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Star Wars Galaxies Emulator Test Server Hits Alpha
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CoffeeHedake continues "This all comes after much very bad press for SOE, after completely changing the game mechanics of Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. The game has had a rocky history, with nerfs and bugs abounding, but the latest 'NGE' or New Game Enhancement patches have led to the detrimental decline in player population. SWGEMU was formed with the hopes of allowing players to 'roll back' their experiences to a Pre-'Combat Upgrade' state of the game, months before the ill-fated NGE was implemented."
"The SWGEMU will allow private, emulated game servers to be run by anyone with the hardware and bandwidth to support the load, possibly allowing customized environments, and game mechanics, as well as a 'dungeon master' control of the server, possibly even over a LAN."
"News has spread, even throughout the Sony Online Entertainment forums of SWGEMU's latest success. No word from Sony, as of yet."
That this goes the same way that the everquest server emulator went.
You might notice that if you click a link with a swgemu.com base, it redirects you to Crayola, Teletubbies or Lego's site. This is because of how the hosting service is implemented. Almost all the swgemu sites I go to require me to cut and past links into the browser and to make sure they are preceded with http://./ So for instance, paste "http://forums.swgemu.com/viewtopic.php?p=24081#24 081" into your browser and you should see the linked forum.
This is, of course, with the exception of the screenshots hosted by gamerspace or the video (which really just seems to be a transition of the stills). Note, I'm not sure if the YouTube video is the same as the one from the mirrors, I'm still downloading that.
I should also point out that the forums are tightly moderated as swgemu is not looking for trouble with legal issues regarding SOE. I think they've had tangles with them in the past and don't enjoy discussing it. I don't actively post on swgemu but am thrilled by the idea of what they are trying to create. The concern by SOE is not only stealing paying customers but also the fact that if this is open sourced, then anyone will be able to see the reverse engineering work which means a whole lot more attempts on hacking the servers.
Most importantly, there are no dates set whatsoever for this project. I am just sitting back and waiting for hopefully a chance to play a game I once knew and loved. A game that exists no more. Pre-CU SWG.
I guess it had such a huge client that most of the functionality had to be sitting on each client machine and the server required some interaction. Hopefully this reverse engineering provides a stable alternative. If you'd like to contribute, help them with the datapack done in a Wiki format! If you're interested in development for the team and know C/C++, check out this post.
My work here is dung.
That they will see their first take-down demand by EOD?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
10...
Dear god why would they do this? Are they going to make is suck any less than the SOE version?
Sony files lawsuit in 3..2..1..
http://religiousfreaks.com/For the two people that still have the client installed!
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
...i think George Lucas's gonna sue somebody!
Well, that definitely opens SWG up for continuation for when SoE decides to flush the project, and it makes it possible to implement some of the changes that people have been clamoring for forever, unhindered by Sony's jackassed design philosophy
And it's going to make it possible for Sony's legal team to achieve their "absuive lawsuit quotient" months ahead of schedule.
Seriously. It's like they're begging to be crushed. I can't think of a company with less sense of humor than Sony, and I really can't think of anyone who protects his IP better than Lucas. They're going to combine to form some sort of mega-legal-robo-proctologist, and they're not going to stop until they get to the back of the SWGEMU team's teeth.
I guess I'm happy and sad for them. They're like happy little lemmings.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
When I read that title, all I could see was eight well dressed lawyers also wearing the garb of the village people dancing to the tune of YMCA, but instead shouting "DCMA!" "I make use of the DCMA!"
To be honest, a big fat SO WHAT.... truth is, SOE screwed the game over so hardcore that even die-hard star wars fans have already moved on. It's splendid that they're creating an emulator, kudos, BUT I seriously doubt they'll see the fan support required to grow further than a curiosity to gamers.
Those of you weeping over this, try http://www.eve-online.com/ Sure it's nothing like SWG, but it's a MMORPG that actually seems to give a damn about it's userbase and isn't catering to the largest $$ segment of the population.... Not that I'm bitter or anything! (Rest In Peace SWG.... Rest in Peace).
May the Emulator be with you!
Unless Sony's legal department shows up with the police, then you may want to ditch the Emulator instead.
