Nostalrius Begins, one of the largest Vanilla WoW servers, just announced that a new Burning Crusade private server project is in development. Below you can find a copy of their announcement. You can find their full announcement thread here.
UPDATE
Open beta testing is available now at the Nost TBC site: http://tbc.nostalrius.org/
Summary
1. Project overview
1.1 Development
1.2 Organization
2. Description
3. Solution overview
1. Project overview
Based on our experience regarding Legacy Server Emulation, Nostalrius TBC is an emulation project based on the first extension of the biggest MMORPG ever built. The server will be independent from existing servers already released by Nostalrius and will need the corresponding 2.4.3 client in order to log in. Characters already created on our Vanilla PVP & PVE servers will be able to be copied on the TBC realm under condition, not to have a negative impact on the economy, which will be described when the server will be ready to use.
The project will be innovative in multiples aspects.
1.1 Development
The project development will be accessible to anyone. Multiples tools will be provided to the community in order to create/launch/debug a server in a more user-friendly way. Even if the project development is accessible to anyone, some parts may remain the properties of Nostalrius.
For example :
- Anticheat system,
- Antibot system,
- Antispam system,
- Performance optimization,
- Timeline scheduling,
- Dynamic respawn,
- Work/studies on the Nostalrius Vanilla content,
- Staff experience vs huge population.
1.2 Organization
the project will be managed using Agile/Scrum methodology, associated with dedicated tools accessible to the teams members. Both development team and ISVV team will be merged into mixed teams. Each of these new teams will be handle with this methodology synchronized with a proxy scrum master. This kind of management will also provide added values regarding communication intern./extern. to the project.
Consequently, this project is designed to handle new kind of challenge, mainly regarding development, ISVV and organization allowing us to handle a much bigger team in a context of constant evolution and very short development cycle. Each teams members will have more responsibilities and the added values of their work will be more representative than our existing project.
Testers i.e external players who want to participate without being part of the IsVV Team will receive tests instructions from the product owner prior to each IsVV Sprint session in order to enhance testing efficiency.
2. Description
Project will be able to handle around 20 developers, 20 IsVV and 800 testers (actual number of active accounts on the Nostalrius bug tracker). Needs are also identified regarding forum (1 developer) & website design (1 developer) plus communication (1 communication) in parallel to the project’s backbone.
Multiples teams will be created with new volunteers apart from existing project not to impact current timeline & teams from Vanilla’s projects.
Capabilities to retrieve data from Burning Crusade extension is much easier than Vanilla, based on web’s archives, videos, magazine & documents. A dedicated forum will be created in order to summarize good practices in the ISVV process.
Main risks for the project are the difficulties to:
- Being part of a huge team while dealing with GMT issues,
- Working with volunteers in a development/ISVV process vs autonomy & motivation.
Main opportunities to work on this project is a win-to-win for the communities:
- It will increase the productivities of the existing projects while shrinking deadline,
- Offer the opportunities to participate to an open source project while bringing more professionalism regarding management,
- Offer the opportunities to discover new kind of process if developers are curious about Agile/Scrum process,
- Offer the opportunities to participate to the complete lifecycle of a whole extension project,
- Repel the limits of private server project.
- Share our experience in project management to enhance team member personal curriculum vitae (which already helping 1 developer to get a real job and 2 developers to get “in real life“ professional training for 1 year.)
- Offer the possibility for everyone to create their own server.
Development will start based on the latest release of Mangos core. As a consequence, migration of all the existing Vanilla content to Burning Crusade will be much easier, allowing nostalgic players only wanting to experience the first extension, to also have access to all the Azeroth & Kalimdor content. All the features properties of Nostalrius will be integrated once the Mangos core will be finished (anticheat, antibot, etc.).
Server will have the same location as all the others servers Nostalrius already uses. Dedicated tools will be provided, allowing anyone to develop & create their own TBC server easily, synchronizing their fix with Nostalrius TBC Core.
In term of schedule objectives, master planning will remain private for now. Objectives regarding ISVV members will be to start existing content analysis beginning of March 2016, driven by a dedicated roadmap regarding content checking.
3. Solution overview
Github will be used for sources versioning.
A custom tool will be used to synchronize database modification.
Up-to-date MySQL version is needed for the database.
Dedicated Tuleap bug tracker will be used to track issues using Agile/Scrum functionnalities.
Nostalrius TBC Vagrant project will be used for user-friendly installation of a ready-to-use development environment.
For AI scripting, 3 options will be available: C++ scripting, database or LUA scripting
For LUA scripting, Nostalrius TBC LuaEngine project will be used.
Each sprint should last for 1 month for development team resulting into an official release, including a bi-hebdo scrum meeting per week to be confirmed (15 minutes maximum),
Communication regarding new release version will be handle on a dedicated section of the existing forum and also on our Twitter account, allowing official/unofficial IsVV members to validate the corresponding release. Slack messaging application will be used for the internal organization of sprint & meeting but will also be public for all TBC oriented needs *only*.
TBC PTR server will be release March 6th 19:00 servertime, while the whole organization kick-off will start during March. Expect more news during the week.
