Recent Posts

1

Lord of the Rings Online / New Lord of the Rings MMO

« Last post by Keggi on September 09, 2018, 07:52:49 AM »

So browsing Youtube I come across a video about a new lotr mmo and thought clickbait title but looked at it anyway seems its a thing Athlon games and middle earth enterprises have teamed up to announce this new mmo set before the third age and is going to be f2p hope not ptw seems its the team behind the game Warframe not heard of that game myself so don't know the standard of quality.

Anyway anybody else heard anything about this ?

2

MMO's we have played / Re: WoW Classic - Dev Watercooler Post

« Last post by Keggi on June 21, 2018, 07:41:21 PM »

WoW is free to play for people with inactive accounts at the moment lasts through 24th june.


I think this moved OT in record time.

3

MMO's we have played / Re: WoW Classic - Dev Watercooler Post

« Last post by Keggi on June 21, 2018, 07:09:51 AM »

I will be playing classic/vanilla
I just hope we get close to the community feeling we had back then where there was people that seemed like demi-gods I remember a gnome rogue who was the first to get the highest pvp title he used to hang around the bank in Ironforge looking mighty(lol) cant remember the name though but I have a feeling that the whiney entitled kiddies will be there in numbers already see them on the forums wanting changes.

The great feeling I had when going to buy a mount at level 40 and finding I was about 30 gold short will be grinding gold from the start this time
and grinding ghouls in western plaguelands from 58 to 60 what fun or it seemed like it at the time.

anyway see you there.

4

MMO's we have played / WoW Classic - Dev Watercooler Post

« Last post by Mangala on June 20, 2018, 06:20:52 PM »

So they announced WoW Classic at Blizzcon last year then went dark. Recently put out this post letting folks know the state of play and also saying that Drums of war patch 1.12 will be the foundation for the games background, hopefully still with progression etc just 1.12 used to tune content and skills etc. 

Its a good read even for those not interested, first time in years Blizz actually went into tech detail about anything!

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21881587/dev-watercooler-world-of-warcraft-classic

Greetings! Development of World of Warcraft Classic is underway, and we’re very excited to share some of the challenges and solutions we’re working on. As we mentioned last BlizzCon, the process of restoring the classic game is not straightforward, and it’s important to us to take the time and effort to get it right—this includes poring over numerous game versions, data, and code; meticulously scrutinizing all the changes we’ve made over the years. Rest assured: The WoW Classic team is hard at work making it a reality, and we’re at a point in development where we’re ready to share some of the things we’ve been working on.

WOW CLASSIC: FIRST PROTOTYPE
The first—and among the most important—decision we had to make was which version of the game to focus on. As many of you have noted, the classic period was two years long and full of changes. Core features like Battlegrounds were introduced in patches after WoW’s original launch, and class design similarly changed over time. After careful consideration, we decided on Patch 1.12: Drums of War as our foundation, because it represents the most complete version of the classic experience.

Once we had our starting point, we began taking stock of what we had in the source code and what we could make available, which included restoring the original development database from archival backups. After stitching various key pieces together, we had a locally rebuilt version of Patch 1.12 running internally. The team could create characters and do basic questing and leveling—and dying, which we did many times. For testing purposes. Obviously.

Our initial runs exposed a few (expected) issues: the game sometimes crashed, didn’t recognize our modern video cards, and was incompatible with our current login system. That first pass also couldn’t support any of our modern security and anti-cheating capabilities. Clearly we had a lot of work to do to make WoW Classic live up to the Blizzard standard of quality, and deliver the experience players want.

THE PATH FORWARD: SECOND PROTOTYPE
Speaking of engineering, World of Warcraft is a very data-driven game, which means the basic code is flexible and the specific way it behaves is controlled by information contained in databases. Things like quests, monsters, items, and the rules for how these all interact are defined by the designers and artists in data.

So we asked ourselves, would it still be possible to deliver an authentic classic experience if we took our modern code, with all its back-end improvements and changes, and used it to process the Patch 1.12 game data? While that might seem counterintuitive, this would inherently include classic systems like skill ranks, old quests and terrain, talents, and so on, while later features like Transmog and Achievements would effectively not exist because they were entirely absent from the data. After weeks of R&D, experimentation, and prototyping, we were confident we could deliver the classic WoW content and gameplay without sacrificing the literally millions of hours put in to back-end development over the past 13 years.

While our initial effort helped us determine the experience we wanted to provide, this second prototype really defined how we’d get there. Starting from a modern architecture—with all its security and stability changes—means the team’s efforts can be focused on pursuing an authentic classic experience. Any differences in behavior between our development builds and the patch 1.12 reference can be systematically cataloged and corrected, while still operating from a foundation that’s stable and secure.

