I know the feeling: you’ve just sat through hours of instruction installing AzerothCore, downloaded and executed dozens of things you have no idea what they actually do, and now you are at the end of that journey, ready to play your World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King offline. Truly a dream come true, isn’t it?
Not so fast. Something is wrong. When you try to start your database, the Authserver and Worldserver close immediately after launching.
While searching on the internet, a lot of forum threads reasonably advise you to search for a log to find the cause of the error…Been there, done that. It did not help me understand what the real problem was in my particular situation. I spent an entire afternoon doing blind trial and error, and after what was hours of reinstalling MySQL and recompiling the whole AzerothCore twice… I noticed that the problem was some sneaky little thing.
Understanding The Problem with your AzerothCore
Whether you compiled your own database or using a repack, If you are having a problem with your authserver/worldserver closing automatically on their own, the problem is most probably MySQL.
When installing MySQL community server for the first time, we are starting it up as well. This interferes with our database to properly start.
This issue will occur every time you try to start MySQL.bat (which is the first step when firing up your AzerothCore database) if a MySQL process is already active.
Here’s how to fix this.
Step 1: Open up Task Manager
The first thing you must verify is if you have a MySQL process already running in the background. In order to do so, open Task Manager.
How to open Task Manager:
- Press CTRL+ALT+DEL → click on Task Manager
If you are on Windows 10 and your task manager is minimized, click on More Details. You should now see Background Processes and Windows Processes as well.
Step 2: End MySQL process
Now your goal is to locate MySQL process and end the task:
- Under your Background Processes section, search for a process called mysqld (fig. 1)
- Right Click on it
- Click on End Task
Step 3: Start your AzerothCore Database
Now that you killed the culprit, we can try starting our AzerothCore Database again:
- Go to your AzerothCore Folder
- Double click on MySQL.bat → wait for it to launch
- Double click on Authserver → Hopefully now it will not close automatically
- Double click on Worldserver → Worldserver depends on Authserver anyway. That’s why you need to open them in this order
- Wait for it to load completely
- Good job! Go play the game now, dammit!
[EXTRA]: Prevent the MySQL to start automatically
If everything worked so far, you should be able to play your World of Warcraft offline server.
I know, it feels good, right?
Wait, though. Although you now know how to fix the problem everytime it presents itself, it would be better to eradicate any possibility for it to come back crawling for a piece of your patience.
If during the installation of MySQL Community Server, you checked “Start the MySQL Server at System Startup”, you will have to end the mysqld process each time you turn on your pc.
I made this mistake and I went on for a couple days just ending the mysqld process. Trust me, it gets annoying the more you do it.
Let’s verify if this is the case for you.
[EXTRA] Step 5: MySQL Configurator
As always there are several ways to solve this, but I will try to stick to the most user-friendly way.
Your goal is to change your MySQL Community Server Settings to prevent the Service from starting automatically at startup.
- On your taskbar, click on your search field
- Write “MySQL”
- On the options available you should have MySQL Configurator (fig. 2)
- Click on MySQL x.x Configurator (the Xs stand for the version you have installed)
- Click on Next
- On this screen, you need to write your password (If you followed AzerothCore instructions, you have written it somewhere, since they tell you it was important!)
- After writing your password, Click on Check
- Click on Next
- In this next screen make sure that “Start the MySQL server at System Startup” is Unchecked (fig. 3)
- Go through the rest of the configuration without changing anything else (Next → Execute → Next → Finish)
- Restart your PC
[EXTRA] HELP, I Can’t Find MySQL Configurator!
If you don’t have MySQL Configurator installed (it is usually installed along with MySQL Community Server), don’t worry.
Got you, fam.
Let’s use another way of stopping the MySQL service from starting at startup without the need of MySQL Configurator.
- Click on your taskbar Search once again
- Type Services
- Click on the result “Services” system (fig. 4)
- Look out for a service called MySQLxx (again, swap xx for the version you have installed)
- Right Click on it (fig. 5)
- Click on Properties
- Under the General Tab you will find Startup Type
- Set it to Manual
- Restart your PC
Conclusion
And hopefully, that’s it! If this process doesn’t work, that means that you have a different problem than the one I’ve experienced.
You can try the AzerothCore Common Errors page!
I swear, this stupid problem made my head spin unnecessarily. The lack of a solution online seriously surprised me, so here I am writing it for anyone having the same issue!
Come on now, stop reading this page and go enjoy a bit of World of Warcraft. I know I will after publishing this article!
Oh, by the way, I wrote an article about playing WoW and Lineage 2 Offline. Go check it out!
