This is awesome, a great step in the right direction :)

Project 1999 is officially recognized by Daybreak Games as a non-for-profit EverQuest emulation project.

Interesting. I'm assuming some idea sharing and possible collaboration will result.

We had no problem running for years and ignored C&D's. SOE's main team has always acknowledged us as that, huge EQ fans that can't let it die, they weren't coming for anyone.

I don't think this is giving the whole story around the table discussions between p99 and daybreak. A more initial 'agreement'/stage/idea involved money going to daybreak. I think that idea fell (I also said it wasn't really feasible) and this is just what he got instead?

I am just a bit confused at what everyone thinks this really accomplished for eqemu as a whole versus just P99. No offense, but I think he did this more for P99 (and for his own protection/reasons) than he did it for eqemu. Hidden guidelines not even explained to us other than their expansion release being moved...

Rogean rogean rogean...What happened to making all that $ and charging p99 players...

Id love to see this not for profit documentation. Along with all the rest of these under the table agreements that affect EQEMu as a whole, not just p99.

This puts other servers in an odd spot for sure, not knowing what you have agreed to.

Meh, at worst p99 runs off into the Daybreak fairy land. At best some IP makes its way into the EQEmu community to better our code.

At the end of the day DBG has no legal grounds against us.

I have been interested in the EQEmu scene for years, but every time I started to get excited and invest time into it, I found myself scared off by the thought that it could all be wiped away in an instant by some overzealous lawyers who were looking for a cheap excuse to run up a bill for SOE.

This 'agreement' gives me renewed hope, and is causing me to consider investing time and creativity into EQEmu again. I am also eager to see the limitations and agreements between P99 and Daybreak, though.

open source doesn't get wiped away by overzealous lawyers. It is one thing if a private server owner went in and had an agreement (which I still think sets a bad precedent, as if we need some paper to say yea its ok to emulate you, reverse engineering is NOT ILLEGAL).

You just had the person running not only P99, but EQEmu's servers go into an agreement which might affect EQEmu inadvertently (I don't know since its some sealed guidelines).

You think Daybreak games feels any different now if someone put out a H1Z1 emulator that was full blown emulated or EQ Next? That will be getting C&D's right away don't fool yourselves. Corporations change like the wind blows you can't expect this to be a real answer they should have just acknowledged the eqemu community or emulators as a whole (community project).

I've been on the "in" of these conversations.

All I've got to say is stop worrying.

You have greater faith than I in the reasonableness of lawyers and in dev communities' abilities to avoid legal bullshit thrown their way by corporations.

It shouldn't be, but there have been situations wherein companies have caused major headaches claiming that the reverse engineering of their products resulted in, among other things, "circumventing copy protections", running it afoul of the DMCA.

I share the feeling of uncertainty, and have had great difficulty feeling there is any sense of immunity up to this point.

This is heartening, and strengthens my hopes that emulation's foundation is becoming less and less like quicksand as things progress.

You're paranoid man. This community has been around for well over a decade and has never been close to being shut down, and Everquest is only getting more obscure as the years go by.

The closest I've seen was Winter's Roar receiving a Cease and Desist order, but even then all they did was relocate their server and they were fine.

I remember when that happened. By the way, why did they finally close shop?

That's a fair assessment. Thanks for the encouraging words. (No sarcasm.)

I agree~~~~~~~~~

IIRC Winter's Roar turned into Shards of Dalaya after the C&D