It's been a while since last time I made a post here. Some of you may have read my essay "Philoric's 10 levels of Warcraft". I can divulge that I've developed some of the ideas since I made that post, and others I've scrapped altogether.
Anyway, here is my question:
Lets say I want to create a private server for experimental purposes where I will be toying with quest creation, NPC placement, modified items including recipes and crafted items and then maybe some custom combat mechanics and mob-AI. I imagine it to run with a TBC-era client, say 2.4.3.
Which server emulator and other software would you recommend for someone such as me?
While I'm not unfamiliar with programming, I think you should consider me a novice in this context.