You're dead to me SWG, DEAD to meeeeeeeeee
Sony will most likley disavow and attempt to stop it. Just wondering if anyone from that team has contacted any of the project managers or legal folks to make sure that this is ok?
I've been sent to teletubbies and lego websites.
Something is amiss
Gadget News at Gizmo.com
64bit here we come! Oh yeah!
Sincerily,
The Alpha Troll
Imagine the interesting content and rulesets that could be created by people not bound by the revenue-focus of Sony.
I am curious if the developers have done anything to avoid suffering the same fate as bnetd, which the courts found to have violated the DMCA and the EULA. Blizzard's main complaint appears to have been that bnetd did not verify CD keys. Does the same issue exist here?
I moved on from SWG to play WoW with my old SWG guild. On my server, there are about 6-10 SWG guilds playing ... going through thier forums, they have a huge interest in this emulator. As a rough estimate, 80% are saying they will come back. Even if half these people come back, that is nearly 500 players. I woulnd't be so naive to think that if this gets running, you could see a large return of userbase - afterall, even on the official SWG forums, the devs are repeatedly deleting threads about this. If you read the SWG forums, you will see that a tremendous number of them prefer pre-cu SWG above anything after it. There were only a few things that needed fixing - namely Doctor Buffs, 90%resist armor, extreme dots, and inability to heal mind. If you fix those four issues much of the playerbase will be happy to return. Maybe SWG should read thier forums more than to just delete negative threads, but actually notice how you have four pages of poeple saying they would recommend pre-cu(pre-combat upgrade) SWG to friends, but not the NGE(new game enhancements)-SWG to friends.
By the way - the SWG-Emulator team says they have the resources and means available to host 3000 player-limit servers - thats is - 3000 simultaneous users at a time.
Its just like Ep 4 ANH. Lucas is the Emperor and Sony is Darth Vader. Ironic and funny that the shoes on the other foot now.
*Waves hand*
These aren't the emulated servers you're looking for.
Allowed by lawyers, this will not be.
The lead programmer for the SWGEMU (Star Wars Galaxies Emulator) Team was found dead in his home today. Coronary exams reveal that he died of acute and forceful asphyixiation but no sign of breaking and entering was found. Police were baffled but after an anonymous tip from a young moisture farmer they are now on the lookout for a man in black who is said to breathe very loudly.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I'd be really into this if I could run a server on the builds prior to the the various CUs.
I think if they had just quit screwing with the core game mechanics/dynamics and instead focused on bugfixes and added interesting content, this would have been my favorite MMORPG ever. As it stands, I gave up for good on my third time re-activating my account shortly after the final CU before they completely raped the game.
Sony-Bony will sue, as they want to have rootkits installed on every computer in existance.
Ive been waiting for years, either someone emulate it or buy it from EA but please please bring Earth and beyond back.
i played this game several times for a couple months at a time (launch, during the CU, during the NGE) and all they did was make it suck more and more as time went on. sony killed the star wars mmorpg, let it be dead.
Reverse engineering a SWG server is like staring at someone's poop to guess what they had for dinner.
Is it really that had to Emulate a very, very buggy piece of software? Honestly, if you that junk and Emulate it and it comes out as junk... is it due to the emulation or the fact that you started with junk? I'd say it's not that had to start from scratch and make something nicer than SOE's junk that they called SWG.
I am not entirely sure the correctness (and want someone to clarify if I am incorrect) of these next few statements. Purchasing the game is different than playing online in the SWG servers. Some may find there is no distinction, however Sony sells the game, and bundles a FREE 1-2 month pass to the servers. The game is sold separately. From a contractual standpoint, does this not mean the consumer has ALREADY paid for liscensing costs for SWG? The server does not manipulate the actual Lucas Arts IP, mearly gameplay aspects. Adding to the fact that this should fall under "fair use" exemptions, so long as the core Lucas IP is not messed with. Sony mearly provides some algorithm development and a data storage/serving SERVICE for a FEE. Supposing it was all clean room reverse engineered, as stated above, so long as the actual data on the install CD's (or updated to whatever patch #) are not altered, we should be in the clear. The instructions residing on the server are probably not covered by copyright. Am I wrong?
Seriously though, from a player's perspective.. is anybody going to get on this server and play, and build up a character, just to find out in a few months that the lawyers sent a nastygram to sombody and the servers get turned off? Or, are you going to end up with modded servers that just are not fun to play on because they are only hosted on some cable modem somewhere?
