If Horizon Had A $1 Monthly Fee

The 'newly popular' almost 20yr old version of a game that people can't let go of because they are literally using it to relive their pathetic 'glory days' (tping in hecatomb) like Uncle Rico? So popular they've lost over half their daily logins over the past few months while Wings was only still growing at this stage of its life? Given how horizon likes to inflate its numbers with hundreds of dummy characters afk in zones you can't search, how many real players does that even leave?

Y'all are huffing copium harder than a certain (married w/ kids) horizon staffer huffs a girl gamer's dx racer

Horizon is the most newsworthy XI-related thing to exist in the past year lol

Also, it's always sad that people who are in a tizzy about Horizon have to push baseless accusations of falsified players.

The most newsworthy thing about horizon is deez nuts, but go off copesar

lol

The LSB code is an entirely original work, except for the data structures shared with the client that must be implemented for the client to work. The only way you can tie LSB to be a derived work is via these structures and how they are handled, everything else is original since they had no access to server binaries or code. It's all reverse engineered behavior and structures from the client, but none of the client resources are directly in LSB.

Atom0s posted a more detailed/reasoned post that lays out why it's not an issue, he points out some of the protocols are modified versions of open protocols like IRC. This doesn't really solve the question of the modifications to those or the proprietary protocols they use. They are both right this is done with some frequency and based on current understanding, the protocols alone aren't enough to consider it a derived work. My question earlier on this was asked in context of a long standing debate about how structures/symbols are used in the Linux kernel, with a number of arguments (some bordering on the absurd, like invoking a system call means a userspace process is a derived work) floating around about what is and isn't (it's still yet to be settled AFAIK). There are some parallels there, which is what I was trying to raise, but ultimately if the protocol/data structures aren't enough to tie it to being a derived work then there isn't anything else that could.

My conclusion is that SE could shitcan Horizon, assuming it's somewhere the legal system allows it, with ease. Putting a stop to LSB or having it taken down from github would be a lot harder/more expensive and there's no current legal standard they can use to have it removed. It doesn't mean they couldn't concoct one, but the cost would likely exceed the benefit. They can argue whatever they want, but to do so for a project that maybe makes a few million a year, if that, it's not worth it. It might be a different value answer if it was FFXIV

Feel like a lot of energy could be put into a new MMO, but I doubt anyone would want to make completely new assets.

If I were to make an MMO, I would like to put my energy into learning something new and not something I am familiar with (just cause I like learning new things and this would be a fun project).

Ahhh banging my head against the wall because you figured out something and it says "no" later. Good times!

right yeah and that was what i said 10 pages ago. SE could likely shut horizon itself down. doubt they could do anything about LSB though.

what's the reality though? SE DOES NOT *** CARE. IF HORIZON WAS CHARGING SE STILL WOULD VERY LIKELY NOT CARE.

there's no evidence otherwise, SE has made it very clear over the years they give 0 *** about ffxi. if you think otherwise you're living in pure delusion.

could they? yes. will they? probably not. end of discussion

k

I bet Rooks is happy this subforum was added.
May as well add a MAGA one, a Marketplace to buy and sell characters/gil and finally an accomplishments page where we can discuss playing with ***' *** in the club

Is that not an accomplishment? Asking for a friend.

Honestly? It wasn't my decision to add them, but it mostly doesn't bother me. They've degenerated somewhat, but the early versions of these threads had better debate and discussion than anything that ever came out of P+R. Low bars and all, but still.

And really, all the activity here got me motivated to fix some stuff on the site and actually log in to retail and poke around. Checkmate, athiests private server players.

We have enough empty forum sections as it is.

Wait.. there is a secret subforum dedicated to the Promyvian areas and nobody told me?

We don't, but the fact that I had to go check and make sure, tells you everything you need to know about that

I have no idea what this mental breakdown is about. I don't play FFXI or Horizon anymore, and this thread is on the home page top threads. I really don't care about Horizon or FFXI, my comment was solely explaining the concept of a "derivative work" from a copyright perspective.

I appreciate the new subforum and honestly, I don't think it's going to work. There will be people who disagree with each other over petty things like I said some pages ago opinions are very hard to change. Anyone who enjoys HorizonXI better find somewhere else to talk about. I used this site a lot (awesome site) just for the AH information and not much else and now this time it belongs only to retail players.

(Please excuse my old profile avatar. I live in the world's largest naval base where I watch pilots training with a fighter aircraft every day above my home.)

I think it's odd this subforum was even created. Nobody who plays Horizon would really use it anyway because Horizon discord and LS discord are better in every way.

