I'm seriously impresssed by what they've done. And it looks like quite a bit of fun playing in a half-rebuilt Dereth with God powers.

I shouldn't have edited out my bet before.

(Something something "rewrite everything" kinda folks.)

games undead lol

You try it out yet? I really want to but I don't have access to a PC.

Not since the first version. I'm fine waiting for a general release.

cool! Some guy has revitalized an old emulator project of AC from before the ToD expansion.

http://acemulator.org/forums/topic/70-uas2-progress/

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAET3NbDepk

This thread delivers. It deserves more from us.

You know what else delivers? PhatAC

You know what it delivers? A leaked copy of the original game database from 2004, lol.

****in dumbasses

What's that mean? They're going to get closed down?

Probably? I don't know. Misappropriation of trade secrets is a way different beast than the run-of-the-mill copyright infringement that comes from making a derivative work.

Pretty much what you're counting on is a Fortune 500 victim of industrial espionage voluntarily not suing the beneficiaries of that espionage. Which, like, is the literal opposite of what these companies are known for.

Pea is going to jail lol.

Was Pea involved in leaking it? If he didn't, isn't his work no different from the New York Times posting Wikileaks content? (Asking because I know nothing about this stuff)

And how'd this news get out?

I don't know. It doesn't matter. Misappropriation of trade secrets does not only apply to the original thief, it applies to anybody who touches it. Pea is equally guilty as his source, and his source is equally guilty as the person who originally copied it. They all proper ****ed.

Trade secrets have a fairly narrow definition. It's not just intellectual property, it's more about competition; it's information that a company created for a cost, which the company uses to its benefit, the disclosure of which would harm the owner (generally by losing the competitive advantage generated by that trade secret).

If the NYT publishes trade secrets, they are indeed liable for the economic harm they've caused.

The AC world database is a compilation of trade secrets. The disclosure of the AC world database will make it very difficult (or impossible) for WB or any other company to sell or otherwise exercise the Asheron's Call intellectual property in the future, since they will be competing against a superior good produced using WB trade secrets. To my best understanding, if Pea creates a replacement server for Asheron's Call using the leaked AC world database, he is liable for those losses.

Videos from PhatAC playtests showing the content is circa 2004/2005, including known unreleased items and admin areas. All from the same era as a known leaked copy of the world database. There is no other plausible explanation for how Pea was able to reproduce that content.

One of Thwargle's videos even showed that PhatAC is bug accurate with an old version of the Aun Ralirea quest...

Aaaah! Well I suppose that explains how they've been able to get PhatAC out so quickly.

I did a bit of scripting for the World of Corecraft quest database, looks like the people are MIA and they never released their quest database.

I really hate that. If people could collectively build a MaNGOS server database that correctly emulated the quests, we could have nice things. But people have pride and ego and want their work to be theirs. So we don't have nice things.

Who are you?

Don't worry about it. I come on here every once in a while. Used to play JK and was in a bunch of DBZ clans. DBZX, DBSS, can't remember if I was in ZF or not. I started playing Asheron's Call in 2001 and was more or less done with JK after that. In AC I played Thistledown, Darktide off and on because I couldn't compete. Played a few JK tournaments a couple of years ago with sith lord and those other queers.

Thought I'd link the Darktide forum for anyone who wanted to talk ****.

Heh, sorry... I apologize for being so unwelcoming

I've been playing some Asheron's Call lately. Mostly I've been reexploring the "trash" dungeons. By that, I mean dungeons that don't have quests, or at least predated the quests as they ended up becoming.

It's... hard to explain, but the most fun I've been having is stumbling across a dungeon that hasn't been updated since 1999. The launch dungeons had a very different tone and balance than the live dungeons.

