EFF asks for the right to revive “abandoned” online games
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-05-12-bungie-to-updat...
(disclaimer: I work for Bungie, but not on that project)
Soon after the GameSpy services shut down, he wrote an emulator to replace the official master server. Bungie then (shockingly) released v1.10 to point the game to the new server, and stepped in and ate the cost of the AWS services used to power the lobby.
Source: I gave my life to that game for a very, very long time and still check in on the community every now and then.
Fun fact: Eric Koger, the CEO of ModCloth.com, also spent quite a bit of time reloading his pistol and rifle.
From a historic perspective, the untouched release version of all games would be very interesting.
Not wanting to downplay the release, though, it's very kind.
While I say "original", these are different from the retail versions of the original games, which required serial numbers. Bungie's Jason Jones removed the serial number check himself, without the original source.
3D models and audio are saved to the clients disk. It's the state of the persistent world that is stored on the server.
This game has really great mechanics with a really huge emphasis on teamwork. It was probably ahead of its time when it was released.
This was probably straightforward for an old game like this but I can't imagine that reverse engineering the infrastructure required for modern games is feasible. I doubt games companies will have the cash or resources spare to consider this from the beginning nor years after.
[1] http://www.gamespot.com/articles/abandonware-now-legal/1100-...
If you're curious, the Copyright Office discusses their reasoning for and the arguments on both sides starting on page 42 of https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/ruling2012.pdf
> The Register further found that even if proponents had satisfied their burden of establishing noninfringing uses, they nonetheless failed to demonstrate that video game console access controls have or are likely to have a substantial adverse impact on such uses. Proponents identified two broad categories of activities that were allegedly threatened by the prohibition on circumvention, scientific research and homebrew software development.
So it looks like the EFF are going at it from the abandonment angle this time having failed with the science and homebrew arguments. I'd say they have a better chance of making their case this time.
However the sub model that most MMOs work under feels more like a lease than ownership to me
In that expansion I'm sure you're talking about, paladins are somewhat better, and shamans are worse. That's normal, and it's not a problem when you play in live servers, since they are making modifications to spells and everything constantly. But when you're stuck in some version, then, you're stuck with how classes work in that version forever. That makes the population lean towards one class.
More information about FOTM here: http://wowpedia.org/Fotm
Server only handles chat (via hybrid-ircd, I think?), and via the main daemon (which seems like it might have been Lua-based at one point, or at least link into it like the client does), state coordination including item looting, and creep behaviour. Creep/boss behaviour and looting have been studied closely enough by tactically-minded players to be effectively black-box reverse-engineered, and fully reimplementable to a high degree of fidelity and precision.
(I'm not going to do it, I quit a while ago, but I did make a pretty popular addon, and did look into things a bit.)