I’m thinking for games like RuneScape/old school RuneScape where there are multiple private servers, World of Warcraft, BattleForged (Skylord reborn) etc.
From my understanding the user’s only have access to a downloadable client that they use to connect to the main game server, do people reverse engineer a server with all the server side logic?
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This depends on the game.
In the case of, say, *Ragnarok Online*, the official server software (Aegis) was leaked to the public by an inside source.
Of course, even when the official server is leaked, it won’t be regularly updated – at least not in a form the public can access. So what most communities do is study the game’s behavior, figure out formulas for things like damage et al, and kinda wing it: they make their own server program from scratch, and adjust it until the game’s behavior seems to be about right (referencing any official materials like leaked official server code if needed.) They may also fix bugs at their leisure. (In the case of *Ragnarok Online* this reverse-engineered server was called Athena – at least the one I was familiar with.)
It helps if people who formerly worked on the game officially end up as part of the private server community. That can happen.
Most MMOs have the bulk of the game behavior coded client-side and only perform necessary things like item drop calculations, cheating checks, and sync thru the server. This is why so many MMOs are susceptible to hacking, since the hacker is editing the code already on their own PC. Again, good old *Ragnarok Online* had vital game balance-related content in the client, to the point that you could edit your player character’s animation data to skip certain animations and attack stupidly fast.
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