We can get live packets decrypted again as of tonight. :)

I will be working on a packet collector project that should help out quite a bit if we want to use the latest client instead of an old one. What do you guys think about that? After the packet logger is finished, getting packet logs of everything imaginable from the latest client. Then we get a emulator working with that version and never worry about keeping up with live again. If we get enough packet logs, it should be pretty trivial.

I think that would be a bit of alright. But, let me double check here, your saying that you could make a PC for LIVE and we could collect on it and build the emulator from the current updated LIVE. Just make sure here. That would seem like a very logical approach to start with. It shame though that I just let my LIVE account go. May have to pay a month and start it back up to collect some.

I'm player Eq2 since Beta, so it would be easy for me running around all zones gathering Packet information. Your Packetcollector should have the feature, to separate logs by zones. This should be easy regarding the logfile EQ2 can create.

Easiest way is to program the PC in that way, that u can just activate it and start running around, to collect Spawndata.

Even combat could be separated in the logs, because the client logs all chatmessages. Everything after "You start attacking" is combat etc ...

The EQ2 Client gives a handy "tool" to define what any packet does.

Even if I think Lethal already knows that, I wanted to mention this. =)

Yes, PC from LIVE is now possible.

Very good news ^^

@Lethal

Whe do u release ur PC, so we can start collecting. I'm starting out a new char so time would be perfect.

So collecting isn't as simple as turning on a linux box with tcpdump, eh? heh! I look forward to a 'safe' way to suck data, and with a handful of mid-bie chars, I will definitely help collect any of the zones I can enter.

It will probably take a few weeks to a month before it would be ready as I dont have a great deal of time to invest. I'll let everyone know when it is ready so that we can get as many logs as we can. It would also be nice to implement some kind of item/spawn collecting in this.

Yah, it would be that simple if you knew the encryption key. Once you have the key from the start, you can decrypt the entire stream.

From Live?

Wow nice news :)

wow. first post here, but this sounds great :D i used to play eq2 and loved it, but eventualy paying the money each week got annoying. cant wait till this is up and runnin

oops. meant every month. every week and i never woulda picked up the box >.<

I loved EQ2, it they had managed to keep some of the charm of the original and it felt epic to play. The Freepost vs. Qeynos setup was awesome.

The only problem I had is when they kept changing the rules (also limiting it to a measly 6 characters per account :P) and simplified things that made the game what it was. I don't mind they added AAs, made tradeskilling a bit easier and such, but it felt like every fourth patch or so they would re-balance the whole world and change up the difficulty of the monsters and class abilities. It drove you nuts after a while.

I think the worst thing they did was release the Splitpaw pay-per add-on - it literally sucked all the players away from grouping form level 20-45 to soloing in some instance somewhere. I thought it was funny even the dev's admitted their own guild members would be unavailable for doing content and such because they were off grinding great loot, money, and XPs all alone.

(The nerf bat swang heavy a couple patches later. But the damage was done.)

I do feel the x-pacs began to spread the players out too much as well, and invalidated the tiered-raids and tradeskilled gear. I feel the Vanilla Coke EQ2 was the 'good times' of the game.

i could live with most of their patches cuz i had a nice band of people that i would always play with. the patch that got me was when they screwd up the class selection. like you go on the isle of refuge already as a warlock, berserker. it was terrible NO MORE did you really get to learn your class and character. it made adventuring too easy. before i always had trouble finding a scout for the named mobs, but after that their everywhere. thats why i sorta hope that when this project gets finished they wont put in every patch. cuz like crabclaw said, every few patches the whole world was changed. oh well. makes me excited for when the emulator is done :D