Private ServersFollow

I remember reading about a private FFXI server a long time ago. However, the project was running at a really sluggish rate because they needed more coders (or something to that extent).

But, the thing is . . . to keep SE off their back, you would still pay the monthly fee from POL (as there is no other way to start FFXI), but instead of connecting to SE's servers, you would connect to the private one.

I forgot the URL (as its been several months), but they seemed really legit (hell, they werent even asking for donations).

Having played a few games on private servers (EQ and a couple of others) there are plusses and minuses, the main minus is that the location of various spawns and the exact stats of all the mobs dont exist, they are made up to behave almost the same way, but since no one exactly knows the stats of the mobs they have made educated guesses.

<rant>
All this talk about law and it being illegal is a waste of time, you dont know where this guy lives and, oddly enough, federal law may not apply to him, it sure as hell doesnt apply to me so assuming he lives in the states is bs to start with, for example if he lived in Pakistan, which last time I visited, didnt have copyright law then really your whole federal offence argument means jack, ooh I broke a us law, the terror.....


Wtf are you on, people run private servers all the time for numerous games, they sure as hell dont go back to the developer to ask for money to help, private servers are just that, private for a small group of people at a particular instance in time, now unless I saw the bit where the OP said he was going to set up a competing service running 24/7 for 1000s of paying people... /sigh
</rant>

IP may not be broken by running a private server; your initial purchase licensed the pol and ffxi to be used, there is nothing illegal about reverse engineering a piece of software that talks to the FFXI client and tells it to load things it is meant to load, nor is there anything illegal about building an approximate database of values to mimic what happens in FFXI. It is still SE software loading the models and textures and it is still all the stuff paid for, what would be illegal would be to release FFXI client for download with all the models and textures, or ripping off SE code directly. Hooking the client up to another server and letting it do what its meant to do isnt.

Anyway back to the point, private servers provide about 30 minutes of entertainment, but part of most mmos appeal is that you dont get handed all this amazing gear you spend months earning it then can show it off to your friends, when you actually look at it most mmos, without the social interaction and required challenge, are actually pretty dull game models and making it easier to go from 1 to 75 (say in about 30 minutes) takes away the ability to wave your 75 badge at friends and peers, as well as providing you with the ability to help people lower down, which tends to vanish in private servers. If we could get the exact stats and the exact server mechanics private servers would create a great arena to trial run things (BCNM runs, new job combinations etc), but since this isnt likely to happen any private server will be a very pale imitation of the real one, and without all the things that make FFXI fun.

As for will one be made, sure it will, will people enjoy, sure, personally I cant really see the point as you wont end up with FFXI in tin, you will end up with something that kind of looks like FFXI and plays in a similar manner but will be missing lots and lots and lots of things.

As to answer your initial question last, no I have not seen any software that mimics the ffxi server, then again I havent looked.

Ash

Edited, Sun Oct 16 08:19:09 2005 by witchdrash

True, although they didn't realise she was a 12 year old girl at the time, and ended up in very bad public standing over the issue.

Back on topic though. Using World of Warcraft as an example. Within a few months of WoW being released, people _did_ manage to create a server emulator. They had bugs and some things didn't work properly, but it was pretty good considering they had to do it by reverse engineering the data the game sent to Blizzard.

However, after huge lawsuits, pretty much any site hosting any information about the emulator got shut down or forced to remove the info. Blizzard referenced DMCA law about the servers circumventing copyright from memory (I could have this wrong, someone correct me if that's the case) and basically got rid of all the public servers. Granted the underground community did survive and have just this week released a new working emulator for their premium members, so that should be an interesting issue.

Applying this to FFXI. FFXI from my understanding has a much stronger encryption scheme than WoW (I've tried decrypting it once or twice... got a few values out of it, but actually decrypting the data in the packets is damn difficult). Trying to reverse engineer a server emulator would be damn near impossible.

HOWEVER... if someone was able to do it, actually playing on it would be very simple I'd imagine. Yes, POL is an extra layer of security, but it has to connect to somewhere to validate your info. It wouldn't be difficult to change the location that connection, assuming the server emulator was able to replicate the POL packet responses.

But realistically, unless you're able to crack the packet encryption, the odds of a private server being released are slim to bugger all. And even if it were, you would still have to populate the databases with all the world data. That includes:

* NPC locations
* Enemy location
* Enemy data (skin ID, HP, MP, attacks, special attacks, spawn time, etc)
* Quest information (_all_ the quest text, all the triggers, etc)
* Item information (this would probably be ripped straight out of Allakhazam I would guess) - including which races can equip which items, what level they're equippable, what their attack is, defense, special procs, etc
* Zone connections
* Airships/Ships

Anyway, you get the idea. Creating a server is damn near impossible, but even if you did, actually populating it would take huge amounts of time, even with the help of the FFXI community.



As I mentioned, yes, that would work, but only if someone had coded all the necessary information in for that battle. Especially in a game like FFXI, where almost all the in game cutscenes are done in-engine. I would wager you would have to recreate the cutscenes.

Edited, Sun Oct 16 09:45:17 2005 by Drusenija

And even if you can,next week they can just change the whole thing and your back to square one.

Funny, I was wondering the same thing.