Had a conversation with Vedan about this not too long ago.
Yes, the cost of running and maintaining the server was NOT expensive. Additionally of the handful(think it was down to three: one guide, one developer, one community manager) employees involved, they weren't being particularly or directly paid for it. The overhead costs were essentially non existent. Server space was not an issue; it required little and took some of the lowest bandwidth of any game SoE had active.
And they still raked in a subscription fee of $14.99 a month. It may not seem much when the player base is less than three hundred people, but there was a time when P99 was averaging three hundred and making $0.
This had been going on for almost five years; they still managed to look after the product and include content updates. It's a shame that it shut down two years ago - especially after I managed to emulate it on the computer (more on that later).
There's quite a few games, whether semi-modern or entirely retro that have been remastered and made compatible to use on newer consoles. They are essentially selling ROMs and emulation packages for PS3, Xbox and soon to be PS4/Xbox One.
I believe the problem there is that those games are not often online based, and thus someone would have to host it.
We could do this privately, like P99 yet there's the emulation side of it which, to my knowledge is going to be a disaster to figure out.
Assuming the server could be emulated all we need is to setup a quick guide on PS2 emulation.
BTW, the timing on me setting up the emulation came the day of the big Sony hacking incident last year. This was a bit of a stinger because I went onto my original account and of course was not subscribed; I didn't want to fork out the money if I wasn't going to actually play (I just did it to see if I could make it work). Then I remembered I had a spare unused key. Having made a new account, I loaded up the server and was in. I didn't really know what to do after running around for a few hours, so I logged off. Next morning there's the news on Sony and in the wake of that, free forty-five days to all SOE gaming accounts. Major score right? My original account was now active and I logged in. I had a good time but got side tracked in real life. I came back and the servers had officially closed!
First is the packet execution tracker and the game menu after recent update.
Second and third pictures are me standing in Freeport once logged in.
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I wonder if Nilbog would be interested in working on something like this rather than ever making another EverQuest server.
And while we're in the signing mood - let's get a signature list going for ENB series to make a DX6 and DX7 converter for their popular ENB series graphics.
See thread here for artist's interpretation of how EverQuest would look with some DoF and SSAO type lighting
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...ad.php?t=18950
See thread here for discussion of EverQuest ENB series
http://enbdev.com/enbseries/forum/vi...b9ea8&start=10