Aegis Support Board: Difference between revisions
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The '''Aegis Support Board''' (known also as ASB) was a forum and community originally created as a support forum for leaked versions of the Gravity-created software AEGIS. It grew to be the largest forum for public-domain Ragnarok Online content for both AEGIS and non-AEGIS private servers. It ran from late 2004 until 2017 when it was discontinued in favour of a Discord server. | The '''Aegis Support Board''' (known also as ASB) was a forum and community originally created as a support forum for leaked versions of the Gravity-created software AEGIS. It grew to be the largest forum for public-domain Ragnarok Online content for both AEGIS and non-AEGIS private servers. It ran from late 2004 until 2017 when it was discontinued in favour of a Discord server. | ||
== History == | |||
=== Alleged Lawsuit and move to Russian bulletproof hosting === | |||
According to the lead developer of the fusion emulator and several others, the Aegis Support boards in 2004 was hosted in the European Union by a person named Maxwell (also known as [email protected]), owing to one of its owners, Tranmir, being based in the United Kingdom, which allegedly led to a court case or legal threat being made against the Aegis Support Boards in the European Union. As a result of this alleged legal suit, server emulator [[Fusion (Server Emulator)|The Fusion Project]], suspending downloads of its server software until Maxwell received $830 (or presumed European currency equivalent) in legal costs, which had accumulated $250 in 3 days<ref name=":0">Archive.org. (2025). ''The Fusion Project''. [online] Available at: <nowiki>https://web.archive.org/web/20040606024117/http://www.fusion.cobax.net/index.php</nowiki> [Accessed 25 Jun. 2025]. | |||
(Archive: https://archive.is/wip/m6XmP)</ref>. | |||
This appears not to have been perceived well by some members of the ASB community, who messaged Tranmir, the owner of ASB, to state that AlexKreuz, developer of Fusion, was planning on staging a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which Kreuz denied. As a result because Kreuz was not banned by Tranmir, Kreuz's ISP which hosted The Fusion Project was contacted, most likely by the person alleging the DDoS attack, alleging that he was running an illegal Ragnarok Online server. As a result, Kreuz's ISP gave him a grace period to remove infringing copyrighted material, most likely because they had not received a specific legal threat, and as a result of this the Fusion forums were closed<ref name=":0" /> to prevent potential breaches of this agreement. | |||
If such a threat were made, it was most likely because the Aegis Support Boards had contents which may have been considered to be distributing illegal copies of AEGIS and/or other Gravity software. This however, is something that has always been the subject of fierce debate with anonymous sources familiar to the Ragnarok Wiki - particularly because several sources other than the Aegis Support Boards claimed to have retrieved copies of AEGIS because they were left on publicly-available FTP sites in unprotected URLs, such as when the Chinese Ragnarok Online service was launched, which meant that at one point the software was available for public consumption which would make the argument that such software was obtained by hacking incorrect and also potentially change the legal optics of what happened. | |||
Because these binaries were allegedly available globally but also distributed in various ways via the Aegis Support Board and other communities, it is hard to tell where the nexus of public availability of AEGIS came from. There were also several cases where Gravity claimed they were hacked -- and it is likely that communities other than the ASB were involved in distributing AEGIS binaries. | |||
According to other sources, this lawsuit caused the server to be migrated to The Russian Federation in order to avoid any potential lawsuits. As a result on the Aegis Support Boards, several posts were made asking for any potential hosting and the domain name of the Aegis Support Boards moved several times. | |||
==== Aside on Ragnarok Wiki's policy on AEGIS and other copyrighted Ragnarok Online materials ==== | |||
It must be noted that the question of the legality of the binaries is very much up in the air and beyond the scope of this wiki -- particularly as we operate in a non-profit basis and base our research on publicly-available documents, and specifically do not accept materials which are expressly the copyrighted property of Gravity and its subsidiaries and partners. While we think that the question of what AEGIS did is valid, and we do reference anonymous sources about AEGIS, we do not reproduce, distribute, or reference specific files or contents of AEGIS binaries or files, such as those which were distributed by the ASB among others as this would be fruit of the poisoned tree. | |||
We do not want to, and will not, reference internal sourcecode or files within AEGIS specifically because we feel this is stepping over a line of preservation and non-profit Ragnarok stewardship, and into a legal gray area which we do not wish to, nor have the legal resources to dispute. | |||
== Known URLs == | |||
* http://snk.netdiscount.de/aegis/ | |||
== References == | |||
[[Category:Public Domain Ragnarok Online]] | |||
[[Category:Private Servers]] | |||
[[Category:AEGIS]] | |||
[[Category:Ragnarok Online Emulators]] | |||
Latest revision as of 12:57, 30 June 2025
The Aegis Support Board (known also as ASB) was a forum and community originally created as a support forum for leaked versions of the Gravity-created software AEGIS. It grew to be the largest forum for public-domain Ragnarok Online content for both AEGIS and non-AEGIS private servers. It ran from late 2004 until 2017 when it was discontinued in favour of a Discord server.
