I have long hated SOE's expand-a-thons every 6 mos for exactly what you mention, Crabclaw. Spreading the dwindling player bases out even thinner than they were. Forcing people to spend $30 every 6 mos on top of their ever-rising monthly fees has put SOE at the top of my hate list. I am playing Vanguard now, and I am unhappy that I still have to maintain a now $30/mo station pass fee. When I started playing EQ in 2000, i was paying $9.95/mo. Now, I pay around $100/mo for all my accounts across various games.

This is the single motivation I have for progressing Emulators. I'm tired of shelling out cash monthly just to sit in a huge-ass MMO alone.

Both Everquest and EQ2 have moved to a 1 expansion a year model and EQ2 has gotten rid of the "Adventure Packs." EQ2 has made some great strides since Echoes of Faydwer was released last year, and the game is more fun now than it ever was (in my opinion). With the November release of Rise of Kunark, EQ2 is also moving to a "Macro-zone" format, with massive multi-area zones.
I think getting the emulator to work from live is by far the best bet, because that way those who want the classic servers can have those, while those who enjoy the new content (like the new Neriak) and have those servers.
Optimally, I think it would be great if we could get Rise of Kunark also included in this emulator from the start, giving the Devs a year of development time before any other huge changes unfold (not counting the monthly updates, which have become larger and larger as of late).

Years!
 

I must say, I am so glad to see that this project is moving forward again!
It pleases me to see people work on this, because I have simply had enough WoW emu play.

If there is anything I can do for you (MYsql AdvAT) please let me know.

Hi
 

By the way,
Thank you LethalEncounter for what you are doing here. Its much appreciated.

Why?
 

LE, as we all know. . .currently your login server is closed beta. Not that I compromise your work in any way, its just that I think it would be better if you get an entire community working on such a project!.

Take for example how far mangos have gone, starting off with a single persons code, developed on forums.

Mangos, by the way (Massive Network Game Object Server) has an open source login server (intended for use with world of warcraft) that could easily be adapted to work with another mmo.

After all, they claim MaNGOS is an inter-mmo emu.

http://www.mangosproject.org/forum/index.php

Some believe MaNGOS is in it's final days, regarding WoW emulators anyway. I disagree, but it seems the more direct C++ projects are taking over. I know Mangos was written in c++, but there has to be some reason why Antrix is taking over. Maybe it's just the database?

Second only to game functionality, is portability. I love using Linux for servers, but some projects limit only to Windoze. I think most good projects start in a *NIX environment and migrate after it goes "open source" to Windows.

As a (semi) MaNGOS developer, I think that Antric is a long way from even remotely playable, simply because of the huge amount of things that simply arent there.

Not to derail... but to comment. I am not sure what you mean, "not playable"? I have players on my server daily leveling away, doing quests, exploring, general fun... and these are experienced WoW players - since I do not have that experience, naturally everything looks great to me.

Thing about MaNGOS is it's stall at client 2.0.12 - no one with a 2.1.2 client can even connect anymore, or use commands or chat? Or the fact that at 20 users, MaNGOS tanks on most PC-based servers? I'm sure they'll update. But the 2+ mos it's been stalled there, I think another giant has entered the arena.

One thing I dislike about Antrix is the commands that are missing. Obvious ones. Like, .lookupitemset. There's an .additemset, but no way to look one up. heh. Of course, this could be my naivity and not understanding the scripts and whatnot.

Anyway... sorry again for continuing the WoWs here, but I happen to like Antrix a lot so far.


Edit: Oh, and I absolutely abHOR the WoW community... they are the stupidest, laziest, greediest, most assinine bunch of players I have ever seen in my life. Not to mention horrible at the english language. Even the non-english speaking players speak better english than these kids. I have resolved every-single-WoW player has to be 9 years old. It causes me physical pain to have to read mmowned or emupedia for any information... sigh.

