Author Topic: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.  (Read 333367 times)

Shidan

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #700 on: December 26, 2013, 05:59:36 AM »
I'm going to quote TonyV here since it is relevant.

I've gotta say, I'm not particularly worried about this.  The practical situation is that I don't think that NCsoft cares one bit about any extracurricular activity going on around the game.  I'm pretty sure that if they've given this any thought at all (and I'm pretty sure they haven't), they realize that without selling the IP to another company, they have thoroughly poisoned the goodwill of any market for anything having to do with City of Heroes while it's in their possession.  I'm sure they still list it as an asset on company documents and whatnot, but it's not like anything we do can devalue that property.  They devalued it themselves to practically $0 on August 31, 2012.

If NCsoft wanted to pursue anything, the worst they'd do is send a C&D letter.  And I kinda doubt they'd do that, because as soon as they did, I would be yelling from the mountaintops, and the gaming and tech press tends to cover that kind of thing pretty thoroughly.  If they just went totally off their rockers and decide to mount a full-out lawsuit against anyone here--which would be about five miles past unprecedented --they would have to prove some sort of damages suffered because of our actions.  Given that they deliberately chose to shut down the game and everything we've done has been in reaction to that decision, they'd really have bupkiss to go after us on.  Worse, if by some weird chance they lost, it would set a legal precedent that is extremely unfavorable to the gaming industry as a whole.  In other words, they have everything to lose and absolutely nothing to gain by doing so.

So I'm really, really, really not worried about this.  The discussion in this thread is filed squarely in my bin of philosophical mental exercises of no practical significance whatsoever.

Also, regarding the legal cases cited above, the thing is, these precise circumstances have never been tested legally.  If you dig long enough and hard enough, you can find plenty cases to support either side of the "is this legal?" argument.  And that's precisely what the lawyers would do if it came to that.  They'd each go off and find cases that support their arguments, air those arguments and cases out in court, and a judge and/or jury would suss out which most closely align to this situation.  And then the other side would appeal it, and then the other other side would appeal it, and ten or fifteen years down the road, someone would win and people playing games in 2025 would now have new rules to play by.

JaguarX

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #701 on: December 26, 2013, 10:56:46 PM »
This is what happens when gamers and coders start arguing about legal matters. Just a wee bit outside their focus, neh? What we really need are some lawyers to set the record straight.
yeah been talking to some lawyers, experts in these matters.

Taceus Jiwede

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #702 on: December 27, 2013, 07:15:34 PM »
NCSoft has nothing to lose by sending a C&D.  If I were a betting man, I would put a decent amount of money on them sending a C&D letter to people who hosting servers(at least popular ones).  Why wouldn't they?  They are removing posts from their Facebook page about anything CoH related.  They got fed up with us for sending emails to accounts we weren't suppose to have.  Why not stick to us one more time.  They PROBABLY won't sue.  But why not send a C&D?  They will probably due it out of the sheer principal of the matter.  Simply to show us and everyone else you can't just use their likeness without them putting up a struggle.  That't not a NCSoft thing, its a business thing.  You gotta show people you aren't gonna let them use your stuff without your permission.  Plus history repeats it self and they haven't let any of their other games private servers stay up.  What makes us so special?

blacksly

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #703 on: December 27, 2013, 07:49:47 PM »
True enough. They may not want the legal precedents set by going to court over the legality of a server emulator and losing, but they won't really have anything to lose by sending a C&D letter to whoever hosts a server. I worry more that they may send C&D letters to the ISPs of anyone hosting an emulator server, and the ISPs won't have any incentive to take that to court if they have to.

CoyoteSeven

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #704 on: December 27, 2013, 09:35:32 PM »
If NCSoft sent a C&D to the host's ISP, the ISP would likely just shut down that server immediately and issue a warning. Or if it's a home connection, just send them a warning or risk losing their service. No lawyers need to be involved in that. Not unless the host wants to escalate things. Could be worse if they sent a DMCA takedown notice. I don't know if anyone ever did that for a server emulator.

