How To Make A World Of Warcraft Server
Setting Up a World of Warcraft Server [Step-by-Step Guide]
If you’re a World of Warcraft player, then you’ve probably wondered what it would be like to play on your own server. World of Warcraft is an incredibly popular roleplaying game that’s enjoyed by millions of gamers around the globe. Private servers can emulate the experience of an online game, but they allow you to change certain aspects of the gameplay for your own enjoyment. Below we’re going to show you how you can create a private WOW server that you can play on. Let’s get to it! What is a Private Server? At the core a private server refers to any server that’s privately owned. Most private servers will allow you to play a version of the game that’s different than those commonly played on the official metimes you just really want to play an older version of the game, or include certain character or gameplay modifications, or even include custom items in regular gameplay. A private server allows you to create a custom-tailored gaming experience specifically tailored to your ivate servers can also allow you to play games that aren’t offered in your region of the world, or even play discontinued versions of the game. These kinds of servers are very widespread. Keep in mind that creating a private WOW server is in a legal grey area, and you should by no means charge for the server, or include to Setup a WOW Private ServerThe steps below will help you install your very own private World of Warcraft server. However, before you jump in you’ll need to install a program called AC Web Ultimate Repack. You can choose the repack that works best for you. You’ll also want to install the Microsoft Framework 2. 0 Service Pack, which you can install from this you have those installed we can move forward with setting up your very own server. Special thanks to Instructables for the configuration help. 1. Map DataYou’ll need to collect the Map Data from your existing WOW install. If you don’t have the game downloaded to your computer, then you’ll need to do this now. You can access the download from your existing WOW up the WOW folder and locate the file titled ‘maps’. Now you’ll need to go to ‘C:/AC Web Ultimate Repack/ Tools/Map Extractor enUS’ and copy the ‘maps’ folder and the ‘’ to the folder. Then, run the ‘’ program. 2. Logon Database Configuration Now you’ll need to find the file called ‘’, open it, and find the area that begins with, ‘LogonDatabase Hostname=’, make sure you change the information, so it looks like the text below:LogonDatabase Hostname = “127. 0. 1”
Username = “root”
Password = “ascent”
Name = “logon”
Port = “3306”
Type = “1”3. Configure Ascent RealmsNavigate to the file called ‘’, and locate the portion that starts with ‘
Are WoW Private Servers Legal? – Zremax
Whether Private Servers for World of Warcraft is legal, is a question that gets asked a lot. The reason is that there’s no simple answer for it, as it’s a bit of a grey zone to host a WoW Server. But players playing on a WoW Server (not retail) have not been punished so far. There is also no indications that it will give laws problems in the future either, to be playing on Private Servers. We will elaborate below. For the server owners (the people behind – running the wow servers), it’s however another story.
Do players get punished for playing on a Private Server?
When playing on World of Warcraft, you’re paying for a monthly subscription, and there’s an end user license agreement. With the fanservers for wow, it’s a different story, as it’s free to play. But don’t worry, as a player, you do not get in any legal trouble or any sort of court case. The reason being that it’s not illegal for players to be playing on WoW Private Servers. It’s against Blizzard’s EULA and ToS, but it’s not offending any law that can get you in trouble. As a player, this means that you should lay low on advertising that you’re playing on a private server. That is only relevant, if you have a retail account, as Blizzard may terminate your account, if you talk about fanservers while playing retail. But besides from that, there’s nothing illegal about playing on one. This means that gamers are not the ones getting in trouble.
Keep in mind that it has been reported that people have gotten complains from their ISP’s when downloading the client for World of Warcraft, on older versions of the game. Therefore, we always recommend using a VPN when downloading the client, but besides from that – you’re good to go. When you want to play on WoW Servers, you must have a game client in order to get ingame.
Do server owners get punished for running a World of Warcraft server?
