gen's thoughts (and also recs) - a Legacy in the making

been a bit since i last posted something here. this was going to be a post on my thoughts about this server, but i figured it might as well double as a recommendation post since it's p rad as well.

ah, private servers. quite a bit of a polarizing topic amongst many, especially amongst World of Warcraft players. for some people, it's a way to experience past versions of Azeroth. for others, it's a way to experience the joys of questing, player-vs-player combat, and raiding without having to pay a subscription fee. and sometimes there's others who think private servers are gimmicky buggy distortions of blizzard's milestone MMO that don't deliver a legitimate experience like retail.

whatever your opinion, there's no denying that WoW private servers are interesting in concept as well as development. while a lot of servers mostly seem to lean towards PvP and raiding with custom content, some other servers seek to emulate older versions of WoW without any fancy bells or whistles. some other ambitious people heavily modify Azeroth's terrain and add new races and quests, creating an entirely new experience that sets it apart from the crowd.

and oh boy, is Legacy quite the experience in those parts and more.

as someone who's been a WoW player since the Burning Crusade era and a roleplayer from the days of when MSN Messenger was still a thing, roleplaying in World of Warcraft is still a learning experience for me. i'm savvy with most of the lore, but making and roleplaying a character in the game has been a bit awkward for me, especially with how things in retail are handled as far as ingame events go which makes roleplay events a bit tricky despite the inclusion of roleplay servers.

another factor is that zones in the world have a certain level range, so a lv10 player might have quite a way to go before venturing to the lv60-70 Outland area. certain areas of the world would be more populated than others, and from my observations, outside of ingame guilds there didn't seem to be a cohesive forum to keep up to date on events that would happen, though considering there's a site for retail's Wyrmrest Accord server, i guess it's my fault for not poking around long enough for it. game mechanics and progression also put a hamper on things as far as roleplay is concerned.

Legacy is one of the few WoW private servers exclusively dedicated to roleplaying in the Warcraft setting. in 2009, the project was initially conceived under the name of Epilogue by a dude named S, who was upset at "the almost non-existent role playing support from Blizzard". what started as a small community eventually boomed in popularity, but real-life commitments and other pressures would eventually spell the end of the server. luckily, popular demand soon revived the project, now under the name of Prologue. Legacy eventually came to be after the loss of Prologue's game and forum data, as well as a meeting with S.

while i could go on with the history of the server, i still don't know much considering i've only recently heard of this server, and i've only been a part of the Legacy community for around two weeks as of the time of this writing.

so from the perspective of a Warcraft fan, longtime RPer, gamedev lover, and Legacy newbie, what makes Legacy so great for its concept, and what sort of experience can someone expect?


while this will go into much more later on, we may as well stick to basics for now.


Legacy is first and foremost a roleplaying server. if you're the sort of bloke who likes playing out their own stories in WoW instead of playing it as a game, you'll feel quite at home here. RP veterans from retail may also find Legacy a pleasant experience. however, there are some things you need to know before jumping in.

Legacy operates differently than RP servers on retail, but not solely because it's a private server. in retail WoW, RP servers are just regular game servers where roleplay is a common thing. there are no changes to regular game mechanics, and game events happen as normally, which can restrict roleplay possibilities.

so what sort of changes make Legacy different than retail RP servers? for starters, it uses the Wrath of the Lich King-era client, so those who've gotten used to retail's current mechanics miiiight find the transition a bit awkward. players are also jacked up to the level cap (80), and all monsters in zones have been raised to near that level as well, so expect Mulgore to be just as deadly as the Storm Peaks (but with less cliffs).

players can choose from the standard races available to the Alliance and Horde, or can roll a neutral-aligned goblin that can interact with both factions. blood/high elves are neutral too; just recall that the blue-eyed high elves are more keen to the Alliance while blood elves mingle with the Horde. There's also races like Broken draenei and taunka, but as of this writing they are unable to be played. after character creation, you'll spawn in the Spark of Creation, an area where you can touch up your character, buy spells and items for them, use the barber to fix up their hair (or horns or tusks or beard), and generally just prep themselves before setting into the world.

