Why private servers use 1.12 talents?

[Itzamna]

Hello there.

This is the first time i've played on a private server, i've been playing WoW since 2005, played non-stop up until the end of WotLK, on and off after that and now i decided to try to bring back a little of that feeling we all had in Vanilla WoW.

But i don't understand why all private servers start with the end of vanilla talents. Wouldn't make more sense for them to be updated when the the content is being released? Not to mention that the 1.12 talents are the most balanced in vanilla, which makes the fights in raids easier.

Are there any technical limitations? The original game can be easily found (i have mine, and many players have theirs), and there are still sites with the old patches.

[EinBaum]

The information about talents (which talents, text, icons, order etc) is hard-coded in the WoW client. You will need a different client version to have different talents.

[Norjak]

Are there any technical limitations? The original game can be easily found (i have mine, and many players have theirs), and there are still sites with the old patches.

Technical limitations - probably not, but it would be exponentially more complex to make that many updates. (Not to mention, more manpower-intensive.) Just be thankful the devs on this project are coming out with new scripted content on a semi-regular basis

[Itzamna]

Are there any technical limitations? The original game can be easily found (i have mine, and many players have theirs), and there are still sites with the old patches.

Technical limitations - probably not, but it would be exponentially more complex to make that many updates. (Not to mention, more manpower-intensive.) Just be thankful the devs on this project are coming out with new scripted content on a semi-regular basis

The information about talents (which talents, text, icons, order etc) is hard-coded in the WoW client. You will need a different client version to have different talents.

Thank you for the explanations.

Now, it's granted that i don't understand a thing when it comes to hosting a private WoW server, and i understand that, specially without being paid for it, it should be a tremendous work to make it all, well, work to a point that we, players, are used in the Blizzard servers. But, the patches are available, do they need to have the code of the game/patches to make the old talents work and update them? would that require that so much work for them to apply the changes when "releasing" the new content? Sure, probably we would need a updated client when the changes were released, but there are 9 patches, spread that for 1 and half years, and it's not that bad.

And that way we would avoid the problem of having better talents (the 1.12 ones) on times we shouldn't have those talents (MC, BWL, AQ and Naxx), which means that the content wasn't made for those talents.

Lastly, im really thankful! My objective with this post was not criticize the great work these guys are doing, was just trying to understand why all private servers start in the end.

[Codeine]

The database is based on 1.12 (technically tbc). So is the Emulation software.

To use an older patch would be a colossal amount of work reverting everything back to 1.0 and updating again for each client patch. I don't know of any emulators for vanilla wow that run older version then 1.12, except for wow alpha.

Installing wow 1.0 and updating to a patch on a client is only half of it, it still needs to connect to the server, I don't think the emulation software can support such updates. It's 1.12 or a complete rewrite of the emulator.

[Killstick]

I thought it was also something about being able to download the client 1 time and having all other fixes/content happen server side.
Switching between patches would require you to patch your client like you did in retail which is a lot of work (but might be technicaly very difficult/time consuming/impossible)

[taxoro]

Honestly I had no idea that the issue was it being hard to do.

Imo even if it is a "unfair advantage" then playing with anything than 1.12 patchnodes would just be a pain in the ass, yes it supposed to be "blizzlike" but honestly some things are better left fixed than blizzlike.

[Setup]

You're ignoring the fact that you'd be working hard to restore a broken, strictly inferior version of the game. You hear Blizzard employees telling people "you don't want to play vanilla", in the case of patches prior to 1.12 that statement is true.

Talents were bad. Bugs were bad. A more accurate recreation of an inferior state of the game isn't a good thing. The idea that this game needs to be recreated pixel for pixel is cancerous because it ignores the obvious fact that even 1.12 is full of bugs and terrible talents.

There's no reason to canonize bad design.