Is eqemu a waste of time for new people?

[javaman]

I have always been against the idea of paying a recurring fee for a game.

I want to setup a standalone server where just me, my wife and my kids could play.

I don't want to enter into a world where it is so uber-competitive that I don't stand a chance.

I want an environment free of hacks, cheating, bots, cursing, potty-mouth teens.

I have played Neverwinter nights in this way with my family and have enjoyed it.

I briefly read on the ragezone board that eqemu or hackerquest are two emulators that would allow me to play standalone lan.

I being totally new to everquest and MMORPG, decided to give everquest a try yesterday, so I bought the Titanium pack from a Gamestop. I have no intention of signing an account (even the 30 day that comes free).

Now I am slowly discovering that I am SOL. I have tried seeing if I could put in old files to make this work, but that practice is referred to as backpatching and noone here is capable of doing that.

So then I tried downloading the free one from Sony's website, Trilogy and that isn't supported by emulator either. And the only option for that one is to patch to the latest live update from Sony which according to the website, only patched to before 9/13 will work.

So barring all this, is it safe to assume that now, emulation is now dead for new people. If so, I am probably going to attempt to take back this everquest titanum and use the $20 toward something else that is more emulation friendly. Any suggestions on a game?

Can I go to ebay and buy an older CD of everquest and play? Maybe when I return it to Gamestop, I can ask them if they have an older version. Or is this work totally based on files that were available from Sony for a period and are now no longer and never will be available again?

Or should I hold on to this Titanium and hope that an emulator is made?

As far as the old client files that work with the emulator go, If those files are so illegal and asking for them here is considered morally wrong, then how come when I login to the loginserver, I still see people playing on an emulator ie, they must be using these illegal files if they are playing. I am still able to login to the login server with Titanium, it just crashes when I try to connect to any of the servers (and yes, I know this has been stated, but I am going to try anyway). Do the current emulator people just not want any newbies in their world?

[Dr Zauis]

As far as the old client files that work with the emulator go, If those files are so illegal and asking for them here is considered morally wrong, then how come when I login to the loginserver, I still see people playing on an emulator ie, they must be using these illegal files if they are playing. I am still able to login to the login server with Titanium, it just crashes when I try to connect to any of the servers (and yes, I know this has been stated, but I am going to try anyway). Do the current emulator people just not want any newbies in their world?

The files are illegal because they are Sonys. They werent illegal for an individual to DL them from Sony but when someone copys them and make available to someone else. Thats illegal.
The reason I and most others can play is because we patched to live before 9/13 and that was not illegal.

The reason newbies cant play has nothing to do with newbies. It has to do with the fact that the DEVS were spending way too much time fixing so newbies could play. At the expense of fixing many bugs that made the game unbearable to play in the first place.

So the DEVS could have kept "chasing live" and you could have easily played but then you would be complaining that the game keeps crashing and mobs/quests/ect dont work.

Eventually the emu will be live compatible but there is no date set for that. The DEVS want to get the game working halfway decent first.

[javaman]

So as of now it is just restricted to the "right-place-at-the-right-time" group. No-one new can join in. No one can recover to this if their harddrive crashes (ie install from their media and update).

It is pretty much moot anyway. I called the guy at gamestop and he agreed to take it back and credit me toward something else (since he did say everquest did work with an emulator).

Does anyone have a suggestion for another mmorpg which is more emulator-on-a-private-lan friendly. I checked city of heros and that seems to have its own political / legal cesspool of barriers as well. I mean the ones who wrote it have not released the server or binaries for the server, but give you the impression by providing guides (1) client setup (2) server setup. But after reading an elaborate server-setup howto, you realize they are only walking you through how to connect to their server. Quite deceptive.

I guess the whole point is not the fact that they charge a monthly fee, but is also an issue of control. When I buy the license to use a software product, they do not hardcode an expiration date into the eula, but guess what? If that company goes out of business and shuts down their server, their server is hacked, the one hosting the emulators server is hacked, your "use" has just expired.

(1) If I have to pay a fixed fee for a product, then I should have full use of it and not have to depend on anything external via the internet.

(2) If I am going to pay a recurring fee, then I should have use of that as well. I mean maybe they should just give you the CDs, but charge for minutes when you login to the server, even sell prepaid server minutes.

[Dr Zauis]

Hey..If Sony could they would shut all this down and we all would have to pay the monthly fee.(And become anonomys players with little or no control of what happens in game.)
Im glad you got your money back but the emu is a project created by many different people for free! Its not to cheat Sony. Its an excersize in programming and investigation.

