Honestly, this is the appeal (to me) of building a private World of Warcraft server.
This way, the user-facing artsy stuff is mostly done. You just need the backend stuff, although admittedly some fun is removed since you have to work with the network protocols the pre-existing clients expect. You'd undoubtedly learn about how and why various aspects of the game were implemented the way they were.
And yeah, there's already a project for private WoW servers, but if I ever get a few months off work, that's something I'd like to look into doing separately. Maybe after enough time, Blizzard would open source the clients so we can hack on those, too. Although WoW still brings in good money, so that'll probably be a while.
This way, the user-facing artsy stuff is mostly done. You just need the backend stuff, although admittedly some fun is removed since you have to work with the network protocols the pre-existing clients expect. You'd undoubtedly learn about how and why various aspects of the game were implemented the way they were.
And yeah, there's already a project for private WoW servers, but if I ever get a few months off work, that's something I'd like to look into doing separately. Maybe after enough time, Blizzard would open source the clients so we can hack on those, too. Although WoW still brings in good money, so that'll probably be a while.