Let’s Talk: Time
As a Classic+ server, we at Project Epoch have the creative freedom to take a deep dive into things that we view as issues with World of Warcraft. Specifically with private servers, one of those is the concept of time.
As I'm sure you all know, World of Warcraft runs on a 24 hour Day -> Night cycle that mirrors the timezone that the server is hosted in. This allows the amazing feeling of having sunrise in game match your sunrise in real life. However, with the advent of private servers this awesome feature has become a negative for many. Due to a majority of servers being hosted in the EU, for many international players such as those within the US, players will find themselves primarily playing at night and not getting to fully appreciate the effort Blizzard put in to night and day related events.
Alongside that issue, this also lead to Blizzard not being able to fully lean into the concept of night versus day and how that can impact gameplay in creative ways.
Due to this, we have put in an extensive amount of effort to introduce what we call "Epoch Time". On Project Epoch, a full day/night cycle will take place over the span of just over 3 hours. We have also intentionally coded a small amount of variability so that everyone will experience a variety of different times as they adventure. It is entirely possible to see more than one full day in a single sitting. Importantly however, everyone sees the same time. The actual Server Time used for Calendar events and scheduling raids with other players remains at a constant. This is a complete decoupling of the "Server Time" and "Client Time", and was a massive undertaking that no other private server has implemented before as far as we know.
Throughout Azeroth there are a variety of events that some simply may not have seen. The rams of Amberstill Ranch being put to bed, Pyrewood Village becoming a haven of the Worgen during night, and NPC's throughout the world donning torches to light their way. These will all correctly trigger based on our accelerated time. This also impacts the ambient sounds and music that play, giving that deep feeling of immersion we all love.
However, Blizzard could not push into this as far as we aim too. Due to night and day as a concept being far more common, we can and have added custom content based around these events. Rares that are only present during night, quests that can only be journeyed down when the sun is shining at its highest, items with effects that vary depending on the current time and much much more.
An item driven by the Day / Night System
A Quest driven by the Day / Night System
