New Core, Past and Future?

[Dunkelstein]

King's Honor, friends.

Skip intro: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=38406&p=416011#p416011

It's well known that with the new core and TBC release, most of the vanilla raids and dungeons don't work as well as they did before.

My question is:
Is it or will it ever be worth fixing them? Can any of the previous work be salvaged or would it all have to be done from scratch?

Part of the appeal of PrimalWoW to me was that eventually we could have the whole game working on a single realm. As we progress through new content, the world would be expanding without the risk of losing all the previous dev work by applying new patches (like I've seen on many other private servers before).

I thought that this, besides the enormously reduced workload, was also part of the reason for choosing to emulate vanilla and TBC on the already tried and tested 3.3.5 TrinityCore build (TrueWoW).


Here comes the part where I look to the future:
Will such a "whole world" ever be within grasp, or will it forever be a thing of fiction? It seems that when we focus on fixing the new content the old breaks and gets left behind, despite using the same build to emulate all three expansions. Or was this just a one-time-thing caused by the core merge, if so can it be avoided with the next big change to TrinityCore?

As a clueless Primal player, how was the WotLK content affected by the core merge? Did TrueWoW get hit as hard as Primal? Have the problems there been fixed to a level that is comparable to how it was before the merge?

Then there's also uncertainty about where PW is going. Is Primal just there to tie in with Stormhold/Truewow and ultimately end in Northrend? Or will a new realm with the same concept re-emerge once we proggress through WotLK? This time with all the tried and tested fixes applied pre-release, making for a smooth experience.


Please don't take this as criticism. I am just genuinly interested in the possibilities of PW, heck you could say the possibilities of private servers in general. If PW can't pull off a whole world with content from all three expansions working, no one can.
If you're still here, then thank you for reading through my wall of text.
Though it would be awesome, I don't expect an official response adressing each of these questions directly. Feel free to take it as inspiration to start a discussion, as a community. Please share what you know and how you feel about this.

Safe travels.

[testeromir]

Core merge effectively killed last remnants of the population on truewow.

[Deim]

I think Nyeriah explained how it works in post explaining why we got upgraded core after long time of not merging it. My knowledge of TC is limited however if I got it right the core changed so much during that no-merge-time it was actualy not possible to merge it. Core just got replaced by curremt version which didn't contain any of previous Primal fixes. Some of them got reapplied tho. Rest was not comaptible. So I suspect the answer is another wipe could happen if we don merge regulary in future.

[Dunkelstein]

Core merge effectively killed last remnants of the population on truewow.

That was foreseeable, but still sad.
At the same time I am surprised that the community lasted for six years without new content in the first place. That is quite an accomplishment imo. Also really nice of the staff to keep the realm online for the social aspect of the game.

Do we have any idea what the actual state of raid encounters and other dev work for WotLK content is, though?

[Jiranthos]

There was new content. Ruby Sanctum was only released on TrueWoW in ~2014 or 2015
Wintergrasp and Isle of Conquest were released even later.

[Deim]

Lol was about to write what Jira did. Content was released more or less progressively. RS was divided first just normals later on heroics were made available.
Answering question about development status of raids. Well yes. The tester rank on forums has it's purpouse. :p Condition of raid is determined by test runs and/or individual PTR testing. Found issues go to bugtracker (anyone can log it and check) Devs and contributora fix things based on those reports.Also TW realm is getting updates on weekly basis, raids are still ran there. Recently took part in icc pug there. Nearly no problems encountered.
Every player can log PTR and see how looks the most current version or just wait for changelog to be released to see list of fixed things.

[Dunkelstein]

...raids are still ran there. Recently took part in icc pug there. Nearly no problems encountered.

Good to hear, gives me hope going forward

[Dunkelstein]

So after talking to a few people in PMs and digging through the old forum posts I missed while I was away, I would like to share what I learned. Thank you Deim, for taking the time to answer on forums.

What is the state of WotLK end game content after the new core?
As of now, most of the end game scripts and mechanics are not perfect but alteast seem to be in working order again.
This gives me hope that vanilla content can be fixed, too.

Is a realm with all old content working even possible?
Nobody can say until we try, but staff made it clear that this still is their goal:

"[...] The goal behind PrimalWoW as a project is to flesh out the Vanilla/TBC raids within the 3.3.5 client to be more complete. [...]"

In my opionion Primal still is the best shot the wow legacy comunity has at this.
Let's work together and make it true.

How much work does it take to fix old content like vanilla raids?
Judging by TW's WotLK content, reapplying old fixes can take a few failed tries. However in most cases it's still better than starting from zero, so we didn't lose everything with the core merge.
Trial and error is the only way to work through this.
(detailed and technical explanation, please don't bring the heat from that old topic here)

What can we players do to help?
More testing and bug reporting on PTR, be patient when encountering server crashes or bugs. We're in this project together (players and staff).
The staff, developers in particular, don't owe us players a thing and are working on this in their free time.
Keep being skeptical, keep making constructive criticism. But please, and I can't believe I have to say this, stop creating conspiracy theories and flaming them for every minor inconvenience (some of the stuff people tried to tell me in PMs and on discord was ridiculous). Let's leave it at that and return to the remaining questions.

[Dunkelstein]

There are still a few questions left unanswered, and some new ones, too:

Q:
Will the core syncs be smoother in the future, or will we perhaps even go more in the custom direction and rely on our own core more?
In other words, should we expect more of a regular maintenance when it comes to core syncs, another big "outage", or will we maybe even stop applying TrinityCore updates altogether in the future?