"hey gen this all sounds well and nice but what the hell can i do in this server" uh yeah we'll get to that, but i should also point out a few things.

first and most importantly, right now Legacy is still unreleased as of this writing. it's slated for release "soon", so the server is currently doing a beta/sandbox phase set in Northrend set during the events of WotLK to test out things and whatnot. development updates are available on the Legacy forums as well as on tumblr.

another important detail is that depending on the circumstances, character permadeath can be a thing. if you're going to participate in an event on par with the Wrathgate, be prepared to deal with the consequences, whether you die or survive. or just don't get emotionally attached to anything ever.

more details can be noted at the game rules page, FAQ, connection guide, and feature tome. if you have any questions concerning how things work, you can probably shoot a PM to one of the staff members on the forums.


so with that being said, how goes a fellow Legacy newbie's adventures?

like i said, some weeks back i began playing on the server. my first character on Legacy's Northbox was a tauren druid by the name of Ahraku Blackwind. he used to be one of my mains on the Wyrmrest Accord server on retail, and he's a pretty personal favorite character of mine, so i decided to practice stuff out with him first just to get my feet wet.

some joke about "stag parties" here

I mostly wandered the southern-central and southeast areas of Northrend doing casual roleplay with the locals. for a frozen continent ravaged by the undead, there was a lot of life to be had. mercenaries huddled around guardposts in Argent Crusade camps, scholarly folk paced around the streets of Dalaran, Forsaken troops conspired plans in their bases. this was just a sip of the adventure i was in for.

the heart of any roleplaying community is... well, the community. Legacy has a pretty active forum where users can post character profiles, pledge to join guilds, discuss lore, and organize events. after the defeat of the Lich King, players also have a hand in shaping the story of the world; "The events of Cataclysm may or may not even happen".

admittedly i didn't frequent the forums much in my beginning days, so i didn't pledge to any guilds until later. i can say that joining a guild does open a lot more RP possibilities, though.

during a stay in Camp Winterhoof, Ahraku met one of the Warsong Onslaught (the current guild name right now; it was known by a slightly different name at this time), a group of orcs that are part of the Horde expedition in the snowy land. he soon joined the group, and pretty much became the resident cartographer/healer/senile old man of the guild.

even with a common goal, the orcs of the Warsong all had something about them, be it in appearance, rank, or personality. one of our most memorable blokes was a warchef. while for the most part we dealt with eradicating the undead in the region, we did do goofy things like raid an Alliance camp to kidnap chickens. you never really forget the first time you drag your wounded self out of a burning human keep just because of a fiasco like that.

so how do events like this happen? some events are made up on the spot, while others are scheduled on the forums and planned up beforehand. but how do these events come to life? that's where storytellers come in. storytellers control NPCs or take the form of NPCs, either to aid players or hinder them.

so how does combat go, considering WoW's mechanics in that field? well, it really depends; concerning player-vs-player combat, some people may opt for going for regular spell-and-sword combat, while others prefer to used the ingame dice to determine success or failure with hits, similar to combat in a tabletop RPG like Dungeons and Dragons. others may resolve combat by writing emotes to express actions. for events, it can be any combination of these, but the latter two are pretty common.

depending on how things in events play out, the outcome can be different than what participants might expect. for example, the Warsong Onslaught were tasked with freeing a Forsaken camp from the xenophobic Scarlet Onslaught. mercenaries were hired to help aid in the takeback. even with the extra help, things weren't going too well, so the Warsong shamans bound together and summoned some earth elementals to aid the group. of course, considering how angry the elementals were with the Forsaken's experiments with blight, we had to reconcile things with them after the camp was reclaimed.

also of mention, i rolled a critical 20 on a check to cast a sleeping spell on someone that was wounded during that event. yeah, guess how well that turned out.