Meh, I dunno. If they can really hold 3000 people, thats great. If they can stave off Sony's lawyers for a few years, they may even be able to breathe life back into this game.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
The original game sucked too.
People wax poetic about the pre-NGE days but they seem to forget that those changes came because the game was a mess and everyone was crying for a change. Just because the changes made the game worse, doesn't mean the game was good to begin with.
I like the idea of a reverse engineered MMORPG emulator from a geek point of view, but this game sucked no matter who hosts or controls it.
It took them this long to get it to Alpha because they couldn't figure out how to implement the Sony root kit inside the original (joke, joke).
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Let me tell you what the prior state of the game was - it was GRINDING HELL.
Soe was MILKING the players by putting goals that is hard and far to reach constantly.
So that game was turned into a question of 'when, how, and where do i grind ?' - Nothing star wars.
The crowd that started the game in fall 2003 had already cancelled by then as the game had nothing star warsy left.
With nge, the "uber godmode" players, the powerplayers, Item sellers, sith wannabees (and they were a many of them) have lost their 'godly' status, as the grind was almost halted.
From what i understand, the poster of this article is just another biased powerplayer.
It is PLAIN stupid to come back from 8-hours long workday and KEEP ON WORKING IN A GAME THAT YOU PAY, instead of playing the 'feel' that you pay for.
Crap, in short. Star wars is way better now.
Read radical news here
After all their pissing consumers off, this would be an ideal time to make nice and put a foot forward to explore user-run servers as a wave of new interest, rather than an assault upon their business model.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
If they used content from the other servers. It's probably imminent anyway.
Kinda upsets me a bit.
Wow, it amazes me that someone took the time to do this for what was such an overhyped major letdown. This is quite possibly the most terrible MMORPG ever made and I wouldn't play it for free, even though I might be able to soon.
Everybody recall BNETD?
If you want anybody to be able to reverse-engineer things for compatibility purposes then you better speak up right now. Otherwise this will be smacked down as hard as BNETD was.
And BNETD wasn't even substituting for a pay-to-play service so you can imaging what Lucas The Hutt's lawyers will do on this one.
You thought Vivendi was bad...
"Bah!" - Dogbert
The only defence I got for my taste is that it was a unique game, the above poster could have simply moved to WoW and found the game he wanted. Or even Everquest 2.
As for the grind accusation, well that is partially true. If you wanted to be a jedi pre-nge you had an ungodly grind ahead of you.
For the longest time in SWG the way to unlock jedi was to master a number of random and unknown proffession to master. This lead to a lot of people grinding to jobs they didn't want. For instance you character might require you to master chef and commando and doctor. Not exactly a logical combination.
This unlock method did give the game something unique though. It had lots of experienced players in the end game giving up their high levels in job X and starting over in Y. This made for a very dynamic game with more people in mid level then you will find in other MMO's.
But they changed this and unlocking Jedi became a pure XP grind. You had to convert your various XP points into jedi XP points at a bad exchange rate. This meant a couple of things. First nobody grinding for jedi bothered with learning new jobs. Because of various game mechanics people just grinded the easiest proffesion to master and then grinded XP like mad. They needed a truly unholy amount of XP too. Far more in fact then you needed before to grind different proffesions. And while before you got to experience different types of playing you now had to grind XP in one job.
So before to unlock jedi you played a scout, then became a dancer and then went on to craft weapons for lets say two months. To unlock Jedi after the village was added you just grinded XP in a combat class for six months. Whoo!
Ah! but you don't need to grind a Jedi at all do you? Well no, and before the village if you avoided the jedi/holo grind you could have a really fun game playing the mixed job you wanted and if you wanted a change, well there were plenty of holo grinders around to make sure that the game was very welcome of job changers.
SWG was far more a sandbox game and the holo grind that a lot of people choose helped in that aspect by supplying the game with a load of mid level players. Imagine a WoW or EQ where 50% of the players are NOT at the top level. This would mean that you no longer need to race for the top. That it is the mid level game that is most important.
Sadly SOE never managed the game well, all the "special" stuff was very high level indeed. It ain't just SOE fault, I don't really know of any MMO that adds extra mid level content.
