In the MMO genre, an emulator is a playable, private version of an MMO run by players independent of a game studio. Both sunsetted and extant games are emulated with varying degrees of moral and technical support from the community and the studios; some develop their games better than the original and even attempt to charge fees or take donations. Despite the claims of emulator runners, private emulators are generally illegal under DMCA laws and violate the terms of service of most online games, but some studios and many players choose to look the other way.
emulator
City of Heroes’ Homecoming rogue servers have joined the Titan Network/NCsoft negotiations
Exactly one month ago, tangent to our interview with the Homecoming server team that's part now-flourishing City of Heroes rogue server community, we also...
Perfect Ten: Great MMOs that will run just fine on your old computer
The other day a friend was telling me that he used to play EverQuest Online Adventures very regularly back in the day, but fell...
MMOs You’ve Never Heard Of: Decentraland, Monster & Me, and Grand Fantasia
Welcome back to another quick roundup of MMOs and MMO-adjacent titles you've probably never heard of (or at least have entirely forgotten about!).
Up first:...
Catching up with City of Heroes’ Homecoming rogue servers as NCsoft negotiations continue
It's been a while since we checked in on the flourishing City of Heroes rogue server community, but it's been busy indeed, with multiple...
Choose My Adventure: Getting to the group stuff in TERA
My final week in TERA saw me hitting the ground running, looking to utilize whatever means I could to chow through the levels, get...
Shadowbane’s player-run rogue server wipes to start a new season
Feeling more than a little antsy as you continue to wait for your PvP dreams to come true in Crowfall? You could chew off...
Star Wars Galaxies Legends is working on Felucia – a new planet with new houses, player cities, and space zone
The upcoming addition of true Bespin content to Star Wars Galaxies rogue servers like the NGE-based SWG Legends has been a big deal for...
The Daily Grind: Which MMORPG offers the best systems for helping newbies?
A while back I saw a deeply underrated post on the MMORPG subreddit about mentoring systems. I don't mean the kind of systems like...
The MOP Up: Project Torque revs back up for another race
Car racing MMOs have endured bumpy runs in the genre, including the late Project Torque (also called Level R and HEAT Online). Torque ran...
New Star Wars Galaxies rogue server Sunrunner 2 blends pre-NGE and post-NGE content
So here's the thing about Star Wars Galaxies: The people who tell you NGE stunk are right. When it launched in 2005, it was...
WildStar’s Nexus Forever emulator shares a slice of progress
Could a WildStar emulator be closer to reality than we previously thought? Back in May, we reported that a community project known as "Nexus...
Rogue Server Roundup: Toontown Rewritten, Chronicles of Spellborn, and SWG Legends
Emulators, pshards, rogue servers: Whatever you want to call them, they're buzzing with confidence right now. I mean, we legit got a properly formatted...
The pieces needed to build a WildStar emulator have been posted online
Have any of you seen the movie Contact? It's a sci-fi film about an alien radio transmission that contains instructions to build an interstellar...
The Daily Grind: Do you think WoW Classic is destined for greatness or utterly doomed?
Since the formal announcement this week that WoW Classic is launching in August, I've seen multiple mainstream games journos opine that, well, you think...
Warhammer Online lives on thanks to a free-to-play private server
Our own Justin Olivetti jokingly referred to our site as "Massively Emulated" in private chat for what should now be patently obvious reasons, so...
Age of Empires Online lives on in the Project Celeste player-run emulator
'Tis the season for player-run servers, right? And we've got another for you to take a peek at: It's for Age of Empires Online,...
Star Wars MMOs pay tribute to the life of Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew
Star Wars fans are in mourning tonight as the original actor behind everyone's favorite walking carpet Chewbacca, Peter Mayhew, is now one with the...
Classic PlanetSide fans keep their favorite MMOFPS alive
While we have heard a lot about a certain superhero MMO recently that the community is attempting to resurrect, there are several other sunsetted...
Two weeks in, City of Heroes has four rogue servers and heartwarmingly massive queues
Two weeks after we first broke the story confirming the City of Heroes secret private server leak, the game has turned 15 years old...
SWG: Beyond is the latest in a long line of Star Wars Galaxies emulators
Is it rogue server week or something? Fans have now announced another privately run Star Wars Galaxies server, this one called SWG: Beyond. Longtime fans...
