Heya all, I've been having a good time playing a *legit* modded version of Everquest for the last 3 months, so I thought I would stop by and spread the word.

www.wintersroar.com (http://www.wintersroar.com)

It's only fair that I should give a summary of what I've learned and encountered here. One thing many WR (winters roar) players will try to tell you is 'this game is like pre-luclin everquest.' This is a bit of an overgeneralization, as winters roar is in many ways a seperate game entirely. Reading the FAQ and patchnotes should give any person a good idea of just how different it is, but to restate it here, the NPC's, zones (levels and some mobs, along with arrangement in some cases) is original to the WR database. Most spells retain their same effects, as well as skins and models. Winter's Roar has it's own developer created lore, and a plethora of quests, including many quests that are submitted by players themselves. A recent patch increased the rewards for quests, to give them a more meaningful nature in progression, however, many quests are not 'farmable', and quests cannot be multi-quested.

Winter's Roar is a free service, that runs on donations. They are currently running 2 servers, 110 zones. The current primetime populations are roughly 300-350 players, and after the addition of the second server everything is *extremely* stable.

This wouldn't be fair though, if I did not bring to light a few of the things I don't care for in winter's roar.

Please keep in mind this is only speculation, however...It maybe an unfair comparison to the Everquest I played pre-luclin, but the leveling is rather fast. Friendships are hard to develope, as in all likely-hood, the player you grouped with last night, may be well out of your level range by tonight. The community in general seems a bit disconnected, and at times almost unwelcoming.

There are two 'raid' guilds on the server, however they seem to reflect the disconnected feeling of the community. They are generally unorganized, and unfamiliar with each other, at least compared to the guilds I knew in my time playing everquest. It just seems so alien to me, to find no raiding guild that marks player attendence, has no application period, ect.

I think this presents quite an oppurtunity for one of those task-force-families of old to secure a dominant presence in winter's roar, but that's just my opinion.

But, overall I personally have been enjoying this game much much more than I did returning to EQ during PoP, or any other current game as far as that goes.

So thanks for listening. Looking back over this, I suppose I'm not really doing the game justice with such a meandering post, but, I hope this finds those interested well.

If there are any oldtimers considering playing, and would like to get in touch you can find me as Loxosceles, or, as always, Peregin.

Peregin Falcon (Wormfood)
Formerly the best.

I agree that Winter's Roar is a kool idea and I hope it works but because they run on donations they are not able to keep up the updates with expansions and such to keep the REAL guilds happy so that would never work :(

That is a very good point I hadn't realized :).

I thought about giving it a try. At least its not connected to SOE. That was the golden age of EQ. Too bad the EQlive devs won't wake up and realise it.

Winter's Roar is an interesting idea and some of the people who run it are cool, but it's so very low population for someone who is used to playing regular EQ

I made a character on this the other day. If anyone is interested in playing just let me know!

How do I get this game running? Sounds interesting.

And how is this one legit when most/all others are officially illegal/bad juju or whatever?

This server is more for the EQ nostalgic people than the "real" guilders. I made a character, played a bit, and realized how bad being lvl 10 without a fungi tunic and twink gear was. Then I stopped playing :(

By legit, I think he means it's not rampant with various functions that "break" the game. Stuff like item duping, item creation, and other such things are pretty common in a lot of the other emu's.

By "legit" he means that he believes the EULA is unenforcable, and as such that you "own" the software, and can use it in any way you see fit -- as opposed to following the licensing agreement. (You can complain about the evils of EULAs elsewhere, but we should all know the truth, we don't OWN any software we buy at the store.)

How do I get this game running? Sounds interesting.

And how is this one legit when most/all others are officially illegal/bad juju or whatever?

Illegal? That's a long winded debate. I bought Everquest Platinum recently and only used it for Winter's Roar. I never logged in to the main EQ servers, nor agreed to the EULA. While I understand your points Palimax, I consider the point to be moot. UO has had player created servers and content for years, and it was hardly the demise of UO. Everquest will not die off because of EQ EMU, if anything, they keep players from the EMU community coming back every few months if for nothing else but to packet collect for the database builders.

Having said that, every time Sony patches, it breaks the EQ EMU. So what alot of EMU's do is offer the old everquest patches for download, otherwise it is literally 3-4 months before the EQ EMU community fixes the problems, and new players can join. Offering the old patches for download is considered piracy or warez and illegal, therefore it is "officially" frowned upon by the community.

