Server emulator

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Server emulator is a term used to describe reimplementations of MMOG game servers. While the term is not technically accurate because no emulation is actually taking place, it is colloquially accepted among the gaming community and has become the de facto standard term to describe third party reimplementations of MMOG game servers.

History

With the rising popularity of commercial MMORPG internet games, came the desire from ardent players of this games to run their own servers beside the ones runned by the game creator. Since the original server software is usually not available the behavior of the servers has to be reeingeneered by analyzing the data stream with the orinal server, or by disambeling and analyzing the client which is available.

Ultima Online was one of the first large MMPORGs. Due to its openess in implementation server emulators arose very quickly even already in Beta stage of Ultima Online development. The destination to which the client connects was e.g. changeable by simply editing a text file. In Beta stage the client-server data stream was not encyrpted yet. The term server emulator became known along with the Ultima Online server reimplementation like UOX which was the pioneer. A lot of forks and reimplementations followed UOX, because it released its source code under the GNU General Public License relativly early. RunUO 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 infringement of the game creators copyright. As the case of Lotus v. Borland 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, for example AEGIS (Ragnarok Online). 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 EULA. 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.

Misplaced Pages

History

Legality

List of popular server emulators

See also