f13.net

I'd like to let you guys know of a ArcEMU server that just opened up. The owner is Hawthorne of the PvP 'The Regulators' and he decided in the wake of Darkfail to try his hand and making an enjoyable PvP game for fun. He decided that he'd like to replicate the UO ruleset as much as possible with a few added tweaks to a system that is already pretty stable.

I'm currently playing and it is so far pretty fun and with pop. growth in the future it can only get better. Here are the release notes from when the server released yesterday.


The website is at http://www.uowow.com (http://www.uowow.com)

If you are interested, all you need is a WoW client patched to 3.0.9 (3.1.0 capability coming very soon) and follow the instructions on the site.

Hope to see some of you in the game.

Er, geez.

That's pretty wild, and a pretty large recoding, seems. Color me impressed.

I see it as having great potential to draw larger lawyer aggro than other smaller scale efforts that fly under the radar, though.

that is interesting. Anyone got any screenies? 

Edit: signed up, no confirmation mail, no downloads.  Any ideas?

Yeah, the website needs some work in terms of usability. Here's the lowdown on how to get started:

YOU MUST BE A REGISTERED USED OF THIS SITE TO PARTICIPATE! Steps to participate:
1) Download the UO-WOW Launcher http://www.theregulators.org/UltimaOnWow.zip
2) Make sure your comptuer has Microsoft.NET 3.5 Installed.
3) Download the WOW Client (http://www.theregulators.org/InstallWow.zip) and patch to 3.0.9
4) Run UltimaOnWow.EXE
5) Press Connect.
6) MAKE AN ACCOUNT ON THIS SITE. If you have already done so and did not get to register for the wow server please do so with this link: http://uowow.com/modules.php?name=WowSignup

This is weird. I am definitely curious, maybe even interested.

So this is legit? I had another guy on another forum advertise for this game as well, but that guy was very suspect. If it is legit, colour me interested.

That sounds kinda..cool..actually

I'm kinda waiting on the word from other people around here......... :)

This sounds frikkin awesome, kinda like my original thought of what WOW was going to be before I played.  Who's going to be the guinea pig?  Unfortunately I have stuff to do today so I don't have time to try it.

I... hrm...

I need to hear more. There's too much shadiness around WoW stuff all trying to get my passwords and stuff.

This is also going to get shut down sooooo fast.

I am definitely giving it a try, but it'll take me 1 or 2 days to download the whole thing.

How many copyright laws does this violate? 

WoW can't me made into a good PvP game.  There's just no way to do it.  As soon as a few groups get a gear advantage, they'll rule the server. 

Not enough.

I'd be worried that some nasty thing would be installed on my computer.  Like a password stealer.

You can only drop your password upon death.

Only carebears are afraid of malware. You have to be hardcore to play a game that tries to gank your computer.

Brought to us by the wonderful minds behind Dominus Online.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/dominusonline/index.html (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/dominusonline/index.html)

so has anyone tried this? 

Recall (as it was implemented!) was one of the worst game-mechanics of pre-Trammel UO. I say this as an former (mostly) anti-griefer/anti-PK/anti-GloriousLordSociopaths player.

If this offers you any type of consolation, here's a online virus scan of the file: http://www.garyshood.com/virus/results.php?r=172c1df9797be7857aae8a26ea64c746


If not, you can edit your realmlist.wtf file in your World of Warcraft/Data/enUS folder from the Blizzard servers to "uowow.com" (without the quotation marks) But you will have to edit it back if you want to play on the Blizzard servers again.

Hope to see you ingame.

I've tried a number of 3rd party WoW servers. Ultimately, it's the same gameplay (usually lesser quality) with less people and the knowledge that anything you do will probably be gone in 6 months.  That puts the kaibosh on any fun I might have.

Does that mean that the items are no longer bind on pickup? Can a person pass a blue/purple quest item with no lvl required to use to a lowbie by letting the lowbie (new alt?) kill him before guilding it?  How about quest items - can the system distinguish between quest items and other items - imagined ganked on the way to quest turn in and losing your quest items - and your ganker getting nothing of value unless he is intentionally try to grief you.


