Emulators - Bringing Back the Past or Destroying our Future?

Now I know many of you who are reading this right now are like myself - you grew up with games on the intelivision, atari, 3DO, nintendo, and things of that nature. And much like myself, you would love and relish in the chance to relive some of those childhood memories by playing Tank Defender or Zelda once again. For most of us we cannot, and have to resort to the process of emulation and play them on our PC if we really want to.

But what if one of your all time favorite video games that is currently on the market is on a "private server" and you can play for free and get all of the awesome goodies without any of the "work" involved with getting them? Do you still play it, or do you step aside and play the real deal?

Many people in the MMO world have succumb to the the fact that they would rather play the free version of a game and do ZERO work for many of the items and goodies a game has to offer!

Let's take World of Warcraft for example. This game has had many different types of emulators in the past, and many of them have been shut down. Most of them due to "illegal funds transfers" to the hosting sites in the form of donations for "play to win items". In most cases Blizzard has come up on top in court and (as I stated above) many were forced to shut down and close their doors.

How about another example - The Star Wars Galaxies Emulator (aka SWG Emu). Yes, SWG is and was a fan favorite by many, but does it require an emulator to some very old and for that matter - out dated and dead code files that these tech heads have acquired illegally through the use of packet sniffers and many self made reverse engineering tools? I personally do not believe so. Aside from that the website has avoid prosecution from SOE / LA various times, and to top it of has had much of their donation money taken, stolen, or used by many of the people on board with the project for various "personal expenses".

With the launch date of SW:ToR on the horizon, and other games like Guild Wars 2 - will these games come under fire by the various "pirating" groups out there on the net? I hope not.

For many of us these games are a safe place to play and build friendships and acquire a strong sense of community within our chosen game. What many of these "emu" servers do is take from that community so that they can build their own due to someone else's achievements and glory.

Yes, my stance on the subject matter is somewhat 50/50 - but I do not wish for a game that I pay a set fee for every month to be turned away by thousands if not millions of players just because there is a cheaper (free) alternative on the internet. Most of the time this is how many of the great games of our time often get sour or bad reviews - due to players playing on free servers and not liking what that community has implemented and never actually playing the real game for what it is worth.

I generally see these "servers" (if you can call them that) as a problematic feature that is out there on the internet these days. If you want to "make money" (or donations as you emu people call them) - go and create your own video game, and not steal it from someone else and use the word "donation" to back up the fact that you are STEALING money from innocent people who are too dumb to see through your lies.

I know this is a sour topic on my blog - one of which I really should not be venting over. I just hope in the future that there will be a higher level of security features set in place for many of the great games of our time so many of the "criminals" out there cannot and do not take away from OUR gameplay as well as that of others.

I think I have spoken enough on this topic - so I shall see you all next time!

Cheers :)

./save

Some Game Talk and Live Stream Info (Part 2)

Ok so we have officially set up our twitch.tv account and have a load of video equipment and new "gamer" stuff on the way to boot!

The word around here is we may quite possibly be ready to record or first live stream broadcast either this week sometime (with all of our crazy antics and personalities), or right after the next beta weekend in ToR (whenever that may be - possibly by the first week of November). No I am not saying this is when a beta weekend will be - so before anyone goes off speculating it will, I really have no clue. I am simply saying we should be ready to shoot by then.

As far as gaming content for this week - I still am somewhat disappointed about the WoW update from BlizzCon, Guild Wars 2 seems like a promising little gem (proverbial diamond in the rough stuff), Skyrim looks freaking awesome, and all of you should by now know how I feel about ToR (I will come back to that in a second)!

As far as things with Battlefield 3 go - I'll have an update about that pretty shortly from one of the other members of the team. Black Ops (for those that like FPS Titles) also looks promising, but not something I would play very long.

And of course I will come back to ToR now, as far as I am concerned this game is going to be the major trend setter in the market for YEARS to come - it is just going to take some more of a push to get the numbers into the game and playing. The Gold Master version (rumor has it) has been produced and ready for distribution, so we should see early access close to approaching (or at least another wave of huge numbers into beta). The testers who get to test this version should be testing the most recent update that will bring to head many of the patches you will have to download upon launch day. This is in fact after the internal test and code lines are looked over by man of the QA Team and then we can have a playable game by Dec 20th.

For all of you who are still in doubt about this title, do in fact give it a fair look - it would be worth the free month you get at purchase, you may even find out some things you enjoy about the game. Of course I can't say much about this as I know nothing about the end product, final copy, or even builds that are being tested. As an avid Star Wars fan, from the things I have read and seen on other sites - it could be one of those games that sticks with us for years to come, much like those of old (like EverQuest).

I am looking forward to this title the most this holiday season and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I will. Even if you do not give it a look, I'm sure we will discuss your game that you play in the future.

If you would like us to review a game for you or even give you a heads up on a certain genre - feel free to look us up on FaceBook @ www.facebook.com/tsotg or look for us on twitch.tv (we are still getting sorted),

www.twitch.tv/deeceecreator
www.twitch.tv/xenocypher
www.twitch.tv/thestateofthegame

Hope to see you all in the virtual world sometime soon. As always - keep it real, stay IMBA, and May the Force be With You!