TonyV
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:That was due to scheduled maintenance at the Titan Network. Apologize for the inconvenience! The links should work now.Originally Posted by Doomguide
Unable to open the link. Did you use phpBB/Zetaboards as your format? -
Quote:Much more rested now.Originally Posted by Doomguide
At the moment when I am trying to look at a build (on these forums, specifically the Defender section) by "Click this Link to open the build" I am getting redirected to this thread.
Checking into this now.
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Okay, judging by how many people are still being redirected to this post, and reports from other people who still aren't pulling up the site at the new location, it looks like some ISPs are getting their DNS updates hand-delivered by people riding on slow mules.
In addition to SuckerPunch's suggestion above, there are two possibilities if you want to get hooked back up right this second.
The first one, which is a better long-term solution, is to change your DNS server(s). Most people just use the default DNS servers from their ISP or school. If you know how to change your DNS server settings, though, you might want to consider pointing them to OpenDNS's DNS servers instead. I use OpenDNS myself, and have found it to be generally a lot more reliable and quicker to update than my ISP's servers both at AT&T and at Comcast. The DNS changes we made today were propagated to OpenDNS hours ago. Note that if you're behind a broadband router, you'll probably want to change your DNS settings there instead of on your local computer, but that's up to you.
The second one, which should only be changed on an extremely temporary basis, is to add the following to your hosts file:
Code:If you do this, then please don't forget to delete these in a day or two, or if god forbid we ever change the IP address of the servers, everything will suddenly stop working for you--and only you.207.192.74.141 cohtitan.com www.cohtitan.com 207.192.74.141 avatars.cohtitan.com 207.192.74.141 cit.cohtitan.com 207.192.74.141 faces.cohtitan.com 207.192.74.141 planner.cohtitan.com 207.192.74.141 webservice.cohtitan.com 207.192.74.141 cohplanner.com www.cohplanner.com
Option three, of course, is to simply wait out the propagation. Most providers will go at most 24 hours before propagation fully hits. I feel a little guilty, because if I had thought about it yesterday, I could have changed the TTL of the record to be something shorter, like an hour or so. Oopsie.
Still, hopefully that will give you a couple of options in the meantime. Before long, I'm probably going to redirect the maintenance page to something local on the server instead of this thread. If by 3:00pm or so tomorrow the sites still aren't loading right for you, you should really consider griping at your ISP. (Or better yet, just use OpenDNS.)
Hope this helps, and sorry again for the inconvenience! -
Yet another update. We have brought the sites back up, and most everything is working okay now. One small exception is that some of the back-end updating of stuff like the CIT badge spotlight isn't updating yet, but we're still plugging away on that. Glycerine also had a few issues, so while we think it's working, we can't rule out it being wonky just yet.
If you notice anything hideously wrong, let us know.
I know this has all been kind of a pain in the hindquarters, but our server and my wallet (which will be more useful now that I won't be shelling out for two VPSes for the sites) thank you for your patience.
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Another quick update. The sites are all moved over and we have everything extracted and put in place, but we're having one nagging issue with the login functionality--which, if course, we really need working right.
We've got Nicster poring over the code now to figure out what the @#*! is wrong, and then we should be good to go. -
Quick update: All sites are backed up and transferred to the new server. Now working on restoring everything on the new server. Hopefully it won't be too long before stuff starts coming up. Probably another hour or two.
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This isn't really a question, but since folks usually come here to ask about it and our forums will be down, I figured I'd proactively answer here.
Today (Saturday, October 17), from approximately 12:00pm until 6:00pm Eastern, the entire Titan Network is going to be under maintenance. During that time, the sites will be offline while we consolidate the sites onto one server.
This will affect ALL Titan Network sites, including City Info Terminal, CoH Faces, the Paragon Wiki, the Ouroboros Portal, the Build Planner sites, the Titan Forums, as well as Glycerine's (aka City Game Tracker's) ability to update your online stats during the maintenance. (Well, one exception; RedTomax is on another server completely, so that site won't be affected.)
We'll try to keep the outage time to a minimum. I don't think it will actually take six hours to complete, but it's a pretty major ordeal and we wanted to schedule enough time to do some internal testing before turning everything back on.
