[PROJECT] Burning Wrath - Single-Player Pre-Cataclysm Mod

[Scytheria23]

BIG EDIT (12th March 2016):

Sorry to say that this project has bitten the dust following a schism between team members relating to tone and style.  One half wanted to get gritty and realistic, giving players a tougher journey through the game world, whilst the other half wanted more whizz-bang-sparkle and lots of easy-mode stuff.  Not unexpectedly, the content and technology we created has gone two different ways, with neither remotely resembling a complete package.  

The future of Burning Wrath, as originally conceived, seems grim.  I will, however, make an effort to get some of the best features from what I retained out as general releases for the benefit of all who would like to use them.  I think the rather special way we handled transmogrification will be of interest to many (and that was all my work), so I'll pack it up as a stand-alone package that can be inserted into any 3.3.5 server (and, maybe, with modification, other servers too).  It's entirely done with database edits and dbc massage and thus requires no coding modifications to the server, but it manages to create a transmog system that is far more flexible and simpler than Blizzard's own.  Watch this space.

To ease the pain of the break-up, I've commenced a personal project that I'll be announcing in the correct part of these forums shortly.  Thanks for all your interest and support in Burning Wrath, and sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Scy

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Hi folks,

I'm starting this thread to prepare for the inevitable beta-phase of my project, Burning Wrath, and to post screens, discuss anything about the project and otherwise drum up interest.  Although I've never posted here, I've been a lurker for a long time and my project has been ongoing for over a year now.  I believe I am now at the 75% stage, and anticipate (after a lot of testing) getting a beta release out by the end of the year.

Burning Wrath - is a mod/repack for 3.3.5a clients that turns the game into a single-player experience.  This is not the same as a playerbot release (which aids a player by providing NPCs to adventure with) but a complete retuning of the game's content to suit a single player acting alone.  In Burning Wrath, all in-game features and references to other players have been carefully stripped away from quests, spells, the interface, etc.  The aim is for the finished repack to look and feel like a game that was always played offline and alone.  All dungeons and raids have been rescripted and retuned to suit solo play and battlegrounds have become exciting repeatable scenarios with challenging scripted enemy 'players' to outwit. World PVP zones (e.g. Wintergrasp and Tol Barad) have become quest hubs.

Burning Wrath - is complete up to the end of the WotLK expansion, but also includes a pre-cataclysm endgame in which players can attempt to foil Deathwing before he goes nuts (courtesy of the Keepers of Time).  This provides access to most of the Cataclysm content (zones, creatures and items), albeit in a very different storyline to the original (thus totally different quests).  The changed world of Cataclysm exists, in Burning Wrath, parallel to the old word - players can explore Uldum, Hyjal, Vash'jir, Gilneas, Twilight Highlands, Tol Barad, etc, but the old world remains as it was in pre-Cataclysm days.  In parts of the quest-line, however, the newer 'destroyed' world is visited.

Burning Wrath - has been designed to be challenging and slow-burning, offering players a chance to slowly develop characters and experience the entire world without the need to rush towards endgame. It's very much for those who prefer to spend a long time seeing and doing everything and enjoying the lore.

Burning Wrath - is based on the latest Trinity Core (modified to optimise the single-player experience) but includes some very special features.  The most exciting of which is our "Better than Blizzard" transmog system which offers far more realism and customization than the retail system.  You can keep your character's look indefinitely, without the need to revisit a transmogrifier every time you upgrade your gear.  You can even make armour items invisible, finally achieving the long-sought goal of hiding shoulders, boots, belts, etc.

Burning Wrath - cue controversy...  has removed Death Knights from the game.  Well, not NPC Death Knights, just players.  It is no longer possible to create or play this class, which has been stripped cleanly from the game files.  All items, glyphs, questlines, etc related to the class have been excised.  In their place, we offer many new race/class combinations (but not all those that current retail allows) and a wider range of character customization options.  A few DK abilities have managed to get redistributed to other classes that lacked a certain something.

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So, that's the basic idea.  I'll post screens of the ongoing work over the next few days, and if anyone has any comments, ideas or questions, do feel free to use this thread.

Scytheria

[Skarn]

I read everything briefly because there is too much text. Though, I like your idea and I want to see some pics and videos of gameplay. Good luck with this project. Don't forget to make quests interesting. Noone would like an rpg with "kill 5 boars" quests.

[Bardh]

So, you're turning a MMORPG to a RPG, sounds very interesting and an idea never heard before. I too would like to see some pics or videos, also beside the quests you should make an interesting storyline-that's one of the most important things in a RPG, you said its 75% completed and for a project of this size it means a lot. I would like to know more if you did this with a bunch of people or all on your own, or maybe how long did it take you to make to this progress?

[Scytheria23]

The project has been in progress for over a year, and there are three of us involved at this point (all based in Shanghai).  We are working to high standards - being very careful about the quality of what we include and vicious when it comes to rejecting or criticizing our own work.  The last 25% of the project is focused on the quest lines and story - in other words, we've got our engine doing what we what (in terms of game mechanics, graphics, items, etc), and we are now fleshing out the world that goes with them.  We have a skeleton of quest-lines which takes players to the right places and lets them meet the right people/mobs/bosses, but there needs to be a lot more meat around those bones.

