Most of the time these "private" servers are really pirate servers. If you ever see a runescape "private" server, it is a pirate server and you should not go there. Also if you somehow decide you want to play on one of these servers, DO NOT put your official runescape password in there as many people are just trying to steal your account. Making a runescape private server is illegal! People who have made these servers have managed to steal or make the runescape server code. I don't know about other games and their private servers but as for runescape its illegal and you should not do it.
Post your opinions here about runescape private servers or other private servers and if they're illegal or not.

Someone i know has a program for making a custom or private server for tibia. It think it is a very good idea as you can have great fun by modding the items and maps but it does have security risks. As you suggested they could be used to steal passwords which of course is not good. Im guessing by the way they work they would not use the official game servers to validate a login so you could probably log in with a different user/pass combination than your real one.

I think if a decent person makes a private server its a great thing however if a cracker etc... creates one its not so good. So anyone planning on playin on a private server try not to use the propper user/pass combination as dazappa said, chances are it wont validate it and it will let you log on as anyone with any password or username. and if in doubt dont risk it!

Gravity, I remember sometime back, sued a guy for making a Ragnarok Online private server. It was a really big one so word got out pretty fast.

I guess... privates servers are best for a large group of friends only? Private.

I don't think private servers are pirate servers. It's there because it's private and not public. Whether or not the owner of the private servers will steal passwords, that we all won't know unless you specially tell us which private servers did that. Otherwise, it's still wise not to use the same password for the public and private servers.

The objective of having a private server is because they can host games without any charges and play according to their server set of rules. In public servers, it's controlled by the game developer. Of course, there's always an offside thinking that because private servers doesn't charge for gameplay, therefore it's pirating games. Still the official game client have to be paid for. For example World of Warcraft. You would have to buy a legit copy of WoW in order to play in public and private games. You can never find another place to download the client game for free. Hence I don't think it's pirating games by hosting a private server.

If the client games are free to download, and whether or not the game play on the public servers are chargable, hosting a private server still doesn't pirate the game simply because it's free to download.

all a private server is is a virtual server its a virtual enviroment on a physical server and it is called a private server as the other virtual users on that server cant get to your account thats why its called a private server.

its basically the same as a dedicated server but cheaper.

This post has been edited by mxweb: May 13 2006, 08:45 AM