That is where things get a little complicated. Hosting a WoW Private Server is technically a copyright infringement, involving server software by developers and server owners. You also use the client files, and that’s a violation. This means that Blizzard can file a complaint to the server-owners (or more realistically, to the host provider where the game is hosted at). This usually happens through an email. The reason being that Blizzard owns the rights reserved to World of Warcraft. But in general, many hosting providers take these DMCA reports for private servers very lightly, especially if they are not US based. Some of the biggest servers run on hosts that are located in Europe, for example OVH – being in France, and they have not been closed down. They have certainly received copyright infringements from Blizzard related companies, but have ignored them. The copyright laws are also different for each country. And Blizzard/the trading mark companies, have not done anything further.
In other words, it’s very normal that Blizzard file copyright complains towards the hosting provider running the particular WoW Server they are ‘targeting’. But it’s very unlikely that Blizzard takes the next step, in case their emails are being ignored. It has only happened with the private server called WoW-Scape, which resulted in a law-suit, but the owner was also US origin based. WoWScape was also a wow server, that Blizzard took in court case, and was judged to pay a lot of money as a fee. But historically, there have not been any other court cases. This includes court cases for server owners, nor for people reverse engineering the game client, touching the database data or the server code involving World of Warcraft.
How can the popular servers stay up without getting closed?
The reason is that the owners of the WoW Servers (and the host company they use) simply ignore Blizzard’s copyright complains, and Blizzard don’t proceed after that. The reason why Blizzard, who has made the game World of Warcraft, does not take further actions is something you can question. The main reason is however that it’s extremely resource heavy, as it will require a law-suit, and a lot of money to proceed such a case. As you might know, a lot of things get pirated nowadays’ (software, movies.. etc), and it’s not that easy to get rid of. The case is not different for Private Servers. Simply because some countries don’t follow the same copyright rules as the US, making it very complicated for Blizzard to proceed. This way, it’s easier for server owners running wow servers, to prevent court cases, and that is basically the reason why Private Servers continue to exist.
At Zremax, we personally believe that this won’t change. A WoW Private Server will continue to run just like now, and blizzard won’t take further actions other than ‘scare letters’ through emails. It’s too resource heavy for them to go after wow servers, and the whole scene is just a very grey area. Perhaps, Private Servers even promote some people to get back to Retail, when gamers are tired of playing on the fanservers. Several countries (Iceland, Russia etc. ) take copy issues more lightly than for example the US. This way the server owners can bypass the copyright law, and continue to run their wow server, even though it’s a private server.
Is it ethical to play and host a Private Server?
World of Warcraft has existed since 2004 officially, and have gone through several expansions. If you think about it, that ‘s a very long time. Some of the game versions were liked more than others. But they have one thing in common. Gamers miss certain expansions. And there’s no way to get back playing at them officially, if you want to follow Blizzard’s EULA. It’s however possible, by playing on Private Servers, as you will be able to log into wow servers that aren’t necessarily on the latest patch.
Whether it’s ethical to be playing World of Warcraft on private servers, is a very subjective question. Some people follow the law in every way they can, and care a lot about Blizzard’s EULA and ToS. Other gamers and people running the private servers for World of Warcraft, may not care as much about it. Either that, or the itch to get back into old wow expansions weights heavier. Either way, it’s a subjective question and can only be answered by the individual. At Zremax, we have seen people who disgraces private servers, but also people who love both World of Warcraft and also private servers.
Conclusion
Playing on the fanservers, which are also known as Private Servers for World of Warcraft are not illegal for players. But it does go against Blizzard’s ToS and Blizzard EULA. Therefore, you should watch out for your account when playing on a Private Server and stay anonymous. Don’t use the same email on retail, as on Private Servers, when you sign up for an account. Running and owning a wow server is a grey area, but can be argued to be illegal as running a private server is a copyright infringement. Private Servers definitely also go against blizzard’s eula and Terms of Service. But closing the private servers is not as easy, as it may sound. It’s likely not worth it for Blizzard, to be closing the wow private servers, because it’s resource heavy. You could also argue that you would want Blizzard to focus on making World of Warcraft even better as a game, instead of focusing on going against Private Servers. If Blizzard make their game good enough, maybe Private WoW Servers might even die out by themselves, naturally.