[Tpiom]

So, the idea is to transform it to something like Skyrim?

Regardless, it does indeed sound interesting.

[Kaev]

The project has been in progress for over a year, and there are three of us involved at this point (all based in Shanghai).  We are working to high standards - being very careful about the quality of what we include and vicious when it comes to rejecting or criticizing our own work.  The last 25% of the project is focused on the quest lines and story - in other words, we've got our engine doing what we what (in terms of game mechanics, graphics, items, etc), and we are now fleshing out the world that goes with them.  We have a skeleton of quest-lines which takes players to the right places and lets them meet the right people/mobs/bosses, but there needs to be a lot more meat around those bones.

That sounds very interesting! :3

[Dainton]

This project sounds very interesting, is there any screenshots or anymore info for how things are doing currently?

[sshroud]

Curious about seeing how it'll turn out, with WoW being an MMO and the engine clearly created around the limitations that entails I can't imagine the mechanics being very good compared to what you'd have in a regular singleplayer RPG like Witcher, Dark Souls or Zelda. Nonetheless I don't underestimate how far you'd be able to push it if you're creative about it.

Good luck!

[Crow]

hows the progress coming along? is money an issue at the moment?

[MountainLion]

Sounds like an interesting project, some things that would benefit this thread are:

[paragraph:og4lreck]* A very short video showing the system mechanics; i.e. What will a quest look like for the player and how long/short will it take them to complete it?. Many people outside of WoW often times don't realize how vast the world actually is compared to other games (not to mention it's in a persistent state all the time). Imagine Vanilla WoW - Player count 1.

* If you are preparing for a beta I highly recommend you provide a link to a website or somewhere, where people can start registering accounts. Even if it's still 25% away from completion, you might want to put together a much larger beta-test party months ahead of time. I would launch at 80%-90% overall completion and rework from there. 2-5 completed areas is more than enough in this case, regarding the size of WoW for starters.

* The thread has more than enough info, it's all text (which is fine if that's what you prefer) but no eye-candy. Maybe dividing the info by small sections and using the formats for headers etc. would help a bit. 1 or 2 pictures if you don't mind sharing content would also be nice.[/paragraph:og4lreck]

Good luck

[Scytheria23]

Just a quick update:

Project has lost few months due to (1) people taking long holidays and (2) changes to the latest Trinity Core that resulted in us having to trawl through hundreds of thousands of our SQL scripts to make them compliant.

I think a few misconceptions exist about what we are doing.  For the most part, our core is exactly the same as any other 3.3.5 core - same quests, same mobs, same items, same instances - just tweaked to make pure solo play possible.  The gameplay and mechanics are relatively unchanged except where gameplay revolved around or required other players.

Many game features have been repurposed to do this. Auctioneers, for example, now buy/sell raw materials for crafting (at premium prices). Battlegrounds have become single player scenarios. Instance encounters that required different players to be in different places doing different things have been rewritten so a soloist can complete them.  

Our additional quest lines are exactly that - additional. They are only there to extend the endgame slightly.  They may not even ship with the first version unless we pull our fingers out.

Beta, when it happens, will simply be a case of people downloading a patch, playing it and letting us know what is wrong.  We will not be opening a server - the aim is to make wow a game that doesn't need one.

Scy

[Morfium]

First, I really love the idea!
If done carefully I'm sure it'll be loads of fun. Especially those bgs and dungeons.
Now to my questions.

• PVP Related
  
  • Did you remove resilence from the game or made the npcs be affected by it?
  • Do you earn honor in battlegrounds (or maybe even out of it for hard world enemies/elites?)?
  • Can you do arena battles with npcs or even create a group?
• Raiding
  
  • Did you also rework all level 60 raids? If yes, with attunement quest?
• Will raids drop items based on class? Especially tier tokens.
• General
  
  • Since there's no balancing problems anymore, are undead undead again? That would be awesome
• Is level 80 max or does the new content increase the max level?

Keep it up, sounds awesome.

[Scytheria23]

Good questions, Morfium

- funny you ask, we are currently in the process of removing Resilience
- honor is still earned in BGs
- arena points no longer exist, neither does arena.  If it did return, it would end up being something like the Brawler's Guild.

- All instances and raids have been retuned and are completable by characters of the instance/raid level.  Ahn Qiraj , for example, can now be completed by a single level 60 character (it's bloody hard to do, but not impossible).
- drops are not class specific, but nearly all items have become unbound. A drop that one character finds useless can be mailed to any other of your characters. The new transmog system makes any item your character can wear have stats you want for your spec.  But...
- Class specs are much less relevant. Tanks are now 'dps with lots of health' and healers are 'dps with lots of self heals'.

- undead undead?  I like it... Will investigate.
- level cap remains 80.  It takes much longer to get to 80 though, with bottlenecks every 10 levels.  


Sorry about typos- using phone
Scy

[Morfium]

Cool, sounds really nice. Although I kinda hoped for a pve arena. x3
Brawlers Guild sounds cool though.
Definately looking forward to this.

[Dainton]

Cannot wait till this is complete, I've been dying to check this out for some time now as single-player wow would be pretty awesome. Any chance for screenshots or updates as its been awhile now.

I've been checking this thread out nearly everyday hahaha!