Blizzard shutting down WoW emu...

[Virus11]

Damn, WoW Emu was fun.

[Woodlife Treestrider]

It was fun for awhile. Most EMUs I found where really poorly put together, and pretty crappy. People did try, but I think this community has had the most accomplished version of a modern day mmorpg game.

[kharmakazy]

Wow... didnt see much movement on the forum here before.... but jesus you guys sure came out of the woodwork to vent there for a min...

I agree that people should have to have had an acount to use the emu... people who just want to essentially bootleg the game should be shot. ..

I would be playing on live now had i not been booted off, as I suspect is the reason at least a few people are here.

I want to play again... bless my heart.... You think sony will still hold a grudge about that incident 3 years ago? will they even check if I just open a new account?

On that note... I would be glad to packet collect if I can get back on live. But it seems that most of the stuff you guys need is from the high end game. Is there any call for packet collecting low level stuff?

[Windcatcher]

I think the concept of an emu of an existing MMORPG (any of them, for that matter), is fundamentally flawed and ultimately doomed to failure. When it comes to attempting to recreate the experience of a commercial server, no group of enthusiasts can hope to compete. There is simply too great a disparity in terms of available effort. From the start I've thought that the only viable way for an emu to really flourish (read: provide an enjoyable experience for its playerbase) is to quickly and irreversibly migrate from an emu to a non-emu: that is, to become a unique game in its own right, from rules all the way to content. Otherwise players will always be subconsciously comparing it to the real McCoy, and that's always a losing proposition.

Is it possible to create a hybrid, where there is some emulation and some uniqueness? Sure, and there are emerging examples of that trend. However, it still only scratches the surface of what's possible, and still leaves such servers under the commercial game's shadow in more ways than one.

This next part might sound like a dig at the devs; it isn't, and I'm really trying to provide food for thought here. Case in point:when you dig through the server code, just about everything is hardcoded for the EQ client, but it doesn't have to be. For example, instead of having netcode in source files, they could reside in a loadable DLL instead. There would be zero loss of speed, but it would allow servers to branch out toward different client types, like (gasp) a client that we could create with our own protocol. It can happen.

With respect to client-server communication, a client depends on many things, but certainly these: a method of packaging data (i.e. a network transport layer), a packet protocol (structs, opcodes, and sequence of usage), and game rules (formulae, for instance). It might be possible for the server to use DLL modules or something similar, so as to decouple it from the live client. How about a server that used AD&D rules instead? (either 1E, 2E, or 3E). Or maybe DragonQuest? (once again, pick your revision, there are several) Or a skills-based ruleset of our own creation? Using DLLs can allow these things. I think that for an emu to wish to be perceived as more than just a pale impersonator demands taking a serious look at this sort of thing. What's more, it makes it hard to legally justify going after such an emu: if an emu has several server modules, only one of which was an EQ module, then that's a whole other ball of wax (though the "eqemu" name would *have* to go at that point, and I'd urge the devs to do that anyway, based on the FreeCraft lesson). I don't know about anyone here, but I *detest* the EQ ruleset

[Woodlife Treestrider]

In reply to WindCatcher. I know your feeling. EQEmu will forever be exactly that, an EverQuest Emulator. Untill the devs and/or operators put some serious effort into making a server truely unique, then it will be a while before we finally see something new. I, along with two other people, are trying to go further with custom content then any server has even considered. Unfortunately, with the best developers stuck onto their own server, attempting to get them all under one server would be near impossible. A big problem Kerosh, Luft, and myself are facing is that us three do not know certain aspects of our customization. For one, we are having a hard time finding a person to help us with creating custom zones. So far, I have seen that Khan is the best with modeling and zone creating. But that is one person. Expecting one person to make all of our extensively large custom zones is unfair and unfortunate.

But, back on topic. I know what your saying, and your very true. If you want to play EverQuest the way it was meant to be, than Winter's Roar is the only way to go. But, for those of us who want to see something never done before, then I urge you to make a difference.


P.S.: To anyone who read the above and wants to help out with Kerosh, Luft, and myself, then PLEASE contact one of us. We are here for the long run, and we need people skilled and who are also willing to stick around to really see this thing work. If you want more information, or would like to help in develop this server, please contact one, if not all, of us.

[iwantavr4]

I had a big thing typed up, but in the interest of this project, im going to let it die... :P

Windcatcher is onto quite a few concepts... Long story short: Legalities speaking though, this place really is *not* into the clear... Youre not modifying the ford, youre recreating it.

[Sakrateri]

Thanks to people like Wind , Khan , Cofruben, and all of the Devs on here I am in the process of replacing every zone with handmade zones from the grass to the buildings to every object in the zone. The only thing I have yet to learn is how to make my own NPCs , It is my long term goal to only be using the game engine and nothing more , I am stepping in that direction as I have three totaly unique zones and working on my fourth and largest which I am almost finished with, It will be a brand new starting zone where all classes and races will begin and the way of starting a new character itself will be unique. There still remains the problem of the EMU trying to always stay up with the big dog and I cant understand why that is, There have been a couple versions out that with time spent on them would have been pretty close to perfect if not perfected but the reasoning as to why the game of catchup eludes me. It seems most people had lost the passion for EQ about the time luclin and the mess that insued came about so why do we try so hard to keep up if no one even likes the new expansions and content? Wll I guess I am getting off track here but if we are to alienate ourselfs from being an Emu and a clone then I think we must forgo trying to stay up with Sony.

[Sarepean]

I think what the devs, the packet collectors, and the quest team are doing is perfect. Every time they go forward in order to try and keep up with Sony, we gain new features that can be added to any modified content we put in. We gain new database columns to be manipulated.

One day, this game is going to disappear and, unlike games in the past, Sony's content isn't going to go down the tube with Everquest because we'll have it. I'm one of those people who hates not being able to find things because they've been lost to aging and everything else and I get a good feeling everytime I think that, as far as Everquest content, it's only a download and a CD burn away from not being lost to time.

Custom content is great, but the Original was heaven. Keep up the good work, guys!

[solid11]

I like WC's ideas on how things could change with coding where we won't have to depend or worry about the changes Sony does to break things on here.

Another point he places is if emu is going to strive it needs to go custom, well besides PEQ, custom content seems to happen as a consequence anyway. Once you figure out how it's done, you wonder what can I add to make this better or "mine". Everyone wants others to experience something that they created. It's hard to get that same feeling when you know that "a_large_bat" right there is from live and you expect it and you don't give a second thought on how it got there or who did it.

This site, and emu, was made for the purpose of re-creating live because that's what everyone wanted and still do. There should be a balance of emulation and custom servers out there to attract a larger following. The Emu name will grow as things get better but is that what we want? How much attention do we want to bring when things start going good? I guess when emu has all it's ducks in a row relating to copyright, then it won't matter how large or popular it gets. I hope I'm around to see that day when EQEmu is in the gossip collumn of MSN.com's homepage