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doesn't matter... within a few years you could emulate (if required) the cluster within a virtual machine. More to the point, if that was really the case you wouldn't have any unofficial wow or daoc servers available now like you do. (just google them)

The reason most companies do not want to open source is that ANYONE (including the fans) could take that code base, rewrite the code through love (or whatever else spurs these entities on) and bring out a better mmo than the company had planned as a sequel.

What if for example... Mythic open sources DAOC, the fans rewrote it and hosted it for free - and was, shock horror, better than Warhammer? shareholders would blame the possible bad 'sale' of Warhammer due to the popular demand for an IP that they dont really own anymore.

I don't agree with it AT ALL, I'd love to see the Amiga classic 'jet strike' open sourced or superfrog (or Cannon Fodder!) so I can continue to play it without needing the original hardware or emulation... but it will never happen because these MEDIA companies (from games, music and film) are scared of their past. Team17 (or their current owners) will keep the Cannon Fodder IP on the off chance that maybe some twit will be willing to pay for the same thing again on their PSP. (and they have)

I believe quite strongly that if the MAFIAA want us to conform to not pirating media, a new law should be put in place that ALL digital media after 10 - 20 years becomes open source and freely available to the public domain. This would encourage the sharing of source, the bettering of society and reduce the splurge of sequel after sequel after stinking sequel.

But I admit I live in a dream world where logic exists and money is only an afterthought. The media conglomerates hold the key and the drm and you need to bend over and take it like a man.

Btw. A perfect example of this is Falcon IV. To quote wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_4.0

"The game was originally designed and produced by Steve Blankenship and Gilman Louie and published under the MicroProse label. The game was rushed to the market in order to make the 1998 Christmas selling season. Unfortunately, Falcon 4.0's first release contained numerous bugs. The final official patch (version 1.08) fixed most of them. After completion of 1.08 patch, the original development team was laid off by Hasbro Interactive. Nevertheless, Falcon fans still sought further improvements of the game. Early modifications altered the game's multimedia and the executable by editing the hexadecimal code. After the game's source code leak, a Falcon 4.0 player optimized the game further by re-programming parts of the game's original programming code.

Through its lifetime, Falcon 4.0 has received ongoing fixes and enhancements from various groups of volunteers, which have enhanced the detail and complexity of the simulation over the years to its current state, as well as mended the numerous errors in the original release and its patches. Much of this comes as a result of the source code being available to the developers of modifications. Benchmarksim (BMS) being the premier team to take on the task of user modifications. However, game publisher Atari later issued a cease and desist order against all executable modifications, and thus many modifications were not hosted by websites. Private modification development did continue, even so, as can be seen by the FreeFalcon/RedViper and Open Falcon leaks. It is rumored that the FreeFalcon and RedViper teams have recently separated."

To add pain to the developers ... Hasbro did in fact release a sequel to Falcon IV. It is considered 'better' than the original falcon but most enthusiasts still find it too rigid than their hacked ones...

http://www.combatsim.com/memb123/htm/2001/12/f5-part1/

Btech online (ansi based); fight in 100 ton battletech mechs against players from around the world.

telnet to btech.dhs.org 3030 telnet://btech.dhs.org:3030
Online training page http://btech.ecst.csuchico.edu/~mux/
A review of 3030 http://www.combatsim.com/review.php?id=723

Another text based game, still kicking.

This reminds me of what happened to Combatsim.com, a fan site for combat simulation games. Prior to about 1999 or so they were a free site, with lots of articles and good forums. Then they went pay-for, and almost overnight most of the site's community jumped ship to other sites. The place became a ghost town after a year or so, to the point where they first openned up the forums again, and then eventually returned the entire site to free access.

Point is, if you don't want to pay, don't. If enough people think the same, they'll fold eventually.

