Author Topic: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?  (Read 7232 times)

emperorsteele

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What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« on: January 23, 2014, 07:41:13 PM »
Preface: This is a completely hypothetical question, not a sly, cryptic, wink wink sort of question.

If someone were to actually obtain the City of Heroes IP from NCSoft, what else would they need (from NCSoft specifically) to get the game up and running? So far, I've come up with:

The IP, naturally, and all the trademarks that come with it. The source code, of course. They'd also need the server-side game code (All the missions and text are kept server-side, iirc).

I guess they'd also need to either buy out NCSoft's lease with Cryptic, or have to deal with cryptic themselves to lease the license.

Also, obtaining ownership of the CoH web address, site, forums, etc would be a priority.

Now there's lots of other things one would need to re-launch CoH (servers, duh*), but I'm trying to keep a narrower focus for my day-dreaming. Basically, If one were to be in talks with NCSoft, giving them an offer they couldn't refuse, what would one have to make sure they get?

*: As I understand it, the CoH servers were re-purposed for other games, so we'd have 0 hope of obtaining all our old character info. However, this brings up another possible issue: What if NCsoft didn't keep ANY backups and don't have the source code or server-side info anymore? What then? Is it possible one or more of the old devs backed everything up somewhere and is sitting on it?

saipaman

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2014, 01:29:51 AM »
One thing you'd need is a way to import Sentinel+ files back into CoX.

emperorsteele

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2014, 02:21:03 AM »
I don't know of anyway that NCSoft would be able to take care of that =P

But, to add to the list: Dev tools and documentation. Those would be important!

Leandro

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #3 on: January 24, 2014, 05:20:58 AM »
The IP and rights to run the existing game in perpetuity, transferring all licensed parts of the game to your ownership (this would include the Cryptic Engine but also any other libraries the game uses that NC had licensed, artwork, etcetera).

Source code and source data tree (with all the stuff that gets compiled into bins, but also the original PSD files used for textures and such; some things are essential than others). If they exist, copies of the last database backups to be made of the server. Developer documents on systems implementation would be a nice bonus but nowhere near essential.

I wouldn't worry much about server costs, if you have the kind of money that NCsoft wouldn't refuse your offer, servers are a pittance by comparison. Getting the game running, even without developer documentation, wouldn't be very difficult for the kind of crazy who injects new code into the game to allow players to walk on maps while offline.
« Last Edit: January 24, 2014, 05:26:34 AM by Leandro »

Eoraptor

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #4 on: January 24, 2014, 07:43:17 PM »
you need

-IP rights... that is all inclusive, both the engine and server technology, and the copyrighted property, such as character designs, legends, settings, place names, etc. In perpetuity so that NCsoft couldn't revoke them at a later date to start their own competing COx property.

-Infrastructure tools... the neccessary hardware and software required to do maintenance on the game. this includes dedicated testing machines, dedicated development machines, and licenses to powerful software for 3d modeling, audio recording, etc.

-Rackspace... That is a physical location for your servers. When COH started they had locations both in the US and Europe, with plans to launch a third korean server... but eventually the korean version of the game was axed, and the european servers were physically transfered to America. Such a location needs to be a data center which is both safe from weather and tectonic events, and has reliable uptime and a very high degree of bandwidth service. That is to say you're not going to go down to your local two guys in a garage and run an international videogame server/social network.

-Programming staff... let's face it, sooner or later you're either going to want to upgrade the game (for instance, windows 8/8.1/9 compatibility, linux steam box) or you're going to run into a glitch that ammateur skills can't fix, or a security hole which has thus far not been recognized. So you need a staff of people experienced in the maintenance and upkeep of a game running several virtual or physical servers, a website, an email, etc.

-Lights-on staff... the moderators and security team. these people aren't JUST for keeping the trolls at bay, they also play an important part in mitigating player issues between the community and the programming staff,  negitating disputes between players, and policing things like intellectual property violation (COH's strict "no homage" rules which kept DC/Marvel/Image from suing on the grounds that COX could be used for violating their IP.)