World of Warcraft’s $25 server transfer fee is infuriatingly overpriced
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In a genre that has largely gone free-to-play, World of Warcraft is easily the most expensive MMO. Though it comes with a free trial (which has its own problems), you’ll need to fork over $40 for the latest expansion pack and sign up for a $15 monthly subscription to really experience Azeroth. I’ve happily stomached that cost for 17 years because WoW is a genre-defining titan that continues to innovate and reinvent itself in exciting ways. But every time I’ve had to shell out more money to pay for one of WoW’s different game services like a server transfer, it feels like I’m being taken advantage of. WoW’s game services are an insanely high toll you sometimes have to pay just to enjoy the game as Blizzard we get into why WoW’s game services are such a negative experience, let’s break down exactly what they are and how much they cost:Boosting a character to level 50 costs $anging a character’s race costs $anging a character’s faction costs $ansferring a character to a different server costs $anging a character’s name costs $’s how those fees compare to Final Fantasy 14, which is another MMO very similar to WoW in terms of structure and offered account services. (Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)For FF14’s level boost, the total is calculated by adding a class level boost ($25) and the Tales of Adventure ($25), which unlocks the story campaign of the latest expansion. There are no factions in FF14, it’s clear that WoW’s game services cost significantly more than its closest competitor. But what really frustrates me is how often I’ve felt forced to buy a WoW service in order to keep enjoying the game. Server transfers feel like an unnecessary penalty to fix problems that have nothing to do with me as a player and everything to do with some of WoW’s most outdated features. WoW has a population balance problemBlizzard should be working to eliminate every barrier that exists between players having fun together, not monetizing World of Warcraft players are divided between two warring factions: Horde and Alliance. Though recent expansions have unified the two factions somewhat—at least in terms of narrative—this means that WoW is largely two separate games: Horde players have access to entirely different quests and areas than Alliance players. Your faction is more than a loose grouping of different fantasy races. The choice on one faction means you can’t cooperatively play with those from the other. At best players can co-exist in neutral towns, but there is no way to form parties or groups across factions. Even if you could, the game garbles the text chat of opposing factions to simulate the language barrier between them. There’s no way to communicate with what is supposed to be my mortal faction system is one of WoW’s defining features and is quickly becoming its greatest weakness. Having a huge group of players to fight against is awesome, but it effectively cuts WoW’s population in half, meaning less people to team up with. Because WoW players are divided up between hundreds of different servers, some servers have become more popular for one faction more than the other. Wildly more popular, in many cases. Wowprogress estimates that seven of the top ten servers with hardcore raiding guilds disproportionally favor the Horde. Illidan-US, one of WoW’s original servers, has an estimated 22, 000 active Horde raiders compared to just 148 active Alliance raiders. That means if you want to play WoW’s more difficult endgame content, you’re likely going to need to start over (or pay) to become a Horde BlizzCon 2021, game director Ion Hazzikostas admitted that faction balance was one of the biggest issues plaguing WoW today and that there were no easy answers. The faction imbalance not only makes the game less fun for those in the minority on a server, but it also often divides friend groups unnecessarily unless everyone agrees to be on the same recent years, Blizzard has merged servers and even implemented complex technology to try and solve the problem. Connected Realms, for example, link two or more servers together to make them act as if they were one big server. If I’m an Alliance player on Illidan-US and I go out exploring, special cross-realm zones will also ensure I bump into other Alliance characters. It helps, but they’re a spite a good many US servers being connected to others, there’s just as many that aren’t connected. And if you’re on one of those non-connected servers, the faction imbalance can absolutely sting when Shadowlands first launched, I decided to start over with a new character. Almost all of my WoW characters are Alliance, so this time I thought it’d be fun to play as the Horde instead. But it wasn’t until I spent nearly a hundred hours getting to level 60 and playing the endgame that I started to realize something was wrong. No matter where I went in the open world I felt like I was swarmed by enemy Alliance players. I eventually had to turn