First off, yeah I fully understand about the whole ''endorsement'' thing. This email stays in this email spare one other person whom won't be telling a soul either. I'm hoping not to see these emails to you as a promotion, but I just wanted someone who aided in creating or was a visionary or anything at all for Everquest to at least know what is going on. By "what is going on" persay, I mean something like... We find the game pointless to die for us simply because the host company doesn't want to see fit to our playing standards (IE: a classic server) so whats the harm in NOT altering code and NOT wreaking profit or endorsement for mearly entertainment that was changed from us in the past... Many people have gotten the point across that they've wanted a classic server (the closest was progression, which was even good in its own right) just as they have for SWG; pre CU... but it never came. If profit was truly the issue at hand to come into legality play, wouldn't they have just taken a backup pre-upgrade and throw it on a server? Theres something like three or four projects of old players out there for Star Wars Galaxies working on methods of getting what they loved back, all with thousands of players supporting it.
I find that most games now are no longer based on what the player has in mind, but everything the dev's have in mind. I don't see player events, I don't see GM events... I don't see people with many comments... I just see a lot of whining. I don't know if that makes much sense but take for example Vanguard Saga of Heroes. Originally, and up until now it's been a generally difficult game. In a recent release, the dev team said to the players "We are gimping it, because we don't like its current state." My guess is they are doing this for more players, except without reading player feedback how do they know what people want. I don't know... often times now I see things being based off of developer instinct trial-and-error instead of a ''suggestion box.'' Which might just be the reason there isn't/might never will be a classic for Either EQ or SWG.
Well, wherever a game goes the players have to go with it... and that includes if the game was to go down the @^$#er. I think one of the main reasons over the growing years of MMORPG's that most 'emulation' has been created is not for a free ticket out of paying to play or some lame excuse along the lines, but for a game frozen at a specific status where that player-group seemed fit. It may not always be the case, but i've seen more than enough to tell me that somethings wrong with the current take on patch and expansion releases. Take perhaps for example, World of Warcraft. Many players found that new expansion horrible, but have no choice to play what they used to find a valuable purchase. MMO's at least to date do not have any self-preservation and from the jist of questionnaires they don't even seem to bother holding previous source-codes (which I just find a scapegoat, and probably not true at all).
Nobody wants to see what we are doing as illegal, just as the other hundreds of emu's out there (unfortunately a lot just to avoid payments) but I guess we know it is. I've touched up on the subject and even talked through SoE on projects like these (not with EQC in particular as it did not exist at the time, but about preserving a game's past status to bring players back) and they basically told me "we do not deal with little fish, it is a waste of our time and resources." So it's almost as if a couple thousand people are a little fish, and although a couple thousand people can make a couple tens of thousand dollar difference just to play a video game they like doesn't seem to matter anymore. Looking through the legal status of Emu's (at least for EQ) it's obviously under the EULA, which despite sometimes being a rather lame legally binding contract it means we could be sued for a 'breach of contract'. But all breaches must have damage incurred, where in which thats where patching and game-term emulation come into place.
I know SOE has seen the project, we've had a few of their employee's pop into the irc.. although wordless. This can be a bad thing or it can be a good thing. If the project was notified that it had to be shut down or they would be sued, sure it would shut down... but everything to come out of this is beneficial to the people that want a classic variant of the game to play. SOE gets to see a lot of people care, and i'm positive the code would get out anyway, what-with-what the internet is these days.
I guess I see work now being obsoleted and no longer looked over or cared about as a form of illegal-abandonware if that makes sense. Everything special is being replaced to almost make a completely different game.
Either way, the players determine if a game is played, and the players pretty much determine the way it will be played. Unfortunately, it goes into legality issues at time, merely over wanting to play the game a certian way... but it's just the way the cookie crumbles.
This was the game we liked, this is the game we bought, this is the game we payed for-for years, and this is the game we'd like to return to, with or without support. I find it rather ill-hearted as to how hard it is to contact someone that really has an opinion on such a topic, especially someone along the lines of Smedley or any other important person working under the hood of the games. Without player-to-dev or even player-to-player contact how is an idea supposed to get across, and how are we not supposed to jump on a bandwagon to disliking the way SOE or other MMO companies handle their games.
I have never seen a more ecstatic community than the one sitting on those forums... and before a minor hitch there was nine hundred and ninety seven people registered, for something not even close to being ready. That just preaches to me that games these days are getting crappier, and we all want to go back to better ones... especially the king of all MMO's, Everquest.
Alright, That was a long rant, and my literacy might be a bit off thanks to a lack of sleep.