CMS wrote:
Wouldn't that be something? To find someone on the "inside" willing to do that? And, I agree with you that they allow the EMU's as a source of info and to "feel the pulse" of the UO community, in a way. I've seen a number of changes in UO that I'm sure had something to do with the popularity of those things in Player-run shards. *nods*
I had the opportunity to speak to the lead UO team (OSI no longer exists) server programmer in person once for about 20 minutes. I, of course, mostly spoke about emulation and tried to squeeze as much information as I could from him in that short amount of time. I learned a few things, and reaffirmed some suspicions that day.
First, EA has hired a number of former emulation developers. All of the people they have hired are programmers and they only hired them when they first applied for the job and met the qualifications. Knowing the innards of the protocol and such just means less training time, and is a minor plus. They have never actively "sought out" anyone from the emulation scene.
Some of the programmers, including him, had the general feeling that everyone and everything relating to UO emulation is amateur and not worth notice. The practice even mildly offends some of them, and the corporate people consider it outright piracy. Either way, I definitely did not get the impression that they look at emulation, let alone study it.
As for stealing ideas from emulation -- that is not something I think is remotely likely. Besides it being considered a "waste of time" there, they have a good many people who come up with the same ideas either coincidently because they are logical extensions of the current design, or are often inspired by the same work that inspired the emulated shards you think they got it from. Sure, many player-ran shards have had elves for a good long while, but so have other commercial games, books, movies, etc. The few ideas that cannot be traced to other media or other commercial games are, without any exception I can think of, unique to the official servers first, and only appear on player-ran servers later. Minor game-play issues that share a strikingly similar system as to that of player-ran shards may even have been introduced by players who play on both player-ran and commercial servers, but even then, I think the influence of emulated servers is at a minimum and only second-hand.
Because of the general corporate consensus on emulation, and because EA is known to enjoy suing people, I see no reason to believe any individual would have enough motivation to risk lawsuit at worst and loss of job at best just so that emulated servers could use custom maps. Making those changes for that purpose would be illegal at worst and look extremely negative on the employee at best, and they would most certainly be detected quickly, given the level QA/QC involved.
Richard Garriott, original creator of the entire Ultima series (also known as Lord British), is known to support any and all remake attempts, emulation, and general fun at the expense of his games. If fun to you means remaking it, reworking the story, or just playing it as is, he generally not only condones the activity, but outright applauds those who attempt it. Unfortunately, RG no longer owns the rights to anything Ultima-related, save for the title "Lord British" -- and EA is very stingy about who can use it and for what purposes. The problem is not that kind sympathetic individuals who could help do not exist; the problem is that they cannot assist for legal reasons (besides, RG does not know C++ and does not have access to the source anymore, anyway, heh).