On one hand I see an adherence to legalities on F13 demonstrated by making sure posters do not violate NDAs; yet it is surprising that a link to a site that obviously breaks copyrights (by modifying the wow client) is advertised and accepted. What is F13's official stance on such?

So, this real in any way shape or form?

To your first question, I am not a developer of the server so I do not have an idea how the system works in its extent. I'm sure that you can ask that question on the forums and one of them would be happy to help you out. The system is pretty new and I can see some loopholes being created, but those will be ironed out over time.

To your second question, I am sorry if I have broken any rules on F13 in regards to posting potentially illegal activities. If F13 believes it to be an illegal activity you can delete this post at any time.

Why the hell not, I'll guinea pig for this. It does seem there are a few things that are great and some things that really need to be worked out, like any game and especially like any private server. One thing to mention: on this server the instances were turned into dungeons that are open world  :heart: :awesome_for_real: :grin: :drill:

edit: Also, if anyone else wants to join, it would be nice to get a solid group going. I'd have no problem playing a wildcard class of whatever is needed if there is interest in testing this out in a group manner.
edit 2: didn't see that the instances being turned into dungeons was listed in the op. Still, it's awesome enough to mention again because it's about damn time this was done again, and done right.

From what I understand, the adherence to NDAs is more to prevent premature bitching and to keep F13 in good standing when it comes to beta testing as a group. Plus, you decide if you'll do it, he just posted a link. I could also be wrong and this could get denned.

To those that say this is going to get closed down really soon, I know of quite a few servers that have been up since before Burning Crusade that are still going, easily found with google.

When Slayerik and I think Cheddar and some other guys all decided to go play some UO freeshard, they got a forum put up for it. Granted EA has never displayed any interest in doing away with freeshards. /shrug

I don't really see a problem. Even if we discussed it as an experiment - it's worth discussing. We're not gonna host any of this crap though.

Someone try it and tell me if its worth the download.

If it works, Blizzard should buy it... not shut it down.

I never did understand why SOE got so upset about the free servers for EQ1. They should have taken the hint and started selling server space. What your own server? $100/month and all your players STILL have to pay us.

Since many of the people related to this site openly violate copyright law with music, movies, tv shows, and software, I find it hard to believe they would have a problem with this.  

I have a problem with this, but I'm strange like that.  

Don't get me started on that subject. I'll win.  :awesome_for_real:

We both have a right to our opinion.  How about we peacefully coexist?  :grin:

Coexistence is never an option.

(http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/64091734/706433)

Can't login.
Says my account/password isn't right basically, "Unable to validate game version", but the reply isn't UOWOW custom, just the default Blizzard one.

Need to manually patch WoW client from 3.01 to 3.09. Couldn't find how within 4 seconds of Google-fu and because of that my interest is waning...

Remember to patch from 3.01 to 3.09 (http://browse.files.filefront.com/World+of+Warcraft+Official+Patches/;1323958;/browsefiles.html) and DO NOT install 3.10.

Eh, I'm already patched to 3.1, and I can't be arsed to mess around installing the game over again, just to try out a freeshard.

Additionally, http://uowow.com/modules.php?name=WowSignup  is the site to create the login account.
-Free level 40 mount is under pets tab.
-It seems any size donation will get you a level 60 mount (Deathcharger), but no actual gear is given away for donation.
-The pvp works, I've killed a few people (same faction on live server, killable on this one :grin:).
-So far it's not bad. I'd like to see the money increased a bit since just training take all the money you earn (this is based off of farming the human starting area which has more coin drops then other). The number of greens is increased, it seems around level 8-9 it starts to be noticeable.  I'm only level 14 now though after about 3.5 hours (over an hour of that was trying to fix an addon for action bars).


This honestly only took me ~45mins, 25-30 mins of that was because I did the first patch through the Blizzard patcher. After that I remembered I could just download the patches from another site and install them, screw the Blizzard patcher. It's really not a bad startup time

Edit: FUCK HOGGER

Ok, patching required me 5 patches. 4 easy to find, one not so easy (between the third and the fifth). So it's NOT SO EASY TO JOIN.

But I am in, I can attack NPC and questgivers, I attacked a guy at level 1 and got instagibbed by a guard.
Have to admit, smells fun.

