The Legend of Mir 2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Legend of Mir 2 (Korean: 미르의 전설 2) is a sprite based isometric 3-D massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Korean-based Wemade Entertainment. There are currently four versions of Mir 2; Korean Mir, Chinese Mir, Taiwanese Mir, and European Mir. The Italian company Game Network is responsible for the operation of the European version of the game. Game Network originally had their own satellite television channel, but it was cancelled due to lack of funding.
While being moderately successful in Europe, it has been incredibly well-received in Asia, and was the most popular MMORPG in China in 2002 and 2003, with over 250,000 simultaneous users being reported.
Mir 2 continues to officially run in both Korea and Europe, albeit with lower player counts. The technology used to render the game is antiquated, as it simply loads pre-rendered images to display the world while using no real rendering engine, as opposed to most of the 3D game technology used today.
There is also a sequel, The Legend of Mir 3, which has the same gameplay elements but has updated graphics, as well as being larger. It has not quite reached the popularity levels of its predecessor, and has so far been released in the same countries as Mir 2, as well as in the U.S..
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[edit] Chinese Mir
Mir 2 is operated by Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited, established in December, 1999. In September 2001, Shanda published Mir 2 as its first game. Later in November, 2003 Shanda acquired the controlling stake in Actoz who owns 50% of the copyright for Mir 2.
Another game by Shanda, The World of Legend, allegedly infringes on copyrighted Mir 2 content, prompting legal action by Wemade.
Mir 2 continues to officially run in both Korea and Europe, albeit with lower player counts. The technology used to render the game is antiquated, as it simply loads pre-rendered images to display the world while using no real rendering engine, as opposed to most of the 3D game technology used today.
[edit] Troubles
Similar to many MMORPGs, Legend of Mir 2 suffers from tailor-made cheat programs, and numerous bug exploits have been abused by players. Private servers are also a problem, as the server code has been leaked onto the internet on more than one occasion.
More recently Mir has been subject to packet editing, though it has been going on behind the scenes for some time it became more obvious when people started to exploit the Challenge NPC, resulting in multiple lvl 46+ characters appearing ingame within hours, 1000's of benediction oils being created and possibly the most clear sign of packeting, complete server crashing.
On the 12th of December 2006 it came to light that a Game Master character had been created/hacked as one was reported to have spawned fox spirits all over mir, resulting in people losing items and the server having to be rewound by an hour. Rumours are that these people have had access to the gm for a while and that have spawned rare items ingame in secret.
During the 5th anniversary event in 2006, an NPC (non player character) was added to the game and was called White Rose. By talking to this NPC a player could try their hand at several different gambling games; including an infamous game of dice. The player could select to play a game with 1-5 die, and would bet a rather low amount of gold (ingame currency). You would then have to guess which numbers would be played - for example, the player chooses 4 dice and the numbers 3224. The prizes included a benediction oil for guessing 3 correctly, a level 44 armour for guessing 4, and a powerful level 43 weapon for guessing 5 correctly. When most of the mir playing public discovered the prizes, some used macro programs to continuously bet on the npc while they could remove themselves from the screen for many hours, and hopefully return to have a level 43 weapon (worth hundreds of millions of gold). After a period of time the legend of mir staff altered the NPC so that the conversational links changed places with a link that said "Send me to Hell". Clicking on this sent the player into Prajna Temple, a dungeon in the game. This would catch out any macro-er and most likely kill the character as the player would not be in front of the screen. However the White Rose NPC was later removed altogether as certain players used packet editing software to create huge amounts of 43 Weapons, 44 armours and benediction oils as well as exploiting the lower prizes which gave them billions in gold. These players were later banned however it is often speculated by players that much of the exploited gold is still in-game even though the Legend of Mir staff insist it has all been deleted. The Staff later confirmed that a certain exploiter had managed to obtain over 100 Sword of War Gods, the level 43 weapon for the Warrior class (and the most valuable of the 43 weapons.)
[edit] Software Leak
During the summer of 2002, months before the release of a large European Mir patch nicknamed "Spider Patch", a distribution server used by Wemade Entertainment mysteriously contained a copy of a the Korean test game server, and within it held all the applications required to operate a game server. Soon, a group of individuals from around the world assembled to translate the software and NPC dialog into English from the original Korean.
The resulting translated files were then used by the individuals as the first private server.
After the files had been translated, one of the members of the group leaked the files, this caused anger amongst the group, who in the end decided to tidy the files up and make an "official" release. After this release the group disbanded.
Considerable strides have been made over the years following, and development had been continued by many different individuals and groups of Chinese players with English private servers relying on translated versions of Chinese private server developments, and even then these continued updates to the game were only be based on the leaked 1.4 version of the software, which soon became far out of date.
To compensate a number of Chinese groups created their own version of the latest software: a 1.9 Emulator in 2005, which has removed all reliance on software leaks. This was also translated for the English private server community.
The Diamond M2 is the latest development, created by an English speaking group. Developed by the person responsible for the troubles of euro mir, it has its own dedicated client, and removes the reliance of English private servers on the Chinese for updates. This is coded in the original Delphi code that is used to create the programs and because they have this source they have managed to bring their version almost in-line with the official running version, and are continuing to reach this goal so that there will be a single 'base' set of files that are simple and ready for all. As well as bringing it in line with the european version they also have the ability to add new elements to the game to suit each private server owners specific tastes.
