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Are Free Servers Illegal?
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Boy those guys in gravity are greedy, they have so much users that they shouldnt wory about not getting paid by some of us. Of course if ro would be free nobody would even care about those servers.
if ro was free, there wouldn't be a ro, cus Gravity would start to lose money faster than, well, Bill Gates makes money
Can't believe I registered to give my 2 cents to the topic, but here goes. I'm sure anyone that used to be in the private server grid remembers me. I used to mod exes, admin servers, etc. I long left from boredom, and boredom is the problem with ragnarok.
Ragnarok was a massive faliure in the US, it was released way too early (Which caused the director to quit gravity), and the charge was over the top for a game that was lagging behind it's korean counterpart. In fact, when I joined the Private server scene, kRO was starting chapter 6 updates, and iRO was still on chapter 1/2. Gravity didn't care about iRO atall, everyone knew this, and visiting the servers using free trials made it blatantly clear, feilds that used to be filled with users were empty. Back then, it wasn't worth paying for, nowadays, they've pushed hard to bring iRO up to date and I'm glad, but it's a dead horse now. It's too little too late. People are bored of RO.
My next point, "piracy" is the term used for people who download files for free or copy something and CHARGE people for it. Piracy is gaining money from someone else's commercial product. Now as far as I've seen, private servers ask for donations, but never charge (Except asgard Online which got busted quickly, and was a shite service anyways. I don't know of any other servers that charged).
Why does gravity charge so much for a game that's so out of date and so badly but together? Why? I've seen thier server software, and the amount of "zoneservers" they have up for so few users. Running AEGIS takes alot of money to do, you need 4Gb of RAM (You can use VMEM but it slows things down) and a high-end CPU to cope with 100% resource usage. Emulators do almost the same job (Although they still have a few areas to work on) for almost no resources. Gravity's inefficient bloated code costs alot to keep going and thus the charge goes back to users. Recently Guild Wars (Which I brought because it was well worth it) allows users to play without any monthly charge, just one-off for the game itself. (Mine cost £18) And the only real online parts where you see everyone is towns, you have to form parties if you want to play together outside towns. it's well thought out and doesn't require that much bandwidth.
My last point, offcial servers have nice people on there. Private servers are full of n00bs, especially n00bs from other countries, looking for a freebie. Private servers have higher exp rates, most nowadays are over 10x exp/jexp/drops which is just silly, because people are so bored of the usual slugging for everything all over again as they move from server to server. Official servers have exp events because they keep rolling back and people keep losing items. Mostly due to hacking on thier dodgy software. Although Gravity charge for thier service which means they have plenty of money to thrown at hardware, so thier servers are more stable, except most of the time, no-one's at the wheel, so when it goes down, expect to wait upto a day for it to go back up. The GM teams on official servers are very private and very full of themselves, always using GM Hide and watching people. Private server GMs can be a mix bag, from very socialable people, and professional, to n00bs that act big and ruin economies by distributing items. (Oh the fun I had cleaning up after dodgy admins on some servers). Official servers will always be there, even though you have to pay for them, private servers tend to go down alot because the owners are fed up with n00bs or bored of RO altogether. Like most other people.
Ragnarok is dying, it's gasping it's last breath before RO2 comes out. I came here looking for RO2 to see whether Gravity have cleaned up thier act. I certainly hope so. As ROSE is turning into an even worse faliure than Ragnarok.
_________________________
Pyrii (AKA Nin-Wah) | Founder of clan.decay | UCL Div 3 Admin | UCL Radio DJ
I used to work on AEGIS mostly, but I was mainly a client person. Making end-clients for servers I worked for.
Eh, god are were some right a-hole admins out there
_________________________
Pyrii (AKA Nin-Wah) | Founder of clan.decay | UCL Div 3 Admin | UCL Radio DJ
Your info is like a year old. Gravity's staff int the states consists of 30 GM and 10 engineers working 24/7; that I learned about it when I went the Gravity's office. If the server ever goes down for an unexpected reason, which is excessively rare, it is brought back up within an hour.
The Korean side of Gravity still doesnt care about iRO. But the server are alot more stable.
There hasnt been a hack incident since September 2003 cause iRO spent several thousands dollars on a new security network that I heard from someone who worked on installing it.
There hasnt been a rollback since that one incident in July 2003.
The population for iRO has been stable at 15k since euRO came out.
Yes they are biding time until RO2 is released.
