JOIN US! Enter the Galaxies Reborn Forums & become a member!

Why should I choose Galaxies Reborn to play the Star Wars Galaxies Emu?
Imagine if you will, being a player that has chosen a less populated SWG ANH server. Six months after you start playing SWG, you log in and find out that your emu server has closed down, because either that admin crew doesn't care or because players don't want to play on a laggy, empty emu server.

All of your hard work is gone.

Just like the CU. Just like the NGE.

You then find a list of the Star Wars Galaxies emu servers that remain, and see that this one is still going and more vibrant than ever, flooded with refugees from other collapsed SWG emu servers, because we have a lag-free environment and players are everywhere.

And you have to start over.

We are in this for the long haul. This server is provided to you, free of charge; however, it does cost us money to operate. How can we do it? Each of the staff are professional working people, and have dedicated part of our income to this. We have to, as our connection agreement requires a multi-year contract.

You have our solemn oath. This SWG ANH server will be the last galaxy standing. For the love of the game.

Our connection to the world
The main datacenter is located in the Chicago Board of Trading Building. It is one of the world’s largest financial institutions, and is fully redundant in its power supply, communications, and other amenities that include elaborate security and surveillance systems.

The Chicago board of trade has a built-in infrastructure of fiber optic raisers throughout its building which ensures easy delivery of any of many ISPs that are present in the building.

Our connection:
1 Gbit Port
Unmetered Transfer

We can host 3,000 players at once with no lag.
Galaxies Reborn is the land that lag forgot.

Legalities

Is this legal?
Yes. The SWG emulator teams are writing their own code. Nothing belonging to SOE is being used. This is a non-commercial enterprise, and since no fees are being charged, no laws are being broken.

What about me? Can I get in trouble for playing on this server?
Absolutely not. You bought the game and can use it as you want. There is no law requiring you to use SOE's servers.

What about you guys? Can you get in trouble for hositng this game?
Absolutely not. We are hosting a private server using privately written code. Nothing we do has anything to do with SOE, as evidenced by other SOE game emulators and all the WoW emulators that still operate.
The Galaxies Reborn Admin has read the parts of the copyright act that applies to us and here's why we are safe:
copyright exists to prevent others from producing copies of works that belong to other people and distributing them for profit

We are not copying anything belonging to SOE or LA
We are not distrubiting anything that belongs to SOE or LA
We are not making profit from anything belonging to SOE or LA

When you log in and play Star Wars Galaxies, and see the terrain and npc's and buildings - all that is done client side. All those images are created on the user's computer. The user (you) has already PAID for that when you bought the game. There is no law requiring you to use Sony's servers. They have no legal authority to force you to pay to use their servers.

The emu server actually has very little to do with how one plays the game. When a player moves his character and an npc spawns, that's the emu server telling the client to generate an npc based on data already installed on the user's pc. If the emuserver actually generated the image of the npc on your computer the game would be so slow that it would be unplayable, as all that data would have to be transmitted from the server over the internet to your computer, like opening a web page.
That's the beauty of an emulator. You dont need to copy any of soe's code to interact with a client. The SWG emu teams have done exactly that: written their own code to interact with the files already installed on the user's pc.

Copyright law can not apply here because:
There is no code from Sony on the server
The SWG game files that render are installed on the pc of someone who paid for it and can do with it whatever they like.

If we charged money, then there would be a different issue. If we offered the game disks in a downloadable format, then there would definitely be an issue. That is software piracy and we will not do it.

Copyright laws are, for the most part, in place to prevent software pirates from copying and selling works that do not belong to them.

It is the arguable that LA is more worried about the millions of bootleg copies of ep1-6 out there than a few hundred people using something they no longer offer as a service.

This has been discussed to death on the emu forum - there are two key concerns here:
- the user (you)
- the host (me)

There is no law requiring you to play on Sony's servers. You paid for the game, you can use it however you like. So as long as you did not steal the game you are safe.

On our end, the emu database will not hold any Sony code. All the rendering is done client side. All the code that will on the database was written by non-Sony people. So since we am using ZERO Sony code - they cant do anything.

Now we get into the area of intent. Is it our intent to break the law here? To steal their game and get rich off it? Of course not. We are not earning profit by hosting a free SWG PRE CU emulator. And as we all know, copyright law, like most law, is written to protect profit.

There are two argments that keep the law on our side:
- Zero profit is being made (re fan films)
- Zero profit is being taken away from Sony and Lucasarts as pre-cu is no longer available

Pre-cu code is abandonware. SWG Pre-cu doesnt exist anymore. Pre-cu is not earning sony any money. Pre-cu is never coming back. They remind us of this every day on the SWG forums when one of their customers asks for pre-cu.
Unlike some WOW servers that have been shut down - we are not duplicating an active game, nor are we charging any money.

All Trademarks on this web site are owned and copyrighted by their respective companies.
SOE and Sony are trademarks of Sony Inc. LucasArts, Star Wars, and related imagery are Trademarks of LucasArts Inc.