Lyntha Posted August 27, 2015 Posted August 27, 2015 My buddy keeps begging me to join a BC private server called Excalibur WoW that's apparently the best BC server out there. Anyone ever hear of it? I'm considering playing again to relive the glory days of farming Karazhan for gear.
Mythosaur Posted August 27, 2015 Posted August 27, 2015 Seen these servers before, in my opinion they are shit. completely defeats the purpose of an MMO
Lyntha Posted August 27, 2015 Author Posted August 27, 2015 Some early servers had the world data loaded but nothing actually... worked. So much stuff is done server-side and nobody ever got direct access to blizzard's data so it all had to be re-engineered by hand. This server has apparently been running for years and they make regular updates to it and even have a GM team to help out players. They claim that all of the raids and dungeons are scripted and work. I'm kind of excited to try it out. Their financial model is to have the server free but you can pay for stuff with micro-transactions. For example, if I do play on this server, there's no way in hell I'm going to level from 1-60. That was a nightmare that I don't want to re-live. I'm not sure how much they charge to level from 1-60 but I think it's like $5.
Mastric Posted August 27, 2015 Posted August 27, 2015 I ran one back in the day, fun to admin around on but against TOS [emoji14] Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk
Lyntha Posted August 28, 2015 Author Posted August 28, 2015 Definitely against ToS but I don't think that Blizzard cares too much since they are never going to do a BC server. I May have tried it out tonight and was blown away by how close it is to classic blizz servers. Apparently, this server has been running since 2008 and has been actively developed since then so pretty much everything works now. There's also an active community with a ton of people who do pug runs, 5-mans etc. There's even a working arena ladder with an active arena scene. Anybody else interested in trying it? I may be playing prot pally and my buddy may be playing lock. We could use a healer buddy
Summa Posted August 30, 2015 Posted August 30, 2015 Lol..This sounds like a lot of fun. I miss BC...i may be convinced to play
Lyntha Posted August 31, 2015 Author Posted August 31, 2015 (edited) Day 1: Made a new character! The prot pally returns! Started questing in the draenei starting area. I quickly remember that paladin dpsing at level 1 in BC was limited to auto-attacking. I can now look at porn and play wow at the same tim once again! I hit level 2 and am already bored of auto-attacking. I go to the website control panel to level my character to 60. It won't let me until I hit level 10 . After what feels like an eternity, I hit lvl 10. I check played time and it was actually only an hour or so. I go to the website and see that it costs ~5 euros to level to 60 or ~15 euro to get to level 60 with a full set of tier 1 gear for leveling along with bags and gold. I proclaim that I will be fine and cheap out and just level to 60 with nothing else. I am now a level 60 paladin who can only equip one-handed and two-handed maces and has 5/300 weapon skill in those. I also have four pieces of white gear equipped. I am otherwise naked. I am also still in the draenei starting area. I am broke and have no bags. I did not think this through. It takes me 2 hours to run to Stormwind and train my weapon skills (With a loan from my buddy) and train my spells (With a MUCH bigger loan from my buddy). After 8 hours of leveling weapon skills (No kidding), I am ready to go to outland! To be continued... Edited August 31, 2015 by Lyntha
Lyntha Posted August 31, 2015 Author Posted August 31, 2015 Day 2: I spend two hours looking up prot pally information from BC. Thank you wayback machine for storing ancient Elitist Jerks forum posts! Satisfied with my talent selections, I travel to the Blasted Lands which takes another 30 minutes or so. I walk through the dark portal. I'm back in outlands! I pick up all of the bread-crumb quests then group up with my also-naked warlock buddy. It's time to quest! Two of us should be fine! We start off on the first quest. I quickly find out that consecrate costs 1/4th of my base mana and my mana regeneration is about 99% dependent on getting healed and restoring mana through spiritual attunement. I also quickly find out that I can only kill one mob (With my buddy helping) before I have to eat and drink. Whatever, let's do it. Three hours later, I have 5 pieces of green gear. I have pretty good survivability (At least compared to my lock buddy) but my threat is terrible unless I spend mana and drink constantly. This is taking forever. I buckle under the pressure and spend 50g on level 40-60 AH greens. Luckily, the server has a functioning economy and auction house. I now have a full set of [crappy] gear. I have no problems surviving but my mana management isn't much better. We decide to do Hellfire Ramparts. I find that the LFG tool actually works and there are a bunch of people looking for a group. I invite a shammy healer to group and he immediately tells me to invite two other people. Sure thing shammy buddy! We head into the instance and I quickly find out that the DPS the shammy invited is naked except for a staff and the warrior is a tank. We spend two packs fighting for threat before me and my lock buddy leave. We make a new group with me picking who we invite and the run goes well. The DPS let me LOS pull packs and wait until they are in my consecrate before DPSing. The healer communicates with me fine. All of the boss mobs work exactly as I remember. There is one issue with the wolf-rider mobs. Instead of dismounting and separating into two mobs, they kind of just stand there for 10 seconds not doing anything and then just forget about dismounting and attack me while mounting. Are these mobs even supposed to dismount? I can't remember, it's been so long. We wipe once on the last boss. I forget that dungeons are actually hard. After tweaking some things, we kill the boss. During the run, I still have to drink constantly due to not taking enough damage to restore mana through spiritual attunement.
Lyntha Posted September 1, 2015 Author Posted September 1, 2015 Day 3: I take the plunge to being a retadin. I cannot go any longer with doing terrible damage AND having no form of mana restoration. Things instantly start to die twice as fast and since I'm not tanking raid mobs, my survivability is still fine. Me and my destro lock buddy destroy most mobs in 5 seconds or so now. We quickly finish up Hellfire Penninsula around the start of level 63. We are almost to revered with Honor Hold. For anyone who doesn't remember the reps in BC, it was EXTREMELY important that you hit honored with all of the dungeon factions so that you get the keys which allow you access into the heroic dungeons. The (Arguably) best way to do this was to just prioritize quest hubs that had those reps. We head into Zangarmarsh and do only the quests around Telredor and the Cenarion Expedition outpost. This takes us to around 64 and we hit honored with Cenarion Expedition. We head to Terrokar and prioritize Lower City quest hubs but it's a bit more difficult because so many Lower City quests are long chains that require you to go back and forth to Shattrath City which is crazy inefficient for leveling. We do what we can and hit level 65 or 66. We decide to pay another $3 or so and level up to 68. That brings me up to where I'm at now. We now have the Karazhan Attunement quest chain and can start knocking out the dungeons needed as well as any leveling dungeons to get those sweet quest rewards and that sweet quest XP. That should carry us into 70. Is anyone else interested in trying this out? Because you totally should.
Lyntha Posted September 10, 2015 Author Posted September 10, 2015 So the last week has been spent hitting 70 then doing Sunwell dailies (Epic shield and necklace for hitting exalted) and slowly knocking out dungeons and dungeon attunements. We got the arcatraz key and did an arcatraz run. We did durnholde to get attuned to Black Morass then did a BM run. We did the Shattered Halls key questline but found that we couldn't 2-man Fel Reaver so called it quits on that quest chain. I have tried to do a bunch of normal MGT runs and only succeeded a few times. The second boss is a huge gear/idiot check so it's hard to find a group capable of succeeding. So far at 70, it has been a BLAST. It was totally worth the time and money to get back to what it felt like at the start of BC! Next up is finishing up Sunwell rep, finishing the karazhan attunement then trying to get into a Karazhan run.
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