Q:
When should we focus on fixing vanilla content? Shouldn't the old fixes be reapplied as soon as possible? From Nyeriah's statement I take it that the longer we wait, the harder it becomes to reapply old fixes.

"[...] But remember those changes made by those developers who left us 2 years ago? How will you figure out what's the version to choose? Which one addresses the issues? [...]"

Q:
What will happen to Primal once we finish WotLK? Will there be a fresh cycle from vanilla->TBC->WotLK, this time with better working content and more players?
If we can get more players and a smoother experience, I think it would be worth it. To me, it would just seem like a waste not to "recycle".

Now that the questions are more precise and up to date, can we get a blue post?

[Imagine]

Are you fu***** drunk or what? What is working on wotlk end game patch? Nothing... if you dont play it dont open your mouth.Everything is messed up, ask anyone who is playing there.

[Dunkelstein]

Everything is messed up, ask anyone who is playing there.

I did?

Also TW realm is getting updates on weekly basis, raids are still ran there. Recently took part in icc pug there. Nearly no problems encountered.

[Eronox]

There are still a few questions left unanswered, and some new ones, too:

Q:
Will the core syncs be smoother in the future, or will we perhaps even go more in the custom direction and rely on our own core more?
In other words, should we expect more of a regular maintenance when it comes to core syncs, another big "outage", or will we maybe even stop applying TrinityCore updates altogether in the future?

Don't think we ever will decide to fully stop TCC merges,
since they can include crash fixes and deep core changes that makes Your gameplay more entertaining.
Our development would be far far behind if it got to be neglected for the rest of our time

Q:
When should we focus on fixing vanilla content? Shouldn't the old fixes be reapplied as soon as possible? From Nyeriah's statement I take it that the longer we wait, the harder it becomes to reapply old fixes.

"[...] But remember those changes made by those developers who left us 2 years ago? How will you figure out what's the version to choose? Which one addresses the issues? [...]"

The code is there, config disabled (I think, lack of access to check myself)
And to be perfectly honest I'm not sure if Naxx should be tuned for TBC, was it for retail?

Anyways, since we are basically 2 coreworkers, well only me at the time being, we have taken the iniative to focus on more player greedy issues and bugs. Like preparing your SSC and TK for the best releases and fixing these gamebreaking issues where you can't proceed in specific instances or quests. On top of that, staff are intensively working with class tuning which is quite the stone as we do not want to do changes that makes Your gameplay negativited.

Q:
What will happen to Primal once we finish WotLK? Will there be a fresh cycle from vanilla->TBC->WotLK, this time with better working content and more players?
If we can get more players and a smoother experience, I think it would be worth it. To me, it would just seem like a waste not to "recycle".

This is faaar far far into the future, we have some unreleased discussions about it and it's stalled into the future as no one can ever know what would happen at the road to there. What's definitive, is that PW will merge with TW once eligible to do so. Yep this is so far into the future that this can't really be discussed, but I promise you that we have nothing of this neglected or forgotten.

Stay true.

PS. Giving some open room for further questions if something was unclear, please refrain from inciting drama or likewise, if going off topic I will myself lock this thread at once. We appreciate your iniative but less so for the unneccesary dramas

[Eronox]

For the record, TW has bugs just like PW, it's inevitable as it will be bugs for wherever you would turn up.
Even retail, actually. But TW raids are completely doable and has more scripted content than most of the other WoTLK servers out there. TW is actually less buggy than PW from my personal perspective of view, but that can be discussed whether its right to view from amount of issues or prioritized gamebreaking issues

[Dunkelstein]

And to be perfectly honest I'm not sure if Naxx should be tuned for TBC, was it for retail?

Anyways, since we are basically 2 coreworkers, well only me at the time being, we have taken the iniative to focus on more player greedy issues and bugs. Like preparing your SSC and TK for the best releases and fixing these gamebreaking issues where you can't proceed in specific instances or quests. On top of that, staff are intensively working with class tuning which is quite the stone as we do not want to do changes that makes Your gameplay negativited.

I agree that these problems take priority. Just saying I am concerned that the broken vanilla raids might be overlooked for too long, and the old fixes might become more difficult to reapply in the far future.
Maybe 'focusing' on vanilla content is the wrong expression, as there will never be time to 'focus' on old raids.
Still, shouldn't some effort go into it, as long as it's still relatively easy to reapply the fixes?

Not sure what you mean by tuning Naxx? It was accessible in TBC, but not really tuned for 70 if that's what you mean.

Thank you for responding, Eronox. And thank you for taking the time to explain code thingies to clueless people like me

[Joh0239]

Are you fu***** drunk or what? What is working on wotlk end game patch? Nothing... if you dont play it dont open your mouth.Everything is messed up, ask anyone who is playing there.

Well I must say, I've been a big critic on all the new bugs the new core brought. But the scripts on TW is good/okay again. Nothing is game breaking anymore, there are no game changing bugs either. The wotlk content are working and are in operational once more. We did full Icc clear and there were no bugs. BPC even worked better than it did before core update. So Scripts are back in it's place. Every raid is doable.

TW have ALWAYS had bugs, there have always been something that is not working properly but it get's fixed in given time (usually with something else getting bugged, kek). So what is it that hinder TW now? population. TW is functioning again and only lacks people to play there.