Yup. LSB on its own, as some kind of pure intellectual exercise or achievement, is legal. Arguably so, perhaps, but if challenged in court the burden would be on SE to prove that LSB is derivative or infringing in some fashion.

The catch is that LSB on its own isn't actually useful if you want to play FFXI(or something FFXIsh). SE might distribute the XI client free of charge, but it is not free software, and SE is fairly clear that a game subscription is required for play.

Running a copy of LSB is legal, but hosting a service that enables or encourages the public to use SE's client to play FFXI for free is less so. If SE decided to sue, a PS operator could try to claim fair use, but they'd be in for a long, ruinously expensive legal fight, even if they did win in the end.

If they were really careful not to directly provide the client and merely mention where to find it, then they would use the same arguments that have won before. Unfortunately like you said, it would be a pyrrhic victory. Bleem was useless without a copy of Sony's PSX BIOS, and Sony sued them for it. Bleem won the lawsuit but the victory was so costly that it put them in severe financial distress and they eventually closed shop.

So even if you win, you still lose.

I find it amusing... okay more like pathetic, that the guy with the "lol bootlicker" avatar is the one absolutely gobbling Horizon boots. Christ dude, if you suck that hard there won't be any boot left.

The legal argument is pointless. I tend to believe atom0s and Saevel are correct, but it doesn't even matter. Horizon staff obviously aren't worried. No past XI private server has been verifiably acted on(though at least one presumably faked a C&D). Even if you can verifiably prove beyond any doubt whatsoever that it's illegal and SE could sue Horizon for eighteen million dollars, they're still going to be up and running and SE is still not going to do it.

If you want to argue for posterity, you do you, but it feels more like people are praying someone shuts Horizon down.

Pretty sure you mean FFXI private servers specifically right? And not "MMO private servers" in general?
Because for WoW at least Blizzard acted in a very clear way against them, but only shortly before they decided to announce WoW Classic.
Before that it was still "illegal" I guess but Blizzard never bothered to act agaisnt them if not with some pretty vague and generic post on their official forums.

I'm honestly quite sure SE will never act against any FFXI private server unless they decide to make serious money out of it and/or SE decides they want to release "classic" servers themselves.
Both are pretty unlikely things to happen if you ask me, but who can say...

XI was shorthand for FFXI, yea.

No private servers charged for access either though.

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: we don't have a readily-available way to gather all that data, and even if we did, it'd be no small amount of work to implement (especially considering we wouldn't want to confuse retail players, or for Horizon/Eden/Catseye/whatever's economy to impact the broader economic metrics). There's also item changes - Horizon changes how Suppa works, for instance - so there'd be inconsistencies.

tl,dr of the longer answer: it's not something we want to do and even if it was, there are sufficient annoyances for such minimal reward that it's not worth it. No one's asked for it in any case, though.

(And, really, if Horizon players wanted that, their admins HAVE all that information. Putting up a web interface to some of it would not be that difficult)

To this note: Eden was doing this themselves several years ago when I fiddled with it. I’d be surprised if the others weren’t already doing the same.

Not to me, lol. I know absolutely nothing about these laws before, but with those exchange back and forth and looking for references, at least I learned something new in this field. I think it is good exchange after all. :p.


I honesly don't care about horizon. SE has the choice to protect their IP as hard as Nintendo, but if they don't do anything about their IP it is their choice /shrug. I only care about verifying misinformation and gain real information.

I'd still question atom0s' legal explanation of "fair use" of reverse engineering. Many sources stated that you can reverse engineer to gain knowledge for creating a new product. but using reverse engineer to make copyrightable content(art) accessable to the public is illegal. May as well post this for whoever care about reverse engineer related law /shrug.

No disrespect to atom0s or anyone else here, but I don't think anyone should take legal advice from FFXIAH xD

It's legal as long you don't get caught.
:I

i "play" retail, not horizon.

horizon's changes are stupid and their staff is questionable.

doesn't change the fact that you're severely misinformed and misguided if you think SE is actually going to bother to shut down horizon.

based on the changes SE makes to the game it's highly unlikely they even know horizon exists. i'm sure they know private servers do in general, but horizon, probably not.

their most recent change was adding a gamepad config to the ingame client, something literally no one was asking for. which is currently in theme with most of their changes in the last 4-5 years. pretending they are in sync with their playerbase, especially their english speaking playerbase, is pure delusion. the main source of boot licking would be people like yourself, the boots would be SEs.

i hope for a better retail or an official classic server, private servers aren't that interesting.