out there with countless staff and huge communities, which implement their ideas to an impeccable standard.
What does our server offer?
Runes
Our custom-built runes system takes care of some of the limiting factors of “max level 25”, like SOD does on retail. You’ll discover class-specific runes as you venture through the world, These can be applied to various armor slots. The system is functional and working as intended, but is not yet completely finished UI wise. I hope you’ll bear with us on the UI side of things.
CRAFTING
Every main profession has at least 1 unique item that they can craft from various materials. Plus end-game recipes that can be aquired through gameplay, to craft high-level BIS items.
Achievements
We’ve added “Realm First!.. ” achievements with appropriate requirements for max level 25 and max profession skill 225.
Talents
Talents are mostly stock, but many of the ones past level 25 requirement have been added as Runes instead and modified to suit level 25. So yes, your Shaman will have access to Riptide, Paladins can get Crusader Strike, Priests can get Dispersion and Shadowform, etc, etc..
Maps
The main starting location and quest hub takes place on the custom map of Mythia, originally created by Amaroth from MC-Net and later shared by Reznik. We have of course had to put quite a few hours into making it complete and playable. There is another custom end-game map in development which will be released in the future.
Once all of the Realm First leveling achievements have been awarded, we will implement a feature to let players decide whether they want to level up through our custom content or go the Blizzlike route instead.
Dungeons & Raids
- As of writing this the released dungeons are:
- Deadmines
- Wailing Caverns
- Shadowfang Keep
- Blackfathom Depths
- Stormwind Stockade
- Razorfen Kraul
- Gnomeregan
To be released (lvl 25):
- Archipelago of the Damned (10-man raid)
- Scarlet Monastery (dungeon)
- Maraudon (10-man raid)
In conclusion
I am not trying to convince you to start playing on our server as opposed to any other. That is completely up to you based on what you’re looking for in a private server. But I will recommend that you at least take a look, see what we’ve done in-game and perhaps it’s something you’d actually be interested in – Maybe you’ll even love it.
Fingers corssed that we’ll see you in Mythia!