But the NGE changed all this. It is now far more like an EQ or WoW game in that you choose a proffesion and then just ride it to the top and sit there running the same high level content until a new expansion comes out wich adds a few levels.
Offcourse some people prefer it but they are not "right" they just got different tastes. My beef with them is that they already got plenty of games for them. Why did SWG have to become another run off the mill MMO like all the others.
Imagine if I said that America Football would be better if you couldn't touch the balls with your hands, except the goalie, and the goals should be smaller and the balls should be round. Would you not say to me, go play soccer?
SOE turned SWG into a WoW wannabe probably because they wanted the WoW subcriber numbers. That is understandable except that it didn't work and never could work. First of WoW is already WoW and trying to out WoWing WoW is as likely as say out Coca-Colaing Coca-Cola. There is a market for clones but if you really want to stand a chance you usually are better of making a product that is unique or at least offers a safe heaven for people who do not enti
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
it clears up those messy 'fair use' issues with an iron clad rule that circumventing any sort of copy protection is illegal. Just checking the CD-Key is enough.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I've been waiting so long for the day I can AFK macro in Coro cantina again all because my holo says "Master Dancer". I'll pwn those Rebel nubs, I'll pwn them with /startDance exotic2.
ZOMGWTFPWNtKKTHNXBIBI!!!ONE!111!!!
The CU and NGE versions bled that potential away. When SOE decided back in 2004 to scrap the core game rather than to fix bugs and inconsitencies and add content to it, they destroyed SWG's growth, and laid waste to the best MMO engine ever produced.
/target Smedley /rude /db
In Pre-CU SWG, you could NEVER SPEND A MINUTE in combat and still be just as vital a part of the game community as a Jedi Master. It had a combat system and UI that was awesome, you spent time on strategy, not toolbar watching and button mashing. It had no levels, only skills.
The CU took the heart out but left the body mostly intact. It was a boring and slow combat engine and nerfed player power to the point of requiring a group to do mundane things like level grinding. Non combat roles got marginalized at that time as anti decay kits and uber loot rewards from the expansions replaced crafted items.
The NGE then destroyed the body, taking away the skill system completely and reducing 32 mix and match professions to 9 static ones. Jedi ceased to be a long term game aspiration and became selectable on startup. There ceased to be anything at all to work towards.
Throught ALL of this we have been screaming for classic servers, which would make the pre-Cu vets like me very happy. No, says SOE, play THIS or else.
Well, even John Smedley admitted on the SWG forums that SWG players have been voting with their feet and that subscriber numbers have been falling since the NGE. Their response has been to shove half assed versions of stuff taken away since NGE back into the game slowly but surely. Rumor has it after the latest combat revision (yes, they are STILL changing the combat system every 6 months) that subscriber levels dropped even more, and consequently, the lead developer recently posted about bringing back turn based combat with a target lock (like all other MMO's use).
So now we have the pre-Cu emulator. The time has come for SOE to either give us our game back, or else, we will take it out of their hands. The Emu project is about to go open source, and no matter what they do with lawyers, just like DeCSS they won't be able to stop it once that code is out there.
Corporatism != Free Market
Please don't tell me this is true? You've wasted your braintime on the most milked franchise in the history of mankind only to be sued to chunky kibbles by Sony/LucasArts/YouNameIt the instant this goes gold? Please, no, don't tell me this is true.
If only they had put their efforts into Planeshift to get it on with a viable open source alternative to WoW and GuildWars. But, no, they had to ripp a commercial product. Great. Wonderfull.
What a waste of brainpower.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Who uses IRC these days?
It's a bit sad to see projects like this happen. As someone else mentioned, there's a lot of serious work going on when making an emulator.
Unfortunately, it's wasted effort. Consider that in this case the emulator writers are facing two companies not known for their patience in dealing with people violating their intellectual property: Lucas and Sony. It's only a matter of time before the lawyers come knocking.
I'm a small-scale online game developer myself, and I appreciate the work that goes into this type of effort. But, really, all that work would be better used if people would write their own games instead of trying to build emulators for existing games. Yes, it takes a bit more time and effort to write your own game, I will admit. But, we really need a wider variety of games out there. Coding a server is still a bit of deep magic. Anyone working on an emulator project would help the industry more by finding other developers able to fill in the missing pieces to make a full game. You don't have to work for years to make a WoW-killer; smaller games like Bang! Howdy can be made on a relatively modest budget and schedule.
