World of Warcraft: Origins
Hello and welcome to the next generation of Private Servers!
The Purpose of the Thread
The purpose of this thread is simple - we are proud to announce that we are moving our Core Project into an ‘Alpha’ Stage in which anyone who is qualified can test the current Meta.
We would love for anyone interested to apply at the bottom of the thread – however please make sure you read the below to understand who and what we are.
What Are We?
We are Origins, a small dedicated team consisting of some of the great names within the Modding and Emulation communities.
Our team consists of 6 developers who are dedicating their free-time to re-build the vanilla meta within later expansions, with the dream of combining all the great aspects of the last 10 years of WoW with the classic game.
We all know about Nostalrius and other Legacy servers - they are great and well respected! However, it’s not long before the initial Nostalgia wears off and you soon realise how bad the state of the game was 10+ years ago.
Unfortunately, the game was heavily unbalanced, slow-paced, limited from a technological point of view and obviously lacked the modern upgrades we see today.
Why do we dream of the past?
Many veterans will tell you of the ‘good old days’ and the difference between then and now – but the second they find themselves back on a legacy server, they are shocked to have their memories shattered. Yes, there were good aspects of the game back then and it is a very subjective topic, but the majority will agree that once the nostalgia wear’s off - the game is still the same level of ‘broken’ they complain about even today.
Whether it was...
Diminishing Returns system, Spec Inbalance, waiting for 40 players, auto-attacking 90% of your damage... bad graphics…class-limitations… Endless Rep Grinding… TO LIST A FEW THINGS.
What Made Classic So Fun/Demanded?
The real hand on heart answer to that question – the community and the content.
Community-
Seeing thousands of players in the open world and it meaning something!
Making friends with people who you level and explore with!
The immersion of traveling to a dungeon with your friends.
World PVP that matters with a PVP ranking system.
A booming economy with active traders/sellers without silly inflation.
Guild’s that feel like a family and matter to your experience as a player.
Content-
-Great Level 60 Meta (Molten Core, AQ, BWL, Naxx)
-Class-Quests creating great immersion.
-The meaningful time-to-level.
-A feeling of wonder and difficulty in new areas with new creatures.
-Planned and calculated engagement of enemies due to difficulty.
-Down-Time spent with purpose not just AFK.
-Professions that actually matter.
-Gear that’s important and has a sentimental value to you.
-Playable and comfortable for new / old players.
-What Changed?
We can all agree that over the years unfortunately Blizzard changed WoW for the worst – however that was usually only present within content and lore.
It is well known that Blizzard has lost over 7-Million players since Vanilla and we wanted to know why! Our player research actually showed it was the either removal or loss of the above bullet-points which caused a decrease in the player-base mainly.
Blizzard has however done some great changes to the game since vanilla – to modernize it.
Immersion increased over the expansions – the spell system definitely improved, talents, guild systems and most importantly with these changes came gamers skills improving (requiring harder content).
From a technology point of view – the actual client has improved in the way it handles graphics, dynamic elements, memory and server-interaction.
So What Can We Do About It All?
Again I would like to take the opportunity to welcome you to Origins – the project best compared to Marmite: “You Either Love it or Hate It”.
We are doing a task that was originally seen as impossible and daring – but so far has succeeded in every possible way.
We have successfully re-built Vanilla Content into a later build of the game which is currently Cataclysm but a Warlords version might be coming in the near future depending on stability.
Okay What the Heck…?
Bear with us a moment... and imagine the following:
“Its 2016 and Blizzard has just announced a brand new title – World of Warcraft” – ask yourself, how would It look, how would it feel?
The answer is based on today’s modern engine and improvements – pretty darn good.
It would be the incredible vanilla experience that you once loved and enjoyed, but with more advanced systems – everything from incredible HD models and Graphics, to in-depth spell/quest-systems!
The 10+ years of learning that Blizzard has had, of what does and doesn’t work can be applied into a re-build of Vanilla to make an incredible remit of the original experience – just modernized with some applied knowledge.
We are the advanced version of what ‘Blizzard’ calls a pristine server – of which even in the aforementioned state has over 200k people agreeing they would love to play.
Still can’t imagine it?
