Hi Tekee. I don't know of anyone still playing multi-player. In fact, you should try to log on to the Sierra server to make sure it is still there. They turned some servers off recently. If you can connect to it, that means it's still available.

The servers seem to be gone. Is there any way to play a direct-connect game without Sierra's servers? Most games let you host your own server for IP games, and it would really suck if multiplayer is now permanantly disabled just because Sierra stopped support for it.

I keep getting a WP_ServerReq_NoServersSpecified error whenever I try.

A few months ago, Scott Kevill posted in the Sierra forum for Emperor that his GameRanger site was set up for hosting multi-player emperor. You can read his post here. I have no idea if his claim is true or not, but you can give it a shot.

I tried gameranger and it seems to get caught on the same problem ; the "master servers" being down.

It seems like not only is the Sierra lobby down, but one cannot even make a direct-connection IP game without Sierra's servers being up. Is this the case? If so, does this mean that all online play is currently impossible? I bought the game a couple of days ago for the multiplayer function alone, so I feel somewhat cheated.

Years ago, I tried the multiplayer function on my own network, behind a hardwire firewall. It was fun with close friends that understood I'm a slow player.
One computer acts as the server and the other computers on my home network could join in playing a game. I imagine you could setup a internet game using your computer as a server, but you'll need to find someone to colaborate with to get a multiplayer game going.
Perhaps Tekee is still interested in playing. With 2 heads you might figure out how to get it working.

Personally, I found the singleplayer games were more enjoyable, as I could play at my slow speed without boring others.

[This message has been edited by TuShaWuJin (edited 01-28-2009 @ 05:37 AM).]

But wouldn't that require a LAN setup and people being in the same household? I don't think I have a cable long enough to reach Russia.

Dynastia, I know you want to play multi-player with other players, but remember that you can always play the multi-player campaigns in single-player mode. I know that is not what you desire, but it still allows you to explore the different maps and scripting of each multi-player campaign.

I did this myself, and found it more interesting than I anticipated, especially with the multi-player campaigns that had different maps for the various cities.

I have been researching how other (more popular) Sierra-server games got around the closure of the servers, and I think I have found the problem.

It seems that Direct Connection games check your CD-Key with the Sierra servers (probably to stop pirates from playing online), and since the servers are down it can't complete the check and refuses the connection. This is from an Empire Earth website...

We've noted that a lot of people had problems connecting to games. Please see that it's nessecary to disable the CD-Key check of your game to play while the Sierra servers are down.

For Empire Earth the solution is as simple as changing a single line of code...

You can also do the changes manually. Therefore, just go to the EE or AOC main-directory. Look for the file "WONLobby.cfg" and open it with NOTEPAD. Set the value for "CdKeyCheck" from true to false!

I know this sounds sleazy and piratey but if it's what we have to do to access a function the game was advertised with, then I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it, and I think Sierra is extremely lax for not telling people how to fix this before the servers went down.

edit ; I tried it, and it works perfectly!

[This message has been edited by Dynastia (edited 02-01-2009 @ 01:02 PM).]

Hey Dynastia, ill play with you if you can find some way to make it work. Well have to arrange a time.

me too,
its an old game but i'd like it much..

and still i don't know how to solve this,

Init Failed
Unable to locate master serves. Please check your internet connection.

Status : Failed to initialize online system.

Gattaca_x2, welcome to Emperor Heaven.

The message you are getting is probably due to the fact that the Sierra servers for Emperor multiplayer have been shut down. Sorry.