ZOMG!! PRIVATE SERVERS!

[TonyV]

(After the May 2020 forum maintenance, this topic was blanked by accident.  We apologize for this outcome.  --Tahquitz.)

Takeaways:
-- Titan Network is taking a neutral stance on the Rogue Server community on City of Heroes.
-- Tech Support lies with those respective communities.  Posts asking for help on those games will be told to visit the game's website.
-- Players can still discuss City of Heroes gameplay here on Titan Network. 

[Felderburg]

Thank you.

[Bliz]

Felderburg:

Thank you for working on the AMA Lore wiki; with the Anniversary around the corner I'm sure there will be much renewed interest given recent events.

[Tahquitz]

Echoing from "The Shot Heard Around Paragon City"...

Hello!

There have been developments about the first few pieces of the server project coming together.  The promise that something will happen by this weekend is getting closer to reality.

While we are working on several things concerning recent news, I do want to make one thing clear: Titan Network is NOT affiliated with the teams making something out of the SCORE Public Release.  As such, any posts of registering for bootleg/private servers, or bootleg/private server websites, and other places is NOT ALLOWED.

If you want to keep on top of progress of these teams, you can join the unofficial City of Heroes Discord to discuss specifically just that.  Posts with links to these servers or homepages to them will be deleted on sight.  That part has not changed.  This also applies to any software concerning such things, such as server-side code or assets.  We've never allowed those things to be posted here, regardless of current news or affairs.

Thanks for your time.

[Janrith]

So I'm guessing allowing Sentinel to log back into cit.cohtitan.com and recognize the "new" binaries is a non-topic.

[Felderburg]

I recall reading a post recently, from years ago when private servers were hypothetical, that said Sentinel had to be updated every time the servers were updated (or something like that), which meant that the proliferation of servers would basically make it a non-starter, or that every server would have to do it themselves. I'll try to find the post.

Never mind, it's from this week: https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=13290.msg231683#msg231683

[Tahquitz]

We're discussing the fate of CIT right now behind the scenes.  When a decision has been made, we'll announce it. (I'll link to it in this discussion if it isn't here.)

[saipaman]

Thanks for taking an interest in this issue.

[Tahquitz]

I'd count this as a new development:

Quick announcement regarding the Titan Network and Homecoming. The upshot: We're working together in negotiations with NCSoft. More to come, hopefully sooner rather than later. Thanks a ton for bearing with us through this!

--Tony V - Twitter post, Aug, 7 2019.

Since a private server is attached to the news, here you go.   Discuss.

[therain93]

I'd count this as a new development:

Since a private server is attached to the news, here you go.   Discuss.

I think it would be wonderful to see a legitimate version of the game again (with proper rule enforcement and etiquette).   Would be very curious what happens to every other server though (live and let live,  or c&d nightmares).

[Surelle]

I think it would be wonderful to see a legitimate version of the game again (with proper rule enforcement and etiquette).   Would be very curious what happens to every other server though (live and let live,  or c&d nightmares).

Yay!

Yes, me too:   I'm also concerned about "the others," even though I play on Homecoming servers. 

It would be the coolest if NCsoft/Homecoming developed a Universal CoX Launcher for every group that wanted it-- as long as their teams could abide by basic behavioral rules and moderate their own players as needed.  This Universal Launcher would list every CoX rogue server, its rule sets and teams, and incorporate it all into a F2P CoX IP Banner.

[therain93]

Yay!

Yes, me too:   I'm also concerned about "the others," even though I play on Homecoming servers. 

It would be the coolest if NCsoft/Homecoming developed a Universal CoX Launcher for every group that wanted it-- as long as their teams could abide by basic behavioral rules and moderate their own players as needed.  This Universal Launcher would list every CoX rogue server, its rule sets and teams, and incorporate it all into a F2P CoX IP Banner.

That would be cool, biggest challenge to 'hosting' within a launcher is the association with potentially illegal operations (e.g. servers allowing trademark violations like copying marvel heroes) or less... wholesome activities (e.g. 4chan server where anything goes).  Something goes wrong,  the plaintiff will usually go after the biggest/richest target.   It wouldn't surprise me if what is taking the most time is figuring out those quality assurance and indemnification challenges because ncsoft would still be the biggest target if they do bless a licensing agreement, (which I hope they do!)

[FourSpeed]

Wow!

I stop paying attention for a few months, and BAM the whole place goes crazy...

While you all have found out about this in April, I just came across it all today...  Holy Cow!

