Freeshard

Arcsalin · Post by **Arcsalin** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 1:44 pm

Ok, since I saw this yesterday and tbh I'd never even heard of it until someone on this forum slagged it off - I thought I would give it a try.

Daoc freeshard is kind of nice. The instant 50 rvr server is very nice if that's what you want. Currently I am on purga reloaded and have just managed to level to 46 in less than 8 hours on my ranger there. The xp is 5x and omg it's awesome. Some of the items that the mobs drop are very very nice too. If I were you and your subs are not payable then go here - it is very nice.

Moral of this week :- Don't overdraw your credit card so that you are over your limit unless you want to see something funnier than Linford Christie run 100 metres 3 times faster than is possible when you ask someone to pay your DAOC subs for you on their credit card and you put the cash right in front of their faces to pay it

Cromcruaich · Post by **Cromcruaich** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 1:47 pm

I would say a post like this has no place on this forum. Advertising a server of questionable legality that can do nothing but harm to the subscription paying and loyal members of the prydwen server.

Arcsalin · Post by **Arcsalin** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 2:08 pm

That depends on which way you look at it Crom.

First of all I was not advertising it. Secondly the code over which the servers is broadcast is handwritten so there's pretty much nothing that mythic can do about it - after all, you have bought the software - how you use that as long as it does not interfere with DAOC live as players on Freeshard pointed out to me is none of Mythic/Goa concern because it falls beyond their duristiction. And an even finer point was put to me in that if it were not for Freeshard, games such as Ultima Online would be dead.

With the announcement of Warhammer online and just about everyone on this forum and his granny saying that they will leave DAOC for WH when it comes out. Then in principle the idea of Freeshard itself is the future of DAOC if it is not to die. Since I came back briefly, I had noticed a sharp drop in numbers of total game population. This will be set to continue as in all games, there is a lifespan and sooner or later it ends up quite naturally being on its knees. Warhammer online will be yet another tooth wrench to the Jaws of DAOC and Mythic's contribution to that as I have said will be quite substantial. Sooner rather than later Mythic will realise that DAOC is a dead turkey not worth the investment of maintaining and updating as they notice the revenues in the game fall dramatically. Quite how long this conclusion will take is anyones fair guess. But what you say about people leaving the Prydwen community Crom is inevitable at some stage anyway due to the finer points of the above

There are also much differences in the way that Freeshard delivers this game than that of say GOA or Mythic. You would see that quite obviously from the way you set out on this game the differences are markedly apparent. But the delivery of DAOC on freeshard is more player orientated from at least what I have seen so far and I have seen quite alot. The ruleset is quite different as it applies on in that servers are tailored for a specific type of gameplay as opposed to the adage from Mythic - 'There's ya dinner - get it eaten'.

I am not saying that you should slag Freeshard wilfully, nor I am saying 'OMFG prydwen's a bag of shit compared to Freeshard - jump ship from prydwen and go to Purga Reloaded or the insta 50 rvr server on Freeshard' because that would be totally untrue. I love prydwen very much and If I could pay my subs right now I'd be there. But what I am saying is Crom is that at least give it a look because if Freeshard is going to be the future of DAOC in some distant future, then it is wise to look at it now.

You may note that if I was truly advertising it Crom I prolly would have left the url to boot so that people would go look for themselves but notice I didn't Crom?

fungus · Post by **fungus** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 2:25 pm

I play on freeshard as well, i tried the xeon severs i did not like it. its just plain old PK-ing. love the insta 50 server though if you are a pvp oriented guy.

Taardad · Post by **Taardad** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 2:31 pm

It's illegal!

http://forums.freddyshouse.com/showthre ... =freeshard (post 6)

Post by **Xest** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 2:37 pm

There's nothing illegal about Freeshard servers however it should be noted that Mythic/GOA can enforce their own version of the law on you by banning your live server accounts because you have to modify your client to connect to freeshard servers which is a breach of the EULA.

On an ethical level I agree with Crom however, advertising a Freeshard server isn't particularly fair on active paying subscribers. I don't wish to infringe on freedom of speech so I wont delete the thread, I will however move it to off-topic.

Arcsalin · Post by **Arcsalin** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 3:04 pm

That may be the position now but when the game is officially dead from mythic's /goa's point of view and they lose their reins on it officially. It will be the remaining fans that keep the game alive.

I don't advocate illegal use of material but I see nothing wrong in what essentially will be the future of how this game will survive rather than be around till I fall to my tired and long awaited grave in old age.

From what I read of Requiel said, it seems there is very little they can do about it anyway at the present moment rather than inspect your pc to see if you are running a Freeshard server or that you advocate it by playing on them.