I'll try to post messages periodically on our Twitter page with status updates. Sorry in advance for any inconvenience, but hopefully this will help us to improve the long-term back-end service of the sites. Once the move is complete, everything should be back to how it was before and you shouldn't notice any difference; these are back-end changes only. -
Quote:This is exactly what the EULA says. Stop thinking in terms of "what makes sense." That's opinion. The actual wording of the EULA is fact.Originally Posted by MunkiLord
See this makes much more sense and is how I initially understood it when I read it. Perhaps I misunderstood what TonyV was saying, but it appeared he was stating once a character is created in CoH that NCSoft owned the IP for that character, period.
I think that's a fair assessment. I'd be extremely surprised if third-party contributions didn't fall under a different agreement, very likely one that you and I aren't privy to. So far, the only "guest author" that I know of is Rooster Teeth, who already has agreements in place with NCsoft, with a character ("Captain Dynamic") designed specifically for promotion of the game.Quote:Originally Posted by MunkiLord
And I would imagine that guest authors aren't bound by the EULA that we are. They are brought in for the purpose of writing a story, so any copyright involved in that process is probably worked out between the guest author and NCSoft.
No, it's not. Intellectual property changes hands all the time. There are many cases of someone creating something and then losing the rights to it for various reasons, most often because they were stupid and didn't know what it was worth at the time.Quote:Originally Posted by Hellguard
Of course not. If you created the character before you made a version of it in CoH, then it's still yours, and THAT's what the line in the EULA ("To the extent that NC Interactive cannot claim exclusive rights in Member Content by operation of law") really means...
I'm not arguing over this any more. It's not rocket science.
If anyone wants to fight this out in court, have at it. You're a lot richer than I am, and how you waste money is your prerogative.Quote:By submitting Member Content to or creating Member Content on any area of the Service, you...acknowledge and agree that such Member Content is the sole property of NC Interactive. -
Quote:That small change would precisely accomplish what the reps have said here and what so many people on the forums seem to want it to say or treat it as saying. But again, that's not what it says. In court, any interpretation of intention, anything that the devs or reps posted, and a million player posts here to the contrary will all be instantly superseded by the actual wording of the contract.
By submitting Member Content to or creating Member Content on any area of the Service, you hereby grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Member Content has expressly granted) to NC Interactive and its related Game Content Providers a non-exclusive, universal, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicenseable right to exercise all rights of any kind or nature associated with such Member Content, and all ancillary and subsidiary rights thereto, in any languages and media now known or not currently known.
So please stop acting like what it says is not what it actually says and what it actually means, and stop encouraging people to act contrary to the contract they're agreeing to, quite possibly to their serious financial detriment. I challenge anyone who doesn't believe me to take the EULA to a lawyer and ask, "Is it a good or a bad idea to commercialize something I've created in City of Heroes?" Better yet, just read the friggin' EULA for yourself with the perspective of, "how can I screw someone with this?" (which is what lawyers are paid a lot of money to do), and proceed at your own peril.
I still stand by my original statement:
Myth: I can use characters I create in City of Heroes in other commercial ventures.
Fact: This is explicitly against the EULA. EULAs are generally upheld as legally enforceable contracts. If you commercialize your character, you are in violation of the EULA, period. NCsoft has specifically written the EULA so that this is true, and barring them rewriting it, no amount of dev, rep, or player opinion will change that. If you choose to violate the EULA, you put yourself at risk for very serious financial damages. You may be able to have the EULA invalidated, but only at significant expense, at least in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That's not arrogance or condescension any more than rolling my eyes at someone whose "opinion" is that the quadratic formula is wrong is. Everything in that statement if fact, pure and simple, period, except for the "you put yourself at risk" part. If you want to dispute that, then the only argument to the contrary I can think of is that there's no risk at all, that the EULA and the law are diametrically opposed, and that it is impossible for a judge and/or jury to come to a legally incorrect decision.
I respectfully disagree on both counts, but hey, feel free to roll the dice, violate the EULA, and see what happens. I just want to make sure you and everyone else understands what you're in for if you do. -
Quote:I hate quoting, but for the morbidly curious, here is the relevant section of the EULA under which "client modification" would fall:Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
This point can be argued extensively. Specifically, the map patches/etc. do not actually modify the game's executable, nor any of its data files. What they do is place specifically named files in a specific location such that the game will read them in preference to the normal data. It is easy to argue that this is not a client modification, but rather an undocumented feature of the game. And that distinction is enough to make any attempt at prosecution not worthwhile, anyway.
Now, if there were a game mod that actually altered the .exe or the .piggs, that would be a different story entirely.