I understand what you mean, but in my view Antrix has got a nice core. . .but a pathetic database system. (Not the actualy DB itself)

For the time being, im staying with mangos, as I know how the mangos code looks like + It would look really bad if a long time mangos dev goes over to antrix.

Anyways, lets get back to the point. Everquest2 (in my poor knowledge of its going on's) uses quite the same method of logging that WoW uses, and the fact remains that mangos was ORIGINALLY designed to integrate with any emu type project, only recently (about a year ago) it became oriented in the WoW direction.

My only wish, I don't want to go through some one else's login server. ^-^ So I have an antrix server running for just my friends. I hope EQ2emu has a better (mini)login than EQemu. It really kills the mood when the main login server goes down and then no one can connect.

My only problem with antrix is that it sometimes (rarely) crashes, the antrix server, not it's login server and I'm almost scared to ask for help on emupedia. Any one here run an antrix server and know of a way to make an auto restart on the servers, please PM me.

Back to EQ2emu, I'm looking forward to the release of the emu. Sometimes all a player really wants is a small community of RL friends.

http://filebeam.com/0e99a0b3c8996e425e7ec1da79faae20

Made by a friend a while ago.
Dont forget to configure the .conf file.

Thanks, This will be very useful for those annoying away from home crashes.

BTW, what is happening with the EQ2emu Project?

Nobody has a current up to date status report. I hope LE doesnt disappear!!

Now that I got my mits on the source, I was hoping to get familiar with it. Do you know >>exactly<< what client is compatible with this current server version (if any)? I'd like to set it up and take a look later.

Hi
 

Currently the only know version of EQ2 to work with the server is:

SOEBuild= 1700 English

But this is pointless, theres no way to even access the world, as LE hasnt released the server that logs you into the world.

You can however, grab yourself a copy of the world source from the SVN (Links in the other post)

To get it working you need mysql, a mysql client (eg. navicat) and you need to execute eq2.sql (A file included in the SVN repository)

Then just configure the server to execute properly in the "db.ini" file.

Server should run just perfectly, until it gets to the stage where it needs a loginserver to continue. Here is an example of it if you dont want to go through all the effort.

Heh, oh yeah... the loginserver problem again. :cool:

Well this'll never get done then. hee! If I cannot login, I cannot do much. I'm a visual learner.

Rofl ;) Now, we patiently wait. . . and wait. . . and . . .wait.

Could this be where someone could work ManGOS to work with world. I think ManGOS could act as a login server to handle that client connections, since it just passes them off to world once its done.

Maybe wrong altogether though. Is the minilogin opensource. Possible to recode it to handle client connections from EQ2 instead of EQ1.

its true that this is an EQ emulator site but you have to remember it was started when there was no EQ2 and there was another competing EQ emulator project. a lot of effort has gone into making EQEMU and certainly the project shouldnt be diverted into other things. however at one time there was discussions about other emulators for even non Sony MMOs.

This topic has been useful for me since i plan to open a site soon that is for any Open Source MMO and any future P2P equivalent. Of course i will still favor EQ probably because i spent about a milllion hours playing it and consider myself a minor expert of that game system.

Haha, there is currently three problems with this idea (That im aware of)

* EQ2 Needs the login server to do more than just simply log the char in, I think it requires additional info from login server, where the mangos login server only checks account username/password and injects char into the world.
* The mangos login server is basically integrated into the world server, code there weaves into each other. . .I dont know how hard it would be to seperate the two.
* EQ2 has different opcode than WoW, different packet sizes and different encryption.

You would need some lethal genius to engineer something like that ;)

wb, madborg. fyi, there's about 100 of these "all mmos" project sites out there already, including my own (but I'm a super-dick admin and don't let anyone in I don't know personally :))

I didnt know what was under the hood of ManGOS, but I knew its original concept was to be adaptable to any circumstance, but yep, guess it wouldnt work here. Could possibly work as a server altogether after some long sleepless hours whacking away at code, but hey, why do that when this is already here.