[Cisyouc]

javaman: There's a key element you're missing here. We can't do anything about it. We can't just ask Sony if we can redistrubute their files, and doing so without their permission would get the project crushed. It would. They've already crushed 3? 4? of our longstanding servers. The titanium version has been proposed, which would relieve us from that problem, but who knows if that actually is going to follow through or not.

The problem is not what we're doing, but that we can't do anything else.

[mattmeck]

This is one part I dont understand,

A simple google will get people the files they need, looking at certain server web sites will get people the files they need (SOE does shut these servers down tho), the files needed are amazingly easy to get.

EQEmu does not tell people where to get them, and we dont support talking abvout it here because we dont want to get shut down.

But the files are so easy to get.

Why do people complain that we dont host them??

The reason we dont host and dont support talking about it is because SOE WOULD shut us down if we did, and because there so EASY to get.

I have stated countless times, "We dont support handing out files, but what individual servers do on there own web space is there busness" how much plainer can I put it?

[javaman]

I am not trying to offend but offer the perspective of someone just coming in.

And simple just does not belong in the sentence with google search, easpecially when you don't know what you are looking for. And as far as my personal abilities, I am usually the one that finds the most obscurist things on google for eveyone I know (hey, can you find this for me?).

These things might have been easy to get on google a while back, but that seems to be diminishing.

WOW does not seem so suffer these issues. Blizzard doesn't seem to be putting a good stop to anything there. I have found around 10 different repacks of wowemu (7 of which I actually got to work -> I should probably post a guide).

As far as development of this goes, I am personally used to VS6. I would guess I could get source of sf build and observe TCP packets, but I must assume is is more complicated than that. Maybe some sort of PKI going on is causing the bottleneck.

Or is it the lack of interest, or the need of a new dev that just purchased titanium to do this.

On another note, and I am not quite sure of the legality of this. Does anyone in here have experience with WinPAR? I would assume the answer to be yes. It would seem that someone with working 0.6.2 could build a PAR set on their Everquest directory (in case a file ever get corrupted, they could recover it with the par set) and since this par set is not the files, but just a measure against corruption could use this par set to repair a titanium install (I can't see the files being that drastically different, unless they are using some sort of real-time mutation encryption exceution). Thoughts?

[Cisyouc]

I am not trying to offend but offer the perspective of someone just coming in.

These things might have been easy to get on google a while back, but that seems to be diminishing.Thats unfortunate, but out of our hands.

WOW does not seem so suffer these issues. Blizzard doesn't seem to be putting a good stop to anything there. I have found around 10 different repacks of wowemu (7 of which I actually got to work -> I should probably post a guide).Ok.. I'm not sure if I see your point.

As far as development of this goes, I am personally used to VS6. I would guess I could get source of sf build and observe TCP packets, but I must assume is is more complicated than that. Maybe some sort of PKI going on is causing the bottleneck

Or is it the lack of interest, or the need of a new dev that just purchased titanium to do this.How is it the lack of interest? The project is not dead, and yet you speak of it as it is.

On another note, and I am not quite sure of the legality of this. Does anyone in here have experience with WinPAR? I would assume the answer to be yes. It would seem that someone with working 0.6.2 could build a PAR set on their Everquest directory (in case a file ever get corrupted, they could recover it with the par set) and since this par set is not the files, but just a measure against corruption could use this par set to repair a titanium install (I can't see the files being that drastically different, unless they are using some sort of real-time mutation encryption exceution). Thoughts?I haven't heard of this and am lazy to look it up -- but I'm going to take a guess and say that if you're suggesting to distribute any EQ Client data in part or in whole -- we cannot. It's the final verdict.

[javaman]

What I meant about World of Warcraft, is that someone new can come right in and in one day, be able to play on an emulated server, get his own server up and running and play stand-alone.

It seems that eqemu has no way of adding new people -> this is what I meant by dead. Someone new who has been playing on legit servers will not be able to play because he will be current with live. Someone who is new to eq completely will no be able to play, because all that is available is what is free on sony's ftp site, and titanium at the stores (there are 7 eb/gs s in the area and all only carry the titanium).

I consider myself quite persistant, but most others will probably move on to another game.

I would rather see something like this where the emu is true open source survive and live on.

My bad, I should clarfy .. the project is not dead, but is currently incapable of adding new blood. And add current members lose interest to other things such as WOW, COH, etc, the number will only diminish.

