the next level: Share the code, be the beacon for the Mangos community

[Mahtan 15]

It is a difficult topic. It is about open source, leeching and seeding, about moral and selfishness. It's a thread about the question: Should Elysium release their code at some point on github?

When Nostalrius shut down, they announced that "source code & documentation will be release to the public". They have never done that. And I doubt they ever will.

It's so sad, because for one moment, the Mangos community was very happy to finally see a project to not just leech but also share back fixes! What a shame. Shame! Shame! Shame! *ding ding ding*

TheLuda, the founder of Mangos, even praised the announcement and that it "would make Nostalrius the first vanilla server project that actually contributes back to the original core in 11 years of project existence.". Poor TheLuda. :(

Well, the code is not entirely abandoned. It is still used on Elysium and people work on it. It's hard work, I promise you that. Database fixes are one thing, but scripting stuff without breaking other random things is an art! The voluntary work on Elysium is invaluable. Without the devs, we would be almost nothing.

And that brings me to my point... Why does this work always have a Damocles blade above it's head? It looks like the managers of the project could just "pull the plug" if they want or have to (evil letters written by Blizzards brigade of lawyers work wonders!). That means all the work would be lost. That was the case in how many cases? In all cases! Every single private server that fixed things took these fixed into their cold icy grave. RIP

I liked the idea of a Legacy Gaming Network. It was a noble idea. And I think the spirit of the project should prevail.

Share your fixes with Mangos. Every single one of them. Let the emulation scene grow. Be the big beacon that shows the whole private server community how to be a good example. You can help to make the vision true that we will have an almost perfect emulation of classic World of Warcraft available for anyone.

I know some people are afraid that people would abuse the core. Well, Mangos is already quite amazing today. They even have some fixes that Nostalrius/Elysium lack. If I compare AQ40 on Mangos today and on Mangos 5 years ago, then I am shocked, because it became so much better. So much work has been done, but it could have been much faster if people had shared their work for years already. Wouldn't that be cool if we had AQ and Naxx fully scripted in stock Mangos already today? Common, you would like that!

I also don't agree to the argument, that this would divide the community. Instead, I think it would unite the legacy community. Elysium could make history as the project that used it's influence for the good of the whole classic emulation scene.

Therebirth announced that "after the shut down [they]'ll prepare to release the code and databases.". They were a small server but their code was quite advanced. It will be interesting to see how it helps the Mangos community and if it ignites the development in positive ways. I advice to observe this process and to think about the fundamental principles on which open source projects are based.

Thank you.

Edited February 24, 2017 by Mahtan

[Uglyaf 9]

Yep lets share fixes so other money grabbing servers could launch :D Rebirth was shit, you probably havent played there, you judging by reddit commets. 

[Erjh8765 19]

No, just no.

This would fracture the playerbase even further, enabling your average owned core dollar-greedy whore to run their own server for profit.

If you want to make money, get a job.

[KromKrush 0]

This would be chinas wet dream. host and spawn their own server and hire some english speakers to run it lul..not happening.

[Daxtar 1]

38 minutes ago, KromKrush said:

This would be chinas wet dream. host and spawn their own server and hire some english speakers to run it lul..not happening.

^ this

[Stylophone 1]

After everything has been said and done, private wow servers are illegal. Release source code to public just pushes it even farther. 

[Revo 34]

i absolutely agree. for the sake of vanilla servers quality and for every single player, it would be the best if the code was made public. it would be nice if every project would share its code and fixes and stop protecting it like its their product, trademark.

the devs have to understand that all they are doing is based on someones else code. partially blizzards, partially mangos, etc. so every def already profits from others code that was made public. its a shame if those that profit from others code so much now try to protect every single fix and improvement they make like their child, they locked in their basement.

its about time to change your state of mind and work together with others. if some try to make money out of it with cash shops - so shall it be. the players will chose what server they want to play on and what community they want to be part of. in the end, the best staff team will convince the players and succeed. thats why i do not only want to encourage elysium to share its code, but every private wow project, to truely bring the old wow back to life.

