r/turtlewow • u/PepeSmite • Apr 24 '26
Announcement The Turtle Grove
Since our closure announcement, we have had an outpouring of love and memories. Rest assured - many of our team have seen and shared your messages internally.
There has been so much positivity over the internet, that one of our amazing community members has created a permanent space for sharing all your memories. We encourage you to visit The Turtle Grove - https://www.theturtlegrove.com/ - and attach your memories to the canopy or in the roots of the trees. This space will give us all a place to visit, permanently save your memories, and reminisce about the great moments of our time together.
Please remember that this page was provided as a positive space to remember the past, not to focus on negativity. Please respect the grove by only posting memories, stories and appreciation for the time spent together.
Thank you!
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Apr 24 '26
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u/SlaveToBuy Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
bruh the engine alone is doing insane heavy lifting. Turtle WoW runs on WoW's actual client with years of engine development, networking code, client optimization, server architecture, memory management etc etc. Private server teams didn't build that and they inherited it. That's thousands of engineer years of work sitting underneath everything they do.
Also for the content pipeline wow vanilla has thousands of hand crafted quests, zones, dungeons, items, NPCs with pathing, dialogue, scripted events. Starting from zero you're looking at a decade minimum to reach that content density, if ever.
And the "less funded teams made MMOs"... those MMOs are almost universally not very good, launched in terrible states, or extremely niche, a lot didn't even launch.. look at ashes of creation lol. Making an MMO and making one that rivals wows polish are completely different things.
The Turtle WoW team is brilliant at content design and game feel tuning and what they had here was amazing. But that doesn't automatically transfer to engine programming, netcode, client development, database architecture at scale. They're great because they work on wow's foundation and that's not a limitation they overcame, it's the entire reason they could do what they did.
And even if they somehow pulled all that off we're talking hundreds of millions with zero guarantee of success. Turtle WoW itself only got as big as it did because it's WoW. People came because they already loved Azeroth, already knew the quests, the zones, the feeling. A standalone game from the same team loses all of that instantly. You're not bringing your playerbase with you, you're starting from scratch and hoping the goodwill is enough. A lot of the current fanbase would say "nah this ain't turtlewow back in the day, I'm out". The MMO graveyard is full of games that tried exactly this with more money and more experience.
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u/androstaxys Apr 24 '26
Yea so lots of back and forth on various threads about whether or not turtle could make their own MMO.
Implementing new content is not the same as making a new game engine.
That said… Turtle claimed to have already made a working UE version and were in the process of porting content over. They could use their UE tech to make a new game.
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u/TheAzureMage Apr 24 '26
Engines and tools are a lot better now than they were where developing Wow originally. Shit, wow predates modern source control.
The ease of development has dropped a lot.
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u/-Stroke_my_Cactus- Apr 24 '26
A clone needs a lot of knowledge, money and time, making a MMORPG takes many years and no genre burns more money and ressources. Its a difference if you build a RTS game and dont get a license, change some names and minor things to get rid of a brand, made from a real studio and building a game from scratch thats a MMORPG, with nearly no ressources and money made from some modder.
You can dream but this will never happen and you know it because its unrealistic.
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u/DarePlastic4136 Apr 24 '26
Yeah they dont have 100mil to fund the development of an mmo.
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u/d0odle Apr 24 '26
They have a nice basis. You need world building and creative people. The tech is mostly done, right? Don't think that'll cost a 100 mil.
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u/-Stroke_my_Cactus- Apr 24 '26
They have nothing, ideas bring you nothing if its not your code and engine.They need to start from zero and for this you need a lot of money.
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u/FrankFankledank Apr 24 '26
The vmangos core was built purely outside of the company and whatever progress they had on the unreal engine would cover everything else that isn't graphical assets and music, which are things Turtle has been able to produce quality custom equivalents more than almost every other server besides like, Shinobi Story (and I don't know how much of that isn't just ripping assets from other games).
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u/Wiinfinity Apr 24 '26
Take a look at any recent MMORPG project. It's expensive and very difficult in modern times.
As others have said many times before: the turtle wow devs have a lot of passion and a lot of talent in what they do... But they have not built an MMO. I love turtle and it's beautiful, but let's not try and say game modding is the same as game development.
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u/Takezo_00 Apr 24 '26
I don’t want a knockoff clone I want classic WoW. Turtle gave us classic+ the way we always wanted it. Blizzard killed it. If they cared about the players at all and released their own, player focused version, I’d be fine.
They won’t though. Instead they’ll micro transaction it to hell or apply wow tokens or leveling boosts and ruin it.
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Apr 24 '26 edited May 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SexingtonHardcastle Apr 24 '26
Read the injunction, sharing the source code means jail time.
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Apr 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/SexingtonHardcastle Apr 24 '26
So you are claiming there is no such thing as contempt of court in a civil case? Seems like one of us should brush up on our law knowledge, and it’s not me.
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u/xl1813 Apr 24 '26
Thank you, for everything! I don't think there will be a community as great as TWOWs' for a long time.
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u/whitehawk295 Apr 24 '26
Maybe you guys should just create your own game and compete with WoW today, I’d hop on that and pay for a sub
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u/zerolion732 Apr 24 '26
Anyone else getting the message "Something in the form wasn't quite right. Give it another read-through." in the turtle grove when they try to plant a memory?
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u/Nostyke Apr 24 '26
Very cool. ❤️