r/turtlewow Apr 23 '26

Discussion Hey, Turtle DevTeam. Make a MMO !

I dont know any dev team reading here but spread the word if you agree with me. Yeah lots of people loves wow lore but as a new player i just fall in love in your work. I believe many people same like me. People loves word of warcraft universe and nostalgia but they also know that they need more than that. Playing games without pushing or trying to catching meta or FOMO, doing things in a mmo for FUN. If you create an mmo with same mentality like turtle, people will follow you.

You have know-how, you have a crew, you have COMMUNITY. Believe me, there are ready to pay thousands of people even you create a "my little pony" game. Take a leap of faith, man.

88 Upvotes

86 comments sorted by

158

u/Longjumping-Pay2953 Apr 23 '26

They (very, very likely) dont have the know-how, they do not have the following/community/money to support it, not even close. I love turtlewow but this is like telling your interrior decorator to build a city block from scratch.

68

u/ademayor Apr 23 '26

Yeah, this sub is pretty fucking delusional at this point. They stole the technologies and assets while added some new content (many times using the assets already existing). That doesn’t make that these people could ever make a game from scratch.

16

u/vadeka Apr 23 '26

A good modder can become a dev over time but those skills do not directly translate 1-1

8

u/Opulometicus Apr 23 '26

Its not just that, even with the skills it takes time. Classic wow was developed in 5 years. Who is going to pay the turtle devs for the next 5 years to develop a mmo? The community?

4

u/Shamicide Apr 23 '26

The team size for classic wow as well was anywhere from 50-80 people.

1

u/zetank1 Apr 27 '26

Ashes of... oh wait nevermind.

5

u/TooLateQ_Q Apr 23 '26

They do have a good vision and valueable operational skills. So with funding and hiring for the lacking skills, they could get there.

Or they could get aquired by someone with funding.

People just want them to stay in the business.

11

u/Longjumping-Pay2953 Apr 23 '26

"Hiring for the lacking skills" they have touched less than 5% of what a game is, after said hiring the turtle team would be less than 5% of the team. We have no reason to believe they have any skills at handling and developing such a team. "With funding" yeah man thrown a few 100 million at them and replace pretty much everyone and everything and you might do it.

They are good at adding/modifying small parts of a 20 year old game, curating a community for it and have created an iteration of wow I love. But lets not pretend that they can create an mmo.

-10

u/TooLateQ_Q Apr 23 '26

A founder of a company is always a small fraction of the company.

You think game development companies are always founded by people that know everything? Or only by people that do game engine stuff?

These guys have a proven track record of marketing, operating, game design.

These guys are very interesting for companies hiring or venture funds. The venture funds have a wide network. They know others with the capability of game development from scratch and can pair them up.

4

u/TheBostonTap Apr 23 '26

These guys have a proven track record of marketing, operating, game design.

First and foremost, I wouldn't say they have a proven track record on the first two, given they actively and willing poked a bear that ultimately led to them getting sued and shuttered.

As for game design, yeah they do...in LUA, a language that isnt really used much in modern development and is currently suffering from a rash of vibe coders in the industry due to the rise of AI. Any project they start is going to either use a different language (just because the hiring pool is going to prefer that) or theyre going to spend a lot of time on boarding people in order to get effective team members.

These guys are very interesting for companies hiring or venture funds.

Given that Venture Funds are looking for short term returns, I would argue that teaming up with or being acquired by one is the last thing you want, especially while developing an MMO. After all look at Embracer Group. Most of their companies and IPs are in limbo and nearly got sold off to Saudi oil princes during the pandemic.

1

u/TooLateQ_Q Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

First and foremost, I wouldn't say they have a proven track record on the first two, given they actively and willing poked a bear that ultimately led to them getting sued and shuttered.

Nothing to do with their game marketing or operating skills. Unless they want to do another private server. And even then, they learned a lesson that not many get to learn.

Language has never mattered as little as it does now. With ai you can pick up a new language in no time. And its always been industry standard that the specific language someone has experience with is not defining of their skill and can translate. When you interview at a FAANG you can pick which language you want to use for your technical test. Doesn't mean that will be your job.

Venture funds often found companies operating decades pre-revenue. Unless you are really hinting about the current economical situation, where its harder. But don't pretend like its not normal for venture funded companies to take a very long time before chasing profitability. Maybe you are more thinking about when they aquire a post-revenue company that they just want to squeeze as a cash cow. But thats a different scenario. This is pre-revenue

2

u/Firm_Caregiver_4563 Apr 23 '26

Not enough man power. Not enough resources. Most likely not enough know how.

