LORD, LORD II, Planets.. Metrop/Gameport -- Pulse check??

[CorpPorThis]

Hey everyone!

In my quest to recreate the gaming communities of our best BBS days, I am hitting a few roadblocks and hoping that maybe someone here may just have some insight that can help.

I would love to register my copies of Lord, Lord II, and Planets but have hit a bit of a hard stop with trying to reach out to Gamport/Metropolis. Most of their emails bounce back and the ones that do not simply go unanswered. I am considering just sending a check to the address they have on file, but I'm a little hesitant. Chances are if their address goes to the office building on Renee St., they likely don't have it anymore and if it goes to the residences located on S. Renee St., there's no way to indicate which unit should receive it.

I am going to try and contact Laura Waldon, who after hours of research, seems to be the person capable of generating registration keys for those games, but I have a feeling that is going to be a long shot at best.

Will they function without regs? Yes, it seems so, but that limits the gameplay and functionality which is something I am trying to avoid. So if anyone has any contacts, connections, good advice (doesn't even have to be GOOD advice...lol) or can perhaps put me in the right direction to get a legit key for these games I would truly appreciate it.

Thanks so much and a special thanks to all the people working diligently to keep BBSing alive and to keep these games, and new ones, available to us all!

J

[daniel_spain]

CorpPorThis wrote:
> Hey everyone!
>
> In my quest to recreate the gaming communities of our best BBS days, I am
> hitting a few roadblocks and hoping that maybe someone here may just have
> some insight that can help.
>
> I would love to register my copies of Lord, Lord II, and Planets but have
> hit a bit of a hard stop with trying to reach out to Gamport/Metropolis.
> Most of their emails bounce back and the ones that do not simply go
> unanswered. I am considering just sending a check to the address they have
> on file, but I'm a little hesitant. Chances are if their address goes to
> the office building on Renee St., they likely don't have it anymore and if
> it goes to the residences located on S. Renee St., there's no way to
> indicate which unit should receive it.
>
> I am going to try and contact Laura Waldon, who after hours of research,
> seems to be the person capable of generating registration keys for those
> games, but I have a feeling that is going to be a long shot at best.
>
> Will they function without regs? Yes, it seems so, but that limits the
> gameplay and functionality which is something I am trying to avoid. So if
> anyone has any contacts, connections, good advice (doesn't even have to be
> GOOD advice...lol) or can perhaps put me in the right direction to get a
> legit key for these games I would truly appreciate it.
>
> Thanks so much and a special thanks to all the people working diligently to
> keep BBSing alive and to keep these games, and new ones, available to us
> all!
>
> J

** POST CONTENT REMOVED BY ADMIN **

[Duckula]

We do not condone the use of any mechanism that infringes on the copyright of any person or company. This includes any discussion of cracks, keygens or other techniques used to bypass or remove software protection.

Unfortunately over the passage of time the ability to register a lot of BBS software has become impossible. While this is frustrating, it does not condone infringing others rights.

[BlaZ]

Crack is wack! :)

[daniel_spain]

CorpPorThis wrote:
> Hey everyone!
>
> In my quest to recreate the gaming communities of our best BBS days, I am
> hitting a few roadblocks and hoping that maybe someone here may just have
> some insight that can help.
>
> I would love to register my copies of Lord, Lord II, and Planets but have
> hit a bit of a hard stop with trying to reach out to Gamport/Metropolis.
> Most of their emails bounce back and the ones that do not simply go
> unanswered. I am considering just sending a check to the address they have
> on file, but I'm a little hesitant. Chances are if their address goes to
> the office building on Renee St., they likely don't have it anymore and if
> it goes to the residences located on S. Renee St., there's no way to
> indicate which unit should receive it.
>
> I am going to try and contact Laura Waldon, who after hours of research,
> seems to be the person capable of generating registration keys for those
> games, but I have a feeling that is going to be a long shot at best.
>
> Will they function without regs? Yes, it seems so, but that limits the
> gameplay and functionality which is something I am trying to avoid. So if
> anyone has any contacts, connections, good advice (doesn't even have to be
> GOOD advice...lol) or can perhaps put me in the right direction to get a
> legit key for these games I would truly appreciate it.
>
> Thanks so much and a special thanks to all the people working diligently to
> keep BBSing alive and to keep these games, and new ones, available to us
> all!
>
> J