My point is that they have the money and power to make life quite miserable for some of us, and if they can't target all of us as a group then they will focus on individuals. That's what the RIAA did. It's what Apple did. I hope you're ready to give whatever support those individuals might need. Not everyone here can afford to be a maverick.

Noyjitat

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #705 on: December 28, 2013, 12:48:05 AM »
True story, I was just thinking about running my friday night msr. But then I was like F*CK!

I really don't care about the legal bs. The minute someone releases code to get this game playable again I'll be spreading it to every torrent site I can find. F*ck ncsoft and F*ck the EULA. I'm mad as hell not being able to play, losing my internet social groups and friends and losing the best virtual world to ever exist. I'll do whatever it takes to share the game with the world once it's available.

GamingGlen

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #706 on: December 28, 2013, 04:28:23 AM »

I really don't care about the legal bs. The minute someone releases code to get this game playable again I'll be spreading it to every torrent site I can find.

I wouldn't be so loud, but I would host a site for someone else if NCSoft is getting frisky about it.  Although, I probably would have to update my machine, or get a new one, or both (about time anyway, still running VISTA on a 5+ year old machine, although graphics card is newer).

Lose my ISP?  HAH!  I got 3 others knocking my door down to sign up with.

I do have one misgivings about playing again, but would in a heartbeat.  Will it make Icon un-operatable?   I really like the options in Icon to set up scenes, especially for the comic-book-like stories I write.  But I suppose Icon will still work, just not online (egads what a mess that would be.  People spawning NPCs or monsters all over the place.  Not that I would do that, but add a few NPCs where needed, like a bartender at an empty bar... although they need a wipe-bar-with-towel emote, or pour beer from tap into glass emote :D)

saipaman

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #707 on: December 28, 2013, 05:26:32 AM »
Let's just get a server in Cyprus.

FatherXmas

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #708 on: December 28, 2013, 06:54:23 PM »
Let's just get a server in Cyprus.


... and let's call it Colossus.

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Illusionss

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #709 on: December 29, 2013, 07:37:39 PM »
I'd feel sorry for any particular mole they manage to whack, especially if they decide to make an example of him or her to the rest.

Is the US going to extradite us to Korea for the proceedings? Doubt it.

Still curious as to what asset I have that would make a lawsuit worth pursuing for them. I don't think they can seize my house.

LadyVamp

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #710 on: December 29, 2013, 08:17:38 PM »
The contract, if one exists, was made in the US so while NCSoft might want Korean courts to preside over the case, not likely they can.  What action they'd take would be against whomever chooses to host the server part.  Little point in going after the players.  no money.
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Codewalker

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #711 on: December 29, 2013, 08:37:08 PM »
Is the US going to extradite us to Korea for the proceedings? Doubt it.

Still curious as to what asset I have that would make a lawsuit worth pursuing for them. I don't think they can seize my house.

They would file the suit in the US, by means of their US division. Or in your home country, either if they have an office there or with their international legal department if it's a country that has copyright treaties with either Korea or the US (i.e. almost all of them). Pretty much your only way to dodge it jurisdictionally would be if you lived in a third-world country that never signed or doesn't care about international trade agreements.

That's how multinational companies operate. NCSoft has been involved in numerous lawsuits in the US, both as plaintiff and as defendant, over a variety of matters.

The point of such a lawsuit wouldn't be to seize an asset, or even necessarily to clearly win the case. It would be to drain your meager savings and your will to fight with an expensive, protracted legal battle until you give up. Such a suit is not filed with the intent to win, it's solely a scare tactic to make an example of someone and make others less willing to take that risk.

It's a despicable fact of how the modern legal system works, and one that is all too commonly exploited by large corporations who can afford to spend a little on their lawyers in order to maintain firm control of the things they want to. The good news is that the explosion of social networking is making it easier to expose these tactics for what they are, as well as collectively mount credible defenses against them.

HEATSTROKE

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #712 on: December 31, 2013, 05:22:42 AM »
 The question is will we ever see a private server? I wonder maybe five years from now..

TonyV

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #713 on: December 31, 2013, 05:27:50 AM »
Nearly 13 months and counting.  I can only presume that APIs are mapped out and proof of concept procedural mob generation on a map with combat as proof of pudding...

