New efforts!

[Baaleos]

Haven't read all the posts here...
but on the NDA -

The NDA can potentially block any and all information about a signed topic.

However, it is very unusual for an NDA to be worded to such extremes that it would prevent the dev studio from even saying to the fans.
'Sorry guys, we are not going ahead for reasons we cannot elaborate on.'

Normally the NDA's are invoked to protect/save face of one or both parties.
No one is harmed if the above statement was released.

It would be a different matter if the message they were releasing was

'NCSoft are being a bunch of pricks and won't sign over the IP to us....
'As such, we are pulling out, please everyone send hate mail to legal@ncsoft.com'

That's the sort of thing an NDA would normally be used to protect against, so NCSoft does not lose face to the fans or stakeholders.

[blacksly]

As far as Vader kicking the robes... I was never clear on what he was doing. Was he just befuddled? Was he checking, and thinking 'oh crap, now he's a force ghost'? Was he verifying that Obi Wan was dead dead? I don't know.

I think that he was just doing what any properly Lawful Evil character does after defeating a major enemy boss... checking for mad lewt.

[blacksly]

How many times do you have to be told that before you just stop saying stupid pancake?

OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!111!!!!11!

If that's even enough times :p

[Arcana]

I think that he was just doing what any properly Lawful Evil character does after defeating a major enemy boss... checking for mad lewt.

Butler gone but pocket still there?

[blacksly]

Butler gone but pocket still there?

Hey, maybe his Lightsaber +4 of Defending fell under the robes.

[MegaWatt]

its not a +4 its a legacy weapon obviously...gets special abilities as you level up!

[Arcana]

Haven't read all the posts here...
but on the NDA -

The NDA can potentially block any and all information about a signed topic.

However, it is very unusual for an NDA to be worded to such extremes that it would prevent the dev studio from even saying to the fans.
'Sorry guys, we are not going ahead for reasons we cannot elaborate on.'

Normally the NDA's are invoked to protect/save face of one or both parties.
No one is harmed if the above statement was released.

It would be a different matter if the message they were releasing was

'NCSoft are being a bunch of pricks and won't sign over the IP to us....
'As such, we are pulling out, please everyone send hate mail to legal@ncsoft.com'

That's the sort of thing an NDA would normally be used to protect against, so NCSoft does not lose face to the fans or stakeholders.

NDAs are not trump cards.  You don't "invoke them."  You agree to their terms just like any other contract.  And if one of the terms is "neither party will discuss the details of negotiations or reveal them to a third party without written consent by the other party" then you can't talk, period.  It is not like one side says "we're going to say you guys stink" and then the other side says "we will block that with our NDA."  Also, I've never seen an NDA that was specifically designed to block negative comments.  NDA stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement.  It is a standard contract to prevent disclosures.  If NCSoft wanted to prevent a third party from making disparaging comments about NCSoft, they would probably put that clause in the licensing agreement.  Except such clauses are rarely (but sometimes) used because they tend to have blowback if/when they become public.

I've signed well over a hundred NDAs.  None of them contained a "save/face clause" in them.

[Stitchified]

It's funny... I was biowares cheerleader at one time. Swtor had a brighter future back during it's release and the next few months that followed. That is until they did the first free update. (which utterly killed my guild over time) And then the first paid expansion (which was really short and ended up like this: swtor eight stories>xpac1 "Hutt Cartel" two stories>expac2 "Revan"two stories>current free xpac "fallen empire" one and one ONLY story. Not gonna mention all the flaws that end game got with it's first update and beyond... No sir the only reason that game still has a chance is because of the die hard fans that buy tons of lock boxes. The latest expansion is free because it has far less content than the previous 2 and boasts many chapters and the first 9 are not even 1/3 the length of a single chapter from the core game or any of it's previous expansions.

Don't get me wrong, the story is great but the replay isn't there with only 1 story. People that like to group and endgame don't have new content to look forward to. Lots recycled content (which is also being used to progress in the story) Bad sign there. And the current final chapter has areas where the player character isn't voiced (another bad sign) Previous companions haven't received new conversations since the core game or romance progression updates.

