Clients past ROF in the Future?
 

Its been a long while and the Live base game has added a significant number of QLF improvements and well, just shear game content.

Its there current plans to move beyond the ROF2 Client or are we at endgame for that base client now?

Ok I am not one of the devs who works on this, but here what you need to know:

Moving up to next client needs 2 things:

-having emu devs to figure out opcodes to connect that client to EMy server - aka do the entire back engineering process, which can take months, and then YEAR to work out glitches. (They been working on RoF for like 8 years now and its still not finished)

-this client widespread availability to anyone at any moment. Why: because official EQ devs patch the game few times a year, and any client pretty much goes obsolete, which kills the point of getting one specific version compatible, if it no longer works in 3 months. This is why client that were released on disks (T and SoF) were worked on, as well as RoF-2 which was available for download for very long time. (not available officially anymore)

Getting new Content obviously requires client first, and then insane amount of time invested into data collection

Devs right now still working out the perks of RoF-2 and content barely goes outside T era.
In short, unless Daybreak just decides to hand us the code - the next time Emy going to advance the client will probably be 5-10 years from now.

Honestly MOST content currently available for modding in even in T client is BARELY used in most servers. RoF-2 has tons more of content resource that barely any one uses. I don't see any chance that devs would dedicate tremendous amount of effort needed to get more advance client working.

To suppliment the above mostly, or clear up:

We used to use CD's to snapshot when we would create a supported client. But, EQ turned to digital form.
ROF2 is a snapshot in the steam repository they still have to this day, so it's easy enough to get a rof2 snapshot.
Another snapshot that was randomly made was a TDS client snapshot. TDS is newer than ROF, but not by much. There's actually a discord channel talking about TDS support and some minor effort towards supporting it.

Since that TDS snapshot, however, they've basically ironed out the kinks and keep doing rolling patches. Since there's no real snapshot for us to easily pivot on, it's difficult to officially say when and where we're going to anchor for the next release.

Plus, it's a ton of work.. we're still struggling to keep up with everything in ROF2! And, well, newer clients aren't as interesting. look at p99! It's been on velious for many years with no real plans to go beyond. So, yeah.. all these factors make us freeze where we are.

Just to comment on that - P99 locked in late Velious intentionally, and to my taste its too stale because- no new content EVER.
However customs servers have GAZILLION of resource available to them to explore and make content. There is like 100 new zones and 300 models added between T and RoF client, there is maybe like 5 servers that maybe use only 1% of those resources to make new content. The possibilities are limitless, it just need right people to put some effort into it.

Well if you look at my Forum date I've been around since the beginning, just not a big poster. Early on I ran a couple servers but time and money and well interest in other things pulled me away. I just was wondering if there was any discussion of moving to a new client so we could work with features like advanced looting, achievements, stable 40 slot bags etc etc. was all.

Sorry if my post sounded condescending - I never meant to treat you like some sort of clueless noob. Yeah I did noticed your join date ;) I was just trying to be thorough to explain why new client soon is unlikely ;)

Aside from advloot, newer clients don't have much to offer. There's really no point to support a client after 2014.

Additionally, client modification should allow for newer zones / races / etc - with the exception of the ice shader used in the newer Kael.

It's a ton of work for one UI window you could honestly make better via lua/perl, or if you're me, you can just make a new window entirely.