Quote:You may not...modify, adapt, reverse engineer or decompile the Software...[or] otherwise use the Software or the Service except as expressly provided in this Agreement. It pretty clearly modifies how the executable runs. It doesn't modify the .exe directly, but if you take a RAM snapshot of the game running with a client mod and without a client mod, you'll have two different images as a direct result of your tinkering. That would be enough to count as "modify."Quote:NC Interactive reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to...terminate any license granted herein
I included the second part because it's a nice fallback for NCsoft if they want. The truth of the matter is that they don't have to have a reason to ban you, they can simply flip the switch, say, "see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!" and you'd have no recourse. So even if what you think is a client mod and what they think is a client mod differ, they have expressly said that they consider editing in-game images (which include "map patches" and the Splasher utility) against the Terms of Service, and if not by one, most certainly by the other section above, they could take action up to banning you for it.
But again, I'm not trying to scaremonger people here, I wholeheartedly don't think they would, especially without some kind of big warning, since these utilities are so popular. It would be a PR nightmare and we'd have another Enhancement Diversification on our hands. Oh, wait, that's not what I meant... -
Quote:If I were a lawyer on such a case, I could poke a bunch of holes in this. I will say, though, that EULAs have consistently been upheld by the courts, with the only exception I know of being when the EULA was not accessible. (e.g. A EULA inside a box stating, "By opening this box, you agree to...") One argument is that by agreeing to the EULA each time you sign in, you are effectively "electronically signing" it. Another is that the fee covers the gaming experience, but by providing hosting services for your creation, it is essentially "work for hire" in that what you are creating is at the expense of my resources. Would it fly? Maybe, maybe not.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The US is *not* one of the countries that allows for rights to be transfered in the manner described, which is why NCSoft does not have exclusive rights to my characters.
In the US, copyright is presumed to attach "at birth" meaning the moment I create the work. NCSoft cannot then demand either ownership or exclusive rights to my work because copyright transfer must be done specifically and in writing, and exclusive transfer of rights is considered to be a copyright transfer under the law.
I won't lie, there would certainly be a viable claim of unenforceability of the EULA if it really got ugly, and if I were a lawyer for the player, I would immediately trot out Title 17 Section 204a (yes, I have read it), as it is very compelling. But I can guaran-damn-tee you one thing, and that is that with IP lawyers being very expensive and copyright law being notoriously hard to navigate, especially in new digital ways such as these in which there is no precedent, unless you've got lots of money to burn, I could simply beat you by outspending you.
Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
It is black-letter law that the assertion that NCSoft "owns" your characters is a myth.These statements are in direct conflict with each other. Note carefully that this does not specify "Member Content, other than publishing rights..." I promise that any lawyer or judge who looks at the EULA will immediately see that it is claiming IP rights.Quote:By submitting Member Content to or creating Member Content on any area of the Service, you...acknowledge and agree that such Member Content is the sole property of NC Interactive.
Here's food for thought. These cases almost always have less to do with "black-letter law" and more to do with who has the better lawyer that can figure out clever technical ways to show that such a contract and the law are not in conflict at all, or if necessary, to simply figure out a way around the law. The agreement you are agreeing to is pretty clear and unequivocal. If all things were equal and a player and NC Interactive had equally competent lawyers, I might agree with you that the EULA would be overturned. In the real world, though, I know that NCsoft has orders of magnitude more resources they can throw at this than even a player who is moderately wealthy. And in the real world, I also know that when there is a non-trivial amount of money at stake, companies tend to do really stupid, greedy things.
Send the cops in, then, because that is exactly what the EULA is doing. If you know of a specific precedent of the outcome of a EULA vs. copyright claim lawsuit, do tell.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Whatever the EULA says, it would be against Federal law for NCSoft to attempt to assert they own them.
What rights are those? I want to see a citation for that. In the U.S., to my knowledge, there is no such thing as nontransferable "creator rights," unless you're talking about non-related "moral rights" like the right to claim authorship and the right to not have someone alter your work and keep your name on it against your will, which are irrelevant here. This myth is about you taking their intellectual property, not them taking yours.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Even if I were to sign my rights away for a creation, there are laws that provide me with some rights to reassert or reacquire my copyright rights in certain circumstances, no matter what I've signed. These rights are granted to me when I create the work, and they stay attached to me until I die.
