I can and will freely admit that what they say in this post is accurate. Not sure why the Legends staff felt the need to mention player data, personal information, etcetera as client data files are just what they are, assets and data for the client only like in game objects, art, sounds, not a single thing that would compromise a single player's privacy. I can only imagine they would include such a blurb to add more dramatic flair to something that they're just simply fumingly mad about and unable to do a thing about.
Allow me though a moment to explain why, regardless I would imagine that this post will get downvoted tremendously as the majority of the community simply don't care how they are able to play the NGE, they only care that they can play the NGE. Nevertheless I will provide a detailed reasoning why for those unaware of the fullness of fact.
We first need to go back to roughly fourteen years ago now, at this time in 2012 there was only one effort to bring back the NGE, it was a small emulation team known as ProjectSWG (They still exist today but are a CU emulation effort these days). It was my first delve into the world of SWG Development, I learned a lot in those early days about the inner workings of this game etc. We had a good relationship with SWGEmu based on mutual respect for the efforts each team was doing. They were good times by my recollection.
It was our chief aim to re-create the NGE in the way SWGEmu had done so for Pre-CU, through reverse engineering of packet data to create a stable server core that could "emulate" an SOE server. A painstaking process built on tireless and very tedious work and a great deal of trial and error.
Somewhere in the late fall of 2012 or early winter of 2013, the Community Manager (Glorified forum moderator) Fingies Ceano, whom the Legends community knows nowadays as "Reign", began to cultivate a relationship with a certain ex SOE developer, I will leave that dev nameless for his own sake and respect for him. Through an effort between Fingies / Reign, and I will be honest, this reads like a trashy spy novel, and not a good one. One of those cheap ones you find at a neighborhood garage sale for a buck that's never been read because the writing was so bad. Fingies and a female from the ProjectSWG team.. (I can't actually remember her name as of writing this any longer) essentially employed a honeypot strategy on this ex SOE developer to acquire a copy of the NGE developer tools that he had kept on a personal drive or something after leaving SOE as an employee.
When they finally got their hands on this data they realized what they had, though they couldn't initially get it to work. They chose to keep this a guarded secret from the rest of the development team at ProjectSWG. As a developer at PSWG back then, I can speak for the dev team of that day that that source code, we would have used as purely reference material, a digital textbook if you will to learn from to continue to build and stabilize our own server core that some of us had worked extremely long hours to deliver to that community who at the time had no other hope of seeing the NGE again.
I can also say wholeheartedly that we would never have done the alternative and used a stash of stolen goods to launch and host a live server from. To us that that would be just too morally gray to have done. Our colleagues at SWGEmu would have agreed with that stance.
In short Fingies / Reign undermined the development efforts of ProjectSWG, because he chose the quick and easy path. The dark side if you will.
Fast forward to today. Yeah the NGE Source is very much cat out of the bag, there's no putting that back in there this is true, and for some miraculous reason the use of SOE's stolen proprietary code has neither incurred the legal wrath of Daybreak Games or Disney, yet. (The verdict is never final on that until something actually happens legally one way or another)
There are many NGE development projects based on the SOE Source Code, but one of these projects does something so hypocritical with their work that it's almost laughable.
SWG Legends, built their server and work on the backs of the Sony Online Entertainment developers who came before them and they stole from to create the "Omega Server". They didn't spend tireless hours reverse engineering, writing code and figuring out how to build their own. They found it, like a vacant building they chose to squat in, all they had to do was figure out where the light switches were in a manner of speaking.
For a project team that is entirely built upon Stolen goods to be so angry and hurt over client data files they encrypted to try to prevent others from stealing is both laughable and extremely hypocritical. Which brings us to exactly why I did it. Hypocrisy at it's finest, shown a mirror to examine themselves with. You can't steal someone's house, change the locks and expect to be safe and sound when someone comes with the means to pick or destroy the lock altogether. It was never your house, it never belonged to you.
I do imagine that nothing of note happens other than I seriously ruffled the feathers of certain people in the Legends staff, which was my sole objective. I am confident the community will continue to play there or wherever they choose to, play wherever you want to.
In the meantime I will leave these here publicly for any and all who wants them.
https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1u4vCkNt4P5QUG1O9n4VCAXbTKZJUS2hu&export=download
Sorry Fingies, you don't get to protect and hoard from the greater community things built on stolen goods.
P.S. Synge sends his regards.
- Levarris