First, I would like to personally thank FatherNitwit and everyone else who has been milling about with complex solutions to all of Sony's complex problems. While there can not be legal tech support for back patching on this site I would like to point out 2 major reasons why the switch to a pre-packaged sony product would create the same quagmire, even though it might grow the community.
First and formost, any prepackaged Sony product will infact use client side communications that are not concurrent with the latest version of EQEMU. I have been 3rd party to some discussions on how to fix various issues, and I can only imagine how FatherNitwit would manage to reinvent the client server communications and encryptions yet again. Aside from his metal well being this has a HUGE impact on the player base. It takes alot of time to dryroom the encryption. That means that even if there was a client in his hands right now, he wouldn't nessicarly be able to push a client to the community quickly. In that time no visable progress will occur. He does have a life after all, and it's not like we pay him.
Secondly, There is no guarentee that Sony didn't have the foresight to actully produce a client that militantly protects it's self. While I don't think that Sony has much foresight, it is not out of the relm of possibilities that they would be sneaky. After all, Sony really doesnt' care for us. I could envision 2 schemes that would make it hard to make a client hackable.
First, rootkits that work with a key and a checksum. If you don't know what a rootkit is it's probably a good thing. Let's just say they could, as other companies have, install code that sinks deep into windows (or worse bios) and changes rules slightly. Say for example that they alter it so your eq client isn't the same as the version number stored on their server then eqgame.exe will not proceed past patching without eqhost and loginserver.ini returning a valid checksum. If these checksums aren't correct it purges your eq directory and prompts you to re-install. It may be quasi-legal, but worse has been done.
Second simply hardcode the loginserver.ini and the eqhost.txt into eq.exe. If it can't be edited, it's really not the big an issue for a game in the end of it's lifecycle, but it makes our lives very poor.
Imho the changes to EQEMU since I started have been very welcome. I would rather have a fully functioning world then a buggy one with more people. EQEMU has real progress, and that's something Sony only lied about on boxes and press releases.
I am
Lemur
Sumlek <50-something Monk> PEQ ~ The Grand Creation 0.6.5