I'm uploading the patch files to megaupload now just so it's easier for anyone else who wants to play


Aside from some pretty minor bugs (for the time being) I agree, it's wow but it's not. Not a lot of people, but every red name gets the adrenaline pumping again ^^

Patches for 3.01-3.09

3.01-3.02 (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=N8SAENDN)
3.02-3.03 (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=223GR9LG)
3.03-3.08 (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BMMR048W)
3.08-3.08a (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YYDT4RSD)
3.08a-3.09 (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9B0A80BK)

Roughly 400mb total


Edit: Updated 3.01-3.02

If I change the following lines in realmlist.wtf, does this allow patching to work correctly via their launcher and stop at 3.09 or is uowow set up to actually mimic all this?

set realmlist uowow.com
set patchlist uowow.com

I can just download the patches but if it will do it for me and stop at the right place ...

edit: nm, I just downloaded them. I did the first file alone since it is the biggie around 370Mb, then waited 10 min so the Megaload limits wouldn't annoy me, then did the other files (which together total about 100 Mb).

This would definitely benefit from having more people around. I haven't seen a single person from 1-20. Kind of hoping there'll be some STV FFA chaos going on when I get there.

The FFA PVP is fun, but like most ArcEmu shards it's a broken form of WoW right now anyway. A lot of abilities and talents are broken (even low level ones, like Warrior's Charge), many quests I've found are broken, many mobs are missing pathing AI, loot tables are broken (chests are empty, pickpocketing is on the standard loot table), ... etc...

But I killed a lvl 14 warrior at lvl 9 and there's some fun. Just don't expect anything near Blizz-like - it's FAR from that.

EDIT: Oh yeah - when I first connected there were 64 people online. And the server crashed twice. Or at least disconnected me and went grey (unavailable) in the server screen twice.

I don't believe so since the patcher for this server seems to just be to launch to the server, not an actually game updater. Fastest way is to download the patches and install them. You don't even *need* to change the realmlist.wtf file, I know I haven't and it works just fine.


I agree about it needing more people, but it has only been open for what, 3-4 days? That's actually not bad. Additionally you really won't see a whole lot of people from 1-20 (well, 1-30 really) because levelling through those levels is incredibly fast. 6 hours played yesterday (as mentioned before I spent a lot of time fucking with mods too) and my rogue is 26 or 27, lock at 10 (just levelling to up enchanting really as my next char will be a healer). It seems most people are level 35-50 right now. I'm not wanting to say 'stick with it, it gets better!' but that seems to be the case as the server did just start up and has a fast levelling with lots of room for a small number of players.

Charge works, it just has some issues with going up/down decent sized slopes. It does need looking into. Pets on the other hand, are pretty fucked right now. Loot tables are definitely messed up, but it's in favor of the player from what I've seen. As I said before, the extra green drops are really noticeable later on. Once I hit 20 there were some mobs dropping 2-3 greens at a time. I'd rather have this then working treasure chests. My enchanter alt is in bliss atm with these drop rates though. And I found beastslayer +2...hello red glowy weapons of doom! :drill:

Blizz-like fun? I'm hoping to all gaming gods it's nothing like the actual WoW. I say that because I want to pvp....actual pvp. Not that arena/instanced b.s. and definitely not some craptastic pve grinding. I'm honestly having more fun, bugs and all, then I have in the last 3 years of on/off playing of WoW. Best of all, no Chuck Norris jokes. For this last point, I'm going to be sitting in the Barrens tonight telling Chuck Norris jokes to anyone who walks into the zone just so it feels normal  :awesome_for_real:

On a good note though, they did just order a new server, so it will be shitty with lag for a week or so (I'd guess) but after that I'm guessing it will be better, because I agree that crashing with 64 people or so online sucks. Bigger cities (even empty) seem to lag more then any other areas.

Overall, I think this server has tons of potential and has been fun. If some bugs and lag bother someone, then I'd say hold off on joining for another week or so. Let the word of mouth do it's thing and the new server get up and running before trying it out.

No. Blizz like quality.

The other issue of course is that on a FFA server if you're going to be solo or in small groups some classes just aren't going to cut it. I think you'll need stealth or healing to survive - I expect to see a lot of druids. I doubt my mage will be very successful heh.

My bad, the sentence was about fun then it just said Blizz-like.

