This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Kethinov (talk | contribs) at 00:56, 10 July 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 00:56, 10 July 2006 by Kethinov (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) | This article was imported from the CIA's World Factbook. Please help rewrite this article. |
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 emulator, they allow you to run your game-client without the use of the game creators server hardware and software.
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 it's 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 got to be 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 like 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.
List of popular server emulators
See also
- VMWare 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 Star Wars Galaxies server emulator on slashdot
- - google group of Ultima Online server emulators