So, full 'story':
Almost half a year ago now, as soon as this all started to look like 'it might just work...' (when cocomed posted his source code and Negative One his bugfixes), I made an initial offer on a domain trading platform to the owner of the original sacred2 lobby. I am used to simply buy any cheap, random domain which fits my purpose and is registered fast if I happen to need one. The occassion never occured to me that I felt compelled to go after a very specfic one already belonging to someone else. And well, nothing much of relevance happened for quite a while. But somehow, a few weeks ago, I got an email alert stating that my offer had been accepted. And today (or yesterday, appearently me typing this took too long :)), after going through a mindshattering slow process of waiting, reading, waiting, writing and constantly hoping for an answer or event to happen and please not abort the whole transfer to my registrar it is finally completed successfully. Yes!
Why is this wonderful? Having control of the sacred2.net domain which is embedded by default into the games config files allows me to make a lobby instance way more accessible to the average player who does not know about the forums, obscure titled threads like this one or did not even want to mess with configfiles of his brand new game. But nethertheless 'out of the box' a clean sacred2 installation running without any modifications will be provided now with the emulated lobby the technically same way like with the original one back then. No one will be spared
I know none of this is about lobby coding itself (after all, I am still in debt of at least some small promised & postponed improvements to the lobby ;)), but yet I think in the meanwhile getting some more players to actually know about this and giving those who just want to play together a nice playground will have it's purpose, too. It would be kind of a waste to just tinker on this in some dark forums corner with only a few enthusiasts experimenting with it while it could be already out there doing it's job good enough for most ;)
For those who are already using my s2cm domain, nothing changes, because sacred2.net redirects now to the same servers.
Whoever has a mod installed, which is the only minor nuisance remaining, might still need that additional file for the OpenNet button. But that is the only client side hassle remaining at all now and I guess if the modders see this working reliable enough they might be willing to enable the multiplayer buttons in their next releases by default again if asked kindly.
The opening post has been updated, title and thread tags, too, to make it a bit more appealing to actual players and easier to find for them. After all, since you have already been so nice to pin this, it might catch a few eyes more that way. Seems like this also has reset thread following, whoops.
As far as I have been able to gather the list of subdomains,
eu.sacred2.net:6800
es.sacred2.net:6810
ru.sacred2.net:6820
ee.sacred2.net:6850
us.sacred2.net:6900
should be all combinations of ports and domain this needs to cover to work for everyone.
Please write me if some country specific url is missing. I will try to do a few minor improvements, especially to documentation soon, but aside from that, I will probably just play for a while and will meet you all on the servers, I suppose... ;)