UOWoW

[FatuousTwat]

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.

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.

[damijin]

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.

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.

[UnSub]

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

[Koyasha]

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.

[Azaroth]

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).

[sam, an eggplant]

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

[Righ]

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

Only in your own fragile mind.

[NiX]

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?

[Draegan]

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.

[Azaroth]

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.

[Hindenburg]

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

[chargerrich]

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

...so no one has been hacked yet?

[DLRiley]

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.

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.

[chargerrich]

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.

[ezrast]

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.

[fuser]

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

[Draegan]

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

[Azaroth]

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

Yes and I smell like a cat's ass.

[Draegan]

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.

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.

[Sunbury]

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?

[chargerrich]

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 

[Lantyssa]

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

[chargerrich]

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)?

[Draegan]

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.

[chargerrich]

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

[Mnemon]

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?

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.

[Malakili]

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.

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.

[Draegan]

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.

[Malakili]

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.

[chargerrich]

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

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!

[DLRiley]

So ultima online even fails at being a private server 

[chargerrich]

If anyone is interested in a very decent private server, check out 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!!!  

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?

[Malakili]

If anyone is interested in a very decent private server, check out 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!!! 

As a side not 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.

[AmericanMcGeesBambi]

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