Lacking Blizz-like quality I agree with absolutely. They have a solid game to base their changes on but there's no way 3-5 people can keep up that level of quality with this many changes. To me that seems unfair to expect that as Blizzard quality is top notch. We can, however, expect them to provide better quality then the companies who released MMOs in 2008, and they seem to be doing that  :awesome_for_real:

Frost Mages can run away quite well though.

I have the client at 3.0.1.8874 (I even repaired it once after failing a couple times, and it still fails) but I keep getting this as the first patch is in its prep phase:

The file "C:\UoWOW\World of Warcraft\WoW-3.0.1.8874-to-3.0.2.9056-enUS-patch.exe" appears to be corrupt. You may need to download this file again.
  To check this installation for problems, click the "Repair" button. The Repair tool can automatically fix many update errors.

As I said, I repaired and re-downloaded but got the identical file again:

WoW-3.0.1.8874-to-3.0.2.9056-enUS-2-patch.exe
size: 382,880,024 bytes
MD5 checksum from the downloadable Microsoft checksum tool (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B3C93558-31B7-47E2-A663-7365C1686C08&displaylang=en) (run 'fciv <filename>'):
//
// File Checksum Integrity Verifier version 2.05.
//
3a451a39fd7089c001edf1f8d45c5d43 wow-3.0.1.8874-to-3.0.2.9056-enus-2-patch.exe

I am running Windows Server 2008, and Windows Defender is not in realtime mode (I also put an exclusion on the UoWOW folder anyhow).

Any ideas?

Ah, 'nuff said.

Pass.

I haven't played WoW in a year and this has me interested, only thing holding me back at this point is the fear of getting hooked to the tune of 30+ hours a week.

I can't ever get into player run servers. They can vanish in the blink of an eye, they are generally much more unstable than the retail product, and generally have a low player population.

However I do think they are good learning tools for companies to check into to offer specialty servers.  A WoW PVP server doesn't really feel like one to me, and seems more like DAOC's RVR model.

Anyway I've seen this posted and discussed elsewhere so its not a scam, but just another player run server that probably won't last long.

Either download 3.01-3.02 using the regular WoW patcher, or google for 3.01-3.02. That is the only one I didn't get from the same site as the rest that I had personally used, and patched 3.01-3.02 via the regular patcher. I'll upload a different file when I get home though as that one may just be corrupt.

I had downloaded that file specifically for uploading for others to use and didn't test it myself.


True, some are gone very fast, but there are others that have been running strong for a long time with no sign of slowing down. This is my first WoW private server, but for EQ and DAoC there are about 4-5 that have been running for a while now. I'm not saying if it will or won't last long, and would lean towards agreeing with you that it won't, but while it's available I think it's a great variation of the normal WoW that I've grown to really dislike for a long time now. Bliz had advertised PVP originally, and you see the results of that pile of shit aspect of retail WoW, so this really does appeal to a number of people. No instances, no truly safe spots (safer spots with guards in towns, but that's it), it's so damned nice.

As for this server feeling like DAoC's rvr, that is true for retail pvp servers....if gear wasn't so important and there was a point to pvp on a pvp server (such as the time post-honor points and pre-instances....ahh the golden years weeks). This server isn't doing that though, not at all. That is where the Ultima part comes into play, open pvp. Anyone is a target, even all non-vendor, non-trainer, and non-quest npcs. Don't like that annoying punk who keeps saying stupid shit? Then kill him if you can. Feels great to see a red name anywhere I go and know I'm about to kill or be killed (edit: when I actually see people that is  :awesome_for_real:)

Yes, it is legit, "The Regulators" have every right to distribute the WoW client.

The ruleset is interesting - I'm down with item loot drops, cross-faction grouping/warfare and housing. I'm less down with IP theft.

But, please, discuss DAOC private servers more. Those especially amuse me. I just *love* having my work stolen.

So you get royalties from DAOC? Sweet gig.  :oh_i_see:

While there I got profit sharing, yes.

Updated the patch links

And I guess they are switching servers tonight, I didn't think it was for a few days.

Therein lies the rub though, Lum. Blizzard's not going to do housing, or item loot, etc. There's no indication that there ever will.