Yes iRO is probably going to die out but not as fast as originally predicted.
Yes kRO is losing customers, most of which are switching to ROSE, and Parfait Station.
jRO is still gaining customers.
iRO gets updates 6 months after they are implemented for testing on kRO sakray.
Yes AEGIS is very clunky software that uses more bandwidth then is needed and has an innefecient database.
Yes Private servers killed Ragnarok Online, on not 1 but 2 major occassions. Specifically when the source was leaked and the company almost went under. And during the hack incident during July 2003 where iRO lost half its population and alot of funding to make iRO better.
Yes using a client you download from Gravity that is used outside thier permission is considered a form of theft. Just like how downloading a version of Photoshop for free and using it passed thier intended period is also theft. Or downloading music and listening to it for free is considered theft. If you program your own client and fill it with your own data then play it on an emulated server, that wont be considered theft.
The reason it's illegal in the United States is because it's considered reverse-engineering the client to connect to an illegit server. This is also known as hacking. But look at it from another angle...
As far as running it on an emulator, really the only thing you're doing is compromising RO by changing a single file. Doing this is not against the EULA Gravity has made (Modifying the client is vaguely defined), so really legally they're incapable of taking any action, unless you run an Aegis server. Even then, I don't believe that Gravity designed Aegis at all... so who cares what they think.
The bottom line is, as long as you're not making any profitable amount of money, everything's in the clear. Many people are sent open threats by Gravy, but I wouldn't feel in danger in any way; considering nothing happened to me.
Where ever you live, be sure that you stay away from any profit, because this also will lead to your taxes--I'm just suggesting keeping the slate as clean as possible.
Hope that helps
-Antonomous the Great
nevermind im an idiot, just trying to get my shit up, nevermind it all =p lol dont hate. now please wait as i spam this poopie everywhere, JUST EVEYWHERE, bordum has overcome me and it strikes hard, i dont know what else to say or do but this stuff watch me ramble is any one reading is this game that dead? oh well this is how itgoes and the tail of the pony ate the gnome for the cookies and lived under the bridge by the river at the end of time.
I just dont know what else to type but i need a nice long post to get this stuff done, so that i can destroy the universe by the time DnDo comes online to the end of the time of the beach of the sand and the people and the slaves and the rambling, i love htis rambling, it is the best and it is not the fastest but actually the slowest thing that i could ever see, i dont know what else to say....
Just YEAH MAN LIKE OH MY GOD IM GETTING THIS STUFF UP.... i mean come on
I confess that I do play on private/free servers! (don't worry, admins, I won't give links to them)
But why? Simple. I'm against paying a certain amount of money per month to play a game...
On my opinion, private servers are illegal, not because of all that programing mumbo jumbo you guys are talking about...
Think about it. Private servers are not allowed by Gravity, so that makes them illegal! END OF THE FREAKIN STORY!!!
Private servers are NOT illegal, i repeat, NOT illegal. the only private servers that are illegal are the ones made by the emulator called:"****". finding private servers with this software is rare.
edit:i don't think its a good idea to call that name on this forum :S
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If you don't like the real Ragnarok and you don't think its worth it then don't play at all. Private servers are illegal no matter how much you want to debate it. The concepts and everything within Ragnarok Online is owned by Gravity, and none of you no matter how long you played or how much stuff you earned in game own a single thing within the game. If you want to take up space in there game you pay the fee they have set. If not to bad go find another game you do find worth playing. In refrence to your Ford comment. Gravity makes MMO's. Ford makes cars. You can not duplicate Ford's cars and claim them to be free. So why can you duplicate Gravity's MMO and claim it to be free? The internet does have laws. People just choose not to follow them. Just like the outside world everything works with mutual respect. People don't run down the streets murdering eachother because we have a respect for eachother. The people who do take place in this action suffer consequences. Life and everything within life is community based. The internet is no different. In order for it to be a place for everyone there must be set guidelines and things you can not do. Just because you can get away with something doesnt make it right. Obviously none of you have morals. Now i know your all going to whine and say Im wrong. But im not and you know it.