[khalismur 6]

1 hour ago, Zhang said:

After everything has been said and done, private wow servers are illegal. Release source code to public just pushes it even farther. 

Zhang, do you know what you are talking about?

Developing an open source software that emulates an official server suite is illegal how?? lol

[khalismur 6]

2 hours ago, Erjh8765 said:

No, just no.

This would fracture the playerbase even further, enabling your average owned core dollar-greedy whore to run their own server for profit.

If you want to make money, get a job.

This argument doesn't have much sense to it either.

While some folks will probably indeed open cash grab P2W servers with the improved emulator, I think the players are not retarded and can judge them and chose where to play.

The gains from an open development are greater than the downsides.

[Erjh8765 19]

6 minutes ago, khalismur said:

This argument doesn't have much sense to it either.

While some folks will probably indeed open cash grab P2W servers with the improved emulator, I think the players are not retarded and can judge them and chose where to play.

The gains from an open development are greater than the downsides.

You are placing far too much value on people.

Due to my job, I used to come into contact with scores of people daily, from different walks of life. After like 20 years or so as a police officer, I gotta say that in my experience most people are two things, retarded and lazy.

The average Joe should not be trusted with decisions involving a simple either/or choice because they have 50% to fuck it up.

So, based on my experience again, I gotta say that if you base your life on trusting the abilities of other people or even worse, the ability of someone else apart from yourself, then you are gonna fail, and you are gonna fail so badly that you won't even know what hit you. If you live, that is.

Edited February 24, 2017 by Erjh8765

[Stylophone 1]

24 minutes ago, khalismur said:

Zhang, do you know what you are talking about?

Developing an open source software that emulates an official server suite is illegal how?? lol

Of course. I'm a game developer myself. I wouldn't say developing a server emulator is illegal, but when you re-scripting the bosses/mobs combat logic that originally designed by Blizzard. It is illegal. When you copy off the quest texts and recording it into the database, it is illegal. When you hosting an emulator you need files that extracted from the wow client (dbc, maps, vmaps), and extracting file from client is illegal. Got it?

Edited February 24, 2017 by Zhang

[Revo 34]

9 minutes ago, Zhang said:

Of course. I'm a game developer myself. I wouldn't say developing an server emulator is illegal, but when you re-scripting the bosses/mobs combat logic that originally designed by Blizzard. It is illegal. When you copy off the quest texts and recording it into the database, it is illegal. When you hosting an emulator you need files that extracted from the wow client (dbc, maps, vmaps), and extracting file from client is illegal. Got it?

hosting private wow servers is not legal anyway, so why would it matter making the code public? it would just make it impossible for blizzard to stop it since sueing one or another project would have 0 effect

[smokeit 26]

Orrrrrr pass it to blizzard in a .rar file

[Pyrognome 3]

I like the idea of projects sharing their code. How ever what Uglyaf say is true. There are too many shady idiots out there who are just waiting for a code to release a server with item shop. Money money money.

Anyway I hope Elysium won't shut down so why should they share the code? I hope they solve all the team problems and keep up the good work and lets hope they find enough devs to be able to release AQ and ZG almost free of extreme bugs and exploits.

[Mahtan 15]

7 hours ago, Uglyaf said:

Yep lets share fixes so other money grabbing servers could launch :D Rebirth was shit, you probably havent played there, you judging by reddit commets. 

I finished the Dungeonset 2 quest chain and raided ZG, MC & Ony on therebirth. I stopped playing around 2014, so my expression of the core is not up to date, but I can promise you that the server was really advanced. Therebirth was the hidden treasure of the classic private server scene.

 

I am not surprised to read about frightened people who think that a better stock Mangos core automatically means more "money grabbing servers". I think you underestimate the overall work of Nostalrius & Elysium. Their success is a testament to a very professional management structure, including developement, community, testing and GM-team. This makes the difference and attracts people on the long term. In 12 years there have always been money grabbing servers and that will never stop.

Almost all projects are based on some fork of Mangos (including Nostalrius/Elysium) and therefore they leeched the code, but the projects don't share back their fixes in almost all cases. The WoW emulation that you all like so much would be tremendously better if people didn't have that mindset in the first place and instead shared back their work.

