EQ Emulator Winter's Roar Shut Down

grumpygrodyguy writes "Fans of Everquest emulation were dealt a blow today as Sony Online Entertainment threatened Winter's Roar into shutting down their server. WR was home to approximately 350 players and a labor of love for the developers who spent hours a day for nearly 3 years improving this unique game world. WR was a not-for-profit MMORPG that allowed players to play for free as long as they owned the original Everquest client up to and including the Luclin expansions. SOE has threatened WR's hosting company EV1 with legal action unless it ceases and desists service immediately."

Comments

Re:I think Sony has a point.

[oGMo]

Just creating a new game world is not enough. They spent loads of time and money creating the graphics and protocol, on which these other people are piggy-backing.

BS. You pay full retail price for EQ. And expansion packs. And if you want online patches, you need an account, if it's like other MMO's.

Just creating a new game world is not enough. They spent loads of time and money creating the graphics and protocol, on which these other people are piggy-backing.

Not only is it illegal, but it does have a (long-term) financial impact on Sony.

Uh what? As stated above, you already paid them retail, for what's no more than a regular game. If anything is "invalid", it's your line of reasoning. Somehow you jump to "illegal" here. Circular reasoning.

Thus is it wrong with the letter and the spirit of the law.

More importantly, "long-term financial impact on Sony" is absolutely irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the law. You seem to subscribe to the erroneous notion that companies have a "right to profit". There is no right to profit. If it affects Sony's bottom line, it's simply called competition. Contrary to large corporate popular opinion, nothing is wrong with the law here, in word or spirit.