In the end, we see more opportunities for innovation if this happens. So, please, stop focusing on making emulators and start focusing on making new games. Or, at the very least, start an open source project to make basic technology. It'll help everyone more in the long run.
My thoughts,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
I used to play on some of the shards for Ultima Online when a lot of them were running. They were just servers that ran by regular people in their own home. I could see this happening with
Even if playing for non-jedi, you could never had the star wars feeling.
Why ?
Because it was ALL ABOUT JEDI at that time. If people were not grinding for jedi, they were trying to get jedi bounties, or producing jedi items, or helping people do jedi quests etc and so on.
Game was ruined at the moment they announced it was possible now to become a jedi.
And even if we take the jedi thing out of the picture, the other professions were some ungodly grind too.
Say, you wanted to be a bounty hunter.
You could NEVER be an effective bounty hunter, if you did not ditch the heavy weapons branch of the bounty hunter tree, and get Carbine accuracy column from carbineer and pistol speed and accuracy columns from pistoleer.
Same went with almost all professions. No profession was able to do its job without getting in some other profession's sporadic trees first.
And even after that, the game was about grind. The grinding to master was a long one if you did not employ auto grinding, and when you did get to master, there was nothing to do with the mastery.
So they put forward the jedi concept. You HAD to MASTER ALMOST ALL professions to become a jedi, practically. Oh yes, some just hit the 2-3 random profs they needed and unlocked it quick, but for others it was practically mastering 22 out of 24 or so professions.
Nay. Swg was star wars in the first 4 months of its launch. It was all about anchorhead cantina then, the rebel people inside it, the atmosphere, it was real star wars.
Read radical news here
I hate doing things like this, but he has a point.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Begun, this lawsuit war has... As if a million gamers cried out at once and were silenced...
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
according to an SOe devs words on the swg forums he said if someone could do such a task he would hire him on the spot. of course that is assuming whoever said that isnt full of shit.
Sony's another story- I'm sure they have legions of lawyers just waiting to piss off more people.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
When Elite Torrents released a crappy quality dvd screener of ep3, George Lucas set the FBI and the goddamn NSA onto them. Brave, brave people.
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
But was SWG fun to play in any of its incarnations? As someone who participated in the beta and then wouldn't have played the retail version of the game had SOE paid me the monthly fee, I don't really see what the allure of a server emulator is. It's like releasing a perfume that smells like poo.
This is Sony. What makes you think they give a damn about getting bad press or alienating customers?
I mean in this case they even have some excuse that they're protecting their IP, but they've been known to do worse stuff just because they could. From SOE's heavy-handed handling of customer relations, to the Sony rootkit of their music division, to the PS3 interviews (especially the one where they say you should get a second job already if you can't afford a PS3), to a few other things, there seems to be this common trend about Sony's corporate culture: they don't give a fuck about the customer. They're the great Sony, you're the peon who's there just to pay your taxes to Sony. And they have no qualms with bashing your door in to see if you've been poaching their royal deer.
And just look at the history of SWG. The team had no problems with wantonly pissing off their paying customers in any way they could. Ranging from "merely" outright lies, to banning people for being tipped with duped money (as if anyone could know they've been tipped with duped money, or refuse a tip), to a patch that rolled back a sold expansion pack, to the rest of the NGE, to God knows what else. Even the quality of the game itself, ranging from still lacking content for whole classes (after how many years?), to illogical mass produced content (e.g., a "sword scope" that's, yes, a sniper scope for a sword... except it works like a potion, since they don't actually have the mechanics to attach a scope to anything), to content that's little more than just merchandising the SW characters, etc, the common theme seems to be that they just don't give a fuck. They do what they damn please, and if you like it or not, that's your problem, not theirs.
