[cavedude]

As most of you know, EQMac is being closed down 3/29. This is as shame for many reasons, the least of all is there will no longer be a way to play EverQuest on the PPC platform at all. The other reason why this is a shame is because Al'Kabor is a very unique server in that it is permanently stuck in time in the PoP era. This is why I am making this post. Before the server shuts down, I'd like to siphon as much data as we can off of it to try to preserve it. I do need some help with this project, so hence the reason for the post.

The good news is EQMac is now FREE until it shuts down. I am not sure if new accounts can be made, or you have to use an existing account but I have confirmed I can log into EQMac without a subscription, and Station shows my account is active and exempt to subscriptions. (The account has been used on EQMac in the past.)

The bad news is you do need access to Mac OS X to play. I am not sure if programs like VMWare or Virtual PC can emulate 3d hardware well enough to run the EverQuest client, but if they can that is certainly an option and something anybody can do. You just need to have enough power to run Windows and Mac OS simultaneously (most modern machines will have no trouble with that), and have access to a Mac OS disc to install. (There are also premade VMWare etc images floating around the net if you look, but even if you do legally own the OS I don't know what the legality of that is.) Also, I am in the process of installing Mac OS natively on my Dell laptop. I know PCs with modern Intel chips (Core 2 Duo+) run Mac OS pretty well, and there are drivers for much of the hardware out there. If you have a spare drive laying about or don't mind partitioning that is another option. It's a bit more advanced than emulation, but guaranteed to have better results.

What we need right now:

- People with a high level characters that are especially keyed for Sleepers (Sleeper has not been woken on Al'Kabor yet, though they do plan to soon. I would KILL for a working log of that zone.) Also, PoP flagging is a plus too, remember in this era you had to get flagged for PoP. Obviously, the more keys and flags the better.

- People who don't mind running around with low level toons using invis or other tricks to capture packets, gather NPC cons, and log in-game texts.

- We don't actually have a way to log packets yet. I believe we should probably go with Wireshark as that is as general as can be and there is a version for both PPC and Intel (Though atm, I am having a hell of a time getting the PPC version to run on my PowerMac, thus the reason I am installing Mac OS on my Dell.) I believe there is also a ShowEQ client available for Mac that can do very elementary logging, but packet captures are the proper way to do this.

- Once we get Wireshark and the EverQuest client running on the same box, we'd need a way to decipher the logs we create. Obviously, EQExtractor2 will be the way we start but I imagine it will not require anything less than heavy modifications to add support of EQMac logs. I do plan to look into that, but if anybody more knowledgeable than me wants to take a crack at it, please feel free. The E&B emulator has proven emulation of a closed server is completely possible with only packet logs. In this case we don't even need to emulate an entire server, just enough to turn our packets logs into working SQL.

At this point, I have a level 2 character on Al'Kabor so I am going to work on trying to get a packet log, and then see if I can get EQExtractor2 to work with it. Hopefully, I can get a procedure soon so we can all get collecting.

The data we mine WILL be released as an open source project like everything else ProjectEQ does. The resulting logs (at least in SQL format) will also be available to the public, per normal.

I am posting this both in the PEQ news section, and the EQEmu general section.