Wow, I still come around these forums from time to time and this time I actually get to say something
.
This is the history of DOL as I remember it up until the point when I left (it's starting to get a bit hazy but i'll do my best):
A long time ago in a land far far away...
Actually it was around sometime in january of 2002 (about 3-4 months after DAoC had been released). I was involved with a project to emulate the alpha client for UO. This project was being head up by Punt (of UOX fame) and Retalin (a.k.a. Ryan who later went on to start RunUO). Emulating the alpha client for UO was pretty much the dumbest idea ever and needless to say the project didn't last very long. However 2 other fellows I had been working with on the project - Ivel and Sembiance - were interested in sticking together to work on another non-UO emulation project. The debate was would we emulate DAoC or AO. In the end we decided to go with DAoC. Thus CoAD was born.
Sembiance wrote our first packet sniffer and we began the tedious process of cracking DAoC. This started off really slow as all of us had work and school and lets face it - packet cracking is just plain boring as hell. After a couple months we found out about another DAoC project by the name of Camelots World that was being headed up by a fellow by the name of fyck. This project was having a rough time as they had not cracked the crypto yet. We decided to contact them and propose a merger to pool our collective talents. They agreed and thus CoX was born. The new additions to the team were fyck, Sir Eggbert, and DubZio. Summer of 2002 sembiance quit the team and in august we added EviLDeD - the guy who helped start UOX3 and was a pioneering force in server side emulation. Unfortunately EviLDeD also had many other committments and was only with CoX for a few months.
Around the end of october of 2002 fyck created our first sandbox. This was a huge mile stone for us because up until that point we didn't have a whole lot to show the community and many people had been flaming us saying we were full of crap and never going to go anywhere. We released some screen shots to prove we were still working on it though the sandbox itself never had a public release. In november fyck had to quit the team due to a promotion at work and a larger time committment that came with it. In his absence I was selected to be the new team leader and we began writing the new codebase for what would become the foundation for CoAD (we changed our name back to CoAD right around the same time).
In early december Ivel approached me about changing the language the project was being written in from C++ to C# and bringing on a C# dev named technoboy. I agreed and began porting our C++ codebase to C# immediately after. To sum up what happend over the next 2 months real quick - me and technoboy didn't see things eye to eye. I quit the project in mid january and didn't work on much of anything DAoC related for 2 months.
March of 2003 was when the idea of DOL was born. I started a new framework written in C++. CoAD was closed source and generally community unfriendly. My goal with DOL was simply to write a framework, implement all of the known packets, and open source it for someone else to work on. That was my senior year of high school and I was supposed to ship off for Marine Corps boot camp 1 week after graduation and wouldn't be able to continue DOL devleopment myself. If I remember correctly I released DOL v1.0a in May of 2003. June of 2003 saw the release of v1.0b. Sometime in that time frame I was also able to convince a fellow I knew from the CoAD community, Archangel, to work on the project with me. My ship date for bootcamp was then pushed back to february of 2004 so all of the sudden I was able to continue development on the project.
Around june of 2003 I got 2 emails from a fellow by the name of SmallHorse. His first email was something along the lines of a request to help with the project. I had been very busy at the time and had not checked my email in a while. The second email was from a highly insulted SmallHorse asking me why I had failed to reply to his first request. I explained that I hadn't been checking my email and told him i'd be more than happy for some extra help. Thus SmallHorse joined the DOL team.
The summer of 2003 saw a lot of changes for DOL. I converted the project to managed C++ so that I could use C# as a scripting language. July of 2003 was the first and last managed C++ release if I remember correctly? We also greatly expanded the DOL core dev time with the additions of Rivendel, Cain, Duff, Milcis, Crystalin, and Rekun. August of 2003 was our first official dev meeting. We decided to rewrite the entire project in C# for a planned october release of DOL v1.4. Unfortunately Rekun had to leave the team at this time for a variety of reasons.
When our move to C# for v1.4 reached the ears of the CoAD dev's they reacted in a somewhat hostile manner. We were accused of stealing their code due to my involvement with the project and a pretty hefty rivalry between the projects was born. Where CoAD was closed source DOL was open source and facilitated the sharing of information. We released our packet sniffer to the community so they could help us crack packets. CoAD was known for being community unfriendly whereas we made interaction with our community one of our top priorities. I personally was always in our IRC channel and would answer any questions anyone asked. In my time in IRC I came to know some of our community members quite well. Cisien, Soho, and Ashley (just to name a few) became very dedicated and knowledgeable and eventually became our official "help" squad.
DOL v1.4, our big much hyped release, missed its target date of the last week of october and was instead released the first week of november (much to SmallHorse's, who still didn't think it was ready, dismay
). The boards quickly lit up with community response to the new release. Most of it was positive but a few bugs were discovered. A week or 2 after v1.4 was released we released v1.4.1 which included some highly requested features that didn't make it into v1.4 as well as a multitude of bug fixes.
DOL held its second official dev meeting to plan out the road map for v1.5 in december or november of 2003. The hot topics at the time were combat and magic. Rivendel, Milcis, and Crystalin all left the team after v1.4 due to various personal reasons. Me, Duff, and SmallHorse were left to hold down the fort and development slowed a bit. In january of 2004 I was pretty burned out from working on DOL. I was leaving for boot camp in february and knew I would no longer be able to continue working on the project. In those last few weeks I wrote DOLMpk, our managed OpenIL wrapper, and some other misc things just for kicks (if you were ever wondering why our old repository contained some interesting things that was why haha). Blue/Thrydon joined the team on my last week with DOL. I left SmallHorse as the new project lead and was shipped off a few days later.
From that point until now you're going to have to ask SmallHorse or somebody else what has happend as I have largely been absent. To sum up the purpose of DOL I'd say it was meant to be the definitive solution to DAoC server side emulation. One of our top priorities was doing this while utilizing the input and effort of our community as much as we possibly could.
No doubt many people will disagree with this statement but i'd say that the greatest accomplishment of the project was bringing Akira over to our side. He had to have been the biggest CoAD fanboy i've ever seen in my life and went on to become one of our most productive community members.
Again my memory is starting to get hazy and no doubt i've forgotten some things. To tell every little detail of the evolution of DOL would probably require a small book. If anyone has anything to add/correct please do.
The End
Me for example 