There is a market that is looking, requesting and begging for a suite of features that no company is willing to deliver due to badly managed products in the past, resulting in chilled PvP innovation. Is the message simply supposed to be, "STFU, LIKE OTHER THINGS," or should it be something different?

I realize this thread isn't the place for the IP/copyright debate, but UOWoW might make us enter into a better dialogue about it if it picks up steam. I, for one, completely surprised that no company to date has embraced the freeshard concept as long as you still pay that $15/month.

I think Raph wanted to do something like that with UO but was shut down by people higher up in the EA hierarchy.

Having played on LS, I concur.

Er. There's no question about it really. If you want that game, build it. There's no rationale that says - "well they didn't give me what I want so I stole their stuff and made it into what I wanted..." that is, well, rational. Anyway, I understand what you're saying, suffice to say I tend to agree more with Lum's PoV. (And no, I'm not still playing this, I just checked it out due to this thread).

(shrug) That's fine, I shouldn't have even brought it up because IP debate isn't going to take this thread anywhere healthy.

Has anyone gotten a taste of the housing yet? I'm curious as to how it's been implemented.

In all your years among the UO crowd, you never logged onto a freeshard, am I right Lum?  :oh_i_see:

Sutro, the problem is that there are like 100k free-for-all PVP fanatics in the entire non-Korean world, and they all want someone to develop a $60 million game tailored to exactly their tastes even though that would mean no one else would ever play it. For obvious reasons, this isn't likely to happen.

The super grindcore poopsock Vanguard fanboy types would probably like a major MMO tailored specifically to their tastes too, but they shouldn't hold their breath either.

That's not right, WUA. In the past, yeah, we felt entitled to have our big games developed, and the future looked bright.

But now we would be very happy with specific nasty but official ruleset servers like this, a WoW one, an AoC one, a WAR one, or a few budget but stable working worldly pvp+ games. Darkfall, which I don't like, is a good example as it is apparently entertaining a bunch of people. Shadowbane was another. EVE is another one too.

The problem is, in a sea of clones of the same few games, there is way less than a handful available for those 100k fanatics. Shadowbane? Dead. EVE? Spreadsheets are not for everyone. Siege Perilous? Unreasonable progression cockblocks. Darkfall? Major hurr..... and still DF is like the only option right now, so that's why they went on and completed anyway.
What else?

So it's definitely not a problem of $60 millions. Much more a problem of "please give us something, anything!"

It's almost as if there's a reason that kind of game doesn't work.

No one has answered my question yet, is this real? Is it worth the hassle? is this complete?

Come on. Don't be a jerk.

They work, they are just niche. So you have to work wisely and on tighter budgets.
It's like saying indie comics don't work. Or whatever isn't hollywood is broken.

The real problem here, I agree, is that the know-how and the talent in the MMO indie-stry is still lacking. In ten years we'll have plenty of pvp+ succesful MMOs that work on a 20k or so subs basis.

1) Yes, it is real.

2) The hassle? Downloading WoW and patching to 3.09 (links provided a few posts up) and a patcher to this server isn't a whole lot of hassle. If you don't mind doing that, then really it isn't bad. The biggest hassle I've had is that when you start on the server the money vs levels gained is a poor ratio for a while. I've had enough to train and that's about it, although all the greens I get go to an enchanter alt which is easily cutting my income by 1/2. I still love the mount at level 1 though (check your character tab for pets and you'll find your mount).

3) As for if it is complete, no. There are still a number of bugs being worked out, housing sounds like it is coming along nicely and shouldn't be long before it's in (they showed a demo of housing over the weekend that I missed I guess), claimable cities/towns I'm guessing are a ways off yet. Possibly closing down zones (maybe expansion areas) and making the old world the only available zones to concentrate the population while this server grows was in discussion last night. This would be great for pvp activity and make this server a lot more fun. A few zones would be adjusted so none of the expansion crafting materials and levels would be missed, just a smaller area.

The new server went in last night and lag was non existant with ~50 people, unlike the day before where ~50 people meant delays, lag, and disconnects. So that part seems to be working nicely so far.

Overall, I'm enjoying it. Would be nice to get a group going so I could stop playing a rogue and move to something a little more challenging, but otherwise the community has been good (if you play type /join world for the global channel). Sadly, like any private shard, it suffers from population. I think if the zones are reduced then the population difference won't be as bad if they can reach ~100 concurrent users on average.