I mean, seriously, how do you top selling an expansion pack for real money and then rolling it back in a patch? Or banning half the player base for something as out of their control as being tipped, and then beaming the protesters into space? Suing a bunch of fans of the old game seems pretty tame when put in that perspective.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As was said, have you _played_ SWG? SOE has been just about the most oppressive and heavy-handed publisher to date. Their approach has always been along the lines of "fuck you, we're Sony and we're right, and you're probably just some whining idiot and a cheater to boot." Deleting any threads even mentioning a game shortcoming, banning people for unfair reasons like unknowingly being tipped with duped money (as if they could even know or refuse), beaming people into space when they had an in-game protest, etc, etc, etc.
Now OK, I know that US constitution amendments don't apply to Sony's private property, but it's hard to not draw some parallels, especially (like the GP post was doing it) in a sarcastic way. It's perfectly valid to say that someone is acting in a dictatorial manner, or compare them to a dictator (e.g., Palpatine), especially in a parody context, if they did half the shit that SOE did. Even though, technically, they're not the ruler of a country or galaxy, so they can't technically be a dictator.
At the very least, Sony shows the same respect for other people that Palpatine and Darth Vader showed. Sure, they're not in a position to physically murder anyone (and get away with it), but they're just as sociopathic anyway. The only difference is that it's the corporate kind of a psychopath rather than the axe-murderer (or red-lightsaber-murderer) kind. But that's pretty much it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They probably _are_ full of shit. It's just some funky way of bragging that their game is too complex to be emulated. And, let's face it, bragging is half of what the SWG team is all about. They're too busy polishing their own statue to even fix the damn game. So whether they'll actually make a job offer or not is pretty much irrelevant there. The main point was just to brag.
Mind you, with something like this on one's CV, one can probably get hired anywhere anyway. So it's not like SOE is their only option, or like that dev was saying anything we didn't already know.
I can see SOE trying to hire them just to give them a non-compete aggreement that makes them stop working on the emu, though... Then again, nah, that wouldn't be Sony. They'll just try to sue them into oblivion.
And finally, even if they did get a job at SOE, don't set your hopes too high. It's not like some netcode programmer will be allowed to give much input in game design issues, especially issues that would require getting past some continent-sized egos there. I just can't see it going too well, trying to tell them that you know better then them how to design a game that player would like.
I don't know... I've never worked for them, so I can't say first hand, but seeing the kind of half-arsed run-of-the-mill stuff they churn as content, SOE doesn't strike me as the kind of company that values personal creativity and vision. (And if you read some Penny Arcade rants about EQ2, they seem to be left with the same impression, albeit in their case about the artwork.) Their games are chock-full of such mass-produced illogical crap as getting bone by chopping wood (EQ2), killing deers and bears to find which of them stole a manuscript (EQ2), a sniper scope for a sword (SWG), and other stuff that just makes you wonder. I just can't see someone implementing that kind of idiocy unless they're (A) completely retarded, or (B) just a jaded cog in a corporate machine, that gave up long ago on trying to make sense or to "rock the boat". And it's probably not A.
I mean, seriously, everywhere else you'd get the scripter implementing that coming to the designer and saying "excuse me? did I get this right? I'm supposed to code a quest that has a sniper scope for a _sword_ as a reward? And how? We don't even have the code to attach anything to any weapon." That they went and just coded it half-arsedly as a strength potion that just looks like a sniper scope, makes me really think about it. It's the kind of half-arsed job that people usually do when they're just jaded about their work, and gave up on trying to be anything other than a brainless slave to the wage. It's the kind of half-arsed job you do when you realized long ago that noone gives a damn about your input, thinking isn't rewarded, and you just want to get it over with and set that task as "completed", go home and forget about it all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Am I the only one who was disappointed when it didn't turn out to be something that can emulate a galaxy?
As I read the SWG EULA it says you don't own the game and they do. Not only can't you see the source code but you actually don't own the game. Give me a break, it's so pathetic that all these religababies huddle around Lucas' hypocritical films about power and control and he puts down America at the same time by praising Australia for the latest SW series and nothing for America. READ: America invented the computer and Internet plus auto racing. His series is Pro government crybabies and anti-trade federation. He made the Trade Federation look like the Empire and like the government is so dam pure. Thanks Lucas now go back to voting for your favored democratic party and pretend that your American. The 'porters' know full well that it will be taken down because the law favors closed source Orwellian software. You don't own it so keep renting and have Uncle Sam ram it in your ass. PapaLucas ownZ you. No permission from Papa.
