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EQ Emulator Winter's Roar Shut Down

Posted by Zonk on from the no-more-illegal-hijinks dept.

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."

3 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Cloners or Creators? by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They've already cloned the servers, why not just clone the clients too, and tell Sony to climb a rope?

    What? Too much like work? Seriously, if the Open Source community wants to shake the "only cloners" label, why not create an Open MMORPG? It should be easy -- if it's architected well, you can just release a basic shell and let it grow. The players will want a good game, so they'll develop content, enhancements, and bug fixes, right? The Players will be the Developers will be the Artists will be the Community. It should be a perfect application for Open Source. And if you toss in a little BitTorrent and a little Seti@home you could do it serverless peer-to-peer.

    --
    If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
    1. Re:Cloners or Creators? by FidelCatsro · · Score: 5, Informative

      like this http://black-legacy.com/index.php
      orhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/planeshift/
      Have a look on sourceforge for a few more

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  2. Client "Back-patchers" to blaim. by BaronSprite · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been developing with the EQEMu project since the ancension from AGX. So far the only time a c&d has been issued was if a server provided a back patch for users to play on their server.

    A backpatch was essentially the older version of the game's client and dll files which would allow it to run on the emulated server. These files however were copyrighted material, which usually would give SoE basis for a C&D.

    The project was previously C&Ded when it obtained the planes of power expansion early and the files were provided on the sourceforge page, but other then that there have been little to no legal issues.

    This wasn't so much as sony being the evil empire, but the fact that you can pretty much dl the game for free then use the provided files off the emulated server's webpage to patch it to a time where it is compatible with the emulated server, this was the problem.

    The client updates have pretty much been the single largest setbacks to the project (besides internal developer fights).