What do I need to know?

[ccs88]

Hey everyone.
I'm curious what I would need to know in order to start and maintain a private server.

I can follow directions in the start up guides, but I have no real idea what any of it means. I would like to actually understand what I'm doing. I work as a help desk technician and I have a great understanding of hardware, troubleshooting, and basic networking... but when it comes to programming I have zero background, unless you can count html/css.

Any tutorials to suggest? I'm really bummed about EverQuest Next, because I always thought it would be a classic-relaunch, but it's nothing of the sort. I would love to take matters into my own hands

[Drajor]

Tough question

unless you can count html/css

no :p

I guess a basic list of competencies would be C++, SQL and Perl or Lua. C++ is not a beginner friendly language, however, unless you want to make a significantly custom server you only need to learn how to use the compiler (or DL a built binary). The rest is mostly SQL and one of the previously mentioned scripting languages. You can even avoid SQL by using some of the tools folks have written for editing items, spells and npcs.

The learning curve is pretty steep but there are experts on these forums for all the skills required. If you ask correctly, they will answer.

[ccs88]

Thanks Drajor, solid answer to my question.

[wolfwalkereci]

Good luck ccs88, just watch out for the evil Drajor and Wolfwalker trolls.
They like to num-num-num on others.