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Spinning Up a Vanilla WoW Server on Proxmox: A Fun Dive Into Retro Gaming at Home
If you’ve ever daydreamed about diving back into classic World of Warcraft — the kind with dodgy quests, clunky mechanics, and that unforgettable grind — you’re not alone. And thanks to tools like Proxmox and a die-hard DIY community, you can actually host your very own Vanilla WoW server right from your home setup. It’s a mix of tech tinkering, nostalgia, and multiplayer magic that makes this whole thing feel like more than just a side project.
The Setup Story: One Gamer’s Homelab Quest
One enthusiast, going by RetroHamer online, shared how they used Proxmox (that open-source virtualization platform based on Debian) to turn their homelab into a nostalgic WoW playground. Their gear? A Ryzen 1700 processor that’s running several virtual machines — like FreeNAS for storage, a Plex server with hardware encoding, and the crown jewel: a Windows 10 VM running a WoW server via the Single Player Project (SPP).
What’s wild is the use of 1,000 bots on the WoW server. These bots simulate an active game world — questing, auctioning, even dungeon crawling — making the server feel genuinely alive. RetroHamer even wired up six PCs for LAN party goodness, with ideas for a Minecraft server in the pipeline. It wasn’t all smooth sailing though, and the community had plenty…