i meant to say on my last post i have been remaking lord for some time now. no igm support, just a simple grind to level 12 kill the dragon and repeat.
i stopped a while back because i was trying to do some heavy datamining and get the dragons stats since they were hardcoded and not a part of
the binary data files and i finally acquired that and Seth Able Robinson provided the methodology to perform attacks/power moves, etc...
then as luck would have it another sysop acquired the old pascal dos source and converted the game to a standalone javascript bbs door
so i was able to fill in the blanks on the events and such.

as for Metro man someone went that route some years ago trying to get the majormud source, offered them like 10 or 20 grand and they claimed
on reddit it took months but someone got back to them that it was more like 100 grand (yeah right) then it came about they lost that source
so who knows who is actually responding to those bbs-related emails anymore. i do offer caution.... be wary of someone saying yeah send me X
for the code and they just provide you with some crack code or exe patcher. Talk to Micheal Pressler, he actually had the last contract with Metro
for T-lord and provided them with the latest build. heard he even had an unreleased version. he may be able to shed some light on contact info
that could be more updated. his website is lordlegacy.org

[daniel_spain]

Duckula wrote:
> We do not condone the use of any mechanism that infringes on the copyright
> of any person or company. This includes any discussion of cracks, keygens
> or other techniques used to bypass or remove software protection.
>
> Unfortunately over the passage of time the ability to register a lot of BBS
> software has become impossible. While this is frustrating, it does not
> condone infringing others rights.

what we need is a forum maybe or some other listing where we can post info on this topic.
alot of door authors have publicly expressed they no longer have access to source or other
material due to disk damage or what have you but have said they do not mind their works
being umm let's say "forced to work" they post alot of fidonet, and other message networks
one of the most famous was doornet. another sysop on another platform (synchronet) actually
contacts alot of these door authors and forks or remakes their game as javascript and using the
spidermonkey java engine they function as doors on the synchronet platform. he was the guy that
actually got Chris Sherrick and John Morris to agree to distributed versions based on the TW2
basic/pascal source. he is some big time linux dev that does door stuff for fun and even has
a site at bbsdev.synchro.net now this obviously does not include isv stuff for majorbbs/wg but
would be great for sysops wanting to put door games on their system for instance Evan Elias
who is a facebook engineer, wrote a door game called DoorMud which was a majormud looking door
in the early 2000's ... multiuser, world editor, all sorts of options, and he provides it free nowadays
but unless you search there is no way to really know. https://serionbbs.com/dmud/index.html
is the site.

yes door games are not actually major bbs related but alot of sysops run door games so it would
be an important resource to those wanting to run a system and want to grow it legitimately.

[enusbaum]

daniel_spain wrote:
> as for Metro man someone went that route some years ago trying to get the majormud
> source, offered them like 10 or 20 grand and they claimed
> on reddit it took months but someone got back to them that it was more like 100 grand
> (yeah right) then it came about they lost that source
> so who knows who is actually responding to those bbs-related emails anymore. i do
> offer caution.... be wary of someone saying yeah send me X
> for the code and they just provide you with some crack code or exe patcher.

A couple years back we went super, SUPER deep investigating Metro, the company they are now, and how registrations are handled.

Best we can tell, there's 1 individual who doesn't work directly for MSE Audio (company that Metro eventually became/was acquired by/etc.) that handles sending registration codes out to people who send in checks. He runs his own local IT consulting business (small business web pages, wordpress, etc.) and it looks like just runs the keygens and sends people screen shots of the generated codes (they're publicly accessible on his web server, not sure if he's aware of this).

Both he and the CEO of MSE Audio will not respond directly to any requests related to MajorMUD, LORD, etc. He only sends the registration codes.

Anyway, our guess is he was at one time associated with Metro and subcontracts/splits registration $$ with MSE Audio as they come in. We don't think he has the source code, just the keygens.

I also agree with Dan, and even in our circle, we get about 1-2 guys per year (still!) that claim they got the MajorMUD source code through any number of dubious channels. We basically ask to see a directory listing of the source files as proof before payment, but they always vanish at that point. These days I'm more interested in the story they cook up as they seem to be getting more and more wild.