And no, I was not suggesting to distribute any EQ client data, but merely a PAR file which is completely for every single byte completely different from and file in the entire directory. Is is similar to RAID technology based on the solomon-reed algorithm for building redundancy across partitions of data.

[Cisyouc]

What I meant about World of Warcraft, is that someone new can come right in and in one day, be able to play on an emulated server, get his own server up and running and play stand-alone.

It seems that eqemu has no way of adding new people -> this is what I meant by dead. Someone new who has been playing on legit servers will not be able to play because he will be current with live. Someone who is new to eq completely will no be able to play, because all that is available is what is free on sony's ftp site, and titanium at the stores (there are 7 eb/gs s in the area and all only carry the titanium).With no disrespect intended, I don't understand your comparison to WoW. They are completely different situations. But even so, I find it very difficult to think it is possible for one to use a WoW emulator without utilizing some sort of warez unless they happen to have the correct version, just like EQEMu? The whole point is that we don't get shut down by SOE for distributing or endorsing warez. Just because Blizzard isn't keeping tabs doesn't mean SOE isn't, as we've seen servers around us go down.

I consider myself quite persistant, but most others will probably move on to another game.

I would rather see something like this where the emu is true open source survive and live on.Woah-woah, since when is the Emulator not true open source? Or do you mean an open source client?

My bad, I should clarfy .. the project is not dead, but is currently incapable of adding new blood. And add current members lose interest to other things such as WOW, COH, etc, the number will only diminish.We can't _do_ anything about it. If you're trying to rally support for Titanium, yeah, there is alot of push for that among people, but other than that. There is nothing we can do.

And no, I was not suggesting to distribute any EQ client data, but merely a PAR file which is completely for every single byte completely different from and file in the entire directory. Is is similar to RAID technology based on the solomon-reed algorithm for building redundancy across partitions of data.I'm not quite sure where that would legally fall, unfortunately. But here, we'd prefer not to take our chances it seems.

[TheClaus]

While a PAR set of EQEMU would be awesome(I am actually doing this for myself) I think that is still legally just as bad as sending out a zip file of the EQ Client files.

Besides even if it wasn't there is still the whole idea of people asking what is PAR and how to use it.

As for comparing this to WoW that isn't possible. WoW gives its patch file out to other sites to ease the load. That basically gives the emulator a site outside of Blizzard for others to grab the correct patch files. Even then those sites that hold the patch files might drop them after X amount of time making it not a solid solution.

Like mattmeck said a simple google search will find the files. I can tell you from personal experience I decided to try out EQEmu after being gone for a couple of years and with a little digging I am up and running.

[javaman]

Woah-woah, since when is the Emulator not true open source? Or do you mean an open source client?


EQEMU "is" open source

WOWemu is not
coh is mostly not

And yes, I am into the titanum move. In fact, I have built using VS Express, the source successfully (from build 764-source, with some files from release CVS, in particular guildlist), going through and adding pragma for some silly MAC file detection that VS Express uses, and several other things to come to
========== Build: 0 succeeded, 0 failed, 3 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
and then the latest server install which is all smooth so far except for install IO::Scalar

and whew, just done download the 1G plus maps. Is it supposed to be that big, guide says 300mb. came out to 1G. Is this windows and it's visual pax calling my tar.gz tar.tar (I dont really like tartar anyway) and expanding it as it downloads it (Please stop with the favors, M$)

[TheClaus]

It should of been 300mb zipped up. Though it is a gb unzipped.

[mattmeck]

The way Blizzard patches is, they hand the patch out to absolutly anyone to host. SOE makes users get it from them.

SO WOW = older patchers can be given out freely because Blizzard gaven anyone permition to host them.

EQ = SOE has not given anyone permition to host them, so it is against the law to do so.


This community is not able to do anything about it, if you would like to call SOE and discuss with them being able to hosrt older files thats up to you.

[Belfedia]

I follow also W@w emulation,
I can say only 3 thing about that:

-Blizzard is more severe than SOE with the emulation. They track one by all website, projects of emulation and server. They make them close (Russian Website are very good provider because Blizzard can't close them).
-All Wow emulation Website contain warez's stuff and are underground, they use W@w instead of Wow to hide about Google & co.
-Please, don't write a Guide about w@w emulation here... I don't want to see Blizzard close http://www.eqemulator.net by a C&D.

For have a new blood on emulation, titanium project is a good idea, but i think devs must be accept also bad consequences like : "I have buy titanium, that's don't work, i have pay, It is a scandal, You MUST make my game/emulator working !!! ". I hope we don't see that but i doubt.

