Trying Out Wathnan Racing
So, I heard about this thing called wathnan racing a while back. Saw some chatter online, sounded kinda interesting, like a low-key, community-run racing setup. Not the big shiny stuff, more grassroots. Figured I’d give it a shot, see what the fuss was about.
First thing, I had to find where these folks actually hung out. Took some digging, ended up on some old forum thread, which pointed to a Discord server. Classic. Joined up, place seemed quiet. Too quiet, maybe. Looked around for rules or how to get started. Found a pinned post, pretty basic stuff about the ‘wathnan ruleset’ – sounded like someone just made up their own way of doing things. Fair enough.
Okay, next step was getting the required ‘kit’. This wasn’t like just downloading a game. You needed a specific base simulator, then a patch, then some custom car models that someone apparently built in their spare time. Finding the links felt like a treasure hunt. One link was dead, had to ask in the chat. Waited a day, someone dropped a new link. Alright, progress.
Downloaded everything. Installed the base sim, no problem. Then tried the patch. It threw up some error message. Completely cryptic, just numbers and letters. Back to the Discord. Asked again. Someone suggested running it as admin. Tried that. Nope. Someone else said maybe my base sim version was wrong. Checked that, seemed okay based on the original post. This back-and-forth took another couple of days. Honestly, it reminded me of trying to get ancient software working back in the day. You spend more time tinkering than actually doing the thing.
Eventually, figured out I needed some obscure library file that wasn’t mentioned anywhere. Found it, installed it, patch finally worked. Okay, deep breaths. Loaded up the custom car models. They looked… well, homemade. But charming, I guess? Fired up a practice session.
Getting on Track (Sort Of)
The driving felt weird. The physics were clearly tweaked according to these ‘wathnan’ rules. Took a while just to keep the car pointing straight. The tracks were custom too, bumpy and unpredictable. Spent maybe an hour just trying to complete a clean lap. It was challenging, I’ll give it that.
Tried joining an online session listed in the Discord. Found one server. Ping was terrible. Only three other people in there, driving erratically. Maybe it was the ping, maybe they were also struggling like me. We bumped into each other a lot. Nobody really talked. After about 20 minutes of chaos, I just quit.
You know, it’s funny. I put in all this effort, probably a good few hours spread over a week, just to get it running and try it out. For what? A buggy experience with maybe a handful of people. It makes you think about these niche hobbies. Sometimes the idea is cooler than the reality.
- Finding the info was hard.
- Getting the software to work was a pain.
- The actual racing was kinda rough.
- The community felt almost non-existent.
Maybe I caught it on a bad week. Or maybe it’s just one of those things that peaked a long time ago and is now just fading away. I haven’t really gone back to it since. Got other things to do, you know? Life’s too short to spend days wrestling with dodgy patches for something that doesn’t quite deliver. Still, was an experience, I suppose. Learned that sometimes, the chase is more interesting than the catch. Or maybe just more annoying.
