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| A '''server emulator''' is a term that got widely known in recent years in the field of online multiplayer games. For many popular online games at some point third-party reimplementations of the original server software emerge, which are known to be called "server emulators". Like the more traditional understanding of an ], they allow you to run your game-client without the use of the game creators server ] and ]. | |||
| == History == | |||
| With the rising popularity of commercial ] internet games, came the desire from ardent players of rver reimplementation like ] which was the pioneer. A lot of forks and reimplementations followed UOX, because it released its source code under the ] relativly early. ] is today the most widely used UO-server emulator. | |||
| Game companies usually tend to try to hinder emulator development by encrypting the data stream. However since the client needs to understand the data, in encrypten terms the "attacker" is always equipped with a decyphering machine. Therefore the original game designer can only add layers of strenuousness to decypher and understand the data stream, he cannot hinder it with cryptographic tools. | |||
| == Legality == | |||
| The legality or illegality of server emulators is a recurrent argument. Server Emulators are presumably legal if done properly. The first issue is a possible ] of the game creators ]. As the case of ] demonstrates recreating "methods of operation" is not a copyright infingement. Thus emulating copyrighted material is not a breach. However this demands that the complete emulator is a work of it's own. Sometimes the original server software leaks out of the company that created the game like for example ]. Use or distribution of this is definitly a copyright infringement. Modified version of such original server software are not considered to be a ''server emulator''. | |||
| Another legal issue is the ]. Today most commercial MMORPG require the user to sign a clause not to create or use ''server emulators'' when installing the client he bought. This issue has not yet been test infront of any court. | |||
| There are cases where a game creator effectifly shut down popular private game servers by law suit threat. But the reseans were always based on obvious copyright violations like for example offering the client for download, or also offering downloads of modified files from the original game package. | |||
| == List of popular server emulators == | |||
| <!--- READ THIS: We are aware that new emu's and forks spread out everyday, and die almost as fast. Please do NOT add your own emu here. Please add only popular games with more than avg. >3000 players online on the original servers, please add only 2 maximum 3 very, very popular emulator implementations per game. We don't want to have a list at wikipedia that needs to be changed almost every day! Order is alphabetically, so do not anger about that also ;)---> | |||
| * ]: ] | |||
| * ]: ], ] | |||
| * ]: ] | |||
| == See also == | |||
| * ] has a server edition, that is, although very seldomly, sometimes mistakenly called "server emulator" which can be mismatched with this article. | |||
| * - Server Side Emulation Community News and Resources | |||
| * - Announcement of a ] server emulator on slashdot | |||
| * - google group of Ultima Online server emulators | |||
| ] | |||
| ] | |||