Yes there were a few banned for life players that I saw playing on there after certain disputes with GOA that had nothing to do with the use of Freeshard and DAOC. So in some respect Freeshard benefits those players not that I am saying that it should rather that it does if they wish to continue to play.

Requiel does miss the fact that some of the code is different as someone quite rightly pointed out as the term is named modding - no game escapes modding of some form or other. And DAOC has been no exception with interfaces etc which are approved of by Mythic. He is right to point out that the code must not be interfered with as stated in EULA but sadly this was 'modding' as so pointed out will always go on regardless of a rulebook - legal binding or not.

I think this is a worthy thread tbh as it does bring up a few questions about Mythic as Freeshard DAOC does run in America too. If these servers are running and people are using them then it does beg the question 'Why is Mythic not at least paying attention to the way these servers are run and in that the rulesets that they are running so that they themselves can gain the benefit of running something similar to the fact that players want this type of ruleset or type of gameplay?' What benefits Mythic/GOA by looking at these servers and benefits their customers by looking at such idea's. If they are then that would be nice to know as long as it didn't upset the current balance of what is the status quo on the game overall. I would rather look at the positive aspects rather than the negative ones - even if some people would view that as just some minor tweaks that make the game more playable. It still has a valid voice.

I'd like to see an overall debate from Mythic/GOA on how Freeshard's idea's can improve the game rather than erode it and how they would implement such ideas into subscription based format for the paying customer. After all if there is a and I quote 'Illegal demand' for such servers which are more player orientated than the current ruleset that Mythic offers at present. Then surely they should be working toward a goal of taking a step to a corporate advantage where it translates into cash for the company and benefit for the customer and thereby everyone wins. Should Mythic actually take steps to implement some of these idea's?

It would seem to me that the heuristic on FH is that they would rather just throw the legal handbook over the head of people running Freeshards of their game which they are entitled to do and will enforce. Fair enough, but outside company/game content often enhances a game when a company listens - A fine example of that was ThieveryUT and their modders/mappers ended up working for EAGames/Looking glass to release Thief 3. I think there is room for debate on this one as long as everyone bears the EULA in mind.

But like I said at the second post of this thread, I was looking at more of the final nail in the coffin of this game which could be some distant time in the future.

Post by **Xest** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 4:34 pm

The FH thread is full of crap.

Laws on reverse engineering, even in the US where things are far less liberal than here in Europe state that it's legal to reverse engineer software with the aim of producing a competing product. When legal cases first came about to determine the legality of reverse engineering in the software world the cases were always closed in favour of reverse engineering with the decision that public good was better benefited by reverse engineering than without it. Reverse engineering forces companies to better their products and keep prices at an acceptable level - this was the argument that was seen as a more fair argument than the suggestion that reverse engineering stifles innovation.

If reverse engineering to discover protocols were illegal as Requiel claimed in that thread then Linux wouldn't read NTFS, you wouldn't get region free DVD players and MacOS wouldn't be able to connect to Windows resources. The fact is reverse engineering to produce these things and freeshards has been determined as being legal in many cases and this is why Mythic haven't taken legal action - because they'd lose outright costing them more than they could possibly gain from it. In terms of court cases, see DVD Jon, see Sony vs. Accolade, see US vs. Skylarov. The only cases that have succeded are cases where the companies doing the reverse engineering haven't just reverse engineered then built a new project - they've outright copied code either directly as assembly or as decompiled code and incorporated it into their own program, DAoC freeshards do not do this and hence it is irrelevant to them.

Another thing to clear up in that thread is Requiel's claim that freeshards somehow are guilty of copyright infringement, this is NOT the case for the freeshard servers themselves as they're based entirely on newly written code. The only time copyright infringement could occur is if the freeshards were to copy massive portions of the official servers ruleset and then in court Mythic would have to prove this, as the server ruleset isn't publicly available then again, this would be a losing case, even if Mythic felt nasty and decided to release the full rulesets then try and claim it it would fall under entrapment. Even a lot of string values are stored client side and loaded when specific server commands are received so even various game specific text strings don't have to be included in the freeshard server code.

DoL, one of the freeshard servers is actually open source also, so if they had actually copied any of DAoC's IP the evidence is publicly available, as they haven't it's not an issue.

Satyn · Post by **Satyn** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 4:46 pm

Look, i'm an E&E i'm suppose to report these things, you're really not making this easy for me.

edit: apparently someone already did

Arcsalin · Post by **Arcsalin** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 4:54 pm

Nothing wrong with discussing Freeshards hun, nothing wrong with using them either unless there is a blatant misuse of the code as Xest said and they would have to prove it first. Proving someone has misused their client in order to use Freeshard of DAOC or any other Freeshard of a game would take more than just say so or even this thread. They need to look at the physical evidence of your folder and then see that - for that they would need a warrant. Pointless waste of time even reporting it tbh.