Yeah, there's a lot of conflicting info about TERA CZ. Here's what I know to date so far (if anyone has more details, fill in). I initially also thought it was a paid build but others have said that was for the box/steering portion which kind of makes more sense versus a lot of rewriting of server side stuff to enable game play systems even if someone had a lot of packet captures.
1) There was a very rare leak from Gameforge of the 2019 classic event server which was a mash up of patch 27 along with a few additions from later updates post patch 30 rolled in; Japan ran this starting in August 2018 while EU and KR started in February 2019). Gameforge normally got test builds several weeks in advance of live service deployment. Haven't heard if it was something that was sold though.
2) TERA CZ launched in beta in early 2019 (
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opened on February 12, announcement in February with open beta starting at the end of March) with patch 33.08. Same timeframe as the official EU event server.
While TERA CZ's client utilizes the CIS/Russia publisher Destiny Games (TERA RU's prior publisher) intro_dd.bik file for their animation, that part is just the client adaptation sort of like how Gameforge v100.02 client works with TW server). Prior to the closure, I also noticed this odd interaction between the CZ launcher and Gameforge's one (to the effect of "your game is still open so the launcher cannot be quit" when I tried closing out the CZ launcher while I had Gameforge TERA running; this didn't happen if I had the TW 92.03 client running).
I don't believe CZ or the old Asura below uses the client from this event server though because the UI isn't as refined in some areas and uses a slightly different font typeface (I have the EU classic event client archived on a different machine that's in storage so I haven't been able to compare them). Work was done to "progress backwards" to make it closer to older versions (and they've recently said the same thing when asked about enabling older content after this weekends reset/relaunch.
But I am beginning to lean more towards CZ possibly running this rare leak.
3) Asura and another private server merged in early 2021?; Asura ran a patch 27 server before the combined team transitioned to the leaked v92.04 retail files. There's this GM created video (accessing GM panel) from March 2020 of a still in "development" for release in Russian language "classic" server (game client still in english with the Gameforge tera-europe.com URL):
Possibly same leak as above or really well developed emulator? Am thinking it is the former. I heard that while this Asura classic version was online, not many were playing it so not many who can provide details of how feature complete everything was (have no idea how factual that claim is though).