The ultimate “lazy” way to host your own private WotLK World of Warcraft server with PlayerBots.
DrePack is a fully portable AzerothCore environment, with a bunch of mods, featuring a minimal built-in management menu, and a simple account-registration page.
⚠️ ⚠️A quick fix, and important update!! ⚠️⚠️
In case you’re running in to an error, a solution or workaround might be to manually create this folder: C:\Games\DrePack. Many thanks to Ricky, for informing me about this issue, and also for telling me how he resolved it. I’m not 100% sure what caused it, but apparently creating the folder fixes it.
More people have been reporting problems getting the repack to run. All of these issues have been entirely my bad, sorry, but hey, I believe I deserve some slack, since it’s my very first repack, ever. You’ll forgive me my rookie mistakes. I’ll admit that I should’ve probably tested the repack a bit better before releasing it. I thought it was flawless after a quick test-run, making me feel a bit over-confident perhaps, but I’ve learned my lesson. Let’s just say, there is room for improvement :-). I learned a lot these last two weeks, through you guys, so that’s nice. I’ve also been taking a good look at other, older repacks, to learn how those were put together, and this gave me some insights, and several ideas for DrePack version 2. I know now that I can do a LOT better, and version 2 is underway. A quick thanks to all who contacted me and tell me their experiences, this has been very useful feedback, and thanks for your patience. Luckily, all issues could eventually be resolved, and I was pleased to hear you guys tell me that you’re now all having tons of fun with the playerbots.
A “repack” is basically a ready-to-use package of the server software, in this case AzerothCore. Think of it like a starter kit that saves you from having to compile all the server files yourself from the source code. Basically, it allows you to download the files, unzip everything, run one or two files, and that’s all you need to start playing.
🐉 Quick Start
- Download & Unzip the DrePack.zip file from https://surls.nl/DrePack.
- Run
_START_SERVER.batinside the DrePack folder. - Relax. The script handles everything.
- Download: the WotLK Client here.
- Edit: WoW\Data\enUS\realmlist.wtf and
SET realmlist 127.0.0.1
🛠️ What does the Start-file do?
Skeptical about running a .bat file? No problem, I get that! Go ahead and open it with Notepad to check it out for yourself. Or paste the code into ChatGPT and have it explain to you what it does exactly. It will tell you that all it does is automate the tedious stuff, like:
- Download and unzip the required map data files.
- Configures all absolute file paths (saving you from manual editing).
- Runs the included MySQL databases.
- Launches a management menu for IP configuration and basic server control.
🔌 Modules & Features
DrePack comes preloaded with numerous modules. Playerbots, AHBot and Transmog have been enabled, but nearly all other mods are disabled, to save resources, but also because several mods will change the server drastically, so you should first decide if you want that or not. Enabling the modules is easily done.
How to enable a module:
- Navigate to
configs\modules\module-name.conf. - Change
Module.Name.Enable=0to1. - Restart the server.
Highlights:
- Playerbots: Pre-configured for a safe amount of bots that log in when you do.
- AHBot: The auction house will be filled with lots of goodies when you log in.
- Ollama Chat (AI): Chat with NPCs using AI! (Requires Ollama).
- Note: Run
ollama pull llama3.2:1bfrom a command prompt first.
- Note: Run
- WebPage: You’ll find a simple account registration page at
http://localhost. - phpMyAdmin: Allows browsing the databases at
http://localhost/phpMyAdmin.
🚀 Account Creation
- Use the registration webpage at
http://localhostto create regular accounts. - To create a GM account, type the following in the worldserver console window:
account create accountname passwordaccount set gmlevel accountname 3 -1
⚠️ Important Notes
- Set: Playerbots.Updates.EnableDatabase to 0 in In configs/modules/playerbots.conf
- Security: Intended for local/LAN use only. The server and webpage are not secure enough for the public on the big bad interwebs.
- LAN Play: To play with friends on your local network, use the Auto-detect IP option in the
_START_SERVER.batmenu. - Customization: Want to change XP rates? Edit
config\worldserver.conf. If you break it, delete it and copyworldserver.conf.distto reset. - Passwords: The database accounts names & passwords are included in the passwords.txt file.
- Services: Make sure you stop any service you may have running on ports 80, 3306.
- Http: The registration page will be available at http://localhost, and NOT https://localhost.
- Ollama Chat: I’ve been unable to get this mod to run without it crashing the entire server. Let me know if you did please!!
📜 Module NPCs (Commands)
Several modules require an in-game NPC to interact with. You’ll need to spawn them.