I still login but not as much. They over hyped the expansion with that huge number of chapters that turned out to be the shortest chapters ever in the games history. And all the remaining chapters will be given out once per month so about 30 minutes of new content per month for those of us that don't spacebar all the cutscenes. Unless we're lucky and those 1 chapter per month are actually longer chapters (but I'm having my doubts now) I don't know though... EA has there hands on the game and they pretty much turn everything into cancer eventually. Maybe the fools in charge of making the decisions will get fired and some of the original devs will return. Because they we're certainly making much better decisions back then. The budget can't be the problem because they're making more money now from die hard fans on the cartel store than they ever were from subscriptions. (actually that's the problem)

I keep hoping bioware will surprise me but that's just a fools wish at this point.

Well, I'm not saying SWTOR (and by extension, Bioware) is perfect, nothing is perfect, I just think that SWTOR has the ability to keep someone's attention alot longer than a game like WoW. Not to mentiom the fact that games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have been done really really well all things considered... To be honest, i think it just depends on one's perspective, because to me, SWTOR still has some potential, but that same potential could be squandered due to EA's influence on things.

In the end, you're not wrong, SWTOR is only really being kept afloat due to the die hard fans and those that buy a bunch of Cartel Coins, but at least that way, we can enjoy it as long as it's around... Go ahead and call me a optimist, i'm fairly certain I am one :P

[Vee]

I didn't play SWTOR at launch, I played an ill-advised 6 months last year and quit after finishing Ziost on all 8 alts because...obsessive? What amazed me wasn't just that soloing was more convenient but that it also somehow managed to be less fun when teaming. It wasn't particularly fun solo either, but it was worse on teams. There was no motivation to teaming other than the occasional difficulty of mostly optional content. If I'm going to stand around for half an hour while 3 other people finish what they're doing, cross absurdly huge zones at a slow pace, figure out they've gone the wrong way, die several times because they're 5 levels below the area they have to cross, etc. only to play something that takes 2 minutes and have the team go their separate ways, I'd at least like that 2 minutes to be fun. And no, I didn't raid, because i couldn't imagine the teaming would have been any more fun if it lasted way longer and required a lot of memorization and set attack chains.

I still remember my first time teaming for dailies on Yavin with my sniper which could already kill every mob in one attack - 'What do you mean we have to stay right with each other to do this? How is that any faster?' I suppose I was spoiled by CoH being my first MMO, but SWTOR will definitely be my last until either CoH returns or the successors drop.

[brothermutant]

NDAs are not trump cards.  You don't "invoke them."  You agree to their terms just like any other contract.  And if one of the terms is "neither party will discuss the details of negotiations or reveal them to a third party without written consent by the other party" then you can't talk, period.  It is not like one side says "we're going to say you guys stink" and then the other side says "we will block that with our NDA."  Also, I've never seen an NDA that was specifically designed to block negative comments.  NDA stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement.  It is a standard contract to prevent disclosures.  If NCSoft wanted to prevent a third party from making disparaging comments about NCSoft, they would probably put that clause in the licensing agreement.  Except such clauses are rarely (but sometimes) used because they tend to have blowback if/when they become public.

I've signed well over a hundred NDAs.  None of them contained a "save/face clause" in them.

I can see that. But I can also see that the company's NDA could potentially extend after the talks with THeM, even if it failed, IF another party was still in the talks to buy the IP or what have you. Not sure it would be legal to say "we reject your offer AND you can't tell anyone about it" though.

[Arcana]

I can see that. But I can also see that the company's NDA could potentially extend after the talks with THeM, even if it failed, IF another party was still in the talks to buy the IP or what have you. Not sure it would be legal to say "we reject your offer AND you can't tell anyone about it" though.

You can have terms that extend beyond discussions, because the NDA is not explicitly about the discussions themselves, they are a separate contract between you and the other party that reference the discussions (or whatever).  There are even non-specific NDAs that just basically say that you are not allowed to disclose anything the other party shares with you and considers confidential, and those can sometimes have indefinite terms.

However, there's a principle of contract law that says contracts are unenforceable if they are legally unreasonable**.  For example, if one party attempts to hold another party to obviously impossible conditions, that would be an example of bad faith.  An NDA could bind me to never disclose the content of the discussions *forever*.  But it would probably be considered unreasonable to require a party to never disclose that discussions ever terminated.  That would require a party to essentially invent the circumstances of discussion as a fiction forever.  You'd have to allow them to at least say the discussion process was terminated.  The special case is when all parties are bound to never confirm discussions were ever taking place at all.  Since you are not allowed to say discussions were happening, you don't have to say they ended either.