Again, transferring a copyright is like selling a car. The only circumstances under which you can "reassert or reacquire" it is fraud or changing the law. I am not a lawyer, but I do keep up with this stuff pretty well (and do geeky things like read copyright law), and I have never heard of these non-transferable rights. There are plenty of court cases on record, however, where artists across various media have had cases of extreme seller's remorse when they sold out for a few pennies and a publisher or promoter buys a Caribbean island with the profits.
And most importantly of all, the takeaway from all this still holds very true: Never, ever, ever put anything in the game that you even remotely think you might want to commercialize someday. Resign yourself to the fact that anything you create in the game, you are irrevocably giving away for free, because for all practical purposes, that's exactly what you're doing. -
Quote:/scratches head at the non sequitur...Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Which is entirely irrelevant to my point.
The rights you are granting to them apply to "Member Content", which is "things you put in the game". Which means that if you, say, write a novel about your CoH character, NCSoft doesn't own it, unless you type all of the novel into the Architect.
If you create a character in City of Heroes, it is by definition a "thing you put in the game." Thus, NCsoft owns that character's name, likeness, battlecry, biography, and anything else you put into the game. If you can write a novel about such a character without actually using any of these things associated with the character (especially the name!), then I suppose you're one hell of a writer.
Or put yet another way, if you write a novel about, say, Superman's backstory, you're infringing upon DC Comics's intellectual property rights. They might not own the IP of the exact text or plot of your novel, but that doesn't make you any less guilty of infringing upon their IP rights, and they can sue you, they can get damages, and they can get an injunction to keep you from selling your novel to others. The situation would be no different if you wrote a novel about your CoH character Mr. Foomonkey, which by the terms of the EULA NC Interactive is the sole owner of, even if you originally created him.
If you want to write a novel for noncommercial purposes (e.g. to post on a fansite), that's explicitly allowed by the EULA. That's what allows sites such as the Paragon Wiki to exist. Otherwise, if you don't get written permission from NCsoft, they can come after you if they want, and there's a not insignificant chance that they would win.
Read the EULA again, but this time, stop thinking like a fan and start thinking like a lawyer.
This is true, but quotes to this effect from devs and reps are commonly cited as to be the only thing that the EULA states. It is not the limit to which the EULA claims ownership. It could have been if they wanted it to; there is no reason whatsoever they had to claim sole ownership of IP created in the game. It would have been trivially easy for them to simply make that "to the extent" clause the guts of that section, so that you still own the IP and they claim an irrevocable license to use it. But, and this is very important, that's not what it says. And again, in court, what it actually says is what counts, not what you think their intention was when they wrote it.Quote:Originally Posted by Silver Gale
On the other hand, if NCSoft writes a CoH novel and puts your character in it, you can't demand they give you money or ask them to take your character out, either.
Edit: Actually you can ask, but you have no standing from which to demand it. And I guess this little back-and-forth is indicative to just how pervasive and compelling this myth is! -
Quote:Um, yes.Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Um, no.
In other words, if the law in your particular area does not allow NCsoft to claim exclusive ownership of intellectual property, then they claim what rights that the law does allow. This is an international game, and some countries don't allow the transfer of intellectual property at all, or it's extremely limited are regulated.Quote:Member Content. Members can upload to and create content on our servers in various forms, such as in selections you make and characters, certain additions to the game world, and items you create for the Game(s), and in bulletin boards and similar user-to-user areas ("Member Content"). By submitting Member Content to or creating Member Content on any area of the Service, you (iii) acknowledge and agree that such Member Content is the sole property of NC Interactive. To the extent that NC Interactive cannot claim exclusive rights in Member Content by operation of law, you hereby grant to NC Interactive a non-exclusive, universal, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicenseable right to exercise all rights of any kind or nature associated with such Member Content, and all ancillary and subsidiary rights thereto, in any languages and media now known or not currently known.
But in places like the U.S. and many other countries that do allow for the transfer of all rights, the section you highlighted does not apply, as denoted by the "to the extent..." clause.
People pulling things like this out of the context of the entire sentence/paragraph/section are exactly why this myth is so persistent.
Or put another way, I'll offer up this agreement to you: To the extent that my name is Robert, I will pay you a million dollars. If you take me to court saying that I agreed to pay you a million dollars, I simply have to show that my name is not Robert and you get nothing. (And sorry to disappoint, but it's not my middle name either, and I have no plans to change my name. And even if I did, I'd probably go with Ben. Or Steve, that's a cool name. And I'd make my middle name Fantasticus.) -
Ooh! I forgot a highly contentious one!