All this to say that I agree with Dan that you should use caution sending any money to Metro, but from what I've seen -- they *are* still sending out activation codes if you send them a physical check. They even updated their mailing address on the MajorMUD registration form in 2019 when MSE Audio moved their warehouse location. So, for them, it's just free money to accept the checks and email a code.

My thoughts on the eventual fate of things:

1. As they're a *real* company (not just some guy who ran an ISV), getting attorneys involved in regards to transfer of license/ownership would probably cost more than anyone has offered them. So everything will eventually just be lost over time.
2. It's already lost and only the keygens exist, until this guy gets tired of sending them or eventually... times out.

[CorpPorThis]

daniel_spain wrote:
Talk to
> Micheal Pressler, he actually had the last contract with Metro
> for T-lord and provided them with the latest build. heard he even had an unreleased
> version. he may be able to shed some light on contact info
> that could be more updated. his website is lordlegacy.org

Hmm, those sites don't seem to work anymore and the one for Mike seems to have changed. Does anyone have an email for him to try?

Thanks for helping to shed some light on all of this, Daniel.

[CorpPorThis]

enusbaum wrote:
> daniel_spain wrote:
> > as for Metro man someone went that route some years ago trying to get the
> majormud
> > source, offered them like 10 or 20 grand and they claimed
> > on reddit it took months but someone got back to them that it was more like 100
> grand
> > (yeah right) then it came about they lost that source
> > so who knows who is actually responding to those bbs-related emails anymore. i
> do
> > offer caution.... be wary of someone saying yeah send me X
> > for the code and they just provide you with some crack code or exe patcher.
>
> A couple years back we went super, SUPER deep investigating Metro, the company they
> are now, and how registrations are handled.
>
> Best we can tell, there's 1 individual who doesn't work directly for MSE Audio
> (company that Metro eventually became/was acquired by/etc.) that handles sending
> registration codes out to people who send in checks. He runs his own local IT
> consulting business (small business web pages, wordpress, etc.) and it looks like
> just runs the keygens and sends people screen shots of the generated codes (they're
> publicly accessible on his web server, not sure if he's aware of this).
>
> Both he and the CEO of MSE Audio will not respond directly to any requests related to
> MajorMUD, LORD, etc. He only sends the registration codes.
>
> Anyway, our guess is he was at one time associated with Metro and subcontracts/splits
> registration $$ with MSE Audio as they come in. We don't think he has the source
> code, just the keygens.
>
> I also agree with Dan, and even in our circle, we get about 1-2 guys per year
> (still!) that claim they got the MajorMUD source code through any number of dubious
> channels. We basically ask to see a directory listing of the source files as proof
> before payment, but they always vanish at that point. These days I'm more interested
> in the story they cook up as they seem to be getting more and more wild.
>
> All this to say that I agree with Dan that you should use caution sending any money
> to Metro, but from what I've seen -- they *are* still sending out activation codes if
> you send them a physical check. They even updated their mailing address on the
> MajorMUD registration form in 2019 when MSE Audio moved their warehouse location. So,
> for them, it's just free money to accept the checks and email a code.
>
> My thoughts on the eventual fate of things:
>
> 1. As they're a *real* company (not just some guy who ran an ISV), getting attorneys
> involved in regards to transfer of license/ownership would probably cost more than
> anyone has offered them. So everything will eventually just be lost over time.
> 2. It's already lost and only the keygens exist, until this guy gets tired of sending
> them or eventually... times out.

Well, that's even worth a try, but how do we contact 'this guy?' I wouldn't think it would be by using the address listed on the Metro/Gameport website.

Thanks for your help,

J

[enusbaum]

CorpPorThis wrote:
> Well, that's even worth a try, but how do we contact 'this guy?' I wouldn't think it
> would be by using the address listed on the Metro/Gameport website.

I won't publicly post his email address, but I can share it via PMs if you're interested.

Many people (myself included) have sent him emails directly, including CC-ing the President of MSE Audio (Lindsey Humphrey) regarding MajorMUD with no response. It seems he only shoots out the screen shots of the activation codes and that's it.