** Legally unreasonable is not what passes on internet discussion boards as unreasonable.  People who try to defend themselves in court and whose sole prior experience with legal advocacy is arguing on internet discussion boards have a remarkably consistent, and dismal, success rate.

[Codewalker]

I've signed well over a hundred NDAs.  None of them contained a "save/face clause" in them.

What about a

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=content7.flixster.com%2Fmovie%2F11%2F16%2F89%2F11168937_ori.jpg

clause?

[Noyjitat]

I have to strongly disagree here.  First of all, I've never seen any evidence that most people don't team in the typical (western AAA) MMO.  Most players solo at least some times but most aren't religious soloers.  The problem with SWTOR is that it was *singularly* difficult to team, almost to the point of insanity.  No western MMO has ever had more impediments to teaming at all, except in a few very limited cases.  And even when you team, the way missions worked acted to make the story telling elements of the game frustrating for players because they slowed the action to a crawl, even when the players were replaying content.  And content replay was important because the leveling curve meant you couldn't just mission your way up the ladder without repeating content.  In other MMOs this can become a repetitive grind.  In SWTOR it was like being forced to watch the same television show repeatedly and not even being able to fast forward through the commercials.

And the notion that you don't have to team in SWTOR originally?  To channel Venture, poppycock.  For expert players, maybe.  If you hit the right combination of class and pet, maybe.  Otherwise, if you didn't group there were many missions or even just plain terrain that would be very problematic for you to play through without assistance.  The difficulty curve was wildly unbalanced relative to that.  Play a healer with a tankish pet and you could run through a lot.  Play offense with offensive pet and you'd be shredded in lots of content unless you outleveled it, which required playing other missions repetitively.

People team casually in WoW.  People used to literally log out in SWTOR rather than wait for team members to crawl their way to the mission.  And if you really wanted a dialog tree to go a certain way for some reason?  Good luck teaming that mission.  That's powerful in a single player game.  That's unnecessary friction in an MMO with grouping.  There are many MMOs where people say you don't have to team.  SWTOR was the first MMO I've ever heard of where the advice was you *shouldn't* team unless you were forced to.  Like your build made it impossible to cross a room to get to your mandatory content location without getting killed.

I can't believe you were playing at launch and didn't hear the constant never ending complaints about every aspect of teaming in SWTOR in chat, in group, on the forums, if people were playing it in your neighborhood you should have heard it out your window.  It was the universal complaint that 99% of players seemed to express, that expressed anything at all.  You can't get a large group of MMO players to agree on the color of the sky, but the teaming mechanics in SWTOR did the impossible and unified players in hating them.

You're going to think I'm bsing you but im not. My experiences have been the exact opposite of what you're saying. I'm must be an expert player by your definition as my first 4 characters in swtor didn't team once (sith jugg, imp agent, bounty hunter and jedi consular) while leveling including my beta character nor did most of my guild. People just wanted to take time and enjoy the story while leveling and at their own pace. (With some doing black talon on the way) It wasn't until we had enough people to do hard mode flashpoints that we really started to group. It's just the way games like this are designed. Doing solo content in groups is so unchallenging and since we're on teamspeak it isn't like we don't still socialize, (so no loss of not being able to type messages)

I don't know,  Maybe you were around a different group of people than me during beta and release. Because I didn't see complaints like that in general chat but I did see some of it on the forums but the forums. As I said though, most of my guild didn't team until someone wanted to do a flashpoint or until raiding started and I didn't see many people typing lfg very often. Same goes for wow, most people solo unless they have some buddies online. Pugging didn't start picking up in that game until much later in it's life because being in a guild back then actually meant more than having a name under your name. And the challenge of finding 40 people that actually knew how to do more than stand in one place and button mash was much harder.

You can team while leveling in swtor however since I leveled 3 characters with the same buddy in a duo. It is easier to team in wow while leveling but I just don't know many people that ever did that.

[Noyjitat]

Well, I'm not saying SWTOR (and by extension, Bioware) is perfect, nothing is perfect, I just think that SWTOR has the ability to keep someone's attention alot longer than a game like WoW. Not to mentiom the fact that games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have been done really really well all things considered... To be honest, i think it just depends on one's perspective, because to me, SWTOR still has some potential, but that same potential could be squandered due to EA's influence on things.

