Why You Should Not Use Repacks To Run Your WoW Server
So you want to install a WoW server and after googling you found some "repacks" that are easy to install. Don't do it! There are many reasons why you shouldn't, and we will discuss them here.
What are repacks?
Repacks are precompiled versions of popular WoW emulators such as vMaNGOS and AzerothCore. The art of kerembeyit These pre-compiled versions are easier to compile than the standard installation process.
A repack is basically the binary files you can download and run. For example mangosd.exe and realmd.exe for MaNGOS-based emulators or worldserver.exe and authserver.exe for AzerothCore/TrinityCore-based emulators).
Sometimes, the official project contributors provide pre-compiled Repacks. Brotalnia is the official maintainer of vMaNGOS repacks. In cases like this, there is absolutely nothing wrong or risky in using them.
Usually, however, repacks are created by other people around the web and they distribute them without the source code. It is strongly advised not to use such repacks.
Why (unofficial) repacks can be bad
Using unofficial repacks (i.e. Unofficial repacks (i.e. binaries that are provided by users not officially contributing to wow emulation project) can be dangerous and inconvenient. There are several reasons why you should avoid them. The art of kerembeyit
Security. You never know what is really running on your computer. Repacks can contain malicious code which can be used to execute unintended actions inside your computer. Keyloggers can be used to steal your passwords. Some WoW server repacks can be used to mine bitcoins, exploiting the CPUs of users who download them.
Control. You cannot modify the source code, because you do not have access to it. Although you can still update your database and make customizations, you cannot change the server's core. You are limited to what the repack offers. You cannot apply any core patch or add core modules.
Support. You cannot install updates on your own, as you can only rely on the author to publish updates. This can be a problem even if the author doesn't have any malicious intentions. He simply stops publishing updates. If the author of the package has not published the source code for the repack, no one can take his repack home and continue publishing updates. This will prevent you from receiving core updates and therefore, core bugs fixes won't be available. People may continue to use old repacks. This is because they are likely to have security vulnerabilities that have been fixed in the main emulators but not in the older repacks.
Platform. Sometimes repacks can only be used on a particular platform. Think of people running Windows 32 bit repacks on Linux using wine. What a waste of computational energy!
Legality. Technically, all repacks of WoW are illegal (unless their source codes are provided). WoW emulators are generally released under the GNU GPL licence (or any other compatible license). This license requires that the original source codes be included in any redistribution. When a repack is published without the source code included or being publicly available, it is a clear violation of the license and thus illegal.
What you can do instead
It is the best thing to do is follow the official installation guide to install a WoW emulator. Active WoW emulation projects typically have plenty of tutorials explaining how to do it and a friendly community around that is able to help you.