History[edit | edit source]
Alleged Lawsuit and move to Russian bulletproof hosting[edit | edit source]
According to the lead developer of the fusion emulator and several others, the Aegis Support boards in 2004 was hosted in the European Union by a person named Maxwell (also known as [email protected]), owing to one of its owners, Tranmir, being based in the United Kingdom, which allegedly led to a court case or legal threat being made against the Aegis Support Boards in the European Union. As a result of this alleged legal suit, server emulator The Fusion Project, suspending downloads of its server software until Maxwell received $830 (or presumed European currency equivalent) in legal costs, which had accumulated $250 in 3 days[1].
This appears not to have been perceived well by some members of the ASB community, who messaged Tranmir, the owner of ASB, to state that AlexKreuz, developer of Fusion, was planning on staging a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which Kreuz denied. As a result because Kreuz was not banned by Tranmir, Kreuz's ISP which hosted The Fusion Project was contacted, most likely by the person alleging the DDoS attack, alleging that he was running an illegal Ragnarok Online server. As a result, Kreuz's ISP gave him a grace period to remove infringing copyrighted material, most likely because they had not received a specific legal threat, and as a result of this the Fusion forums were closed[1] to prevent potential breaches of this agreement.
If such a threat were made, it was most likely because the Aegis Support Boards had contents which may have been considered to be distributing illegal copies of AEGIS and/or other Gravity software. This however, is something that has always been the subject of fierce debate with anonymous sources familiar to the Ragnarok Wiki - particularly because several sources other than the Aegis Support Boards claimed to have retrieved copies of AEGIS because they were left on publicly-available FTP sites in unprotected URLs, such as when the Chinese Ragnarok Online service was launched, which meant that at one point the software was available for public consumption which would make the argument that such software was obtained by hacking incorrect and also potentially change the legal optics of what happened.
Because these binaries were allegedly available globally but also distributed in various ways via the Aegis Support Board and other communities, it is hard to tell where the nexus of public availability of AEGIS came from. There were also several cases where Gravity claimed they were hacked -- and it is likely that communities other than the ASB were involved in distributing AEGIS binaries.
According to other sources, this lawsuit caused the server to be migrated to The Russian Federation in order to avoid any potential lawsuits. As a result on the Aegis Support Boards, several posts were made asking for any potential hosting and the domain name of the Aegis Support Boards moved several times.
Aside on Ragnarok Wiki's policy on AEGIS and other copyrighted Ragnarok Online materials[edit | edit source]
It must be noted that the question of the legality of the binaries is very much up in the air and beyond the scope of this wiki -- particularly as we operate in a non-profit basis and base our research on publicly-available documents, and specifically do not accept materials which are expressly the copyrighted property of Gravity and its subsidiaries and partners. While we think that the question of what AEGIS did is valid, and we do reference anonymous sources about AEGIS, we do not reproduce, distribute, or reference specific files or contents of AEGIS binaries or files, such as those which were distributed by the ASB among others as this would be fruit of the poisoned tree.
We do not want to, and will not, reference internal sourcecode or files within AEGIS specifically because we feel this is stepping over a line of preservation and non-profit Ragnarok stewardship, and into a legal gray area which we do not wish to, nor have the legal resources to dispute.
Known URLs[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Archive.org. (2025). The Fusion Project. [online] Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20040606024117/http://www.fusion.cobax.net/index.php [Accessed 25 Jun. 2025]. (Archive: https://archive.is/wip/m6XmP)