Myth: The Fifth Column were removed because of the European release conflicting with anti-Nazi laws
Fact: The devs and reps have repeatedly denied this claim outright. It's impossible to ever know this for 100% certain without having taken part in the conversations at the studio. The European release did closely coincide with the removal of the Fifth Column, and there is a sliver of possibility that someone mentioned in passing, "Will this fly?" However, if it was--and again, it has been repeatedly denied that it was--claims that is was actually relevant have the credibility of a conspiracy theory. The most blatant symbol of Nazism--the swastika--does not appear anywhere in or out of the game related to the Fifth Column, and the laws usually referenced specifically apply to symbology, not to descriptions. The only reference to Nazism is the historical context in which the Fifth Column arose. Additionally, devs and reps have repeatedly made reference to the "story bible" they have, a description of things that have occurred and will occur in the City of Heroes universe up to years in advance. It is extremely unlikely that a major change like the Council taking over the Fifth Column would have been thrown in at the last second. Finally, the Fifth Column gladiator was added around Issue 7 and now, they have reappeared in several zones. Hopefully, that will drive the final nail in the coffin of the myth that the Fifth Column can't be portrayed in European countries, especially Germany, where this myth is often cited to apply and in which the European servers are in fact located (Frankfurt, to be exact). -
Myth: Enhancement Diversification caused subscribership to fall.
Fact: Subscribership actually went up after Enhancement Diversification was rolled out, and maintained higher numbers for over a year. (I'm not making that up, it's was in NCsoft's quarterly reports.) To people's credit, Jack Emmert supported the myth when, in an interview once, he referred to how ED caused people to leave. Undoubtedly a few did, but the vast majority stayed, and the game got a huge boost from City of Villains, which was released at the same time. So next time someone tells you, "This is going to be another Enhancement Diversification!"... We can only hope!
Myth: Map patches and splash screen modifiers aren't against the Terms of Service.
Fact: They most assuredly are. CuppaJo posted a sticky that has remained up for over five years in the Player Guides forum saying that Client modifications are against the Terms of Service, and later posted in the same thread after discussion about map patches, "Even if you are just photoshopping a pic or turning off a sound, it is a violation." This is a subject near and dear to my heart, since I've written a map patch myself. Their current attitude seems to be that if it's harmless and doesn't cause copyright violation, they don't pursue it. In some cases, such as the Splasher utility, they've come very close to semi-endorsing it as okay, but where the rubber meets the road--in the Terms of Service and the EULA, they are technically not allowed, and NCsoft/Paragon Studios are well within their rights to nuke these utilities if they so desire at any time. Will they? Probably not. Can they? Absolutely yes.
Myth: I can use characters I create in City of Heroes in other commercial ventures.
Fact: As soon as you create any character or other intellectual property in the game or on these forums, according to the terms of the EULA, you are transferring all rights to that intellectual property to NCsoft. As NCsoft then has sole ownership, including all rights to publish and commercialize that intellectual property, legally, you are obligated to get their express written permission to use it in your own commercial work. It does not matter if you owned the intellectual property before using it in the game. This is another case of "they wouldn't enforce that!" Maybe, maybe not, but the fact is that they can enforce it if they choose to. Also, there have been references to community reps saying that the clause is there to protect NCsoft, not go after people. Again, maybe, maybe not, but community reps aren't lawyers, and it doesn't change what the EULA--the only thing a court would consider binding--actually says. Short version: Never, ever, ever create anything in the game that you might want to someday use to make money on your own.
Myth: Farming helps the game by creating a supply of recipes on the market, thus making them cheaper.
Fact: Very tenuous claim at best. Farming increases the supply of some recipes on the market. Specifically, the recipes that commonly drop during missions, the kind that anyone can easily get via merits or tickets. However, because farmers reap in sums of influence that are vastly higher than what is obtainable via regular play, typically for the specific purpose of purchasing extremely rare items from the market, the prices of those items skyrockets out of the reach of almost everyone but marketeers and other farmers, making rare items much less available than they would have otherwise been. It's basic economics. In a recession, the prices of ultra-luxurious items (yachts, Learjets, etc.) don't fall until the ultra-rich can't afford them any more. If the ultra-rich are making money during a recession, the prices of these items actually go up.
