Do you have any analytics data for your site for this time so we can a better picture of of its growth? What is happening to your servers now? It seems you guys are in the middle of a massive transition.
The claims of it being so significant are odd given that I've never heard of them (or have forgotten or it was during a time I was not involved). Some reference to when might help as there have probably been 5 different servers with the same name.
Some of the background information is not current. For example, iRO does not require a subscription to play (even on the the VIP server). I would also disagree with the characterization of iRO's servers as not having inter-guild competition, but I don't think HN is a place for debating the history of Loki, Chaos, Iris and Sakray.
You're right - I'll make an edit with time frame. The project started about three years ago, and went through 3 versions. I'll make sure to mention all the details in future posts.
Send me an email, and I'll forward you some more definitive proof if you like. You could visit our forums, but I've archived old version discussions in preparation for v4, which may not launch (plus there might be too much trolling for this community to enjoy!). But yeah, I don't want to debate RO specifics here - that wasn't the point. I just wanted to share the experience.
I clicked back to the prelude because I didn't know what RO was but then came across this sentance:
"Thanks to 17 USC 102(b), some privacy laws, and inter USA-Canada-China-Korea legal confusions, running emulated software is apparently legal, as long as you make it really annoying and costly to find you."
Can someone explain this? There are lots of Ultima Online shards that run without problems. On top of this classic emulation software has been legal for years (I'm thinking NES, SNES, MAME, console and system emulators, etc). Or is it not legal at all?
Console emulation certainly created an uproar during the crescendoing prevalence of "ROM" game packaging and "warez" communities, but distribution for a 120kb Gameboy emulator with 13kb ROM files was so widespread and underground that everyone stopped caring. I also remember every emulator resource having this staple legal disclaimer that probably demonstrated that what amounted to repackaged "game backups" didn't fall under any hard legislation.
Ultima Online shards usually were based off reverse-engineered unsupported clients and were mainly populated when UO say larger changes to game mechanics so users could play different eras of UO. I remember people frequently discussing community stratification with the release of certain patches that popularized the idea of playing on private shards. Back in the early 2000s, we're talking about shards with communities that exist in an IRC channel. Today, I see World of Warcraft private servers with blogs and publicity, openly trying to recruit a userbase, and those seem to get abruptly shut down.
I'm sorry for going on a tangent, but how can you not remember the name of the person who funded you when nobody else would? That's just unfathomable to me, not to mention extremely disrespectful.
I remember his real name, but not his screen name. Because I don't want to reveal identities, I decided not to use his real name. Sorry for the confusion.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 31.3 ms ] threadSome of the background information is not current. For example, iRO does not require a subscription to play (even on the the VIP server). I would also disagree with the characterization of iRO's servers as not having inter-guild competition, but I don't think HN is a place for debating the history of Loki, Chaos, Iris and Sakray.
Send me an email, and I'll forward you some more definitive proof if you like. You could visit our forums, but I've archived old version discussions in preparation for v4, which may not launch (plus there might be too much trolling for this community to enjoy!). But yeah, I don't want to debate RO specifics here - that wasn't the point. I just wanted to share the experience.
I'm not sure this is valid news...
Damn Porings.
"Thanks to 17 USC 102(b), some privacy laws, and inter USA-Canada-China-Korea legal confusions, running emulated software is apparently legal, as long as you make it really annoying and costly to find you."
Can someone explain this? There are lots of Ultima Online shards that run without problems. On top of this classic emulation software has been legal for years (I'm thinking NES, SNES, MAME, console and system emulators, etc). Or is it not legal at all?
Ultima Online shards usually were based off reverse-engineered unsupported clients and were mainly populated when UO say larger changes to game mechanics so users could play different eras of UO. I remember people frequently discussing community stratification with the release of certain patches that popularized the idea of playing on private shards. Back in the early 2000s, we're talking about shards with communities that exist in an IRC channel. Today, I see World of Warcraft private servers with blogs and publicity, openly trying to recruit a userbase, and those seem to get abruptly shut down.