One word – Time-Walking.
This feature introduced by blizzard allows you to re-visit old dungeons / raid’s in the current meta to experience those great times again.
Imagine if you could do this on an EXPANSION level, not just a dungeon.
The Progress So far…
This is not a show-off, so we are being honest with our progress and it change’s daily.
Please remember we will be the most heavily modified server in the world that intends to become large-scale.
-100% ported vanilla world to Cataclysm Engine
-Binary Manipulated to support new custom core.
-95% complete ported vanilla data (All, NPC Data, Waypoints, Loot, Objects etc)
-50% Scripting Completed (All Playable but working through fixes)
-Vanilla Quests – 85% working (All Playable but working through fixes)
-HD Models for characters and NPC’s.
-Vanilla Login Screen / LUA / XML changes.
-Levelling Tuning – all rates equal to Vanilla for quests / kills / discovery (Server-side and DB)
-Disabling of un-used tools such as dungeon finder.
-Meta PVP balanced and scaled!
-90% Client DBC manipulation.
This pretty much covers what is needed to be known by the average player – but doesn’t reflect other core changes.
Thanks to our incredible team and dedicated assistance from: Trinity-Core and Modcraft / Model-changing.net
The Future…
We have a separate dedicated team working on custom content – some work we are currently working on..
Two Fully Custom level 60 PVP Rated Arena’s.
A new 20 vs. 20 battleground
Correctly Tuned Balanced Legendary weapons / custom class-quests.
The Alpha!
There will be three realms available for testing – all with it’s own gm’s . It is important to note we have increased the experience gained by 50% for Alpha in order to get a good spread of bug-reports without sacrificing your precious time!
There will be 3 Realms active from alpha launch - these are placeholder names but represent their functionality.
Only one realm will be active when we go live – the others are designed to test different aspects of our creative process.
REALM 1 – Original Origins levelling/meta Vanilla Experience – No additonal custom content.
REALM 2 - Instant Level 60 – For Raiding + World/Arena/BG PVP Testing.
REALM 3 – (Optional) Testing custom content on the base Origins experience.
Possible Future Patches
Patch 1.05 will be released a sometime after the initial Origins experience. The plan is to continue the vanilla experience past the currently existing raiding content.
We will be releasing a fully built blizz-like emerald dream raid which is in development and will not be available until at least late 2017 - after we have cycled through the current available raiding tiers.
Patch 1.1 we can confirm will be called “The Hallowed Abyss” - let your imagination run wild with what this is about – details will be released later.
Get Involved?
So do you want to be involved in the creation of something magnificent?
We need everyone who is happy and willing to help test and play our current game to get involved!
We already have a dedicated server running live with private testers – and now we have ironed out most of the big bugs – we can happily extend the alpha to people who apply.
If you are happy to report, test and endure a bit of stress – but hopefully enjoy the game. Then please apply!
There will be undisclosed awards that translate through to the live version of the game for anyone who helps and proportionately for those who dedicate their time to assisting.
Please reply using the format shown below.
Get Involved (STAFF)
We are also looking for Developer’s still in almost every role – if you feel you have what it takes to get involved please reply with the below with the Role Set to Staff.
Outro
I am sorry for the wall of text, but hopefully you made it this far because you are interested and care.
We are doing something quite revolutionary from the world of Private Servers, but not everyone agrees with us. We would love your feedback whether positive / negative – because we want to make this work for everyone, not just a specific type of person.
Thanks for taking the time to read our journey and we hope you join us for the rest of it.
Best Regards,
The Origins Team.
How To Apply
Please note all accounts will be reviewed on an individual basis and we will limit applications if required.
Name :
Age :
Role Applying for : (Tester or Staff)
Have you tested private wow servers or bug tested before?
(if Yes , what servers? what expansions?)
if not , what sort of help testing do you think you could offer?:
How much estimated time you would be willing to test each day?
Which hours would you be able login? (GMT):
Faction you would prefer to test Horde or Alliance?:
Would you be willing to help test PVP and/or PVE?
(People applying for Staff)
What is your experience in a moderation / gamemaster role?
What is your Development experience in client / server-side / database manipulation for WoW?