If you don't like the real Ragnarok and you don't think its worth it then don't play at all. Private servers are illegal no matter how much you want to debate it. The concepts and everything within Ragnarok Online is owned by Gravity, and none of you no matter how long you played or how much stuff you earned in game own a single thing within the game. If you want to take up space in there game you pay the fee they have set. If not to bad go find another game you do find worth playing. In refrence to your Ford comment. Gravity makes MMO's. Ford makes cars. You can not duplicate Ford's cars and claim them to be free. So why can you duplicate Gravity's MMO and claim it to be free? The internet does have laws. People just choose not to follow them. Just like the outside world everything works with mutual respect. People don't run down the streets murdering eachother because we have a respect for eachother. The people who do take place in this action suffer consequences. Life and everything within life is community based. The internet is no different. In order for it to be a place for everyone there must be set guidelines and things you can not do. Just because you can get away with something doesnt make it right. Obviously none of you have morals. Now i know your all going to whine and say Im wrong. But im not and you know it.
actually, your wrong and I know it. the private servers are legal in most country's. however, changing the things in your EVE online client to a private server, THATS Illegal. but private servers are legal.
And since I live in US i don't care about other countries laws. If you run a different language server i could care less. But in clones of iRO are illegal so don't argue with me
And since I live in US i don't care about other countries laws. If you run a different language server i could care less. But in clones of iRO are illegal so don't argue with me
and you know whats the best thing? their made with emulators that are made by people themself, and thats perfectly legal. but you don't want to argue, fine, hope you fall of your high horse some day. and if you don't care about other countries laws, thats fine with me, but then don't come here discussing like you know everything.
Its true that actually running the emulator isnt illegal, but the way most private servers work is that they take the data straight from RO when cRO was cracked into 4 years ago. Data tables, drop rates, the way the login system works, in some cases even the ports are all the same; since the data was all stolen. Thats what makes a private server illegal in most countries.
Also users of private servers are using the software provided by gravity illegally. In order to play a private server a person has to download the clients first from Korea and Agree to thier User Agreement, or they wouldnt have the right to use the software. Then they edit it to access the servers yet still use the data.
The reason using a private server is illegal goes to why downloading subbed versions of Japanese Animation isnt illegal, yet downloading the dubbed version is. The Japanese company makes the animation from scratch in Japan and distributes it within Japan or through a japanese distributer. In order to make profits state side, they usually make an agreement with a seperate American distributer to have the rights of distribution within the US; like 4Kids. The thing is they only have rights for thier version of the animation, so if someone gets a hold of the Japanese version and subtitles it; they can legally distribute the animation within the states but not in japan. Unless the Japanese company also distributes the animation within the US themself; in which case it is illegal.
In Gravity's case. They're company is actually extended into the US instead of having someone else handle the distribution. What steps up it up a notch is that Gravity internally translates all its versions of the software, Arab, English, Korean. So if you live in Korea, Japan, or the United States; downloading and using any version of the game from any of its distributers would still be using the software out of the range of the User Agreement and illegal.
"Its true that actually running the emulator isnt illegal, but the way most private servers work is that they take the data straight from RO when cRO was cracked into 4 years ago. Data tables, drop rates, the way the login system works, in some cases even the ports are all the same; since the data was all stolen. Thats what makes a private server illegal in most countries"
i am sorry, but your wrong here. the emulator that was stolen from Gravity is called Aegis. but there has been quite a few new emulators build from the ground based on Aegis. and these servers are legal. nowadays, hardly any private server runs on aegis.i doubt the project is still open. you will never hear me say playing on a private server isn't illegal, but running a private server is most of the time perfectly legal.
I agree, the emulator may steal snippets of the Aegis engine, but it is perfectly legal; despite having many bugs that the actual creator of the engine won't fix cause they don't have time to.
The real issue here is how the data is sent from the server. You actually need seperate data tables to work a private server that don't come with the emulator. Things like monster drop rates and names. Nearly all these tables info are taken from RO, in most cases directly.
Well private servers are legal, thats it. They change names on items, equip, monsters, card and so on. They also change the exp rates and drop rates so they wont be like k-ro or i-ro´s. So if anyone are afraid of playing on private servers, dont be. Its all legal.
It's Pretty Simple to make this Discussie Short..
Emulate a Server for yourself (Offline Play) IS LEGAL!!
To make it Online to let a Small 100 People Play on it IS ILLEGAL!!
Just keep it Offline or make a Small Network between 3 PC's and Friends then I guess you can.
But what is 10 euro in a month!?... Or just 90 in a Year... You don't Die off paying 10 a month ^^
There's No Escaping Me...
I'm Alway's Better!!
what shuld be illegal is having to pay 10euros to play a game if there are a lot of games like it that are fun too.
btw nintendo suks bad
omg ps3 cd are 53gbytes