Create Your Own World of Warcraft Server

How many of you love World of Warcraft, but hate either having to pay to play, or the sometimes enormous lag time that come with public and private servers? Well, I for one can’t afford the cost of the game, nor is my internet connection always reliable enough to play on a private server, so I’m running my own.

This server is totally my own. I can play alone, or with other computers on my same network with no lag, no hassles, and no problems. Setting up your private WOW world is not fast, but once you do, it can bring many hours of fun.

There are several things you will need to run the basic game.

1. WOW version 3.3.5a no install
2. Jeuties Repack
3. Simple Port Forwarding
4. HeidiSQL

With these 4 items, you can be on your way to running your own server in no time at all. What’s more, you can make modifications to the settings to do things like giving you more money when you start the game, giving more XP when fighting or questing, and so much more. Be careful though as some changes may cause instability in game play.

Also you can find and download various items to use like populating your own Auction house, and other things you might find useful and fun. I have had as any as 4 people online playing at the same time with no troubles of any kind.

Now, if you go to the different sites to download the various software components, many of them assume you know what you are doing, and do not provide proper step by step directions on getting all of this done. I for one am not a programmer or even what you call a geek. So for those of you who are like me, I am going to try and break it down for you as simply as I can.

Item 1 above is pretty self explanatory. There are other repacks you can get with a more advanced version of Warcraft supported, but many use 3.3.5a as the standard mainly from what I can due to its age, and stability.

Item 2 is the key to everything, as it is the server that makes playing possible. From what I gathered when I first looked into doing this, it is one of the easiest to set up, and one of the most stable out there. My character has progressed up to level 60 with little or no glitches. Yes, there are some, but nothing to cry about. A few are down right funny.

Now, if you are playing using a wireless router, you need item 3. This will let you sync your host computers current internal IP address with your router as a port forwarded address, which is important for other computers on your network to find your server. As some may know, every time you turn your computer off, you have a good chance of having a different IP address, and this will not only tell you what it is, but let you make the needed changes in your router.

The 4^th item is for interacting with the server to update your IP address. It is a bit confusing to me as well, but when we get there, I will endeavor to make it as easy to understand as I can. When all is done and ready, this is the IP address you will have to give to your fellow players for their realm list. Sadly I have not found an easier way to update the realm list automatically. So there are some steps that you have to do every time you get ready to play unless your IP address has not changed.

As the download of WOW is difficult to find, and may involve using torrent searches, I will not post a link to any sites where it might be found. A quick look in Google can yield many many sites to choose from. Jeuties Repack can be found here. The download link is at the bottom of the page. Simple Port Forwarding here. Lastly, HeidiSQL, can be found here. Once you have all of these items, you all but ready to move on to playing the game. In a few more minutes, you will be running your own server in house, and playing WOW without being on anyone else’s server but your very own.

First things first, after you have downloaded World of Warcraft 3.3.5a, go in and immediately change your realm list. To do this, open the folder where wow is stored; open the data folder, then enUS. Once you have that, open the realmlist.wtf file using notepad and change the realmlist to 127.0.0.1; this is the IP number that you need strictly for your computer. Once you have changed it, save and close the file.

Then, the next thing you need to do is open Jeuties repack. There are three settings that need to be set up so that the program can run. Server Path, MySQL path, and Apache path. Each one is inside the same folder as the repack. Just point the program to the links and as long as the text is highlighted green, you’re good to go.

Now, just so you know, if you are only going to play the game alone, from your own computer, you do not need to use the other two programs on the list, however, if you want to have others playing along with you, then you need to go a bit further.

The last two programs are only needed if you want to have friends over to play with you, or you have more than one computer on your same network and want to let them play as well. At this point you need to remember that in order for them to play, each has to have the wow 3.3.5a file on their individual computers to play. They will have to have a different IP address in their realmlist and that is where Simple Port Forwarding comes into play.

To use Simple Port Forwarding, run the program. Your current internal IP address will show up on the main program window at the top right of the screen. Your router name should show up in the router info panel, and below that is where you set up the port forwarded IP address. Just right click and add new. Fill in the information, and when done click update router on the lower right corner of the main screen. You will need to start here any time anyone else is playing with you on a separate computer if the internal IP address does not match the one in the list, change it to match. This is done by double clicking the item in the list and changing the number. Each player other than the one on the host computer has to have the correct number for their realmlist. Once you have done this, you may close the Simple Port Forwarding program. And you’re just a few steps closer to fun.

In order to run the last program, you need to have Jeuties repack opened. If all of your paths have been set correctly, start the SQL server. Then open the HeidiSQL program. It will ask you for a password and Host IP address. The Host IP address will never change. It will always be 127.0.0.1, the user name and password once entered will always be the same. Once you have entered the user name and password, along with the host IP address, hit enter. You will see a list on the right with “auth”. Click on auth and look in the list for realmlist. Click on it, and the next part took me a while to figure out. Look on the right hand panel to find near the top the word “Data”. Click on it and you will see the IP address click on the IP address listed and change it to the one you set up in port forwarding. Then click on anything else on the left hand side of the screen. It is now set.

All you have to do now is start playing. On your own computer there is a default logging username and password. You can set up user names and passwords of other players as well. There are steps laid out for doing this where you downloaded the repack. You will also find other add-ons like the auction house and other cool things on the site as well. Each has instructions on how to use them.

I hope that this helped. I personally have enjoyed playing my own custom World of Warcraft server this way. And look forward to playing the updates this way some day as well.