I'm still reading the various Massively articles on it, and whatnot -- it's gonna take a bit to process, and I confess to feeling all the emotional roller-coaster stuff that everyone else felt.
In some ways, I can sympathize with Eliot's viewpoint in his article -- heck I have chatted with Leandro (in CoH, and in TR) in the past, and I even posted in that "On private servers" thread,
4 years ago, so to read all this now, is a complete shock to me... As I try wrapping my head around the "what, and for how long" this was all buried, while so much other stuff was going
on concurrently, in parallel, comes with a distinct sense of the surreal for me.

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm NOT sharpening any pitchforks or anything like that. As a former software developer myself, I completely understand much of rationale that kept this whole thing
underground, but I can certainly see how the reveal had the effect it did. I'm feeling a bunch of it now, myself.

Otoh, that's all Old News to you guys, so back to the practical      I guess I need to figure out how to get back on board these days.   

Thanks Tony, for this update post -- it's a great point of clarity, and much appreciated.  Hopefully, I'll get to see some of you folks online once again  soonish!


Regards,
4

[Korbian]

Wow!

I stop paying attention for a few months, and BAM the whole place goes crazy...

While you all have found out about this in April, I just came across it all today...  Holy Cow!

I'm still reading the various Massively articles on it, and whatnot -- it's gonna take a bit to process, and I confess to feeling all the emotional roller-coaster stuff that everyone else felt.
In some ways, I can sympathize with Eliot's viewpoint in his article -- heck I have chatted with Leandro (in CoH, and in TR) in the past, and I even posted in that "On private servers" thread,
4 years ago, so to read all this now, is a complete shock to me... As I try wrapping my head around the "what, and for how long" this was all buried, while so much other stuff was going
on concurrently, in parallel, comes with a distinct sense of the surreal for me.

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm NOT sharpening any pitchforks or anything like that. As a former software developer myself, I completely understand much of rationale that kept this whole thing
underground, but I can certainly see how the reveal had the effect it did. I'm feeling a bunch of it now, myself.

Otoh, that's all Old News to you guys, so back to the practical      I guess I need to figure out how to get back on board these days.   

Thanks Tony, for this update post -- it's a great point of clarity, and much appreciated.  Hopefully, I'll get to see some of you folks online once again  soonish!


Regards,
4

If you need pointing in the right direction, give a holler.  Most of the action is on the Homecoming forums nowadays.

[Ohioknight]

Wow!

I stop paying attention for a few months, and BAM the whole place goes crazy...

While you all have found out about this in April, I just came across it all today...  Holy Cow!

I'm still reading the various Massively articles on it, and whatnot -- it's gonna take a bit to process, and I confess to feeling all the emotional roller-coaster stuff that everyone else felt.

Yeah people are still wandering in every few weeks and going through what you're experiencing.  There are a bunch of servers now but Homecoming is the largest operation with 100,000 accounts mostly active (most evenings there are multiple instances of several of the maps on all the servers).  And a number of people have taken the I25 object of Leandro's that was released and set up servers on their own boxes for offline play (apparently most modern game rigs have more than enough oomph to run the whole thing for a few players since that object was cleaned and optimized).

[Ohioknight]

...
I'm still reading the various Massively articles on it, and whatnot -- it's gonna take a bit to process, and I confess to feeling all the emotional roller-coaster stuff that everyone else felt.
In some ways, I can sympathize with Eliot's viewpoint in his article -- heck I have chatted with Leandro (in CoH, and in TR) in the past, and I even posted in that "On private servers" thread,
4 years ago, so to read all this now, is a complete shock to me... As I try wrapping my head around the "what, and for how long" this was all buried, while so much other stuff was going
on concurrently, in parallel, comes with a distinct sense of the surreal for me.

BTW It's not really obvious, but what happened with the release... Leandro pointed out that he couldn't release the source because the version of the code he was using would point to the person who "leaked" it and a condition of  that leak was that he not release (I'd also note his previous point that IF they ever DID get a "reverse engineer" version running, then if it was known that they had access to the source it would "taint" the RE version legally).

What changed was that he was on the discord chat with the SEGS developers publicly talking about the craziness in the middle of the night, when a caller called in who demonstrated that they ALSO had a copy of the source from an entirely different "leak".  It was the collaboration of Leandro and "Mr. X" that  allowed the source to be released the next day (somehow) without any danger to Leandro's "leaker" (or Mr. X's leaker) and led directly to all the "rogue" servers that now exist.

[Phaetan]

Yeah, I kinda dropped out because it was painful to not be able to play.

Saw the news in April, and assumed that the data would not get out any time soon.

A bit shocked now and desperately trying to figure out how to set something up at home, but not having much luck.

[Felderburg]

Check out http://city-representative.network/coh/ scroll down a bit for a list of servers (there are a few that aren't on there). Probably easier than actually setting up your own.