Save EQOA Petition

[Bumblebeard]

Hullo there! For anyone who used to play Everquest Online Adventures on the playstation 2, or would just like to try and bring back this game; there is a petition that only requires 24 more signatures to reach the goal. Thank you to all who make their mark. Peace

http://www.change.org/petitions/save-eqoa

[Thulack]

Dont think a major company gonna use up serverspace/electric for a game that 500 people cant even sign a petition to play in 3 months.

[Nune]

they dont even make that game anymore, gave my discs away a loooong time ago and a few years ago went back to try and rebuy them and they were a small fortune, maybe they remarketed the discs but last i checked they were bleeding it dry, and were very open about that despite what the petition seems to be "unfairly" declaring

[Auvdar]

Originally Posted by Thulack [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Dont think a major company gonna use up serverspace/electric for a game that 500 people cant even sign a petition to play in 3 months.

[r00t]

I don't understand why they would shut it down. A single server is not that expensive to host. I'm sure there was enough people to offset the cost. It did have a subscription fee right?

The link for more info 404's: https://www.soe.com/eqoa/

in b4 EQOAEmu

[Khaleesi]

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

[r00t]

The problem with creating an EQOAEmulator is that a lot of stuff for EQEmu was done with the help of packet sniffers like ShowEQ and Wireshark. Since Sony does not have the server up anymore, it's going to be considerably more work, nearing impossibility. There's already a ton of guesswork involved when it comes to deciphering the packet stream even when you have most the info on the structs and what opcodes are communicating back and forth.

Perhaps a petition to get them to release the source and database (I highly doubt they would though). Someone ask at a fanfaire open mic!

[Bumblebeard]

Good idea with the fanfaire open mic. Though I know it's probably unlikely that they would bring back EQOA on ps2, if the information required to create an emulator was available, I think many people would be happy to see it return on PC. With the cost of one server being low, and the higher playerbase than EQmac (which was saved from total destruction by Smedley due to a petition) It sucks to have your favourite game vanish when it could have been salvaged in some form instead. I'm sure anyone else who really enjoyed EQOA shares similar nostalgia, and feeling of mmo homelessness since it's departure.

[Khaleesi]

Why not amend the petition to get source code access?
Surely Sony don't need this any longer.

[Sularus Oth Mithas]

EQOA was a great game for it's time. It was the first game I ever got to Beta test and it was first time I ever had a server first 50 shortly after it went live (go bards!). I played up until the first xpac and lost interest shortly thereafter. I was surprised to see they were shutting there servers down a while ago. Looks like most people moved on to EQ2 at that point.

I don't think I would enjoy it on an emulator much but I hope it works out for you.