First of all, I do not own the game. I have watched videos of people playing via live in 2016/5 but they have the game or have a cracked copy. I know the servers shut down, but also that microsoft had dedicated servers. Were those… on “network”? That would make sense because the efforts of the community to bring the game online are focused there, maybe because you need to have bought the game or cracked it to play on live, and this is hard. So, a lot of people needed the servers to fully play on network. And this would mean… that if i buy or crack the game, can I play via live, just like 9 years ago?
One possibility is that someone could be hosting a private server to play the game online! Some older games, like Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 have these. It’s not that hard. Like I said, it could be a possibility!