And of course, YMMV but that is my take so far on this server.

Maelstrom, lvl 41 Shadow Priest. If anyone is online or knows a good guild, I've just been soloing so far.

Yesterday I started, the XP is easy, I soloed my shadow priest to Bloodsails (lvl 41) in one day. The reason why money is tight (but managed to get all the important spells and buy a few things on AH) is b/c you level so fast you don't really have time unless you want to farm for a while to buidl up money. I just went and bought all spells that matter asap once I leveled.

All flight paths are known up front for all factions, and insta-travel time. on all forms of travel (even ships).

The server d/c's every so often, but relogging back in takes maybe 15-20 sec and I haven't died from it yet, although I came close :)

STV had maybe 5-6 people around, but there is world war in places I'm just not high enough yet to go there yet. 226 people online last ngiht.

Some funny bugs, like if you attack any humanoid at Hillsbrad Farm - any - they all aggro from all over the place.

Class skills are okay on Shadow Priest, a couple dumb bugs like Blackout stun procs will reset some mobs to evade mode. But I hear some classes like Warriors complain a lot more due to moe basic issues which screw their PvP builds.

Hawthorne is pretty good about notifying "Server down in 0:60, get to safe spot". They only reset the server whenthey have somethig worth it, and coming back in is only < 1 min. No shutdown/patch has left me out of the game for longer than maybe 2 min.

If anyone is playing, ping me here or in-game as Maelstrom ... I am still guildless just listening and watching who is/is not a full retard before takign that plunge.

Edit: I can see this being very viable for world PvP once the bugs are hammered down more. If they can put in some keeps for claiming and incentives like that, I can see how it could be more like what I wish WAR offered. And no isntances ANYWHERE is great. Reminds me of WoW very early when there was city raids, outdoor zone fighting and TM/SS ping pong.

As a general post about IP theft/freesharding/etc, but not at all related to WoW or UO:

NCSoft had the FBI shut down a very large private server (what freeshards are called in the L2 community) some years back. There are thousands more, some of which have populations larger than the lower populated retail clients, and if you could total all of the populations of L2 private servers together, I would not be surprised if more are playing those than the North American L2. They tend to be really popular in strange parts of the world that don't have localized language versions, like Greece, Russia, and South America.

Private server operators often run 'donation' systems that allow them to essentially provide a free microtransaction-based version of NCSoft's intellectual property. They give expensive items and such to donators at a fixed rate, making them less like donations, and more like microtransaction purchases. As far as I can figure, if you work up a healthy population as some of these servers have, and set the right price ratio for the right types of items, you could easily generate a huge quantity of money doing this.

If you had asked me about how freeshards should be treated a couple years ago, I would have said they were harmless fan-based creations that put creative niche spins on games that could benefit from them. After seeing them turn into a full fledged micro-industry generating most likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars each year between the thousands of servers floating around out there -- I'm very much starting to see the legal argument against them...

On the other hand, I'm an ethic-less scum bag and if I didn't live in the US, I would probably be running one. Easy money is lovely.

Why even have leveling?  God, that is the most retarded thing in a pvp game.  I have long held the view that everyone should just be born as gods and it's up to the player to figure out how to use the abilities they are given.  Sure, you might have to go farm some gold to keep you in business, but WHY GOD, WHY do you keep on insisting that we grind out levels?

SHADOWBANE!  I AM TALKING TO YOUR CORPSE!  Those jerks talked their stuff up and down but I got so god damned bored killing bunnies that I thought I was playing EQ and quit before I even got to fight another player.  Grinding wheat to bake bread and grinding XP to make levels; SAME DAMN THING!  You tards shot yourselves in the foot.

Look, levels work one time in a pvp game - when the game goes live and everyone is at level 1.  Then it's really fun and battles take place every day for who is going to win the arms race.  But after that, it's just a huge chore.  Eventually there is parity in game level and skill is what makes the difference... but you want to make a new character, well get ready for the pain.

I actually knew a guy online who made pretty good money running an RO freeshard (I think it was called ProjectRO). Don't know if it's still up, and I don't think he ever got into the whole selling items business, he just took donations.