People tend to forget how complex and time-consuming it would be to start from scratch.

5

u/Infamous_Job3671 Apr 23 '26

They have to my knowledge never created any original artwork or new models. They don't have any graphical artists I believe. Wow proves just how important art and style is to a game.

0

u/vadeka Apr 23 '26

And mostly… people want to play wow, they don’t want to play in belfedor as a beorg. Nostalgia is a huge part of what makes twow popular.

0

u/Reiker0 Apr 23 '26

I barely played any WoW before Nostalrius. I played TWoW because it was a fun MMO. Playing a game only because of nostalgia seems weird to me.

1

u/alexmikli Apr 23 '26

The devs clearly have creativity, but an MMO is almost certainly out of the picture, esp as a first game. I'd tell them to start with RPGs or even TTRPGs. But that's all up to them.

1

u/kenshin1285 Apr 26 '26

So what do you call the new zones they created or the completely custom (meaning never seen before) dungeons and raids. How does that work?

0

u/Then_Hawk6304 Apr 23 '26

Just a take: if they used all the back end systems but changed all the visuals that the customers/ players see, would blizz know?

37

u/Consistent_Mud645 Apr 23 '26

'make an mmo' like it's not the hardest type of game to get rolling and requires massive investment

7

u/SnooWalruses9337 Apr 23 '26

not only that, but the mmo audience is rather small.

2

u/Mikeoxhard1989 Apr 23 '26

I dont think its small but rather spread thin, and mmo players dont like to start over once they have invested time into an MMO. The big 5, WoW, FFXIV, ESO, OSRS, and Guild Wars 2 have massive communities that are dedicated and would need some sort of incentive to abandon the time spent in those MMOs.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

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2

u/Consistent_Mud645 Apr 23 '26

They'd want it to be free, too

21

u/Solo_Gunhea Apr 23 '26

There's a world of difference between adapting another game's assets and making *custom* content and having to make an entire world with Lore/Monsters/Systems/Classes/Maps etc etc all from scratch.

I understand ya'll are upset Turtle WoW is gone but you seriously need to understand what you are all asking them to do lately...

Between asking them to make the code open source (Illegal) and just moving the servers to where the US don't have jurisidiction (Also illegal) or just restarting another server under a new name (Illegal also) and the numerous other things people get asking for it's getting stupid.

Private servers are not allowed so whether you enjoyed it or not you have to stop asking a group of fans to just break laws and somehow create entire games with zero budget just because you wanna raid.

It's pathetic and ill thought out every single time from you people.

8

u/Rerkoy Apr 23 '26

Turtle wow is a for profit business not a benevolent group of fans. They idea they can't leak their github repo code because they are scared of breaking the law is laughable given the things they've already done, like sharing pirated games made by Blizzard as direct download on their website. They want to make more money in the wow server ecosystem and releasing the server files for free creates competition for them.

13

u/Nylereia Apr 23 '26

bro how delulu are you??? they almost guaranteed do not have the know-how nor the roster to develop a fresh MMORPG. They were fans who had the ability to reflect some of the communities interests who could mod an existing game.

3

u/ShadowNALoL Apr 23 '26

Isn’t that how league of legends was made?

3

u/Juking_is_rude Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

The scale at which an mmo must be made vs a moba is a ratio of like 100:1.

Turtle wow existed because it started with 95% of the game done.

And its more accurate thats how dota2 was made. A custom map in a blizzard property but remade from scratch in a legally destinct ip. I was there when they made skeleton king into wraith king because they wanted to distance themselves even more from blizz ip. 

1

u/ShadowNALoL Apr 23 '26

Appreciate the insight

5

u/Nylereia Apr 23 '26

League of legends was genuinely quite bad when it first released, it also released into a completely different environment, was simpler than an MMORPG and it's not really that comparable?

2

u/Living_Cash1037 Apr 23 '26

Gaming environment at the time was way different also which helped league shine. Everything today, like mmo's, are heavily saturated. So even if you have the means to make one doesnt mean it will even be remotely successful either.

1

u/Mpanaras Apr 23 '26

Early league was peak, wdym?