In the time leading up to closure of coh I can only presume some clever people looked at server code protocols to be confident of replicating that functionality....  Unless someone put the code on a pen drive... :o when clearing their desks...

Have other mmos been reverse engineered and if so how long did it take?  And we're these mmos as popular as coh..?

Azrael.

I won't lie, recreating the server is taking way longer than I was hoping it would, just to have something to show for our efforts.  There are actually two separate but related efforts going on right now, and the folks who have been working on this project have been devoting most of their time to the second one.  I really can't talk about that one, and likely won't for a long, long time.  But I will say that it's not all just wasted effort.  The work that has been done to date is directly relevant to rewriting the game, doing stuff like editing client-side files that will be required to run against a new server, since some of the APIs depend on server-side code that we can't literally recreate to work exactly the same from scratch.

I also know I've been quiet this month, but that's mostly because I had my birthday, started work on a new job, and then the holidays (including the most extended vacation out of town that I've gone on in a long time) all squeezed into the space of one month.  But it really is still being worked on.

TonyV

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #714 on: December 31, 2013, 06:00:37 AM »
NCSoft has nothing to lose by sending a C&D.  If I were a betting man, I would put a decent amount of money on them sending a C&D letter to people who hosting servers(at least popular ones).  Why wouldn't they?

True enough. They may not want the legal precedents set by going to court over the legality of a server emulator and losing, but they won't really have anything to lose by sending a C&D letter to whoever hosts a server.

You're assuming that anyone is a position to send a C&D would even notice.  From what I've heard, NCsoft's U.S. presence is mainly just a skeleton crew of puppets who take and carry out orders from the corporate HQ in Seoul.  I'm almost certain that the people in Seoul are willfully ignorant of what's going on with City of Heroes.  If I were a betting man, I'd wager that they are actually actively tuning us out, and even if someone in actual authority got an email saying, "Hey, there's a private server here," they'd hit delete before reading it, just like they've probably done with every other "Hey, the City of Heroes players are [whatever]..." email.

Honestly, there is one guy who I might have been worried about, the guy I dealt with once before regarding some legalities, and he left the company over a year ago.  Hell, I don't even know if they even have legal counsel in the U.S. any more.  If you're interested, you can probably apply for the job, although from the location, it sounds like you'd be representing Carbine, not NCsoft corporate.

My point is that they have the money and power to make life quite miserable for some of us, and if they can't target all of us as a group then they will focus on individuals. That's what the RIAA did. It's what Apple did. I hope you're ready to give whatever support those individuals might need. Not everyone here can afford to be a maverick.

But there are two HUGE differences between NCsoft and the RIAA and Apple: The RIAA and Apple have billions of dollars at their disposal, and more relevantly, the RIAA and Apple went after people who were impacting products on which they are still profiting handsomely.  You have to understand that even if NCsoft came after me with every legal gun they have and blew me out of the water with some out-of-this-world multi-million dollar judgment against me, I would immediately declare bankruptcy and start my financial life over.  Yeah, it would suck being poor as dirt for a few years while I worked to restore my footing, and yeah, they could temporarily make my life miserable, but really, it's not that bad and eventually, things would be okay again.  It wouldn't affect any non-me people at all, and they'd be paying out the wazoo to go after anyone else.

On the other hand, if they lost, then it would set a legal precedent by which game server emulators could actually be ruled legal.  And while I'm not rich and probably don't have the legal muscle that NCsoft does, I'm not exactly poor either and would use every cent I could lay my hands on to get the best legal counsel I could buy to see that such a precedent would be set.  If that actually happened--if NCsoft lost their case--it wouldn't just be NCsoft that would be screwed, but a huge chunk of the gaming industry as a whole.  I'd be surprised if other gaming publishers didn't step in on my behalf and do whatever they can to keep NCsoft from suing me.  Especially since NCsoft is an MMO company (that is, not gaming in general; they don't have any FPSes or single-player RPGs or any other genre to their name), if they lost, it would basically spell financial ruin for them and likely be a bomb exploding in a lot of other powerful industry players.