Myth: Paragon Studios and/or NCsoft are working in collusion with RMT spammers
Fact: I see this one pop up every once in a while. Hopefully, the claim is ludicrous enough on the face of it for most people that it doesn't need addressing. Still, the simple fact is that several steps have been taken to keep RMT spammers from doing what they do. They have added commands to report spammers and repeatedly asked players to petition people who are spamming. They added a UI element (the spam button in e-mail) specifically for the purpose of making it easier. They have changed the way that trials work--to the detriment of showing players the full range of what is possible in the game--in order to stop spammers from sending tells. Now, they've nerfed the e-mail system entirely to stop them. They've also added word filters for some of the spam sites so that's not even possible to say their names or e-mail the actual site name to someone. All of this, of course, overlooks the simple fact that if Paragon Studios and/or NCsoft wanted to make money off of selling influence, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from selling it themselves and not having to pay a middleman a cut of the profit. It is not unprecedented for a large gaming company to do this with very popular games. The simple fact is that they are doing their best--some would argue going too far sometimes--to stop RMT.
Myth: Jack Emmert is the Antichrist
Fact: Granted, this is more a matter of opinion than fact, but a lot of people forget that Jack Emmert was instrumental in getting this game to where it is today. Without him, it's entirely possible that there would be no City of Heroes at all, or that it would have been so dinky that it would have failed years ago. Like it or not, there are still a lot of remnants of his vision in the game, and there are a great many fun things that he originated. Before NCsoft and Cryptic parted ways, he had a very high degree of fan praise on these very forums (well, the old UBB forums, anyway...), and I see the same small contingent of vitriol spat at Matt Miller today as I sometimes saw when Jack was in charge. In short, nothing has changed from before, except that Jack now heads up a competing product. He was, and still is, a very competent game designer, and like any red-blooded human being has strengths and weaknesses just like the crew that is now in charge that alternately produces awesomeness and frustration. (But fortunately, must more awesomeness than frustration.)
Myth: Development is easy
Fact: I see this one pop up sometimes in the form of people saying stuff like, "Just add a button to..." or "Just change the..." or "It has been doing this for years." The fact is that game development is a very hard, tedious process. When you change one little thing, it is possible that dozens of other things might be affected. In my own development efforts, I have run across so many bugs that resulted from side effects of things I had no idea were related, I can't count them. You can't just go in and quickly change something. After doing so, there has to be a comprehensive battery of review, QA, in-house testing, and player testing for even the most simple and minor of things. That's not to say that there aren't important things that need to be done or that it's not frustrating when something breaks, but sometimes I think that when new features such as the changes in Issue 16 are magically rolled out over the course of a few hours on a lazy Tuesday morning, players don't get the fair sense of how many years of hard work have been put into this game and how hard implementing stuff like this really is. -
Has no one started one of these yet? For god's sake, people, we're FOUR DAYS IN already!
And WOOT! The Falcons are undefeated!
Miami... Guys... Whatever it was you thought you were doing, you really need to go back to the proverbial drawing board and get it together. The truth is that the Falcons played well, but not stellar. Four turnovers, ouch!
And Brett Favre won, too. I can't help but cheer for him, he's like the only player left in the NFL that's older than me. Kick-*** geezers FTW, so go Vikings, may you only lose in the playoffs! (To the Falcons, of course... Sorry I can't root for a Super Bowl appearance, 'cause it'd mean that you'd have to get past Matt Ryan...) -
Food for thought.
Okay, first of all, I seriously doubt that the RMT spammers are going to stand next to Ms. Liberty saying their spiel more than once every minute or so. You're never going to be able to detect that from normal conversation. Look for the same message, you say? They can simply use several macros to rotate messages. Look for rotating messages, you say? You're going to ban half the freakin' player-base when people like me use macros and binds to automate stuff like, "Teleporting $target to my location."
Second of all, spammers' accounts don't last more than a little while. That's the problem with the e-mail system now. You can /gignore until you're blue in the face, but it's not like they use the same account to send out their spam every day, or even every hour. They'll simply register new account after new account, and you'll be /gignoring several dozen people a day. (After so many of which, the list fills up, and the people's chat you /gignored a while ago will start showing up again.)
And incidentally, I doubt they'd stand next to Ms. Liberty. It might be one of their popular haunts, but they'll be in all of the popular hangouts. Architect Entertainment, Peregrine Island, Pocket D, Fort Darwin, by the train stations and ferries, etc.
I'm sorry to sound so pessimistic, but there is simply no question whether or not we'll be spammed. The only question is how. Every time I saw people call for doing away or crippling the e-mail system, I posted a warning that if that happens, the spammers will move off to different--and likely more irritating--means of conveying their message. At least with the e-mail, it's easily ignored and easily reported. Now, though... Well, we'll see, but I just really think it's not going to be pretty.