In the end, you're not wrong, SWTOR is only really being kept afloat due to the die hard fans and those that buy a bunch of Cartel Coins, but at least that way, we can enjoy it as long as it's around... Go ahead and call me a optimist, i'm fairly certain I am one :P

I still like and love swtor I just wish it wasn't being milked and got the proper development and attention it needs. It's not as bad off as champions online is being abused and it's a bit better than star trek online (sto was doing fine until pwe came along)

[KennonGL]

I've said before that I don't really believe we'll ever get CoH back (but I really, really, really, hope I'm wrong).

However, given the state of the I-23 image and that NCSoft didn't shut things down with an eye towards ever restoring it;
it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if that might be part of the hold up on things.

Heck, it's entirely possible (maybe not probable, but possible) that the negotiations are concluded but that they are holding
off saying anything until the servers and supporting code base (market, login server, etc) are re-written and running.

For all we know, the next communication could very well be "Hey guys, we're finally ready and the servers go live next Monday."

...

[Arcana]

You're going to think I'm bsing you but im not. My experiences have been the exact opposite of what you're saying. I'm must be an expert player by your definition as my first 4 characters in swtor didn't team once (sith jugg, imp agent, bounty hunter and jedi consular) while leveling including my beta character nor did most of my guild. People just wanted to take time and enjoy the story while leveling and at their own pace.

Individual experiences can vary wildly, which is what makes anecdotes always difficult to extrapolate.  And because experiences can be clustered for a variety of reasons, even an informal poll of relatively connected players can confirm the same thing.  However, debatable as it might have been at launch, its an objectively true statement that the majority of players had issues of the type I mentioned, as even the developers conceded that.

The question always worth asking is when and why one's personal experiences sometimes do and sometimes do not reflect what the majority of players were or are experiencing.  That can be valuable when trying to figure out what's happening to a game globally.  I understand how MMOs work, and I even understand how developers tend to think about design.  So I both consciously and unconsciously set myself up for success when playing them.  To see what a game's real design victories and flaws are, I often have to "turn that off" so I can see what a person who isn't experienced at it will see.  It is not easy to do.

So no, I don't think you're BSing me.  I just think its probably the case that your experience was atypical.  For that matter, so was mine.  No one's going to experience an MMO the way I do: I just can't be an MMO neophyte anymore.  But I think, having spent a lot of time comparing my experience to what other players' experiences are, I can tell the difference between what works for me and what works.  You could say that the criticisms I made about SWTOR were not an attempt to declare what everyone else's experiences would be, but rather a form of bet on what problems the developers would be confronted with.  I believe I can make the case that I won that bet.  That doesn't mean everyone will agree with the criticisms I had, only that enough people would experience them to become a threat to the future of the game, which seems to be obviously true.

[Arcana]

Heck, it's entirely possible (maybe not probable, but possible) that the negotiations are concluded but that they are holding
off saying anything until the servers and supporting code base (market, login server, etc) are re-written and running.

For all we know, the next communication could very well be "Hey guys, we're finally ready and the servers go live next Monday."

I have no idea what the odds are that this could be happening now.  However, what I will say is that whenever a deal is done, I would have to conclude the deal makers were complete and utter idiots if they didn't do exactly this: say exactly nothing until they are actually ready to go and have all their ducks in a row.  To come out and say they have the deal done and now all they have to do is a bunch of technical things they haven't done yet, don't yet know how hard it will be to do, aren't sure what the precise form of it will be, when the launch date will be, how they are going to give players access, and how they intend to administer the game, but don't worry it will be Soon, is just asking to be punched in the face repeatedly with a steam shovel.

I'm not sure I would be willing to give someone that dumb my money, because I would be worried they would accidentally confuse the cash for spinach and turn it into crab dip by mistake.

[Soul Resonance]

I have no idea what the odds are that this could be happening now.  However, what I will say is that whenever a deal is done, I would have to conclude the deal makers were complete and utter idiots if they didn't do exactly this: say exactly nothing until they are actually ready to go and have all their ducks in a row.  To come out and say they have the deal done and now all they have to do is a bunch of technical things they haven't done yet, don't yet know how hard it will be to do, aren't sure what the precise form of it will be, when the launch date will be, how they are going to give players access, and how they intend to administer the game, but don't worry it will be Soon, is just asking to be punched in the face repeatedly with a steam shovel.

I'm not sure I would be willing to give someone that dumb my money, because I would be worried they would accidentally confuse the cash for spinach and turn it into crab dip by mistake.

