OK, I just received and installed the expansion and the news is mixed. The problem is that they shipped a broken version of the game probably because they anticipated it to be fixed before it was officially opened to the public. My early thoughts are that the patcher will have to be used to get all the necessary files that they didn't bother to fix. However, the core exe and dll files seem to be working fine, so we might be able to copy those files, patch the game to live, and then overwrite the exe and dll files. I am attempting to do so now although it will take a while to see if it will work.
At this point, if you were going to buy the expansion just for the emu hold off until we can verify that it will work properly. I'll know more about this tonight and will keep everyone updated.
UPDATE: Upon further examination it seems that this client CAN be used directly from the dvd. At this time you wont be able to create a Sarnak from the normal character creation screen, but you can login to the game. Note that the servers will need to be updated to make things appear correctly (ie corrupt spells are being displayed on client when they log in), but it can currently log in straight out of the box.

Thanks for the update LE

No Sarnak is not a big issue to me. So long as people can log in and actually do stuff. Heck.. the sarnak is a brand new race, with a new continent among other things. There is still tons of things that have to be done that dont require that race as of this point ya know. Good to hear though that we can still use the boxed client. Kinda was getting worried up until the UPDATE part lol.

Just a thought here... couldn't we alter the character creation screen to allow sarnaks anyway? I don't believe that is against policy since the files are located in the UI directory and last i checked changing those files was okay...
Of course it may require more than that, but hey... was worth a shot.

If you can alter your race after creation or in any other way access the race, then that should be more than enough. Personally, I have little interest in them, but it seems that would be much the same thing.

Alright... I just got my retail box copy of RoK. For me, the client is 4412, and I have the sarnak on my char select. It is just the silouette, but i figure that is because the login server doesn't have them activated yet. Is this what everyone else is experiencing?

Yes, but it isnt because Login hasnt activated it. I'm sending the same expansion information that live sends to activate the slot, but it refuses to activate. It might be something that has changed from this version and live and I might eventually figure it out and fix it, but no promises

Ah, that makes some weird sort of sense ;op