It is sad to observe the classic private server scene over the course of the last decade. Projects rise and collapse and their developement work vanishes. We could have been so much further if the work of developers had been shared from the beginning. I think it is time to change that.

 

Edited February 24, 2017 by Mahtan

[Revo 34]

7 minutes ago, Mahtan said:

I am not surprised to read about frightened people who think that a better stock Mangos core automatically means more "money grabbing servers".

this also is a totally retarded assumption.

if every server had equally good code, the one with the least money grab and best staff/service would obviously take the lead. infact, it would eleminate money grab/cash shops as they could no longer compete if theyre having those. and since projects with corrupt GMs and stuff would also simply lose players to projects that do not have such people in their lead,  those ppl would also just disappear. or at least become less likely.

its only the DEVs ego and fear there could be ppl that offer a better service than they do that is blocking an open source movement

[khalismur 6]

Yeah... If a private server is non profit, I don't see the point in not opening the source. As you said and me as well before, P2W copies of good servers would pop, but people should have the brain power to judge where they want to play.

Asked Elysium, Nost before it, Asura and Kronos what they think about OS development. From those, only Asura (CF) answered with:

"I don't want others to profit off my work."

Sadly, if he doesn't want to profit himself, which he says and I believe is the case, I don't really understand why not open source it. There must be another reason.

[Revo 34]

1 hour ago, khalismur said:

Asked Elysium, Nost before it, Asura and Kronos what they think about OS development. From those, only Asura (CF) answered with:

"I don't want others to profit off my work."

Sadly, if he doesn't want to profit himself, which he says and I believe is the case, I don't really understand why not open source it. There must be another reason.

probably for credits, the fame. maybe hes afraid anybody else with the same code could treat the players better, thus get the players.

for DEVs, it can be disadvantageous if they currently profit from the "monopol" they have, either by money or reputation/"fame". because if it was open source, the projects with the best behaviour, attitude and vision - service - will succeed, theres no longer a monopol controlled by a few that can be abused.

for players, making as much code public as possible is only beneficial.

Edited February 24, 2017 by Revo

[GoForTheMoon 0]

I don't think releasing what is nearly stock mangos would help much.

[khalismur 6]

Every single commit is progress and eliminates the redundancy of inventing the wheel again and again. Instead of doing what someone already did, they could all build on top of it.

[Stylophone 1]

5 hours ago, Revo said:

hosting private wow servers is not legal anyway, so why would it matter making the code public? it would just make it impossible for blizzard to stop it since sueing one or another project would have 0 effect

If they want to they will. 

[Lifealert 19]

This is not the answer. Private server organizations build on top of the already default mangos code or they attempt to create their own cores from scratch. Elysium giving away their core would be the equivalent of Intel just giving away their most important intellectual property (patents and such) to the public. They would lose their competitive advantage and there would be no more reason to buy from Intel because AMD would be making the exact same thing. In this case anyone could just open their own private server and elysium would have no advantage over any other server.

What would be better would be for smaller projects to voluntarily merge with Elysium and the LGN was kind of a step in that direction, except it was two high profile projects cooperating for the greater good.  

[khalismur 6]

Read your own post, lifealert.

would kill code competition, but players would choose the less P2Wish server, or the server with the best staff, best events, less amount of shady stuff, etc.

How can us players not benefit from that? The concurrence will shift to providing the best experience and transparency / good service, not who has the best scripted raids or w.e.

[Lifealert 19]

And it can be argued that it would create even more servers with corrupt staff members.

This is all speculative, but if you look at the actions of the past you can obviously see future outcomes in regards to this. When Nostalrius shut down they told everyone that they would release the character data as well as their core for everyone to use. Of course this never happened because it was not exactly in their best interests to do so. In light of this I don't think there's a chance in hell that Elysium would ever release their code to the public domain. 

[Revo 34]

1 hour ago, Lifealert said:

This is not the answer. Private server organizations build on top of the already default mangos code or they attempt to create their own cores from scratch. Elysium giving away their core would be the equivalent of Intel just giving away their most important intellectual property (patents and such) to the public.

 

good satire, lmao