C'mon, guys, let's stop the flaming. Who cares whose work is better? I don't. As far as I'm concerned, the more the merrier, and quality be damned. Beggars can't be choosers, so you won't see me nitpicking.
I haven't mentioned Wiz's project before because he asked me not to, and when I make a promise I do my best to keep it. A lot of this has taken me by surprise, and it's going to take me a little time to get up to speed (not to mention that my time is severely divided). I get a lot of PM's about content-related projects, and it's getting to the point where I'm having trouble keeping the names straight (grin).
I'm gratified to see that there's real enthusiasm now for something independent from EQ. Look at it as sort of graduating from high school -- there's a time for high school, and there's a time to move on. It looks like we might be finally reaching that critical mass point where enough people have decided it's time to move on from EQ such that something meaningful might happen.
I don't mind helping out if I can, but my skills are limited to coding for the most part. I guess I somehow became the guru when it comes to the WLD format, but it looks like that's going to become obsolete knowledge real fast. One thing I can do is add a new exporter to OpenZone so people can use it for any projects that don't involve the live client, if a file-format spec is available. I've been planning on moving the export function out to DLLs at some point anyway.
It sounds to me that Dawntide is very near an alpha stage if I'm reading this correctly, so I guess my biggest questions revolve around the state of the client, server, and content, especially when it comes to protocols and file formats. For that matter, is the source open or closed? What is the policy with regard to content usage? With some specific answers on where things stand I might be able to figure out where I can lend the most assistance. My guess is that this applies to more than just myself: the existence of a client that doesn't use WLD or S3D (and a server that isn't a version of EQEmu) sort of changes everything, and it's going to take the community a little while to figure out where their efforts should go. I have no doubt that there will be plenty of willing players, so don't be offended by some of the remarks -- assimilating something new doesn't usually happen instantly. The best advice I can give is to provide as much information as possible to put people at ease.
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