off PVP altogether because I would routinely get ganked. There were also fewer Horde players to group up with in certain world quests, and when I got to a high enough level where I wanted to start running Mythic+ dungeons and raids, it felt like there weren’t very many open parties. Even finding a decent guild was slim pickings. Having played Alliance characters on the same server, the difference was profound. I finally realized why things felt so weird when I looked up the estimated population balance for my server, Lightbringer-US. Alliance characters outnumbered Horde characters on Lightbringer-US by an estimated factor of 20. Horde wasn’t just in the minority, we were practically non-existent. What’s worse, Lightbringer isn’t connected to any other server according to WoW’s support page. (Image credit: Blizzard)What frustrates me is that WoW’s hundreds of servers are not equal, but none of this is communicated to the player through World of Warcraft directly. When logging in, servers are only listed by approximate population but don’t provide any more granular detail about the culture of that server or what timezone it’s based in (beyond broad geographic descriptors like “European”). All of this incredibly useful information has to be discovered using third-party websites. It makes choosing a server an extremely risky decision that practically requires doing a good amount of research. Good luck finding that one out, new ‘s unbelievably shitty, though, is that once you’re in that position you only have three options: Pay up, start a new character from scratch and lose all that time and effort, or grit your teeth and continue playing. If I wanted to stay on Lightbringer-US, I could pay $30 for a faction change but I’d have to give up my badass Blood Elf appearance and change to an Alliance race. Or I could pay $25 and transfer to a different server with a thriving community of Horde players. So that’s what I am I having to bear the hidden cost of World of Warcraft’s aging server infrastructure and faction design? This is Blizzard’s problem, not is now the second time that I’ve had to pay for a server transfer. The first time was years ago when I originally transferred to Lightbringer-US so I could link up with a group of friends in a guild. Talk to any WoW veteran and chances are they’ve experienced a similar situation. As a player, it pisses me off to feel like I’m being taxed just because I want to enjoy World of Warcraft the way it was intended—either directly with friends or alongside a healthy community. Blizzard should be working to eliminate every barrier that exists between players having fun together, not monetizing them. I get that these services cost money to discourage players from taking advantage of them, which could theoretically result in a bad experience for many players. But making the barrier such an exorbitant fee—over half of the price of the new expansion in some cases—feels scummy, especially in the middle of a pandemic when people are already hurting financially. Why am I having to bear the hidden cost of World of Warcraft’s aging server infrastructure and faction design? This is Blizzard’s problem, not of Warcraft has made some great strides over the past few years to become more accessible to all players. Its new starting zone is a much better introduction for newbies, leveling up takes a fraction of the time it used to, and Blizzard even eliminated the fee to change your character’s gender and made it something you can do as much as you want, at any time. But there’s still so much else that makes World of Warcraft frustrating. It’s high time for Blizzard to rethink its approach to these services and the kind of message they send to players who have already invested so much time and money into this game.
Steven enjoys nothing more than a long grind, which is precisely why his specialty is on investigative feature reporting on China’s PC games scene, weird stories that upset his parents, and MMOs. He’s Canadian but can’t ice skate. Embarrassing.
Frequently Asked Questions about how to make a world of warcraft server
Is it legal to host a wow server?
Hosting a WoW Private Server is technically a copyright infringement, involving server software by developers and server owners. You also use the client files, and that’s a violation. … They have certainly received copyright infringements from Blizzard related companies, but have ignored them.Jan 29, 2021
How do I create a private server?
How do I create one?Click on the Servers tab on the game’s details page.If this feature has been turned on, you will see a section entitled Private Servers. … To create a new one, click the Create Private Server button.Give your new server a name.More items…
How much does it cost to buy a wow server?
World of Warcraft’s $25 server transfer fee is infuriatingly overpriced. Faction imbalances and outdated server infrastructure make the cost to change servers a hard pill to swallow. In a genre that has largely gone free-to-play, World of Warcraft is easily the most expensive MMO.Mar 23, 2021