Winters Roar has sort of split off from the rest of the EQ EMU community, by sticking with a much older version (but more stable) of the EQ EMU code. They also offer 100% original content which is downloadable with their own patcher.

Winter's Roar is considered a Legit server, by the EQ EMU community. All this means, is that there is no summoning of items, or insta-zoning, insta-leveling via the GM commands. (#zone, #summon, etc)

My suggestion if you want to try playing as a GM, is to just set up your computer as a server, and log in via localhost 127.0.0.1. It will get old extremely fast, zoning to sleepers and killing it with #kill command. At best, this would serve a Raiding Guild in Everquest as an invaluable tool for planning raids, and where to stage people.

I never logged in to the main EQ servers, nor agreed to the EULA.Depending on where you live, you might well have agreed to the EULA when you opened the CD case or ran SETUP on the CD.

The point remains, it's not your software to do with as you please. You can certainly agrue that it's poppycock, and you can do whatever the hell you want with it, but in most cases the law disagrees with you.

Hackers logic.....

No matter how you slice it, and enjoy it , it's still illegal...

Fandros

But how do I get Winter's Roar in the first place ;).

hmmm I thought on the winters roar website it said that it was totaly legal and didnt go against the eula guess i read wrong.

But how do I get Winter's Roar in the first place ;).

Cados, go to www.wintersroar.com (http://www.wintersroar.com).

They have a "how to log on winters roar server" guide. Its pretty simple, sign up for winters roar account, install everquest, patch to live, download winters roar patcher, re-patch, play.

Thanks for the link.

I'm assuming that I can't have both Official EQ and Winter's Roar available without disabling one or the other, since WR requires use of the 'EverQuest' folder so it can modify it.

Any way around this? Can I duplicate the EQ folder and let one be for WR?

You can execute EQ from anywhere. Make multiple copies.

I made a seperate copy for wintersroar and called it wintersroar :) just patch to there.

And, as you all know, you don't actually need to buy EverQuest:


http://eqlive.station.sony.com/supp...new_patcher.jsp (http://eqlive.station.sony.com/support/tech_support/ts_new_patcher.jsp)

EverQuest Patcher Help
Important Note: If you are unable to download files with the new patcher, download this file (http://eqlive.station.sony.com/support/tech_support/EverQuest.zip) to your EverQuest directory (default location is C:/Program Files/EverQuest/) and run it. You must have Internet Explorer installed on your system for the EverQuest patcher to work properly.

Thanks for the link.

I'm assuming that I can't have both Official EQ and Winter's Roar available without disabling one or the other, since WR requires use of the 'EverQuest' folder so it can modify it.

Any way around this? Can I duplicate the EQ folder and let one be for WR?

It doesn't matter if you have a high speed connection, it will only take a few minutes each time to re-patch if you switch back and forth from live to Winters roar. But if you have plenty of hard drive space, I would make a copy of the EQ folder, and rename it Winters Roar. After that, start the Winters Roar patcher, and it will ask you to tell it where your copy of everquest is located. Just direct it to that folder.

One of the positive things that just occurred to me that I left out in my first post.

The GM's in winter's roar are extremely accessible. In fact, there is almost always one available in the winter's roar IRC room. They are volunteers, and as such, are not bound by company policies. A good example of what I'm trying to imply, off the top of my head, was about a month ago when I was on the verge of triggering a mob to complete a quest. The servers coming down for a patch was imminent, but the GM's actually delayed the server coming down for us to have our shot.

I conceed I don't follow the legal policies very well. The only reason I used the word 'legit', was due to a thread about winter's roar being posted on the Vanguard forums, where the moderators stated they had gone so far as to call a SoE representive and ask them whether or not they considered Winter's Roar as a hack, warez, or whatever you want to call it (as they stick to a pretty strict policy on having such posts on the boards). They stated that the word from SoE was, because Winter's Roar is a volunteer operation, and (at the time at least) it was clearly stated on the WR website that you must own all of the necessary EQ CDs, it was a-ok. Sorry to get you all riled up Palimax, but that is what I meant.

