A small file

metin2_db+mysql.rar weighs 677,197 bytes. On July 18, 2009 it was already in the hands of an American with no ties to the scene. F A passer-by. The same file name was circulating in the Turkish scene as early as the preceding July 11. T It's the data directory of a MySQL instance holding a Metin2 database.

For one day the archive believed it was the "missing half" of the 2009 tarball: same database, same date window. Forensic reading said otherwise.

What's inside

The internal modification times say the directory was copied on May 15, 2009 between 10:24 and 10:33. F The MySQL server sat on 94.23.20.144: AS16276, OVH, Kimsufi block, a cheap French dedicated box. F The 56 GRANT statements were run by root@net-93-148-218-110.t2.dsl.vodafone.it: an Italian Vodafone ADSL line. F

The game database holds around 279 accounts, 85% with emails on .it domains; 205 player IP addresses, of which 191 Italian (Telecom Italia, Wind, Fastweb, Vodafone); five GMs with names the Italian scene remembers (Legolas93, Dulaan, Vodafono2, Gio01, Chucckino). F On the same instance sit clubmt2_forum, forums_gilda, an l2jdb (Lineage 2), an ogame, and three world (WoW servers): a whole stable of private servers. F ClubMT2 is remembered as the first Italian Metin2 private server.

The archive transcribed neither emails nor password hashes: only the staff's public nicknames.

But the database is called metin2_runup

The database's name is metin2_runup, the charset is big5_bin, the locale is hongkong. F These are Run Up's files, the Hong Kong build. In May 2009 the Hong Kong build was running on an Italian server, four months before rain's public release (9/19/2009) and three and a half months before game0901.tar.gz was packaged. That the server was actually up and played is a strong inference from the database (accounts, IPs, staff), not a dated period page: a dated document on ClubMT2 is still missing. I

What it means

The leak "of September 19, 2009" is the public release of files that had been circulating privately for months, and not only in China. The Italian scene knew it in its own way: on September 8, 2009, eleven days before rain, a guide on an Italian forum already mentions a "Repack / Auto-launch." F On October 18, 2009 a guide teaches how to "start the Chinese launcher." F The first Italian YouTube tutorial is from October 23, 2009 and has 206,000 views. F

Italy was there from day one, and doesn't know it. In 2012 a census counted 33 Italian private servers; F in 2026 one remains online.

The stated limit

There's the database, but not the game binaries of the Italian server: the archive can't say which server version was running in Rome or Milan in May 2009, only that the data was Hong Kong's. The document that would settle the matter is a dated ClubMT2 page (or of legolas93's stable, later EternaLongju2 in January 2010), and it hasn't been found yet.