You obviously are still completely misunderstanding what I am proposing and why it is the best solution and still just as secure as anything you might propose.
I said nothing at all about sharing account information between any servers, private or public. There is no sharing involved at all... All account information for this idea would be held and accessed only on the server running it's own private Login Server. It would work exactly like a private Login Server should, exactly like you are suggesting, accept with more options. It has nothing to do with any other server's Private LS and doesn't interfere or interact with them in any way at all. I don't know why this is hard to understand as the concept is really quite simple.
Yes, the eqhost.txt file cannot accept multiple Login Servers to be set in it to be used at the same time, but you can set as many as you want in there and comment them out using the # sign and then simply uncomment whichever one you are wanting to use at that time and comment the previous one you were using out. Something like this works perfectly fine:
Code:
[LoginServer]
#Host=eqemulator.net:5998
Host=192.168.1.101:5999
#Host=209.17.190.80:5999
Also, I am positive that moving an account from 1 server to another on EQLive or WoW, or whatever is as simple as having an admin either run a very simple command or just click a button in a UI. It isn't an involved process. It shouldn't be any more involved than our webtool being able to move a character from 1 account to another, which takes about 2 seconds. Really, that has nothing to do with this conversation, but since you brought it up, I figured it was worth clarifying that.
I'm not sure what it is that you are not getting about this idea, but I think that if you understood it, you would be perfectly fine with it.
As far as how much work it would take to code exactly what I am talking about, I really don't think it would be that much at all. Then again, I have been working on getting the Secrets of Faydwer expansion to be fully compatible with the emulator for 4 months now for hours every single night. So, compared to that, most things pale in comparison :P At least it is almost done now, so it shouldn't be long before I can move onto doing other things and hopefully find time to start working on new content for the server I run.
I may be wrong, but I think Image said it only took him a couple of days to code the whole new Mini-Login and Public LS that they have now. If that is so, even if a good portion of it had to be adjusted to work for this idea, it isn't like we are talking about an insane amount of work to do it. Not that I am asking him to do it, but just saying it probably isn't as bad as you are thinking it is.
The whole concept of this idea would be to have dual LS capability for server. People would set their server to connect to the public LS just like normal (though, that would be optional and not required if you just wanted to use the Private one). Then, they would also set it to use the Private LS running on their own server and using their own accounts database at the same time. Ideally, servers would be connected to both all of the time. But, in the case that the Public LS goes down for any reason, their players could then change their eqhost.txt to point to the private one for that particular server. Also, if people wanted to avoid the Public LS even when it was up, they would still be able to use just the Private LS for that particular server since they would both be connected at all times.
The private LS wouldn't use the LS account ID numbers like the Public one does. Authentication for the private LS would ignore the "lsaccount_id" field completely since it would have no way of knowing what it should be. Instead, it would use the password field when people log into their private LS and then just forward any accounts that pass the authentication check at that point straight to the server as authenticated. That is it. Am I missing anything to make this more clear?
I am not trying to start an argument here. It seems that no matter what I say, you have to disagree, Aergad. That is perfectly fine, as everyone is entitled to their own opinion and you aren't breaking any kind of rules. But, I am not going to bother discussing it any further with you until you can understand that I am not out to control you or anyone else. All I am here for is to be helpful. I know you haven't been around this community long (maybe 2 weeks), but if you give it time, you might see that I am a fair person who just wants to help :P