[MUD-Dev] Of interest

[AR Schleicher]

----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Rickey <daver at mythicgames.com>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Freeman <skeptack at antisocial.com>
> > http://www.hackersquest.gomp.ch/
> >
> >An EQ 'server emulator'.  Site says it's been up for 2 weeks now.
> >
>     Hoo-boy....  Sony Legal must be going nuts trying to figure out how to
> get a website in China to cough up some names and addresses.

Switzerland.  China is .cn.  As these are the same people that write ShowEQ,
I'm sure Sony Legal has either been trying for awhile, or given up...

>     Here's a question, though: Do emulators actually hurt subscriptions
for
> online games?  There's been a UOX almost as long as there's been a UO, and
> there's never been more than a few thousand people using those shards.
> Figure that many of those people still have UO account, and most of the
rest
> are burnouts who would have quit UO anyway, and you have to wonder if
> there's any point in getting worked up over emulators.  Or if you should
> just sell the core server code (but not the databases) yourselves as the
> ultimate emulator.

As long as the emulators are free to access, I don't think they hurt
numbers, and perhaps they even help them.  However, if operators start
charging for access, then I think the problems / financial losses start
coming into effect.  Of course, UOX looked at an interesting track in
dealing with this once, there's an option in the codebase (don't know if it
works anymore, out of neglect) where you would require users to login with
their official uo account name, and a combination of their uo password, and
a server specific uox password.  The UO server would then connect to the OSI
login servers, and insure the user had a valid subscription.  Sadly, the
security flaw in this is that a malicious server operator would then have
your real UO account information and could do *bad things*.  The ideal
solution here would be to put in a server (run by OSI) that both the client
and emulator server talk to on each login, which verifies that the client is
legal and has a current subscription.  As for selling the core server code,
it's fun to note OSI (nearly) did this with their T2A demo, which basically
was a modified client, and a modified server (only accept 1 connection, only
handle a part of the world, don't save).

>     My own opinion is that it's nothing to worry about.  Free worlds can't
> get the same production values, and (in spite of all the complaining) big
> corporations are generally considered more trustworthy with the power that
> comes with running the world, since they have a financial interest in not
> playing favorites.  "Free Shards" for whatever game just aren't a
> significant threat, any money you lose from subscription fees you could
make
> up by selling the server executables as a seperate product.

I think a good free server is possible, but hasn't been done yet for a
number of reasons.  (of course, with the very frequent crashing that has
visited some of the official shards lately, you might say some of the
current emulators are better...)   Having customer support you're paying for
a is a big plus, and the trust factor is an issue, though I don't think it
is a large one.  After all, there are lots of people who play free text
MUDs, right?

Now, something related to this that I think is really interesting is the
following.  At http://www.sphereserver.com/ (Sphere is another UO Emulator)
they've just release a preview version of a replacement UO client.  It's not
in any way complete, but it does look very interesting.  It also doesn't
(yet) have a limit on the gameplay window size.  While obviously, when
playing the actual game, the server only transmits those items close enough
to you, you can still make view of the static map just about as large as you
want.  I set a dual monitor system into 1600x1200 on each monitor, and the
view of the world was huge.   (Normal UO is displayed in 640x480 or "big
window" 800x600, so I basically had 8 times the largest normal UO view)  It
reminded me of the current Diablo 2 magazine ads, where they show a bunch of
the game screen put together into one big screen.

AR Schleicher (Jerrith)
ars at iag.net






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