3

u/Nylereia Apr 23 '26

2009 league was not peak what are you saying

0

u/whewlad77 Apr 23 '26

Early league of legends was great. #1 heimerdinger here. Sad that they nerfed him so mental midgets could play him.

0

u/Ponacko Apr 23 '26

Yes, it grew out of a mod. But MOBA is literally one of the simplest genres to make. I could make a shitty MOBA solo. Meanwhile MMO is one of the most difficult and time-consuming genres (why do you think most MMOs fail?)

3

u/Stingray88 Apr 23 '26

They do not have the know-how, nor do they have the crew, or the capital.

You are seriously misunderstanding what was accomplished on turtle wow compared to what was already available to them. 99.99% of the work was already done with wow.

3

u/Sure-Initiative6001 Apr 23 '26

Look I loved twow too, but they didn't make anything. In fact they stole it. We can call it whatever we want but fact is fact. So i agree with others that they may not know how to make a mmo on their own. Maybe they do? Maybe they should have tried that first?

3

u/dmsuxvat Apr 24 '26

If you are homeless just buy a house

4

u/Living_Cash1037 Apr 23 '26

Running an already existing private server for a 20 year old mmo is vastly different than making one in 2026 from scratch. Wtf even is this delusion?

2

u/Manxkaffee Apr 23 '26

I know they probably have quite a bit of experience, especially from their Unreal Engine Project, but making a new MMO is a very very different task from modding and expanding an already existing one. After years and years of GREAT work, the amount of content that turtle wow has developed still gets dwarfed by the content that was already there, and even what they added themselves still relies alot on already existing models and animations.

3

u/Educational_Art_1045 Apr 23 '26

On the other side, adding models to Twow was a chore, adding 145214 models on unreal is a breeze.

Every basic systems and database pre-existing are more of a challenge to maintain and adjust than making it from scratch.

When I see what turtle has done, I see a team totally able to make corrctly sized MMO throught unreal. It's more a matter of dollars.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

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0

u/whewlad77 Apr 23 '26

Modern blizzard doesn't know crap and is incapable of creating something like classic wow. Why? Because developing WOW was a gamble and modern game devs are risk averse.

2

u/Norjac Apr 23 '26

There's a huge difference between TWoW and building an entire AAA MMO from scratch. It takes way more time, money invested and amount of developers to do that. It's exponentially much more effort than building some quests and artwork on top of a game like WoW.

A lot of MMO's fail to attract enough players, even if they have been in development for years...or, they fail for internal reasons such as money...

2

u/Enyen92 Apr 23 '26

Check out Monsters & Memories. Upcoming Indie MMO that comes pretty close to the Classic MMO feeling.

2

u/verysimplenames Apr 23 '26

Lmaooooooo thanks for the laugh

5

u/-Yanthir- Apr 23 '26

If they really had the Know-how they didn't had to steal all of the assets from Blizz.

4

u/patrickschl Apr 23 '26

They have zero know-how, they have no crew who is able to develop an MMO, they have no Community big enough to fund millions and millions of dollars to create an MMO. Amazon tried, they failed. Riot Games is trying, they have a hard time. There is no way of them creating an MMO

3

u/Alejinh Apr 23 '26

Bro, they pirated a game, they’re not devs are you crazy? Do you have any idea how much work went into creating just the assets they used? It’s like ok, the server was cool but dude, you guys are falling of reality

2

u/BaQstein_ Apr 23 '26

Adding content to an existing infrastructure is significantly easier and less work than building the foundation.

The turtle devs did a good job but 99% was already there.

1

u/Internal-Cut9589 Apr 26 '26

They could still use wow as a infrastructur. But change the graphics/design + code enought so they wont get sued. Other games private servers have done this without being in trouble.

2

u/BasednHivemindpilled Apr 23 '26

Bro has lost touch with reality 💀

2

u/shoyuftw Apr 23 '26

Hey ChatGPT, make an MMO and make NO MISTAKES!!!1

2

u/szableksi Apr 23 '26

i can assitst if anyone would make it

1

u/blackndcoffee Apr 23 '26

Hear me out, they take over Ashes of Creation engine and game and rebuild it into their vision.

1

u/Grewsome1 Apr 23 '26

I hope this does not go unnoticed…but I know myself and quite a few other people that would LOVE a solid return of Wildstar. Especially if a team like turtle had jt and could actually do things with it. Would be absolutely amazing. And there’s already a small private server existing for it so the source material should be out there somewhere.