Still courious about the mini-login though, wether or not it can be altered and adapted to work with eq2 instead of eq1. Probably too much hassle.

100?? i am tired now.

ok, i exaggerated.. maybe 98. ;)

I actually think we should get together a second team to work on a login server. And if we can do so, a dedicated eq2emu website as well.

When link2009 was pushing this project along, I offered my site (eq2.mmoemulators.com) as a temporary community site, but he said he "had it covered".

Shrug.

Shrug some more :(

Got my SVN setup too (I also compile Mangos, Scriptdev, ect. as well), have to see though, it needs love and copious SQL-age.

What a 'make' file and no VS2005 eq2emu.vcprog file! What will us people who live up in the clouds in Redmond do? Hard labor?

*shudders*

*cries*

(hehe - joking. :) I'll try to help any way I can.)

Due to so many people using 03' I just got myslef a student copy of it. Compiled fine. Some day I might have time to convert it to 05' but Its not all that important right now. :) - I did leave executables xD

Though, make sure you update your checkout every now and then, I might feel like doing it some time.

People people! You gotta understand that the network code for EQ2 and the communication between EQEMu/EQ2EMu programs (login server - world server - zone server) are completely different. I can tell you that the login server to EQ2EMu is very similar to EQEMu in terms of base network code.

WoW is in no way similar, period.

Err, nobody ever referred to wow here?
Its not the point anyways.

Mangos is built for WoW..

My post was about ManGOS, cause I though it was orignally designed to be a adaptable server, but its knee deep in WoW now so there is no hope there, as it would just take more work to make it somthing viable than to fix and work on this.

As far as the networking goes between client and server, I had figured that SOE just developed upon the existing communications of EQ and server to make EQ2, but there would also have to be a "BOAT" load of additions and changes to make EQ2 work.

I know that LE does have a working LS and World for early clients of EQ2, so there is really no need to dig deeper in to the LS subject. The only thing to do is to get it function with a client other than BETA, or even a month after launch becaues very very very few people have that specific client, so very few people can actually perticpate in testing and developing without going into illegal activities. If we can packet collect on LIVE, get the emu to atleast work with live, we can then start workign kinks out of it, and put features in. Maybe not live, maybe a box version that is widely available that will be available for the months after it works with it. That would give a dev team time to try to implement as much features and get it caught up on terms of content and accesibilty. Once we reach a point were its say 85-95 percent like LIVE, we can then work to get it to work with LIVE clients and allow players to make the switch.

The initial hump is to make it work with something people have or could get, and then play catch up adding the past 2-3 years of features and content into it.

Image is correct... these projects are so vastly different, it would be easier to start from a blank VC++ project than to adapt something existing to EQ2.

Incorrect, Mangos is not built for WoW, ;) But its the only game it supports! :D
Its a kind of elaborate policy to dodge most international laws regarding the subject. The mangos login server is only designed to check login and start the player thread for each player. The EQ2 loginserver has alot more to do apparently.

I am aware it is supposed to be a generalized MMO in some fashion, but it isn't built beyond one game. You would have a better chance converting the EQEMu loginserver over (Like LethalEncounter originally did) than attempting to recode everything in mangos.

The big reason for this is the code between servers (such as the world servers you run) are already the same network code, just different structures and opcodes which are in your codebase already from EQ2EMu Source. Same deal goes with the opcodes to the LoginServer from a EQ2 client.

I am very excited to see that EQ2 may have a chance to be reborn...I will have to keep a close eye on this and keep my fingers crossed that it makes it!

Good luck all,

::rayman::

Well, as you can tell, alot of people have been keeping there eye close on this thread for almost a year now. Dont get your hopes up to much for a soon to be release, but I have a feeling that the more support and people interested in this, the faster word can get around to help things take off.

Trying my best to keep the fire burning as well mate :)