Weiss (Server Emulator): Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 13:52, 25 June 2025

Weiss was the name of a Ragnarok Online Server Emulator which originated in Japan (likely in the Saitama region) which is one of the earliest server emulators. It was contemporary with the Japanese project, Athena, as in its README.md it notes that part of the inspiration for Weiss came from Athena, so it is likely that it, and Athena were based on 0052.lzh and/or ROServer as it discussed EmuServer Of Ragnarok (EOR).

History[edit | edit source]

So far not much is known about Weiss apart from what has been left in the eWeiss sourcecode, which includes readme files from the original Weiss project, which is likely from Saitama Japan due to it's "Saitama Saitama Saitama" reference. In the readme, the developers were particularly concerned about the prospect of releasing the emulator and asked members of the public not to distribute the source code in any way due to the perceived legal threats that may have occured.

The developers of Weiss discussed that they felt those running public servers ("private servers") would be at risk of legal threat and counselled them against doing so, but thought that Weiss itself would be less likely to be sued, but still couldn't rule out the possibility and thus suggested against it.

It's likely that because Ragnarok Online was far more popular in Japan that Weiss was not particularly wrong in its perception of legal threats as Gravity/GungHo had significantly more influence on the Japanese Diet through lobbying than they did in other countries where they did not have a commercial presence. There were several people who were sued by Gravity and several campaigns within Japan to be able to end private servers due to their perceived impact on profits around the time Weiss and Athena were being developed.

In eWeiss' sourcecode, a version of a README.md from the original Weiss project exists, which acknowledges the project could not have begun without 0001.txt (the packet specification) and 0052.lzh (the predecessor of most known server emulators), as well as fragments of Athena source code.

Weiss eventually fractured into other emulators such as eWeiss (an English translation), DarkWeiss, uWeiss, and other continuations, and it was symbolically continued on with the emulators such as Fusion, Prometheus and Helios Project.

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 {{Server_Emulator|serverEmulatorName=Weiss|datesFromTo=January 2003 - 2004?|currentStatus=Defunct (Replaced by eWeiss, later Fusion)|reason_for_closure=Merged with other project|programmingLanguage=Pascal (Borland Dephi 6)|operating_system=UNIX/Linux/Windows|software_license=GNU General Public License Version 2}}
-'''Weiss''' was the name of a Ragnarok Online Server Emulator which originated in Japan (likely in the Saitama region) which is one of the earliest server emulators. It was contemporary with the Japanese project, Athena, as in its README.md it notes that part of the inspiration for Weiss came from Athena, so it is likely that it, and Athena were based on [[0052.lzh]] and/or [[ROServer (Server Emulator)|ROServer]]. It was written in the programming language Pascal and is thought to be the earliest Ragnarok server emulator as when [[EmuServer Of Ragnarok (EOR)|EOR]] was discussing Ragnarok packets there was reference to Weiss among these discussions.
+'''Weiss''' was the name of a Ragnarok Online Server Emulator which originated in Japan (likely in the Saitama region) which is one of the earliest server emulators. It was contemporary with the Japanese project, Athena, as in its README.md it notes that part of the inspiration for Weiss came from Athena, so it is likely that it, and Athena were based on [[0052.lzh]] and/or [[ROServer (Server Emulator)|ROServer]] as it discussed [[EmuServer Of Ragnarok (EOR)]].
+== History ==
+So far not much is known about Weiss apart from what has been left in the eWeiss sourcecode, which includes readme files from the original Weiss project, which is likely from Saitama Japan due to it's "Saitama Saitama Saitama" reference. In the readme, the developers were particularly concerned about the prospect of releasing the emulator and asked members of the public not to distribute the source code in any way due to the perceived legal threats that may have occured.
+The developers of Weiss discussed that they felt those running public servers ("private servers") would be at risk of legal threat and counselled them against doing so, but thought that Weiss itself would be less likely to be sued, but still couldn't rule out the possibility and thus suggested against it.
+It's likely that because Ragnarok Online was far more popular in Japan that Weiss was not particularly wrong in its perception of legal threats as Gravity/GungHo had significantly more influence on the Japanese Diet through lobbying than they did in other countries where they did not have a commercial presence. There were several people who were sued by Gravity and several campaigns within Japan to be able to end private servers due to their perceived impact on profits around the time Weiss and Athena were being developed.
 In eWeiss' sourcecode, a version of a README.md from the original Weiss project exists, which acknowledges the project could not have begun without 0001.txt (the packet specification) and 0052.lzh (the predecessor of most known server emulators), as well as fragments of Athena source code.