Sorry for my very bad english :( But i hope you understand part about W@w

[johane]

While a PAR set of EQEMU would be awesome(I am actually doing this for myself) I think that is still legally just as bad as sending out a zip file of the EQ Client files.

Besides even if it wasn't there is still the whole idea of people asking what is PAR and how to use it.

As for comparing this to WoW that isn't possible. WoW gives its patch file out to other sites to ease the load. That basically gives the emulator a site outside of Blizzard for others to grab the correct patch files. Even then those sites that hold the patch files might drop them after X amount of time making it not a solid solution.

Like mattmeck said a simple google search will find the files. I can tell you from personal experience I decided to try out EQEmu after being gone for a couple of years and with a little digging I am up and running.


Since a PAR file has essentially the same information content as the files themselves, much as a ZIP file does, there would be no way in hell that distributing a PAR file would not be considered distributing the actual warez in the eyes of SOE, or in the eyes of any halfway intelligent judge.

Don't forget that courts interpret things in light of the Intent of the Law and the Intent of the Actions of the Accussed. Cries of "but I didnt distributed eqgame.exe!" mean zip when the intent is to distribute the file in breach of Sony's copyright.

Good thinking though.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that a binry diff file, that could be used to "backpatch" a valid (but wrong versioned) client would probably be OK as long as it didnt constitute greater than about 10% of the content of the original file (this number 10% is a fuzzy one... and read on for the nasty catch!).


But "probably" is a HUGE word, and I'd NOT suggest it be tried as there would have to be a chance that a judge could consider it to be evil in intent, even though it would be enabling a User to recreate a file that was once publically available and distributed by SOE. The fact that the explicit file that is the result of such a process is NOT publically available from SOE would PROBABLY mean that with the right lawyers and the right judge (the halfway intelligent one I mentioned before) the finding of intent would be that there was an intent to circumvent SOE's copyright - in particular their right to maintain particular versions in the marketplace.

Furthermore, all SOE has to do is to claim that at least one of the official patches between the Emu compatible version and the current live version was for Security purposes, and that this patch involved changing some level of encryption, and they could even invoke the dreaded DMCA, which would result in a very very short court case in my opinion.

So 10 points for good thinking about the PAR files, but minus 10 for not thinking it through like a money hungry corporate manager.

All opinions voiced above are based on my extreme age and experience in the business end of IT and gaming, and not in any way based on the state of the eqemu project or codebase.

[Cisyouc]

The fact is, they could shut us down at any time for any reason. Its just that shutting us down for no reason would be pretty bad PR on Sony's part, so if we were to slip up and allow or endorse distribution of warez, Sony can defend themselves by saying that we were a center for EQ warez and costing them money.

[javaman]

Making progress:

World List:
============================
ID: 4, Name: [0.6.6] I Forgot To Edit My Config Server, Local, IP: 127.0.0.1:397
5, Status: 0, AccID: 0
============================
3141906 New client from ip: 127.0.0.1 port: 3999
Unknown packet: .4233692 [92.153.64.0:15->0.0.0.0:0]
[OpCode 0x0003 (OP_Unknown) Size=11]
00000: 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 | ...........

Now to find this in my local copy of the source...

[Teppen]

Ive always respected eqemulator forums by not posting links to warez. If you just follow the line of text below you will be playing or hosting in no time, its not that hard to figure out.

titanium(out of box install dont patch) + google = good to go

I speak this from experience, Ive been around here since 2002. Had a nice backup dvd but I went away from eqemu for awhile and my backup dvd got too outdated to the point you needed to patch up to a certain date but not over a certain date, and I felt screwed. I later found that my backup dvd was scratched beyond playing in my pc. So I went to EB bought titanium, did an out of box install did not patch, did a google search, and was playing same day I brought home titanium from the store.

Now I cant and wont tell you what to type in or post any links to it, and wont respond to any pm's regarding this subject.

its very simple.

[Ueguvil]

[~RD~ Not permitted ]

[javaman]

Im more for a titanium branch. I am slowly getting to make my own build. Just figured out that close(SOCKET) was causing an Assertion and killing World.exe in my VC++ Express (actually needs to be closesocket(SOCKET)).

MS has come along way since VS6 (I am not sure if it is forward though)

[Runeblade]

I can play on 0.6.3 and up cuz i left eq alone on my old comp for so long and came back and luckily didn't update.

[farce]

you can now install titanium and a server and play. follow the guide on the wiki for running a 7.0 server and use the peq db (the other did not work right) and you'll be rocking. There are some updates the database needs (new zone points for nektulos is one) but it'll work.