No I'm not taking OOB as in "out of body" experiences but rather out of the box thinking. A crude way of figuring an acronym for that I know but I figured that going for a 4 lettered one would just add to the title's clutter. This will be the 1st in my non-regular series of some 'distasteful' subjects for the industry, devs or publishers mostly and possible ideas/what ifs from those that may yet contain a lot of sobering factors for considerations.
Private servers, grey shards, free shards, 'alternative public server projects'...Call it what you will but they all share the same prickly traits in all. They're illegal, a pain in the ass for some of the current p2p titles today, lunch thieves even and the BIGGEST taboo in the industry than using hairy drag queens as booth babes.
QUESTION: How many of you here had any experiences in any of your chosen private servers or are you actively playing in one?
ANSWER: I'm not gonna bother to post statistical evidences (not like there's any anyways) so I'll just answer this for some of you instead. I myself have several previous experiences in ones that emulates Lineage II, RF-Online, WoW and DAoC. Spanning back from 3 years ago.
Here's some interesting findings as to what I'm trying to convey for this entry:-
1. The ratpacks that doubles up as teams of devs, admins, mods and GMs (I'll use the term privateer from this point onwards) in the majority of private servers are;
- relatively young and falls BELOW the 25-30 age bracket.
- armed with high levels of 'elite' programming and community management skills.
- and seem to display near Godly abilities of managing between real life commitments (literally the majority of these guys/girls aren't doing what they do in full time mode) to this hobby of running a renegade MMO server for a small community.
- coupled with no known or clear steady income sources apart from plastered on banner ads and donations.
- the devious ones that goes for illicit profit making chances are the smaller half (and rising unfortunately..) from the ones who's merely in this for the technical and personal challenges' factors.
- interestingly the ones based in Europe are more dilligent in their efforts, knowledge exchanges and more open than any other privateers from different regions or countries.
2. Assuming that these types obviously enjoys the lower costs via shortcutting through reverse engineering IPs that they don't have to build from scratch themselves. It's still is weird in seeing that even with CLEARLY OUTLINED legal implications that they're risking their necks in and have full knowledge of, to see that some of the most 'successful' private servers aren't your typical flash in the pan operation. Some had spanned a healthy 5 years average and most display the same determination of their 'borrowed' IP holders' staying power by weathering out fluctuating player bases, hardware and data centers' moves and struggling with on-going operational costs.
3. Believe it or not, some of the more hardcore supporters that makes the bulk of loyal donators aren't even categorically active as players and are willing to voluntarily promote, help to manage the community and contribute ways to sustain these operations.
Done that and now I'm gonna level those up...For point no.1, it's pretty evident that we can see serious talents/technical prowess that's necessary to sniff out packets, mod out game clients, build up own anti-hacks, figuring server and bandwidth allocation configurations and even, mods for additional maps,contents and features to start for a smooth running private server op? Now we're not only talking about guys/girls with lesser paychecks (if any for most of them) than what's legally perceived in the mainstream MMO industry, we're talking about groups of people who are in fact doing what they do with career risks that you won't ever wish for even on your most hated dentist that is FBI arrests/raids and possible jail times?
What's my point exactly? Is it the industry side's obsessive fixation on college degrees, previous working experiences in other game companies or individual fames gained for some 'star' lead designers of today that had driven these young and rebellious talents to NOT go the legit way? Is this really the case? What's the proactive steps taken or being discussed right now in the industry to lure these people in and to properly reeducate and distribute the talents for proper causes?
I ask because I believe that there isn't such a thing that we can consider as NO shortage of talents and devs. Over time in this day and age, I'd doubt it if anyone is in favor of 'outsourcing' to Asians should that critical need arise (maybe it's already happening..) and I'm saying that even though I'm Asian myself.I ask because litigations and punitive measures alone are not the productive solutions in handling this ongoing illegal activities and the activists behind it. I ask because now there's ample reasons to 'source out' some work to these privateers and harness additional creative forces with legally binding assurances. How we ask? Has anyone from the industry had really held out their hands in reaching out to the privateers? If so, when, how frequent and how fair was that initiative in favor of both sides barring from any slightest signs to demonize the privateers, causing them to continue what they do with added angst and that much more solidified "against the establishment" ethos? Has there ever been a round table or brainstorming session from those typical game conferences that had seriously touched on these specific issues?
I've been in private servers that can dish out fast updates (an impressive feat in my book, considering that a private server can barely achieve a 3 man scenario for most works) and yes I DO mean updates by own critical bug fixes, patches and content changes. Some can go as far as adding custom items, warp functions, tweaked default in-game events and skill trees even o_O?
So yes this part of the analysis series mostly revolves around potential talents (tested and proven with varying degrees of success rates, results and moral standings of course) BEHIND private servers' activities, the questions surrounding the subjects' viability for the legit MMO industry and what measures that makes sense in answering those.
User Comments
Based on my own experience, a small team always get things done faster than a big team. Take your 3 programmer example, if one of them has an idea, he does it most of the time without consulting the other two. If you're in a big team, one that's making money out of it, your idea has to go through everyone before it's denied. They really hinder any creativity the team may have while one or two people are responsible for everything that may or not go into the game. They don't even get their hands dirty in most scenarios, they just tell the programmers what to do. So in the end, you have people programming in zombie-mode doing something that might be the opposite to what they would like for the game.
I often wonder though if these operators can hang with the big fish.
Sure they have gone and grabbed the IP along with it's technical standards but can these same people actually do what the IP builders can do? Sometimes yes. Being me and liking this gray area to play on (often!) I find most are underskilled and are working with FAQS etc.
Though occasionally I do come across a gifted team those times are rare and far between. I honestly think maybe a small percentage could be considered "dev worthy" while the rest are half assed "copy cats".
The real question is why the companies that run these games do not shut the freeloaders down ? They only go for the obvious & stupid enough to spread the word everywhere.
Why ?
Because if you think about it, people who play free mmos, download mp3s, and watch movies online won't pay for them to begin with. They're not losing '300' subscribers, they're not losing anything. Sometimes one will come forth and grab a famous server for a beat down just to scare the rest.
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