And if he made a significant income offering nothing, imagine what these other guys pull in.

PC Cafe owners in those countries I mentioned, Greece, Russia, many areas of South America... they find it attractive to use private servers instead of paying monthly fees to connect to a real L2 version in their cafe. So the feed these servers, make money of their patrons, and in turn, the patrons get addicted to the game, and spend more money buying things through donation.

Everyone gets rich except the owner of the IP, well, and the gamer.

There's an irony in people pirating entire MMOs given that MMOs are being favoured because they help to avoid individual copy piracy issues.

Servers like this seem to be the MMOG version of games modding, not a heck of a lot different than mods for DOOM or Half-Life or whatever game's mods you might pick to make an example.  It requires something more complex for an online game to be modded, but it's essentially the same concept.

What people making money off these says to me, is that what CharlieMopps said on the first page is right.  The companies should set up some deal so that people can do their own shards, pay them a fee, and get back a cut depending on time per month of accounts logged into their shard.  Not to mention it would help retention in my opinion, since if you want to try out one of these alternate rulesets you could do it quickly and easily with a minimum of hassle.  And as long as it's set up in a manner where it's clear the company developers are responsible only for the main servers, it doesn't seem like it would be a major CS issue.

Absolutely, and I think Raph said something like this about the original UO greyshards a long time ago. I believe he said it was shot down, which isn't hard to imagine.

You have to be careful about what you associate yourself with of course, and then how closely you associate yourself. Giving the okay for people to move in droves from the official servers to the private servers might not end up being a great idea.

As far as people making money off of donations... I don't know. I ran a system of donations. There was even a reward (which was a named tile in a certain building in Britain, so nothing other than a bit of recognition), but there was never a dime to be made. Not that I was looking to make money, as any overflow was put back into the kitty for the next month. However, a coder did manage to abscond with our server donations at the end of one month, forcing me to turn to the community for a donations drive.

They came through with every penny as I recall, so perhaps there's potential there for unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of that in a donations systems as far as turning a profit. But I don't know how long it'd fly (perhaps indefinitely, who knows).

Not indefinitely, ask Eldin. If you can find him.

Only in your own fragile mind.

Buddy and I want to hit up a free server. I tried googling one, but all I got were silly lists that look like they're trying to sell me on their server so I'll donate. We don't really want to PvP, so UOWoW isn't up our alley. Any suggestions?

I've been playing this for the last few days.

It's pretty fun.  I leveled a warlock up to level 74 in like 5 hours or so.

See, in no way would I find that fun. Hitting level XX seems a bit less rewarding when you killed three pigs (which yielded six purples and a legendary) to do it.

So I take it that you hated the fact that DK's start at 55?

always wanted to try a freeshard but never have. However this sounds fun...

...so no one has been hacked yet?

Conquer Online says hi. 20k is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to small for any mmo unless you have all 20k players play in a 200 foot box.

Lol I remember playing on ProjectRo and seeing the "donations" button on the side. They decreased the grind from .000001 to to .0001. Oh good times. And that was just the level grind.

OK so what is the most efficient way to take one of my boxes down from patch 3.2 to 3.09? Do I need to uninstall WoW and then reinstall the game from disc complete with both expansions? That would suck since I have 6 machines, 6 retail boxes and 6 BC and WoLK expansions, which would mean digging out CD keys and hoping I do not use the wrong one, et al.

There has to be a better way... right?

Would like to try this tonight on 2 machines so my son and I can check it out.

Any advice is appreciated.

I don't believe there's any way to downgrade an installation, so you'll need to reinstall. If you don't want to mess with discs there is an online installer you can get from the WoW site (look under Manage Account) that will install WotLK 3.0 (or whatever the earliest 3.x is) with relatively little fuss. (never mind, do what Draegan says) After you have that patched to 3.09 and ready to go with the UOWoW stuff, you should be able to just copy the whole folder to whatever other computers you want - as long as you aren't applying more patches, the game will run just fine without being properly installed.

Anyone care to comment if a private server can talk with a clients warden?

Copy pase your wow folder somewhere else.

Go in and delete your patch.mpq and patch2.mpq.

Run repair.

Patch up the client to 3.09

Laun the uowow.exe or whatever its called

Yes and I smell like a cat's ass.

