State of WoW modding

[Hobbilis]

Hey guys,

I am fairly unknown to many of you, if not all. I come here often and read what's new, who did what, so on and so forth.

I'm really interested in hearing from schlumpf or any other boss on this site, what is the state of WoW modding? To break down my question. How is the community holding up? How far have the WoW editing tools came? Are there any significant things going on that members who are not maybe very active are unaware of?

Now I'm not totally sure when saying this, but I think there are a lot of people coming to this site and checking things out. Even though they maybe haven't registered and/or posted.

I'm just a friendly lurker who is regularly visiting (every couple of days) this site and I'm honestly interested in hearing from the management,on how is everything working out.

Thanks for taking time to read this.

[axel0099]

well yea, although im not any of the "bosses"
Still I believe i can answer some of these questions.
I guess WoW modding is doing fine atm,
Maruum etc.
And yea there are a lot of users who are kinda active but don't post everything.
If I would do that, The whole map editting section would be filled with shit I test on.

Axel,
DIdn't really answer the question but you probably know what I mean.
xD

[Steff]

What changed mainly isnthat noggit now work with water and has many other newnstuff in 1.3

Main gib thing changed is that we have a converter for m2s and wmos now.  What gives realy new possibilities.

And as axel said we expand what is possible in the maruum team every day.  Deep6ixed do su h a great work and we get fixed/implemented stuff step by step. Ful l working 2d maps.  Greate from scratch custom classes with completely own spells. Reused glyphs as Paradigma system to controll quest flow.

Only the work on quests run slow because there anre not many serverside people that are willig to do work.  And also there are not much helpfull quest writers. But it is going on also there.

[Hobbilis]

Thanks axel and Steff for answering. I have now a more clear vision of what is going on here. I really like this community, although I have never done anything productive... ever.

I tried, I failed. Tried again, failed. Gave up. But this is not about my failure. I want to say thanks to schlumpf, steff, axel, relaxok, cromon (even though he's not active anymore, too bad he was onto something great with SharpWoW), and everyone else I forgot to mention. You are all awesome. This community is great, and I hope you all continue working on this.

Also, might I recommend something. Now, I'm not aware if all the tutorials are up-to-date but have any of you guys considered creating a video tutorial for noggit 1.3? If not, please do consider this. I think many people would appreciate it. It's much easier than reading a lot of text. That's just my opinion.

Thanks for taking time to read.

[fearless_wind]

Projects and tools are developing but the number of active users has decreased since the shoutbox is gone.

[Steff]

I plan to do a video tutorial series bit at the time 1.3.1 ks released.
I dont know if we will have some ui changes till then and maruum also take time.

For your fail starts.  Just try my startup tutorial and if you have problems just ask me.  I will help.

Skype : project.modcraft

[Moridhin]

Maybe I am just stupid, but Steff, could you please give me some more info, on quest work you are doing?
Didn't get it  :?

[Steff]

As we start over with a fully empty world.  We need tons of little storys and quests/gossipnteling this story.
We decide the zones in questspots.  This sports have always a little story direction and a play ground.  Then we collect story idea for this spot.  Next step is to define the gossip and quest flow andnwrite thentexts andnquest mechanics.  Then implement the basic quests and finish the only  afterward with needed scripts.
For escortnquests or realy special once.

If you do a wow server you just can look at wow and fix the mkssing stuff into your server.  We do fully own stuff.

[Moridhin]

Does Marrum have any lore? Maybe I could help, but need to know basic lore of the world.

[Steff]

Therenis some basic worldlore and much local one.  Gothan writes in the moment an overview.
If you want to help,  just make an post in recruitment forum and add me in skype.
Project. Modcraft.

[Hobbilis]

Steff, please do make video tutorials. It would help everyone, especially new comers. Cheers guys!

[XxXGenesisXxX]

To put more of a negative reflection on it all as balance in my honest opinion: WoW modding has seen better days in some respects. Modcraft is one of the few (English speaking) sites worth even looking at, the community is the only one that still actively helps on a level of more or less "equal" contribution. Most other sites are just veterans answering newbies questions to keep the site alive. No new tutorials or re-written tutorials are really done by anyone.

For myself personally, I don't know if it's me truly burnt out on WoW in general, or that I am just not creative enough to find new things to fuel my creative drive, but I don't even have WoW installed anymore. My extent of WoW modding is answering friends on Skype. I haven't been on Ownedcore in 6 months to a year, or even taken the time to read posts on here.

Some other people also like myself move on to other things to fill their creative appetite, with things such as ComputerCraft on Minecraft, or other games that require scripts to be written. Which is all well and good, but I don't think enough new people are coming into the WoW modding to fill the void of those leaving or not posting anymore.

The reason I think it's slowly dwindling is because of the larger modding sites like AC-Web and Ownedcore. These sites, while they do not share the level of experience per person as smaller communities, that's exactly what they are needed for. They are gateways that are easily found for newer modders to start learning. But most of those communities are stale as all hell and don't retain enough new people for them to eventually get to a level to post their own content.

Another factor is 3.3.5 has been researched to death, which is certainly a good thing if documented, which it is. But it leaves very little for the less experienced modders to explore. One of the things that many modders thrive on is exploration in attempt to understand the emulation system. These days to really find or create something truly new, you need a much higher level modding skill than you used to. This lowers many newer peoples creative drive as the sense of accomplishment is a matter of following already documented stuff.

That's my opinion on it at least, but I haven't done anything in quite a while now, nor have I been actively reading the forums. So I could be wrong about the larger sites, but I doubt it.

[iindigo]

Genesis, I agree with you on everything but I think a factor that should not be underestimated is the state of the tools. Simply put, the usability and learning curve of WoW modding is terrible because of the tools. Worse, nobody really seems concerned with making said tools more friendly and usable, meaning that they will continue to drive away newcomers. There are a number of creative people out there who are looking to get into the community but simply don't have patience and/or time to dedicate to overly technical crashy tools.

[Hobbilis]

Firstly I'd like to say thanks to Genesis. Thanks for your feedback, it was very constructive and informative.
I have never made anything by myself because I find it too time consuming, especially using "peripheral" software.

There are a number of creative people out there who are looking to get into the community but simply don't have patience and/or time to dedicate to overly technical crashy tools

So much this. You have no idea how stressful for a new comer that is. I hated it. I just hate that I have to have 20 other mini programs created for only one thing. Instead of being incorporated all together with other software in one big piece.

[schlumpf]

Worse, nobody really seems concerned with making said tools more friendly and usable, meaning that they will continue to drive away newcomers.

Not true. It just is really time consuming coming up with good, user friendly tools. It is a huge pain, which a lot of people -- like me -- are just no longer wanting to feel. People put great length into making tools like Noggit more stable, user friendly and correct. There have been multiple tries to rewite it, completely or partially. In the end, it takes about a year to come into a state where you can actually show it to an end user without getting flamed for being broken even more than before. There is no motivation for most programmers to take that, especially as users won't notice that pain and long time needed. There is nothing coming from enduring that pain. At least that has been the reason for me to stop doing it.

We know the tools are bugged and horrible UX, but we aren't paid for it and the people offering to work on it are even less experienced with actually writing applications with good UX. Most developers don't even know how to write proper code.

tl;dr;was bullshit: People had been working on it and gave their best. At least five people I know of failed. It isn't fun. People stop doing it. They are concerned, though, and partially hate themselves for sucking that much.