Terms of Use & Expectations

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ReturnOfReckoning
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Terms of Use & Expectations

Post#1 » Wed May 11, 2016 1:53 am

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Important notice for new and veteran players.
Spoiler:
The below envelops what you must absolutely keep in mind about this project before you start playing. By creating an account and playing on the Return of Reckoning project, you agree to (1) acknowledge and respect the expectations, as well as (2) abide by the terms of use/service. By creating an account and playing on the Return of Reckoning project, the staff will assume that you've already read, acknowledged and pledged to respect all of the below.

"Us", "We", "Our", "RoR", "the Project" and "the Server" all refer to the Return of Reckoning project, enveloping its management and the rest of the team members.

« A » Return of Reckoning is NOT Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
Spoiler:
We are not Mythic, nor are we EA or GOA, or any other company that ran the game during it's live period. We do not have the server resources, codebase, or databases from the live service that was previously run by them. This is a volunteer, free to all, fan-based project, to recreate a game that closed down forever in 2013. While we are incredibly huge and dedicated fans of Warhammer Online, and played throughout all of it's years, we will never be the same as what came before us.

Even if we start discussing what the server is supposed to be, none will be able to precisely say what was Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The game during live service had multiple significant periods and patch notes, drastic changes to RvR and Keeps and Forts and City Sieges, multiple class mechanics and balance changes during its far -too short- life.

Each period of the original game had its advantages and drawbacks. Sadly it is impossible -and wildly subjective- to pick here and there which periods of the game are the correct or true implementations. Massive mechanic changes between different periods certainly are not compatible, and through all of their changes, none would agree they had it right from level 1 to RR80 at any point in history. Therefore:

« A.1 » Our purpose is to extend the spirit of WAR bringing our own vision in the limit of our abilities.

« A.2 » Consider this project as another period of the game, for better and for worse.

« A.3 » According to the above, don't feel offended if you don't recognize some part of your memories from the live game. We will try our best to make your experience as delightful as possible, provided you are willing to join us in a new period of Warhammer Online.

« B » The public server for this project is only a sandbox and a test server.
Spoiler:
« B.1 » Rather than the sort of feature-complete pay-to-play server that we will inevitably be compared to and despite appearances of a fully functional and highly organized MMO operating worldwide with a dedicated following that rivals many professional and profitable corporation backed MMO's, we are not a company of professionals collecting your subscriptions, just a bunch of dedicated fans and volunteers pushing this game into the future. Please, allow us to make changes and mistakes, allow us to play by slightly different rules.

« B.2 » We can and will push relatively untested code to this server. Issues will arise as a result, and you must accept this as much as we do. The number of variables in a game this vast, particularly for changes intended to affect hundreds of players at a time cannot simply be tested by a lone dev and a few extra instances of the game. Frequently, YOU are the test server, and we will do our best to keep things interesting and fair.

« B.3 » Please don't complain too incessantly:
It is stressful enough for us when things don't work as intended. Whines and screams won't help us to make things better. We will quickly realize when a problem is causing the server pain through kind words as much as we will through angry voices. Be kind to the staff. Use the Bugtracker or contact the Community Management team for any assistance/guidance.

« B.4 » The project does not use any original game server code:
Unlike some other private servers whose code was leaked entirely, Warhammer Online was not at all. Thus our server is feature incomplete, and is a project that requires significant time and reverse-engineer to re-create. The server code here is being rewritten from scratch, with no knowledge or documentation of the original Warhammer Online server protocols besides some packet logs taken by volunteers once the announcement was received that the live servers were shutting down. It will have bugs. The end goal of course is to have less bugs and issues than live, perhaps one day!

« B.5 » Some of the bugs are crippling in complexity and very difficult to fix:
This is a problem with lack of understanding of the intended server protocols, and it takes significant time and an element of luck to figure out the actual method for accomplishing a given task. For those who are uninitiated - we need to figure out the right information to send to the client, in the right order, at the right times, based on analysis of the original live servers communication, which just looks like a string of hexadecimal bytes, and that's if we even have the packet logs that tell us what the client is expecting from the server at all. This is not a simple task with proper data, less so with nothing at all.

« C » This project is in its Alpha Phase.
Spoiler:
« C.1 » All of this project is a vast WORK IN PROGRESS:
This is not an excuse - it means that the server is not feature complete, that bugs exist and that major changes to aspects of the game may occur, including (but historically unlikely) resets and rollbacks as and when necessary if we have no better solutions. We will do our very best to avoid these at all costs.

« C.2 » All of the contributors in this project are volunteers and are providing their time, knowledge, and expertise, for free and for the benefit of the server.
They do what they can, where they can, when they can. They have a limited comprehension of things and they are trying their best to make things better step by step. Often 3 steps forward, 2 steps back.

« D » The staff work to their own priority lists.
Spoiler:

It would be incredibly unfair to expect that your immediate desire should align itself with the priority of a volunteer developer with limited time and resources to dedicate to the project. They cannot, and should not be expected to intervene on short notice for any aspects of the game you may personally consider as vital at any particular moment. Provide feedback through measured and reasonable methods, and development may end up shifting in your direction.

« D.1 » Contributors know what is possible and not, they are limited in their action field. Sometimes by internal discussions that average players are not privy to, sometimes to technical details that simply cannot be implemented as suggested, and frequently by their own design principles they will not violate despite suggestions to the contrary.

« D.2 » Contributors are not professionals working for a paycheck, they are not commutable assets to be discarded for failure to achieve specific targets, they are actually not paid at all nor are they scheduled to work any particular hours. Their volunteered time and expertise is one of the greatest values to the server, and should not expect to be squandered recklessly.