Enable the module first, then use .npc add [ID] in-game.
| Module | Spawn Command |
|---|---|
| Assistant | .npc add 9000000 |
| Transmog | .npc add 190010 |
| Beastmaster | .npc add 601026 |
| Services | .npc add 55002 |
| Dungeonmaster | .npc add 197762 |
| Buffer | .npc add 601016 |
| Enchanter | .npc add 601015 |
| Spectator | .npc add 190000 |
| GuildHouse | .npc add 500030 |
| Queue List | .npc add 93080 |
| Top Arena | .npc add 55333 |
| 1v1 Arena | .npc add 999991 |
| Reward Shop | .npc add 92000 |
| Mythic Plus | .npc add 200005 |
| Gambler | .npc add 601020 |
| Tic-Tac-Toe | |
📜 Modules Included
Complete list of all the modules that are included in the repack.
DrePack was compiled on Monday the 22nd of March 2026. ⚔️
The long version
After many, many requests, or at least, that one person, I have packaged an all-in-one repack for AzerothCore on Windows. It includes a couple of really cool mods, like PlayerBots, AHBot, Transmog, OllamaChat, GuildHouse, and many more. Because why? Because I aim to please.
I compiled the server on Tuesday the 22nd of March 2026. It took me quite some time to package everything together in a way that it would become fully portable. It wasn’t as easy as I thought beforehand. Especially because I wanted to include a simple webpage that allows people to register an account for the server. I borrowed a thing or two from XAMPP, and I downloaded a random repack to learn from how they packaged everything. Being the perfectionist that I can be sometimes, I believe I did a much better job.
Since everybody who wants to use this repack will choose a different folder location, my priority was to make sure that everything would work fine, wherever the files are stored. Wanting to include Apache and PHP didn’t make things easy for myself, since they use some config files that contain absolute paths. Simply changing these to relative paths didn’t work out the way I had hoped. So, I decided to create a .bat file, that will copy all the required config files from a template file, and at the same time it will change each line where an absolute path is used, so it will work from the folder where you will run it from.
In order to keep the file size of the repack as small as possible, I’ve chosen not to include the game-data files. Since those are hosted on GitHub, the bat file will download it from there and unzip it when you run it for the first time. This trimmed down the size of the repack with another 1.1GB. Resulting in a zip file that has an acceptable file size of 570MB in total.
I’ve tested the repack myself, twice, and everything was working as intended. It should, in theory, work for anybody on Windows, but, I can imagine that a some people will experience errors, or issues, due to things that I didn’t think of. If this is the case for you, let me know in the comments. I wrote detailed instructions in the README.md. As long as you don’t already have MySQL running, or anything that runs on port 80, you should be good. In theory… Feedback is always welcome. So, I guess I’m looking for a couple of people who are willing to test it out! Are you up for that?
Frequently Asked Questions
You can, but then you'll need the source files that I used when I compiled the server, since these are not included in the repack. But if you want, you can download the zip file from Mega, it's 1,5GB. Unpack it to a folder that does not have a long name (to avoid errors during compile). Then edit your worldserver.conf and authserver.conf to specify where the source files are stored. Once everything is in place, go to the "ac" folder, and type: git pull. Do the same in each module folder (or use a script that performs "git pull" from each folder all at once). Now you can go ahead and compile the server. Once that is done, run the servers, and it will automatically import all the updates in to the database.
Paste this in a .bat file that you save in the modules' folder, and run it to update every module in this folder.
@echo off
for /d %%d in (*) do (
if exist "%%d.git" (
echo Updating %%d
cd %%d
git pull
cd ..
)
)
pause
That means something is not working as expected. And since the window automatically closes, we don't get to see any error messages. But, there is a way to keep the window open. And that is to manually run the authserver.exe or worldserver.exe. This can be done from the command line. So click start, type in: cmd to find it, and open it. Now cd to the drive/folder where DrePack is located, and from there start the server by typing worldserver.exe.
That's not a question.
I can probably help you out, when it comes to running the server itself. Leave a comment below, and let me know where and when it goes wrong. Any information you find in the log folder would be of great help to me. Please be as detailed as you can with your description of the problem, since that will make it easier for me to quickly pinpoint the issue. Screenshots are also a great help. When it comes to AzerothCore related questions, you should check out their Discord server, because they are probably able to offer better help than I can. Especially when it comes to working in the databases.
No. First, let me compliment you for how cautious you are. You should be, nowadays. Since I'm the one who put the whole package together, I know there's nothing malicious in there. But I'm aware that me saying that, may not be very convincing, because if I would've packed it with malware, I would of course not be admitting that here, certainly not on the page where you downloaded it from. All I can say is, I don't hide who I am, and I'm hosting it from my personal website. Links can be found to my social media, and getting in contact with me is really easy. This hopefully shows that I have nothing to hide. For what it's worth, I promise you, the repack is 100% safe, and only contains stuff that allows you to run a server, the easiest way possible. Put together by a huge WoW fan, and a hobbyist, since I enjoy just meddling around with stuff like this. And from this meddling I learn all the ins-and-outs, and at that point, I just like to share it, hoping it will bring others joy as it does me. That's the honest story behind it. But hey, I totally get your concerns, especially because we know that repacks have indeed been used to spread malware by people who used it to do bad things. I say: Fuck those guys!
Join the discussion