Started playing on that server. Got a 23 monk right now. if anyone wants to play just shoot me a tell, his name is Almador

I wonder if SOE will decide to go after the WR people for using their software someday if it gets too popular? After all, they did use the EQ game code to make this and SOE tends to be money hungry when it sees an oppurtunity..lol

Probably not, since it's free and their all time record was only 397 people online.

tempted to play but I dont want to start where I cant PL :/

tempted to play but I dont want to start where I cant PL :/

You don't need to power level, it took me 4 days to get a lvl 30 enchanter with crap items :P

the experience is boosted here, and in a group its increased nearly 50% more.

if the population was bigger i would be more inclined

It's down and out ahahaha

jesus shamzy you sound like you just want someone to give you a level 65 character there twinked but then you'd probably find another excuse to not play.

jesus shamzy you sound like you just want someone to give you a level 65 character there twinked but then you'd probably find another excuse to not play.
doesn't matter they got a cease and decist from sony hahahaha

doh! lol and the mightey SoE squashes another cockroach.

Kinda funny that almost no one wants to talk about it. I posted this on SOE's boards and it got deleted which didn't surprise me. I posted this to the GU forums and it also got deleted. After an email from Woody I have determined that he has no balls.

What truly confuses me is the lack of any kind of news on it at all. There has been no press release from SOE regarding this. You think they would do something to help their public image after this, after all many people liked this service.

In the end I believe SOE will just end up losing more customers using these strongarm tactics. After all, just how long have independant UO shard been in existance?

There's not doing something to protect their "public image," they're doing something to protect their intellectual property.

doesn't matter they got a cease and decist from sony hahahaha

At work and they have "Games" filtered with websense so I can't check www.wintersroar.com (http://www.wintersroar.com)

Where did you see the cease and decist at?

http://67.15.24.48/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4449

[14:12] <Wiz> First of all, I'll repeat what's happened. We've gotten a cease and desist related to the site and the server, and it also seems like EV1 wants the site down entirely. So to protect ourselves, we've pulled it at least temporarily. We will be checking into the legal development from here. This isn't the main reason I asked you here, though.
[14:13] <Wiz> EV1 is our hosting company. chatlogsaregay

I used to be able to see it (www.wintersroar). I get a 502 now, so they might be gone.

I used to be able to see it (www.wintersroar). I get a 502 now, so they might be gone.
Use the IP from the link i gave

http://67.15.24.48/

Your post came while I was typing mine, it seems.

From your link:
Winter's Roar is down indefinitely -- we have been served a Cease and Desist by Sony (through the completely unaffiliated owner of the domain, none the less...). There will be a redirect to the status of the legal process and our future plans here shortly.

You can also follow the progress in the IRC channel -- irc.eqemulator.net #wr

They stated that the word from SoE was, because Winter's Roar is a volunteer operation, and (at the time at least) it was clearly stated on the WR website that you must own all of the necessary EQ CDs, it was a-ok.

GUESS NOT!

Honestly I can't blame SoE for this. I would do it too.

Except that it wasnt really costing them money. Most people were either subscribed to EQ already or would never ever give Sony another dime.

Atleast they are making a game of thier own. Im interested.

Not only did it have the potential to cost them money...in that it only takes ONE player who was on the edge of subscribing for a single month...but it dilutes their trademark. You MUST protect your trademark.

I see your point Pali and I even agree. But im sure thier subscritions didnt climb by the 300ish that played it prime time.

Oh, it wasn't hurting them MUCH in the wallet, but it's a slippery slope :)

Seems like they only hardened the resolve of those guys to make a competitive game, that will probably take away a few subscriptions. Dumb move, IMO.

I'm not holding my breath.

Almost all such legal actions have little to do with threats to direct profit and everything to do with maintaining the due diligence you will be required to demonstrate in court should your copyright/trademark/brand/whatever actually end up in a suit versus someone else with enough money to make a real case. I'm not super familiar with Winter's Roar, but I'm sure they've known about it forever and let it slide until it got good enough as to be a considered as a potential competitor (in theory if not actuality) and thus they felt they had to do something about it to protect their IP.

But yeah, screw you Sony!

hehe I agree Palimax. Their new game sounds a bit overly ambitious to say the least. Can you say "Dawn"??

Wiz seemed to be the only actual coder on the WR team and I find it hard to believe he was working on two games simultaneaously.

Oh well, guess it time to catch up on a few games i've been meaning to play lately :P