« D.3 » Contributors are working for the good of the project first and foremost. Your personal enjoyment of the project is a byproduct of their great efforts, it is not necessarily a goalpost to be reached. Some things that seem FUN at first glance can be detrimental to the enjoyment of others. Some things that seem like a boring grind are what provide a sweet payoff when you finally achieve your tireless goals. If at any time you do not enjoy content that is being provided, the forums are available to provide constructive feedback.

« D.4 » According to « B » and « C », it is just common sense again.

« E » Your viewpoint on the game and that of the staff may differ.
Spoiler:

« E.1 » According to « A », our purpose is to extend the spirit of Warhammer Online.
The general outlook of the team on the game leans progressive towards a changing future, not conservatively rebuilding a past glory that perhaps never was. Our intent has always been to bring fresh changes to the game in pursuit of glorious battle.

« E.2 » According to « A » again, we apologize if some of our choices are hurting your Nostalgia/Traditionalism or Conservatism.

« E.3 » We are not claiming we have perfect solutions for a perfect game, but we are acting with sincerity and passion to spawn a version of the game, within the limit of our abilities and understanding, that we think/hope is as good as possible.

« E.4 » According to « A » again, we are those who spend time and energy to make this project alive.
It seems quite legitimate for us to be free to bring changes and take liberties we think important to enhance this project. There is enough constraint within the team to provide a fair amount of consideration to prevent most changes from going wild. Being further constrained by community demands would be untenable.

« E.5 » According to « B » and « C », nothing is engraved in the stone.
What is deployed today, may be modified completely in the future. We are working in the limit of our present abilities and this forces us to make hard choices at any given moment in time. This doesn’t mean we will not come back to some aspect of the game when we will be able to deploy better solutions. This frequently happens as we discover new protocols and need to better refactor old code.

« E.6 » You can disagree with our choices, but we are asking you to respect them, without anger or hate.
Our purpose isn't to make you miserable. On the contrary. We can make mistakes and decisions that seem counter-intuitive to intended goals, but be assured we are trying iteratively at times to break through hard problems. Some changes will be less apparent than others, but any controversial choice to be made starts with significant internal debate among the leads, devs, and other contributing team members.

« E.7 » Your feedback and suggestions are more than welcome, however - and according to « D » - we may not always follow your advice or suggestions.
We are trying to keep a global view of the project with our limited abilities. If some feedback and suggestions are agreeable with this general pattern we will be glad to please you. Note it may take time if this happens.

« E.8 » Your opinion about our choices and work should be reasonable, presented with facts, and without hostility. Otherwise - according to « A » and « D » - it won’t be relevant for the project. You can disagree or dislike, we are very sorry, but we can’t do much for you.

« F » We do NOT and CANNOT take donations.
Spoiler:
Warhammer Online is not our intellectual property. Because of this, we will not allow any assistance to come in from the community, whether direct or through any kind of attempted loophole (we've heard them all before). Any donation would be a risk to the existence of the project. We do not want your money. Keep it to yourself. Do not ask how, there is no way.

« G » This project and its sources are private.
Spoiler:

Consider the absolutely mad amount of work over many years that has gone into coding thousands of lines from scratch, rebuilding thousands of database tables, touching endless amounts of items, and quests, and PQs, and dungeons, etc.. Each aspect of the RoR sources are the property of those who have devoted their time working on it and ultimately to the RoR project. Our implemented server code, databases, assets, research, and processes are the property of RoR project itself and this team. It is not open-source, it is not shared freely.

Reasons are pretty simple to understand:

« G.1 » Sources are private to protect each contributors work:
The 'owner' of the project, must protect the project integrity and respect all the work, time, and energy spent to make this project real by a team of passionate contributors, gathered around a common purpose.

« G.2 » Sources are private to protect the overall Warhammer community:
Considering the community size and interest compared to some other MMORPGs, splitting the community among several private servers will put in danger the survival of the project itself and existence of the community if it were to fracture. Warhammer Online is a game of numbers. As many of you experienced on live, a dying server tends to bleed and rarely recovers.

« G.3 » Sources are private to protect the Intellectual Property rights of the original owners:
We can’t have guarantee that any other private server won’t use these sources for profit, or violate the spirit/design/vision of the game with changes that would clearly go against the intent of the original owners. Either of which would put this project in danger as well (see « F »). The ROR team is well aware that Games Workshop needs to be protective of their intended vision of the game, even post-mortem, and we will respectfully protect that vision where others might not.

« G.4 » If some day the RoR project is fully abandoned; with agreement of each team members, full sources will be released.

« H » Warnings, bans and Terms of Service.
Spoiler:
If you suffer from any of the following issues:
• Inability to reconcile the difference between the viewpoint of the team and your own viewpoint in a mature manner
• Inability to respect the team enough to accept their right to make changes
• Inability to criticize changes directly, instead complaining about changes having been made per se because you didn't want the original game to change at all, no matter how (appealing to tradition)

Then, we apologize and invite you:

- To take some distance with the project. Maybe future updates will please you more.
- Try to create your own project using WarEmu's free source. You will quickly discover the vast depth of the WarEmu codebase from where we started, and how wildly far off the mark you will be from ROR currently. Good luck.

Take into consideration, and quite seriously, the Terms of Use
« H.1 » On the forums, you will receive warnings. Warnings will lead to suspensions. Continuing to violate these terms will lead to forum bans. Creating new accounts to avoid suspensions or bans can result in your game account being sanctioned. The Community Management team and the GM team are here to preserve a state of general peace for all those who would visit. Disrupting this peace means facing sanctions.

« H.2 » In game, there are many infractions outlined that will immediately impact your ability to play on the server, now and in the future. All bans handed out are accompanied by reports, with evidence, and are reviewed by the Head Game Master. Very rarely are these overturned. If you value your time on our server, play with respect to our home, and follow our rules.


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