Is eqemu a waste of time for new people?

[javaman]

I have always been against the idea of paying a recurring fee for a game.

I want to setup a standalone server where just me, my wife and my kids could play.

I don't want to enter into a world where it is so uber-competitive that I don't stand a chance.

I want an environment free of hacks, cheating, bots, cursing, potty-mouth teens.

I have played Neverwinter nights in this way with my family and have enjoyed it.

I briefly read on the ragezone board that eqemu or hackerquest are two emulators that would allow me to play standalone lan.

I being totally new to everquest and MMORPG, decided to give everquest a try yesterday, so I bought the Titanium pack from a Gamestop. I have no intention of signing an account (even the 30 day that comes free).

Now I am slowly discovering that I am SOL. I have tried seeing if I could put in old files to make this work, but that practice is referred to as backpatching and noone here is capable of doing that.

So then I tried downloading the free one from Sony's website, Trilogy and that isn't supported by emulator either. And the only option for that one is to patch to the latest live update from Sony which according to the website, only patched to before 9/13 will work.

So barring all this, is it safe to assume that now, emulation is now dead for new people. If so, I am probably going to attempt to take back this everquest titanum and use the $20 toward something else that is more emulation friendly. Any suggestions on a game?

Can I go to ebay and buy an older CD of everquest and play? Maybe when I return it to Gamestop, I can ask them if they have an older version. Or is this work totally based on files that were available from Sony for a period and are now no longer and never will be available again?

Or should I hold on to this Titanium and hope that an emulator is made?

As far as the old client files that work with the emulator go, If those files are so illegal and asking for them here is considered morally wrong, then how come when I login to the loginserver, I still see people playing on an emulator ie, they must be using these illegal files if they are playing. I am still able to login to the login server with Titanium, it just crashes when I try to connect to any of the servers (and yes, I know this has been stated, but I am going to try anyway). Do the current emulator people just not want any newbies in their world?

[Dr Zauis]

As far as the old client files that work with the emulator go, If those files are so illegal and asking for them here is considered morally wrong, then how come when I login to the loginserver, I still see people playing on an emulator ie, they must be using these illegal files if they are playing. I am still able to login to the login server with Titanium, it just crashes when I try to connect to any of the servers (and yes, I know this has been stated, but I am going to try anyway). Do the current emulator people just not want any newbies in their world?

The files are illegal because they are Sonys. They werent illegal for an individual to DL them from Sony but when someone copys them and make available to someone else. Thats illegal.
The reason I and most others can play is because we patched to live before 9/13 and that was not illegal.

The reason newbies cant play has nothing to do with newbies. It has to do with the fact that the DEVS were spending way too much time fixing so newbies could play. At the expense of fixing many bugs that made the game unbearable to play in the first place.

So the DEVS could have kept "chasing live" and you could have easily played but then you would be complaining that the game keeps crashing and mobs/quests/ect dont work.

Eventually the emu will be live compatible but there is no date set for that. The DEVS want to get the game working halfway decent first.

[javaman]

So as of now it is just restricted to the "right-place-at-the-right-time" group. No-one new can join in. No one can recover to this if their harddrive crashes (ie install from their media and update).

It is pretty much moot anyway. I called the guy at gamestop and he agreed to take it back and credit me toward something else (since he did say everquest did work with an emulator).

Does anyone have a suggestion for another mmorpg which is more emulator-on-a-private-lan friendly. I checked city of heros and that seems to have its own political / legal cesspool of barriers as well. I mean the ones who wrote it have not released the server or binaries for the server, but give you the impression by providing guides (1) client setup (2) server setup. But after reading an elaborate server-setup howto, you realize they are only walking you through how to connect to their server. Quite deceptive.

I guess the whole point is not the fact that they charge a monthly fee, but is also an issue of control. When I buy the license to use a software product, they do not hardcode an expiration date into the eula, but guess what? If that company goes out of business and shuts down their server, their server is hacked, the one hosting the emulators server is hacked, your "use" has just expired.

(1) If I have to pay a fixed fee for a product, then I should have full use of it and not have to depend on anything external via the internet.

(2) If I am going to pay a recurring fee, then I should have use of that as well. I mean maybe they should just give you the CDs, but charge for minutes when you login to the server, even sell prepaid server minutes.

[Dr Zauis]

Hey..If Sony could they would shut all this down and we all would have to pay the monthly fee.(And become anonomys players with little or no control of what happens in game.)
Im glad you got your money back but the emu is a project created by many different people for free! Its not to cheat Sony. Its an excersize in programming and investigation.

[Cisyouc]

javaman: There's a key element you're missing here. We can't do anything about it. We can't just ask Sony if we can redistrubute their files, and doing so without their permission would get the project crushed. It would. They've already crushed 3? 4? of our longstanding servers. The titanium version has been proposed, which would relieve us from that problem, but who knows if that actually is going to follow through or not.

The problem is not what we're doing, but that we can't do anything else.

This is one part I dont understand,

A simple google will get people the files they need, looking at certain server web sites will get people the files they need (SOE does shut these servers down tho), the files needed are amazingly easy to get.

EQEmu does not tell people where to get them, and we dont support talking abvout it here because we dont want to get shut down.

But the files are so easy to get.

Why do people complain that we dont host them??

The reason we dont host and dont support talking about it is because SOE WOULD shut us down if we did, and because there so EASY to get.

I have stated countless times, "We dont support handing out files, but what individual servers do on there own web space is there busness" how much plainer can I put it?

[Runeblade]

I can play on 0.6.3 and up cuz i left eq alone on my old comp for so long and came back and luckily didn't update.

[farce]

you can now install titanium and a server and play. follow the guide on the wiki for running a 7.0 server and use the peq db (the other did not work right) and you'll be rocking. There are some updates the database needs (new zone points for nektulos is one) but it'll work.