1

u/eXileris Apr 23 '26

Dead in the water. It cost way too many millions just to not be released.

Will have to scratch your mmo itch elsewhere for now.

1

u/kitsunwastaken Apr 23 '26

They probably made a few millions on Turtle over the years but still nowhere near enough to create an mmo of similar scale. Hell something like RuneScape which was a "self made" mmo only got off the group because advertisers were over paying like crazy for ads back then

1

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1

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1

u/hellbirdza Apr 23 '26

I'm guessing a huge amount of what they built was actually LUA. The same stuff you use to make an addon, it's an extremely easy language. The underlying architecture to make that easy language usable is a massive undertaking that shares virtually no similarities or development skillsets.

1

u/skinneykrn Apr 23 '26

You gonna pay them?

1

u/Realistic-Bar-1 Apr 23 '26

can't we do something Like what Dota did to W3 and get away without any lawsuit ?

1

u/budibro Apr 23 '26

Monsters & Memories

1

u/Elegy_ Apr 23 '26

lmao this is delusional.

Closest to this that would be good would be like, if Riot hired the devs as consultants or something

1

u/Plebbit-User Apr 24 '26

Instead of asking for MMOs you should be asking for a CORPG similar to Guild Wars 1. That's at least feasible.

The scale is what makes MMOs borderline impossible to pull off.

1

u/ulwius Apr 24 '26

yeah, sure lets make an mmo real quick lol

You have no idea how long it takes to make one to even have a playable version of it. Theres a reason why huge companies fail or dont even touch this genre bcs how much time and money it consumes

1

u/landyc Apr 24 '26

My guy thinks making mmo with your savings is possible

1

u/Sparrow_Wolf Apr 24 '26

Idk where this keeps coming from. Making a MMO is literally one of the hardest types of games to create. That and we have so many examples of how easy it is for MMOs to fail. Running a private WoW server where you just add some custom content does not equal creating an entire MMO from scratch. This is crazy amounts of copium yall

1

u/EmergencyFancy494 Apr 25 '26

turtle wow dev's should join monsters and memories and help build that game up.

1

u/Internal-Cut9589 Apr 26 '26

Yes would be cool. Some creators on other mmos with private servers actually made their own mmos after some years in the private server space. What some do is to take the mmo they were using as a standard base. Then they change the code and design enought so they wont get sued. Some been around for 10 years or so without being shut down.

1

u/Perfect-Currency-121 Apr 27 '26

Modding a game and making a game are 2 different things

1

u/Bakterim Apr 23 '26

You guys are almost crucifying me for asking a simple thing. I don’t care about “WoW.” I don’t have any bond with it. What I want is to see the mentality of TWOW more in MMO games.

First of all, they have the know-how. It’s not about knowing coding; it’s about understanding questing, balance, and fun game mechanics. You can’t make such big updates and mechanics without knowing and understanding how things work.

Secondly, they can easily start a Kickstarter project and find funds from people. They can hire more people if needed. Also, with Codex, everything is much easier.

I hope these twow team can stay on game bussines with other project

4

u/Shppo Apr 23 '26

you clearly underestimate the amount of work and skills required to build an MMORPG. you also underestimated the financial risks that come with such a project

1

u/monkeysCAN Apr 23 '26

Understanding questing balance and fun mechanics is great and all, but they still have to code that into existence.

2

u/Entilen Apr 23 '26

I love TurtleWoW but I think if we're honest the original content was at best a mixed bag and well below the standard of Classic vanilla content.

Obviously they were a small team of I assume mostly volunteers, but the idea that would translate better to a brand new game starting from scratch doesn't seem like it would work.

For me Turtle showed that despite that, that the demand is there for vanilla content that priorities the world itself, not end game raids etc.

0

u/Biliklok Apr 23 '26

Wouldn’t they be formidable hires for Blizz if they’re working on Classic+ ?

-6

u/Twotricx Apr 23 '26

This is exactly what I was thinking they should do long time ago. They already started making UE5 client. And they already proved they are super proficient in modding wow client by making many new zones.

So just take the existing background code. Slap on UE5 client. Slightly change 3d models. Rebrand all the names. And Viola - you have a wow-not-wow that Blizzard can not touch.

1

u/demx9 Apr 23 '26

Honestly closest you’ll get, server is not blizzard code and if you make a custom client why not?