Lol, so true. In fact, if I'm not mistaken(here I go again  :-\ >:() they said earlier in this thread that nothing would be announced as set until they have either a highly achievable rough estimate, or an actual time frame for things set. I'm better it's the latter. Also, I honestly doubt the wait is because of anything minor.

[MM3squints]

Lol, so true. In fact, if I'm not mistaken(here I go again  :-\ >:() they said earlier in this thread that nothing would be announced as set until they have either a highly achievable rough estimate, or an actual time frame for things set. I'm better it's the latter. Also, I honestly doubt the wait is because of anything minor.

Or they can have the deal done, but are working on the technical issues so once the announcement is made, you can make a toon within 5 minutes of announcement. This is not looking the current situation with rose tinted glasses, but a full on Molly trip. Tin foil hats for everyone xD

[Joshex]

NDAs are not trump cards.  You don't "invoke them."  You agree to their terms just like any other contract.  And if one of the terms is "neither party will discuss the details of negotiations or reveal them to a third party without written consent by the other party" then you can't talk, period.  It is not like one side says "we're going to say you guys stink" and then the other side says "we will block that with our NDA."  Also, I've never seen an NDA that was specifically designed to block negative comments.  NDA stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement.  It is a standard contract to prevent disclosures.  If NCSoft wanted to prevent a third party from making disparaging comments about NCSoft, they would probably put that clause in the licensing agreement.  Except such clauses are rarely (but sometimes) used because they tend to have blowback if/when they become public.

I've signed well over a hundred NDAs.  None of them contained a "save/face clause" in them.

from what it sounds like they only agreed it was necessary because of us all getting too giddy and wanting to know every little detail, I'm guessing they came to a point where those little details would expose super sensitive information or information about dealings with other companies.

for example it may have to do with the marvel lawsuit or maybe it's that the shutdown was caused because NCSoft's license to the game engine expired and cryptic/PWE doesn't want to allow extension of it. I really have no clue, these are just wild unfounded guesses, but realistically it could be any sensitive data or anything dealing with other companies,

Or the most logical thing is they just didn't want to have to deal with the possibility that anything that was released could possibly cause a grievance of any sort, because that means each update would have to go through careful and expensive review by lawyers.

for all we know they were afraid of /US/ (us all) getting offended at some of the things they discussed but decided not to do. I mean, I am SURE that the lawsuit with marvel made it into the discussions at some point if even briefly, and they might have said something vaguely like "what are we going to do to insure this doesn't happen again with marvel or anyone else, especially if the game is run in maintenance mode and has limited staff or no staff to perform the nerfing?" or they could have worried about all the remakes and "re-suiting" that mainstream characters get and asked the same question (seriously by 3200 wolvarine and the hulk will have worn everything.. "no your character can't have that costume! Wolvarine wore it as his iconic costume in the 3012 movie! during the first 20 minutes, after that he wore your other costume as one of the 5,013,000 unlockable alternate costumes in the new game, which we will get to in a moment" )

and maybe the first outcome was to instate auto-nerfing in the costume creator but later they decided on a different approach. Can you imagine what people here would do if they heard about the costume creator disallowing certain costume piece combinations or color combinations? you would all be outraged and worried, and there would be petitions and youtube videos condemning it (and some people would be sending hate mail to marvel even though marvel was only mentioned and had nothing to do with it), that's the last thing they need especially given the conditions that they might have decided against it themselves, on their own, without our input. But if they decided that after our input that would be tantamount to looking like they "gave-in" to our demands.

again these are just wild hypothetical situations, but it's just a load of trouble and headaches they would like to avoid while they get us our game back.

again from what we know "officially" from what was told to us by official updates, at the beginning of all this everything was initiated in good faith from both parties, NCSoft is willing to sell, there were some issues, there was a hold-up with Nexon, but things are moving along slowly yet they still move along and in good faith.

for all we know they want to be rid of it. there is that possibility that the THeM contacted NCSoft to just buy a nondevelopment maintenance copy of the server image as it was, and NCSoft at some point said "look lets just negotiate for the whole thing, we really don't want to deal with the legal responsibilities of it".

For all we know that might have happened after Nexon was kicked to the curb and changed the course of the negotiations entirely. Or maybe NCSoft decided they want to run the game themselves and the deal was cancelled but the THeM are under NDA because the game is still going to return so nothing can be said about it till that happens.

point is it's happening, and in good faith, NCSoft doesn't want to sit on this game or any other and everyone involved is handling it in a serious manner overall.