.: Age of Mythology Private ESO Server :.

---

No no, of course not. I haven't done a private ESO server. What I've done is some work towards that and I think it could be possible and I want to share my findings with you guys. See this as my temporary comeback to AoMH as I'll have a round of exams soon so I can't work on this for a month or so.
Anyhow, this I'm going to briefly tell you what I've done so far.

---

First I get to see where AoM connected. It make sure it has the latest version and gets the update if needed. I downloaded all cabs files and noticed that for AoM the last 3 updates are missing (!) which is a bit weird. I think it could be possible to continue to use those cab files in the future using RTPatch which is what they used.

There are some cfg files at AoM\Startup folder which contain that information of the url of this updatelist.xml and ESO url and they are 100% configurable so that allows an easy way to make AoM connect to a different ESO. Looking at production.cfg (its inside the bar file) I saw the ESOConfigURL. Downloaded it to my Dropbox public folder and reset that value to my file and toyed with values - Message of day, ESO Pop, refresh intervals, ESOOutageMessage, all it seems to work. The last one kicks a user out while displaying a message which is pretty interesting - maybe apply a personalized banned message here?

So now, the tricky part - actually making something that resembles the servers AoM connects to. The major problem is that AoM connects to aom.eso.com using SSL which means its encrypted, which is pretty scary and frustrating at first however I got it working (after a few days) and I was able to read what AoM sends to the aom.eso.com, and use that to resend to the aom.eso.com to see the replies. Tho, I'll tell you that aom.eso.com is not the first server it connects, it's login.passport.com - that's Microsoft login plataform for their own services, such as Windows Live Mail and Messenger. So, after realizing just that, I logged in to Messenger using my AoMUsername@eso.com and password and logged in to Windows Live Mail using just that too. I can add people and send emails from that account, which is pretty neat. . Go ahead and try it out! This might not be something 100% new but it was to me . Moving on.

AoM request several things to ESO in the following order: GetConfig, GetMasterTicket, ActivateProductKey, GetServiceTicket, RegisterNickname, VerifyTicket. The bolded one are tricky since there's part of the message that's encrypted.. Which can really mean no private ESO on the worst case scenario. .

Now after gathering what ESO replies to AoM on a positive AoM login request - my username and correct password, along with my valid CDKey, and save them on my server so it always replies just that to AoM I started to experiment. And oh boy did I find something awesome. So awesome I'm amazed myself as in all this time I'm probably the first to do this. Maybe the previous AoM servers had better protection or something, but here I'm logged in as nottud and Yeegaabooon:



Chatting works, join and hosting games works, looking for stats works, all that use different servers which I didn't replace and what actually authenticates a user is my fake server always saying it's authenticated. On the upside you can't win\lose points in a rated - sorry nottud, you'd have won 20 points on AoM rating . Tho everything else seems to work as long as you enter an existing nickname. Mythic_Freak and Oboe agree that it's kinda creepy seeing me logged him as their account. Not to worry tho, this doesn't grant full-access nor I can get your password - that's stored on Microsoft servers.

Now the next step towards a working ESO would be figuring out those encrypted messages.. Since the messages that logged my in yesterday don't do so today. Maybe that's because I'm still trying to access parts of the real ESO kicking me out. Not sure.

Using Wireshark I was able to see the packets sent between AoM and the chat server. They seem to be encoded. Maybe compressed. The latter also being because ESOClientDLL on AoM folder contains strings from zlib. Which means that atleast part of the connections are compressed, so more testing will be needed.

Hosting a game seems to be a mixture of XML data and probably AoM compressed messages. I think a private-hosting server is also doable.

Stats seem to be simple since they are mainly XML. Pretty much doable - I was thinking, keeping the rest of ESO intact but maybe use a different Ladder to store ratings of a community competition for example...

---

So this is what I've so far gather so far. Now I'm not going to reveal my code nor further explain any specifics on how I got to make the fake servers work and getting past the SSL protection, I merely want to demonstrate of what's possible, and I welcome you to constructively discuss the findings.

Maybe the future of this could mean an integrated with Fan Patch?

---

Progress status:

Name	Progress
Account creation ingame	100%
Password recovery button	0%
User login to ESO	100%
Message of the day	100%
ESO Population	90%
Address server	90%
Hosting advanced games	100%
ESO Stats\Ladder	35%
Upload ESO stats at the end of a match	0%
Chats\Lobby Server	90%
Friends Server	90%
Rated game matching	75%

-invent00r

[This message has been edited by invent00r (edited 09-15-2013 @ 04:20 AM).]