DIGGING IN
So what does it take to recreate an authentic classic experience with modern engineering? Let’s start by categorizing the different types of game data that make up WoW:

Table data: This kind of information is almost always represented as numbers. How many hit points a creature has, the amount of Strength an item grants, or where and when certain creatures spawn, are all examples of the numerical data we store in our databases. We can also store and enforce relationships between different pieces of data.
File data: This is often very dense data like 3D models, textures, animations and terrain. Our user interface is built up from XML and Lua files. Many of the art files do not use the same file formats that commercial art tools spit out. Our build pipeline takes these raw art files and translates them into something optimized for our game to read and process.
Lua scripts: Some features are driven by Lua scripts written by designers, allowing them to easily define custom behaviors for server-side logic without requiring deep engineering knowledge.
HOW ENGINEERING HAS CHANGED
One challenge we face is that all the classic data is in the original format used at launch, but that format has changed substantially in the intervening years. Major work needs to be done in this area to make the modern client compatible with the classic data.

For example, spells could originally only perform three actions on the spell’s target. In table form, that looked something like this:

ID

Name

Effect One

Effect Two

Effect Three

Aura One

Aura Two

Effect Damage One

Aura Damage One

Aura Damage Two

1

Fireball

Deal Damage

Apply Aura

Nothing

Nothing

Deal Damage Periodically

30

Nothing

3

2

Frost Bolt

Deal Damage

Apply Aura

Nothing

Nothing

Slow

20

Nothing

Nothing

As you can see, there is a lot of space taken up by ‘Nothing’. Over the course of WoW’s lifetime, we’ve improved our data design and normalized much of our database data. Today, that same data would be separated out like this:

Table Name: Spell

ID

Name

1

Fireball

2

Frostbolt

Table Name: Spell Effect

ID

SpellID

Effect

Damage

1

1

Damage

30

2

2

Damage

25

Table Name: Spell Aura
ID

SpellID

Aura

Damage

1

1

Deal Damage Periodically

3

2

2

Slow

Nothing

In this form, there is much less wasted space and spells are no longer limited to three effects. But before we can load any database data, we need to transform the old data layout into the new one. This is not limited to spells, as almost every game system (including items, creatures, player characters, spawning, AI, and more) has had its database layout altered over the years.

LOOKING AHEAD
All the work we’re doing will ultimately allow us to recreate an authentic classic experience on a platform that is much more optimized and stable, helping us avoid latency and stability issues. Additional improvements will include modern anti-cheat/botting detection, customer service and Battle.net integration, and similar conveniences that do not affect the core gameplay experience.

We are looking forward to the challenges ahead and share your passion for the classic game; every code check-in data conversion we make brings WoW Classic closer to providing that authentic experience you—and we—want. Thanks for joining us on this journey.

5

MMO's we have played / Re: Battle for Azeroth

« Last post by Mangala on April 24, 2018, 08:13:37 AM »

Didn't know you frequented the official forums Jon just seen the thread about classic servers and guilds had to trawl a bit to see who posted Hands of Justice

I get around

But im interested in classic so tend to read a lot on there, post when I feel a need. I do the same on the classicwow subreddit too.

6

MMO's we have played / Re: Battle for Azeroth

« Last post by Keggi on April 19, 2018, 02:26:18 PM »

Didn't know you frequented the official forums Jon just seen the thread about classic servers and guilds had to trawl a bit to see who posted Hands of Justice

7

The Dog & Duck / Re: wish me luck!

« Last post by Keggi on March 22, 2018, 11:52:52 AM »

Good luck remember if you cant stay on your feet your backside is a good alternative.

8

The Dog & Duck / Re: wish me luck!

« Last post by Caradir on March 22, 2018, 10:47:28 AM »

Good luck in preparing for that challengs, sounds like it will be painful but worthwhile.

9

The Dog & Duck / wish me luck!

« Last post by peo on March 21, 2018, 05:10:53 PM »

Wish me luck...
In almost 1 year I will ski one of the largest (if not the largest) ski competition in the world... Also one of the longest at 90km!
So, I'll have to loose a shitload of weight (I'm sadly at around 115kg now ) and also gain a lot stamina and strenght.

Also, i've barely ever skied before (not with modern skis at least)

10

MMO's we have played / Battle for Azeroth

« Last post by Keggi on March 21, 2018, 08:14:53 AM »

Woke up to find Battle for Azeroth alpha on my launcher this morning no thanks blizz over the years I have been in quite a few alphas and betas and the one thing I realised is you get burnt out on the beta before the game/xpac launches so thanks but no thanks.