I think many companies turn a blind eye to server emulation because they don't want it making headlines. It's easy to stop news about some free emulator that's unauthorized being release (Most companies wouldn't publish something that's clearly bad for business they report on), but it's impossible to stop the media from reporting on the lawsuit you filed to stop the release of some free unauthorized emulation software. Many legitimate customers will be in the dark to a free alternative for years to come, paying for the real product. In the long run it may prove a better damage control alternative.
Finally I can be a powerful Jedi, while the rest of you can't! >:(
I'll let you stand there while I, Boba Vader, slaughter you with my red triple-bladed lightsaber!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I hope the admins of the emulated games aren't as uptight as the CSRs of the official SWG. Player bounty greifing, prostitution, scams.. I can't wait to spam Bestine with my Rebel rhetoric and corpse-camp TEF'd n00bs. "Down with the Empire" - Xamot - Deacon of Politics - Church of Alvis - Scylla server 'All this time and still no pants'
http://wormbrain.com/
Hopefully they didnt emulate the part of the game that sucked. So I guess an Alpha is as good as its going to get :-/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!
Bleem was basically sued out of existence even though I'm pretty sure they were in the right and no existing playstation code was used. The difference may be that Bleem was a commercial enterprise and this SWG emulation apparently is not. I guess that's a pretty big difference but I'm still surprised that they were allowed to get as far as they have.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Noone said that anything Sony did was _illegal_ (or unconstitutional or whatever.) That's one... element that _you_ introduced in that discussion, I'm not even sure in response to what.
Then again, I'm sure Palpatine never did anything illegal after he was in power either. I'm sure he just changed the law to give himself full legal rights to do whatever he wanted to do. So even taken that literally, the analogy between Sony and Palpatine doesn't really fail.
But again, that analogy was (A) for comedy purposes, and (B) more reflecting on Sony's oppressive/abusive/disrespectful treatment of their customers, than implying literally that they force-choked anyone, Sith-style.
No. Just no. You have mis-understood that. The emulator is a server-side program that doesn't even need SOE's or Lucas's images. It can't even use them. Those are in the client, and are 100% useless to a server emulator.
Server-side code doesn't actually _need_, say, Darth Vader's 3D model or textures. All that is handled by SOE's client. For the server it's just a generic character with a generic hitbox. It doesn't even need to know it's Darth Vader, or anything that would violate Lucas's IP. For all the server neds to know, it's something like "internal character number 42", or some such. Nothing more. From there to actually rendering that as Darth Vader is the job of the client.
And the client isn't emulated, it's the plain-old SWG client that SOE sold you on a CD. Noone ripped the artwork or anything out of it. It's exactly the program that SOE sold you, only you tell it to connect to an emulated server. Nothing more.
And noone stole any SOE code. Noone broke into SOE's network and stole some server-side code, and the client code wasn't even applicable, so the theft just doesn't exist. This is newly-implemented clean-room server code that copied no lines of Sony code whatsoever.
Basically this whole rant just tells me that, no offense, you just mis-understood it all and over-reacted based on that mis-understanding. You _assume_ some code or artwork or franchise thefts that weren't even possible or needed, and then react to those incorrect assumptions.
I can respect your lawful good determination to uphold the law and IP. It's good to see someone lawful good and all that. But here you just mis-understood it as some heinous theft, where there really was none.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
SOE's is soe scare of the EMU that they have nightmares about it. TheEMU makes them look like liars " We can not run a pre CU server". In a related story, SOE is going to reboot all the EQ1 servers . The long time players are going to have to restart and be pissed off the the SWG-NGE players! SOE knows how to tick off players . AVIOD if at all possible. Love that Jestor! " Oh yes, there will be blog" http://blog.myspace.com/lovethatjestor
I never grinded in SWG except for a short stint of the village because everyone else was and some of the quests looked like fun.
SWG I think was never meant to be about masters. The game was most fun at the mid level where you maybe had a novice proffesion mastered and slowly finding your niche as you played the game. Then again perhaps I was just lucky in finding a really good guild filled with people always coming up with fun stuff to do.
Then again, I must admit I was only in one successfull run on the death watch bunker. I rarely did the extreme high level stuff, so perhaps unlike you I never felt the need to grind a bounty hunter.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
well thats already in progress
http://www.enb-emulator.com/