MicroProse was one of the most highly regarded computer companies in the Flight Simulator market. they made computer games that were used by the military because of their realistic physics model and complexity. F15 and F16 simulators were their main thing...
Falcon4 was microprose's last big project. it was a HUGE undertaking and very well might be the most sophisticated computer game (certainly the most complex flight sim) ever made. Beautiful AI, war engine and VERY realistic radar and physics make it incredibly ambitious. the source code, of course, was heavily guarded.
The game was well recieved, but the major criticism was that there were some bugs and some other little problems that made it hard for the super observant flight sim users to use properly. Some AI bugs, some missles fired outside their parameters, etc. little things, but important things. It took months for patches to come out and when they did, they weren't great. here was a KICK ASS game that simply didn't reach it's full potential because it was in a dying company. It had a strong fan base that couldn't do more than wait and do a few Hex edits to make it all better.
BUT when microprose was bought by hasbro and hasbro dumped the flight sim division, an angry programmer posted the entire f4 source code WITH the patches online.
what it's done that's great was spawn a whole series of really good 3rd party (OS) patches for this incredible game. Real open source gaming? not on purpose, but the effect is wonderful.
it's an interesting kind of Open Source development. it didn't happen on purpose, but it proves something: you can have a successful commercial product that's open source. quite frankly, compiling such a huge thing (about 600 megs) is too big except for the REALLY advanced users and most people would buy the binary anyhow. but it makes things like patches and addons happen much faster. I waited 3 months for the first patch to come out of the dying MicroProse website, as opposed to 1 week for the latest patch to come from 3rd party people. You still have to buy the game, but all of the latest great stuff is added on because of the "open source" nature of the program.
I wonder if this could be used to help promote open sourcing of games and large, killer apps. Clearly open sourcing hasn't hurt falcon4..in fact, it's increased the fan base. the hardcore game site, combatsim.com gave falcon4 an initial review that was decent, but after the open source patches came out, they said it was like playing a masterpiece. hm.
an explanation of what happened HERE and HERE.
an explaination of hex editing and source editing http HERE
i wonder if this might be the next big push in software...companies working with mod/patch developers..it seems to work well with games whether intentionally or not...

----- go to www.questionexchange.com.

This is quite an interesting article, and while I, a hard-core flight simmer can see the point of the writer, however, I think it is too corporate oriented.

Another article appeared yesterday on combatsim.com that looks at it from the simmer's perspective. Steve MacGregor writes about the computer gaming industry having "moved out of the age of bedroom programmers, and into the age of multi-national companies" and the pros and cons of this paradigm shift. On the plus side, this means that they have the budget available to create such productions. But on the down side, it seems the latest crop of games show that they "seem to be designed and developed by faceless marketing divisions who are soley interested in moving product."

Mr. MacGregor gave a number of examples of games which, when he bought them, were either obviously incomplete (e.g. the reference manual talks about features that are obviously not in the game), or the system requirements were determined by some marketing droid whose sole motivation is the bottom line. (In his example, he bought a game which said minimum requirements were a PII/266, 64MB RAM, 4MB 3D vidcard, recommended was a PII/350, 64MB RAM, 16MB 3D vidcard. His machine is a K6-2/533, 64MB, 32MB Riva TNT2, and even with all of the graphics options at minimum, he can't get above 10 FPS.)

I think the following statement from his article sums the situation up nicely:

"Some recent games seem to have been produced solely based on how much revenue they can generate, and have ignored completely the need to give the customer value for his money. This isn't how it is supposed to be. If I buy a microwave oven, or a radio, or a car, or any other item, I have every right to expect that it will perform as advertised. If it doesn't, I get my money back. If I buy a computer game and it doesn't perform as advertised on the box, I am often left to hope that unpaid but talented individuals will assist me via the Internet. It seems that we gamers are getting a poor deal here, and I believe it is time to take a stand."

I understand that computer games is an industry, and that they want to make profits. But why should quality suffer?

Don't forget the Atari 2600. You have to be really really old to not remember that.

When older geeks do go gaming, it seems to me that they (self included) spend more time with military simulations than any other genre. If you're looking for the "over 30" set, look to combat flight sims like Aces High or WarBirds.

FPS are fun, but after a while, they all seem to be the same. Sure, there are different guns and different maps but the objective is almost always simply one thing, kill the enemy and collect frags. CTF and UT Assault are the obvious exceptions.