Ahraku and his comrades face off against some Scarlet paladins.

sometimes characters can leave a rather bloody battle with a few wounds, or not live to see their home again. some events carry a risk of danger with them, so you might have to consider these risks. Ahraku made the mistake of participating in the battle for the Wrathgate (people who know their WoW lore knows how well this turned out) and ended up collapsing in the snow trying to escape from plague bombs (and failing a survival roll). from what i can recall, only one character in the guild survived through the event, and the horror of seeing his comrades die still wrecks him. surviving after a catastrophic event isn't always a good thing.

one character officially dying doesn't mean the end of your RP days, though. a player can have up to three (living) characters at one time. you can always roll another character just so long as they aren't a carbon copy of the dead one. character death is hard to deal with, but you gotta push on regardless. been manning a surly jungle troll shaman by the name of Jazzek shortly after Ahraku's death.

there's a lot of potential for character creation in Legacy. you're not solely limited to the available classes at creation. if you want to roll something like a witch doctor, spirit walker, or warden or whatnot, just roll a main class you think the mechanics might fit for it and gear/spec yourself accordingly as you see fit. the TotalRP2 addon is bundled with the Legacy custom patch, so you can record your character details like class, personality, description, and what have you.


so yeah, with that all being said on what a player can expect (though there's probably some details i forgot to mention, but idk what, though), let's get down to what makes the server stand out in my eyes. and that's custom content. well-implemented custom content, may i add.

from what i've seen on Legacy's tumblr, even during the Prolouge era there were impressive things in terms of custom content, particularly in the field of world editing. yes, World of Warcraft client modding is indeed a thing.

Legacy uses the v3.5.5 WotLK client, but also adds some locations from Cataclysm, alongside some original edits. all possible with the wonders of world editing. while now retired, Prologue had quite a lot of lovely world edits for its custom lore. "Towns feel like towns and players can spend hours exploring and discovering the changes made to the well-known and loved setting."

of course this tradition will be continued in Legacy's release to breathe more life into the world. the devblogs on the forums and devposts on tumblr show more examples of world editing. places like the Echo Isles, the refurbished Brill, Pyrewood with Gilnean architecture, and even zones like Kezan have been shown, and areas like the Twilight Highlands untouched by the Twilight's Hammer cult have been considered. it's safe to bet many more areas will be added.

the Echo Islands. home to the Darkspear jungle trolls. former home of several-time death evader Zalazane.

some models from later WoW expansions have been imported as well. the goblins use their Cataclysm models, and it's even planned that the vanilla races will have their models updated once the new Warlords of Draenor expansion hits retail.

also of notable mention are some of Legacy's mechanics, namely ATPs, Galenus, and Euclid. ATPs are placeable objects; you want to make a tent for yourself and decorate it a tad, you can. these objects can be created and placed into the world, allowing players and guilds to make bases and homes for their characters. as for Galenus and Euclid, these aren't fully implemented in the beta so far, but some details have been said about them. Galenus is a revamped death system for Legacy, while Euclid is the server's dynamic NPC/resource spawning system. NPCs will react depending on how the player reacts, so you might want to be a bit careful before running headlong into a group of bandits. other features like professions and talents are currently being worked on.


so, that all being said, how hyped am i for Legacy? very much so.

those not keen on how retail WoW handles roleplaying might find Legacy to be a fresh new experience, even in its current Northrend phase. come Legacy, i'm most likely going to put out an article on it, as things are probably going to be different when the release comes. so far though, i've been having a wondrous time with it, and reading up on the development of the server has been pretty interesting as well, especially for someone so interested in modding.

wordiness aside, if you're a Warcraft roleplayer, i do encourage you to check out the server. by private server standards, it's one of the most interestingly-crafted out of the ones i've come across, and a wonderful world for roleplayers. my experience in Northbox has been pretty fun so far, and i can't wait to see what the official release of Legacy has to offer.

so with all i've had to say on the subject for now, feel free to give it a look yourself. who knows? maybe you'll join us in our campaign against the Lich King. how you play your character's story is up to you.


this article dedicated to the memory of gen's tauren druid Ahraku Blackwind, and his Warsong allies Traa Ironfist, Uk'ran Worgfriend, Asroam Ogretusk, his Centurion Gormak Ironfang, and the many others of the Alliance and Horde who perished in Northbox's Wrathgate assault event on 4/26/14. goddamnit, Putress.