I think it's because of this:

At launch, quests didn't have rewards in the same way as later quests. Your reward for finishing a dungeon was usually some random loot from a high tier chest, and maybe a key or a clue for another dungeon. The challenge came from, first, discovering that the quest exists, then finding where to go, then finding the treasure room, then surviving the monsters, in roughly that order. The later live quests, on the other hand, were all about surviving wave after wave of enemies to get the named item at the end.

Practically speaking, I don't think the original quest style could have kept working. I mean, it plainly didn't - that's why they had to change course, starting immediately with the extremely linear Frore dungeon and the named quest rewards in Sudden Season. Despite that, though, the original dungeons feel better, like the treasure chest hunt is a more thought out and complete expression of what Asheron's Call was always supposed to be. Because it is. The massive world and random loot system are essential innovations of Asheron's Call, so quests like Overlord's Sword, Sylsfear, Swamp Temple - which really take advantage of those features - should feel the strongest, even if they ultimately didn't work the best.

Anyway, next up for me is a bunch of newbie dungeons. All of the starter dungeons are still there for Nanto, Baishi, etc. with level restrictions intact. That more or less means nobody has even tried going into them for ~15 years since it's not even possible to get there at a low enough level normally.

So, in other news, PhatAC's been working pretty well.

I'm about to have access to a PC again. Maybe I'll be able to play a bit.

What's it like socially? Do the worlds feel as empty as they did when the game ended officially?

I am running a local server and playing singleplayer, so... yes, it's about the same.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AsheronsCall/comments/6ytlqa/the_situation_as_it_seems_to_stand/

No surprise at all, but nice while it lasted.

Wow, they're going scorched earth on this one. Emulator videos deleted (see up-thread), several sites taken down.

I didn't even get to play!

There's a server torrent out there somewhere... for now. Strangely, those have been disappearing too.

You're still able to play on local host?

Think ACE will pull through? Or are they going to get hit with a cease and desist soon enough?

I haven't tried it since, but I have the software downloaded locally and I doubt they would implement a remote disable.

No, I don't think ACE will succeed. I don't think they will get far enough to warrant a C&D.

If I had to guess, I'd say it was one of these things that did it:

- They were waiting until the server was reasonably complete before taking action.

- They are suing pea and cmoski, and it just took this long to get the ball rolling.

- The new servers became too popular to ignore. In particular, this one complete bellend has been promoting Fenntide on 4chan and other big forums (he's now blaming Pea's critics for what's happening, lol).

But no matter what this project was going to get shut down eventually. ACEmu might be able to fight WB if they have the money, and as long as they don't distribute any derivative world data along with the server, assuming they ever got far enough for them to matter. But PhatAC? lol. Lawsuit bait.

You suspect/know that the stolen data was the main reason for the C&D, or was it the popularity of the servers?

I don't think it was a C&D.

Huh. Then what do you suspect happened? They were sued?

I guess they dropped the ball... on Asheron's Call.

The conversion of trade secrets could be tort or criminal. The copyright infringement could be tort or criminal. So yeah, I would guess they are either being sued or worse.

Cease and desist means publishing a statement saying "project discontinued by request of Warner Brothers, downloads not available" and life carries on. It's just personal correspondence, there is nothing stopping you from sharing it or your interpretation of it. It's this scorched earth stuff, immediate cessation of all activities, expunging all possibly infringing content even gameplay videos and descriptive prose, and refusing to comment on the circumstances of the shutdown, just screams "their lawyer told them to do it because they are being sued" or maybe even because they have been enjoined.

I could be wrong. Doubt it though, they crossed a big red line that WB/Turbine had previously threatened people for crossing before. Cease and desist is a courtesy that allows both parties to avoid costly litigation, when the infringement is not too damaging and the sender has a reasonable belief that the recipient might stop infringement. I don't think WB is interested in extending pea et al. many courtesies right now.

So what was the fall out?

The lead developer settled the suit. I don't think he understands that's what happened though.

A large portion of his remarks seemed as if they were written by a lawyer, with some nonsense sprinkled in by him for good measure.