I cannot tell you how unlikely I think that NCsoft would be willing to risk such a thing, especially given that the property they'd be suing over is one that they themselves killed off and that, for practical purposes, is worthless right now.  Even if a thousand private servers were set up and active, they still get to claim that it's worth $[whatever] on their taxes, which is all that it's good for right now.  Yes, if it makes their radar all the way over in Seoul, they might send a C&D to have a private server shut down.  I really kind of doubt that they'd do that.  But for them to actually go so far as to try and sue someone?  Yeah, I cannot imagine a universe in which that could possibly happen.  They would have absolutely nothing to gain from doing so, and they'd be risking their entire business model (and lots of other companys') if they lost.  That's why I keep saying that I'm really, really, really not worried about this contingency.

JanessaVR

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #715 on: December 31, 2013, 06:12:38 AM »
I've said it before - at about 1:40 on the following video, it adequately expresses my fear of NCLimp "retaliation" against us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqDdrT2-bH4

I'm so scared!   ;)

Auroxis

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #716 on: December 31, 2013, 02:17:14 PM »
TonyV, that post made me tear up a little.

Your dedication is truly inspirational, I'll be watching this one closely.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2013, 02:33:25 PM by Auroxis »

Heroette

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #717 on: December 31, 2013, 03:12:21 PM »
So, how long is a "long, long time"?  It's all relative.  I can wait "a long, long time" for City of Heroes to come back.  But, I am not getting any younger and I hope I can fly once again in the skies of Paragon City.

Atlantea

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #718 on: December 31, 2013, 04:59:11 PM »
Ed Gruberman: "Yeah.  No disrespect or nothing, but like how long is this going to take?"
 
TonyV: "The resurrection of City of Heroes is not a path to a door, but a road leading forever towards the horizon."
 
Ed: "So like, what, an hour or so?"
 
TonyV: "No, no.  We have not even begun upon the path.  Ed Gruberman, you must learn patience."
 
Ed: "Yeah, yeah, patience.  How long will that take?"
 
TonyV: "Time has no meaning.  To a true student, a year is as a day."
 
Ed: "A year?!  I wanna go flying right now!  I got the cape!"


Azrael

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #719 on: December 31, 2013, 07:17:40 PM »
I won't lie, recreating the server is taking way longer than I was hoping it would, just to have something to show for our efforts.  There are actually two separate but related efforts going on right now, and the folks who have been working on this project have been devoting most of their time to the second one.  I really can't talk about that one, and likely won't for a long, long time.  But I will say that it's not all just wasted effort.  The work that has been done to date is directly relevant to rewriting the game, doing stuff like editing client-side files that will be required to run against a new server, since some of the APIs depend on server-side code that we can't literally recreate to work exactly the same from scratch.

I also know I've been quiet this month, but that's mostly because I had my birthday, started work on a new job, and then the holidays (including the most extended vacation out of town that I've gone on in a long time) all squeezed into the space of one month.  But it really is still being worked on.

Thank you, Tony.

An intriguing reply.  One that hints not only at reverse engineering the server and, therefore to some degree, game client functionality...but perhaps a further project that allows something even more significant ergo it's secret nature.  Possibility for tools that help expand the game maybe eg with mods, texture,map and even mission creation tools.  Even the possibility to lay the foundation for a graphical update to the engine itself.  A defacto Coh 2 maybe..?  Or 1.5... ;). But I speculate.

As for the timing..?  If it's taking longer than thought ( no surprise considering even Matt Miller said it was an archaic code beast...) then we can speculate that at least an alpha or beta or even the whole server functionality was expected by now but no surprises that even at 13 months it still has a way to go.  I'd guess at something being ready to show to some degree by next November.  Or 'when it's done it's done.' ;)  But, it's a ten year old game at the end of the day.  It's no longer cutting edge tech...but it's still not a trivial matter either.

A message of hope I glean from Tony's reply.  I'll wish him a happy birthday and a happy New Year for being a true Titan for the Coh community.  I'll extend those wishes to the rest of you on these boards and to the Code Warrior for the awesome Icon - a heaven sent gift.

Keep the faith.

Azrael.