This game's all about getting to the max level and then start PVPing.  It's not a PVE game in the slightest.  I really don't know why they don't start people off at 60+ anyway.  You can hit 60 in a few hours.  I'm pretty sure you can do it faster with other classes, and good grind spots.  I wen from 58-70 in like an hour or so.

Does it say anywhere on their site how many man-years and how they reverse engineered what the client sends to the server and vice versa?

Let alone write all the server-side code, com layers, combat logic, quest logic/database, threading logic, etc?

Or did they get a stolen copy of the source of the WoW client and Server?  OR did they decompile a binary copy of it?

So I uninstall and reinstall the client up to wotlk 3.0.1 then use the in game patcher to update but the very first update took me to 3.2... WTF?

I tried installing the patches from the megaupload link above but the first patch errored out on me. So by midnight I said screw it for the evening.

Tonight I will try Dragen's advice (which I did not see until this morning) and move my WTF folder, run repair and see if the patcher will get me to 3.0.9 and not 3.2 in a single update...

I want to try this, but my patience will only go so far  :uhrr:

I imagine you're going to have to use manual patches to get from 3.0.1 to 3.0.9.

Indeed that was my initial thought, but everywhere I look (uowow.com forums, here, google) says to use the patcher and just stop it at 3.0.9 but like I said, for me it goes from 3.0.1 to 3.2 in a single patch.

Can anyone confirm a good link to the first patch (from 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 - the 365mb one)?

Make sure you're running the right program to launch the patcher.  That happened to me before I realized I was running the wrong *.exe.

AH... now that makes sense... so what .exe should i be running to properly patch to 3.0.9?

There has been a private server download available since around the launch of The Burning Crusade, if not before. I'm guessing they just took whatever version they prefered and began editing it themselves. I'm pretty sure it first became available after pieces of the games code were leaked by a former employee.

Most of the changes they've listed would be pretty easy to do and didn't really require a lot of hard work. i.e. the amount of xp players get is just a line in a settings files you can change. Some other stuff took a bit more elbow grease, like the repopulating zones. Also player/guild housings probably took some coding on their end.

Could you please be a little more specific?  I really don't want to download 3.01 - 3.02 3.02 3.03 and so forth from file front, so if you could tell me how to make this happen from the patcher, I'd appreciate it.

I'm not at home this week but its either the patcher.exe or the wow.exe

Its hot hard to try either.  Just close the program if the wrong version comes up.

Both ended up downloading straight to 3.2 for me, I dunno.  Anyway, I ended up getting the patches fairly quickly from a third party host after all, and played for about an hour, hour and a half last night.  Its pretty good.

Well this was my first foray into the world of private servers and I have to say I think I am hooked  :ye_gods:

However I would add that the uowow private server is just "meh" compared to some of the other top private servers. Things like insane leveling, 255 level caps, custom weapons, et al really make it a different game. One server in particular gave me a gem that when i click it allows me to teleport to any city or any instance... pretty cool stuff!

So ultima online even fails at being a private server  :awesome_for_real:

If anyone is interested in a very decent private server, check out naxpgaming.com (http://naxpgaming.com). They have 7 or 8 different servers, decent population and just generally feel like a retail server (albeit with some crazy but awesome changes).

They have a regular "blizz like" server with faster leveling all the way to a "fun server" (their words) that has 4000% xp increase, 255 level cap, and a "mall" (yep their words again) that has every trainer, all tier items, all mounts, etc for basically free (gold, but thats obscenely easy to get).

All in all, its a nice break from retail and really great if you cannot play 40 hours a week like me. I can get A LOT done in 1-2 hours. Plus there is something damn cool about the idea of soloing Nax or Uld in my 255 paladin with 90k health!!!  :ye_gods:

As a side note, it is amazing how they get away with this, but given that most (all?) are in China, I guess Blizzard has a hard time getting to them... They HAVE to know about them though, right?

I'll give it a look.  Also, I can't imagine these things are any thread to blizzard.  Hell, even when I play on these private server I'm paying them my monthly fee to play on their servers, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of others were in that boat too.

(http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/8844/rodtayloringlourious.jpg)

"Compared to say... Raph Koster... how're they doing?"