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Quote:Pfff, think what you want.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Wow. Leave it to TonyV to convince me that converting influence into prestige isn't a bad idea.
Chew on this. According to the rates quoted in the latest spam message I got, if I had around $3,100 to blow (and believe me, some people really do), I could start a brand new supergroup on Infinity (my usual haunt), never even touch supergroup mode, and simply buy myself the first place slot outright. No fuss, no muss. I could simply wave all of those other groups who have put in literally years of work goodbye as they ate my dust, because I'm just that rich.
Comparatively speaking, if I were in the second place supergroup, especially if I had a few people willing to chip in so that I wouldn't have to foot the bill all by myself, it would be trivially easy and relatively inexpensive to simply buy that first place slot.
I have ideas on how to solve these types of problems in the long term, things I wish they had considered before decisions were made going back to Issue 9, but at this point it would probably cause a lot of outcry. -
Quote:I actually suspect that most RMT purchases are impulse purchases. I'd be lying myself if I said that I haven't thought, "that isn't very much, and if I get a one-time virtual CC number, I could snag it in no time..." Fortunately, such thoughts are always merely fleeting, and the truth of the matter is that there's not a chance in hell that it would make it past the two-second or so threshold of being only fleeting, let alone actually acted upon.Originally Posted by Speed_Bump
Another reason why I think they will find another way to spam us is impulse buys. I've never bought inf, but there have been times when I've been tempted (usually when I was looking at some of the prices at WW). I'm sure that other people just like me have given in to the temptation.
But those fleeting thoughts are exactly what RMT sellers prey on. They're hoping that if they send out enough spam, 1) people will get the impression that answering just one might not be so bad (that company has been around so long, surely they can't be that bad, and their spam is at least kind of clever and nicely worded...), and 2) that one might hit someone right at the moment that fleeting thought is going through someone's mind (maybe it's a "sign!").
I can think of several diabolical ways of continuing to get their message out. The obvious ones have already been covered. Local chat from trial accounts, gtells, etc. I honestly think that the changes to e-mail are a bad thing, because it will drive the spammers from using a means that's really not very annoying (although some try to make it sound like the end of the world) and easily reportable to other means that are much more irritating and less amenable to getting banned. -
Quote:No, it's not the only reason needed. Questions like this should always be taken in the context for how it affects other players and the long-term health and playability of the game.Originally Posted by MissInformed
While it doesn't matter to me at all and matters little to you, it matters to him and his group. That's the only reason needed to make it important to him and I can appreciate that.
I hope the OP very seriously considers this. I'd rather be bumped out of the top 100 entirely than to spend one red cent on prestige. The simple fact is that as soon as it becomes an issue of money, then the only meaning having a #1 ranking (or any ranking at all, for that matter) is how much money you're willing to spend for the dubious "privilege."Quote:Originally Posted by MissInformed
And OP, if you really want that number to matter, the very last thing you should do is cheapen it by buying it.
Consider this. What makes you think you deserve that #1 slot? You admit that your membership has dwindled, and your SG isn't as active as many others are. On what moral authority do you think that some other SG that is active with a larger membership should show up lower in that list that your tiny little group trying to hang onto its last vestige of virtual glory?
No, you shouldn't be able to buy prestige. Just suck it up and let a more deserving group have the spot. Even better, be gracious about it, and congratulate them for the amount of activity they have. If it's really that important to you, consider even joining them.
Personally, I don't use prestige as an indicator of how good or bad a supergroup is. To me, it's how active they are and how much a part of the community they are. By those measures, I don't need some number. The actions of their members and how they carry themselves when we're teaming or hanging out is all I need. -
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There is always a lot of confusion in threads like these. Just to clear a few things up...
The EULA states that they can ban any name or other information at any time for any reason. Whether they can do it is beyond question, and most certainly legal, no matter how non-infringing the character might be. Anyone claiming that they can't do it or that someone has some kind of "right" to use a name is being completely bogus, and more importantly, wrong.
However, as you might expect, they would get really bad press if they just capriciously banned names at random for no reason.
So they ban names that might be protected by IP laws. Notice the "might," it's really important. NCsoft is under no obligation whatsoever to make a judgment whether or not the character actually is infringing. Only that it might be. Beyond reasonable doubt? No. Maybe, maybe not--that's the standard that the GMs use to trigger a name/costume/bio ban. (Actually, I'm thinking it might even be more like "possibly, but probably not.")
