Server emulator

With the growing popularity of commercial MMORPGs , many players had a desire to create their own servers for these games, and to use them as much as their creator does. But, unfortunately, most of the original server software was not available to anyone except their creators, so they had to recreate their functionality. This was done either by analyzing the data stream generated by the server, or by disassembling and analyzing the existing client.

Ultima Online was the first major MMORPG. Due to the too simple client-server architecture , the first emulators appeared during beta testing . The very concept of a “server emulator” began to spread after UOX , the first emulator of the Ultima Online game, was released. UOX had an open source code, thanks to which, in a very short time, quite a few analogues appeared, and the “offshoots” of this project, and in real time, its port on the .Net platform - RunUO is most often used.

Game developers often tried to prevent the development of emulators by encrypting the data stream, but the client still needed to somehow "understand" the data that arrived, and decrypt it accordingly in the computer's memory. The authors of emulators actively used this, analyzing how the data was decrypted, and on the basis of this recreated the original encryption algorithms.

• In most countries (including Russia) it is not forbidden to recreate “the methods of work of something”, and from this side there can be no claims to emulators, however, in addition, emulators almost always illegally exploit trademarks, thereby breaking the law.
• Sometimes it happens that as a result of information leakage from the developer’s company, the original server software disappears, as happened, for example, with AEGIS (the server software of the Ragnarok Online game), and PTS (the server software for the test servers) Lineage 2 . Using it, or modified versions, is always illegal.
• The communication protocol cannot be copyrighted , but it can be patented as intellectual property.

MMOG :

• Ultima Online - UOX , SphereServer , Pol , RunUO
• EverQuest - EQEmu , HackerQuest
• Dark Age Of Camelot - DoL
• Lineage II - L2J
• Ragnarok Online - eAthena , Freya
• Star Wars Galaxies - SWGEmu
• World of Warcraft - WoWEmu , MaNGOS , Arcemu , TrinityCore , Kobold
• Warhammer Online - DoR , WOE
• Aion - Aion emu COM , Aion emu RU , Aion UNIQUE , Zetta Core , Aion Lightning , Aion Core
• Point Blank - PBX Games, PBDev
• APB - APB EMU

Game Services :

• Battle.net / Westwood Online - PvPGN

• The largest English-language portal for game servers and emulators.
• The largest Russian-language portal for game servers and emulators.
• One of the oldest portals for game servers.