Public Vs. Private, My Why and Why Nots.
There are some “killer” online Massive Multiplayer Online games, or MMOs for short, such as World of Warcraft (WoW), City of Heroes, Eve Online and some not so well known ones like LineageII and RagnarokOnline. These games can be fun, challenging and take up a good deal of time just to get a level. Leveling can be a good deal of fun in itself but what if I told you you could spend about 1/100th the time it takes to get to level 60 in WoW and all you have to do is just change out a few lines in a file.
This is where Private servers come in. Private servers are hosted by people who have a decent interenet connection and have taken the time to find and download a private server, which are put out by either third party groups who think servers should be free or by leaked server code such as in the case with WoW. I’ve spent a good deal of time playing both public and private servers to get a good grasp of what you should expect if you are the one of many, who are mostly foreign, who play on a private server on a daily basis.
Lets start with the pros of private servers. You don’t have to pay! (unless the server offers great gear for a small price which they boast helps keep the server running). This is probably the lure of most foreign countries primarily South America, Russia, and a few European countries. Another reason you’ll enjoy playing on a private server is the free starting gear like money, mounts and a boat load of bags. Most private servers will give out a greater yeald of money per kill and yet keep the costs the same in stores so you’ll be able to buy just about everything. What I enjoy the most about private servers is the increased exp per kill, which means you’ll level up to even 10 levels on the first thing you kill. Why so much exp? Well most people who play private servers play for the Player vs. Player, or PvP. The faster you get your guy to his max the better the server for these addicts. It then just comes down to getting the best gear your player can have. Which can take a while less you’re playing a server with has vendors that sell nearly top grade gear which just requires you getting enough money to buy your gear.
Well that’s all fine and dandy but these priviledges come at a cost. Most of these servers are free which means they don’t have much of an income to maintain them. As more and more people hop onto the server you’ll find the server will slowly lag itself to frustration. You’re attacks won’t seem to regerester for about 20 seconds, movement can be a pain, and you’ll want to avoid crowded places since a good deal of lag will occur at them. Also depending on the server you’ll have “World Saves” which saves the total game status of all the players in the world which can take up to 20 seconds and can occur often.
You’ll also tend to find language barriers a bit annoying, and I’m not just talking about speaking in gnomish. You’ll be good if you can speak Spanish since a good deal of them are from Spanish speaking countries or atleast know a little spanish. You can usually find a server that’s hosted in either North America or Europe so you’ll have a good deal of players that can speak English.
A con to getting a lot of exp is you’ll lose out on the enjoyment of leveling though there may be not joy in leveling for a good deal of people. And the downside to getting a lot of money is that the admins of the server will usually make the top gear super expensive so that it’ll take a good while of just playing to get enough money to get the premo gear.
Another downside to private servers that I find very annoying is that the admins will be “pimped out” in the best gear since they can create just about any item in the game and give it to themselves or others. Which then turns you off from playing when you see people playing who just created their character a few hours earlier with the top gear. This is why I suggest making very good friends with an admin/moderator. Free teleports can be nice and instant rez’s better.
A few other issues with private servers are that they’re not always up and I tend to cherish my character while it lasts since you might leave for a few days and come back to find the servers reset since someone accidently dropped a table (deleted a good deal of info) from a database or just come back to find that the server is down and just about every hint of its existance is gone from the web.
What bothers me the most about private servers is the amount of cheating that occurs from the server being hosted privately. I’m not just talking about admins. I’m talking about the +100 sword of miracles and the force teleports of other players by people who find enjoyment in making their attack speed faster than that of god whose initiative has to be about a +49 (50-70) by D&D 3.5 standards. Any server with a boat load of Russians usually means that the server is either old or has a few known bugs that will give them an edge. A good server keeps up on the known security flaws and bugs and keeps a firm grip on its players and their gear.
Private servers can be a good deal of fun. Running your own server for you and your friends private use can be fun too. I’ve seen some very nice servers that create just about as much content as the real server and keep the servers interesting. You can’t beat the price of free but you have to keep in mind that these servers only stay up for as long as the admins can keep their connections and don’t lose interest in the server.
There’s a big following for private servers so they’re not that hard to find. NEVER use your login or password for these private servers. These things get logged and I’m sure that the admins running the private server haven’t given it thought to using your info in the real servers to see if they can’t gank your gear or just delete your public character.
Public servers are overall the best for longtime gamers. They’re capable of handling thousands of connections, stable, filled with a great number of players who you get to interact with and are very secure.
If you need any further details like howto’s just post in the comments and I can supply links to what you need to get started.