If you were to write a comic book titled "Arc.Angel," there's a high probability that 1) you wouldn't be sued, and 2) even if you were, you would win. However, remember, that's not the standard that the GMs use. Also remember that you're not writing a comic book. You're playing a game. A game with specific rules spelled out in the EULA that says that you're relinquishing any rights you might think you have to your character to NCsoft, and that they can do whatever they want with said character, including but not limited to blowing away his/her/its name. Whether or not "Arc.Angel" (or any other name, for that matter) is infringing is largely irrelevant, other than it helps you predict whether or not action will be taken. But it's not a sure-fire indicator.
Last, but not least, all of this has little to nothing to do with the Marvel lawsuit a few years ago. I distinctly remembering many names being nuked before that lawsuit, and the fact that NCsoft was indeed responding to such issues was undoubtedly pointed out during legal proceedings, and one reason that the case ultimately went nowhere. They nuked names before, just as they nuke names now. -
Quote:!!?Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
Your biggest challenge is that an amazingly large amount of the source info is actually apocryphal. Paragonwiki is a great resource as far as quantity of information but as far as quality goes, it ranges from "good" to "guesswork" and pretty much all of it is uncited, undocumented, and unsupported. Large sections of it are simply wrong, because it documents what the contributor has deduced on his own or heard third-hand because the topic is something that isn't actually covered anywhere in either the game or the associated fiction.
Actually, I specifically ask for people to only post information that 1) comes from official sources, 2) is cited for reference, and/or 3) is verifiable. There are a few places where there is some leeway, such as a few strategy sections within task force articles and a specific category that we set up for player guides, but I have to say, I'm rather proud that we are able to keep idle speculation under control. Many are the times we've edited articles on, for example, upcoming issues and removed stuff that has no basis in truth and no verifiable official source.
As a simple example, check out the Going Rogue article. Everything in there is cited with sources and/or linked to where information can be verified. Ditto the Issue 16 article. Now look at the Issue 17 article, which the developers have given us pretty much zilch in the way of information on. Accordingly, the article is pretty devoid of content. As stuff starts filtering out, it will be added. As people go a little zany and add pure speculation ("Moon base will be added!") with no sourcing, we'll blow it away.
I will admit that sometimes, we make educated guesses if we don't have definitive proof of something. For example, before they released the real numbers information, we included information that people had carefully figured out based on trial-and-error. However, we did so in the interest of providing what we have in lieu of deliberately withholding stuff that some people might want and having them go through the same trial-and-error themselves. When such situations arise and information is wrong, it tends to get corrected relatively quickly. ("Relatively" meaning when we either see it or are alerted to it.)
And although I don't particularly like beating people over the head with this, the editors of the Paragon Wiki are human, and as such, we only have so many hours to dedicate to this, and sometimes we'll miss something. If you see something that you feel doesn't belong in the wiki, you do have the power to make it better. All I ask is that you be sure. I have read sources such as Gilgamesh's, Arctic_Sun's, and now Manticore's posts about the background, I have read both The Web of Arachnos and The Freedom Phalanx, and I do try to keep up with the story's canon. I tend to run across really obscure things. When something is too obscure, it can be noted in something like the extremely well-documented in-game timeline, courtesy primarily of Yakovlev.
I really think that the Paragon Wiki took off precisely because people realized that something like the Prima Guide would never be up-to-date, would never contain even a fraction of what you could find quickly on the wiki, and was subject to what the NCsoft and the publisher thought you would want to know.
While I could see maybe some kind of handy reference sheets at some point, I just can't imagine a dead tree guide coming out at this point. It's just too easy to alt-tab to a browser and find what you're looking for for free at good ol' paragonwiki.com. -
Quote:Man, that's the last time I let you people know what I really look like. Next time, I'll just crop a picture of Tom Cruise instead.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
The Mods were extremely grateful when I pointed out an Avatar which had caused riots and calls for murder that was being used on the forum.
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I love my iPhone. So far, there are only two things about it I don't like: AT&T sucks ***, and bluetooth support is really bad. But other than those two things, it's pure awesome. I have a couple dozen apps, and I love having access to everything pretty much everywhere.
I'm actually working on a couple of iPhone app ideas. (I also have a MacBook Pro and have been learning Objective C and the Xcode IDE.)