-Data keeping... You'll need a way to back up user accounts and more. Even if you rely on a system like Sentinel or Icon to allow users to back up costumes at home, you still need a way to archive months, if not years worth of server-side data. usser accounts, preferences, server-side maps and balancing adjustments... if a server ever physically goes down, or if an update turns out to be bad, you have to have copies of all data, stored separately from your servers and your produciton equipment, to restore from. This is usually two locaions, one directly on site for daily or weekly backups, and a long-term off-site backup in a physically separate location for security purposes.

-optionals... If you are feeling brave, you can do all this yourself... but you may still want to take out a type of insurance, be it legal insurance against lawsuits (such as a lawyer on retainer) or physical insurance on the hundreds of thoudsands of dollars of hardware and software listed above. Additionally any bank notes, holding corporations to keep the IP protected, any benefits you provide your employees (Affordable Care Act, perks, etc) Plus of course the various legal perils from operating any kind of buisness, such as someone, government, law enforcement, court injunction, etc, swooping in to cease your hardware, or less savoury types of payouts you'd think better left to fiction.

As you can see, it's an extensive and daunting list to try to tackle, not to mention expensive.
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Azrael

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #5 on: January 24, 2014, 09:04:17 PM »
Good outline from Eoraptor and Leandro.

It's starting to look expensive for any company to take it on...especially an old game with a 'small' (by MMO standards...) user base?

All the more reason, perhaps to create an 'offline' mode from any such emulation project to share the burden?

I'd be happy with just an offline mode and let my own computer act as 'server...'  And for community play, one 'mega server' funded from donations.

Looks like the community (well, the ones with programming powers...) will have to take charge of any such Coh resurgence.  The chiefs at NC Soft made their position clear by their actions.

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Eoraptor

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #6 on: January 24, 2014, 11:29:00 PM »
an expense I forgot to mention is the bandwidth lane. remember that the US courts just declared that it is now perfectly legal for an ISP to stratify bandwidth and charge preferentially, as well as make deals with existing content providers for preferential access, meaning ou may be faced with the existimg MMO's making deals to keep competition out, or at least to a slower lane of internet traffic.


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« Last Edit: January 25, 2014, 12:42:41 AM by Blondeshell »
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LadyVamp

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2014, 05:30:31 AM »
That's pretty much what you'd need.  As for the backups, they would have them for legal reasons (like defending themselves in court) but only so long as needed to meet statute of limitations as well as whatever gov't mandate.

You'd have a very hard time getting copies of the backups as they'd likely have ncsoft's accounting records too and certainly paragon's.
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The Fifth Horseman

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2014, 12:20:31 PM »
That's pretty much what you'd need.  As for the backups, they would have them for legal reasons (like defending themselves in court) but only so long as needed to meet statute of limitations as well as whatever gov't mandate.

You'd have a very hard time getting copies of the backups as they'd likely have ncsoft's accounting records too and certainly paragon's.
Records can be sanitized or removed. It would probably boil down to having to pay NCSoft more.
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LadyVamp

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #9 on: January 26, 2014, 12:29:35 AM »
Records can be sanitized or removed. It would probably boil down to having to pay NCSoft more.

Very true.  You'd get backup (likely tapes) with nothing but the data from the game servers.  likely sql dumps in whatever sql server they used.  The gaming server themselves probably have no player data on them.

Any such IP transfer deal would likely include that data too
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CoyoteSeven

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #10 on: January 26, 2014, 02:52:35 AM »
I'm guessing when CoH started, the servers ran under Windows Server 2003. No idea if they ever upgraded from that. The server code itself would probably have to be updated to run under Windows Server 2012.

I'm willing to bet they also used Microsoft SQL Server as well. That bit of software is way expensive all by itself.

EDIT: You know, I'm reminded I had a dream almost a year ago that I was on this site and I saw an announcement that Titan Networks was able to get all the rights and such to CoH, and TonyV was making posts and uploading photos of the tapes and disks and stuff, showing them to all of us as he unpacked them.

I mean like, yeah. That would have been nice? haha

LadyVamp

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #11 on: January 26, 2014, 03:35:11 AM »
I knew they were using AD for our accounts but a little surprised they'd have w2k3 servers hosting the server part.  Would have figured Linux backend and Oracle for the db-server or perhaps mysql with a support contract from mysql ab (then sun, then oracle).

The game client was compiled on VC 5. 
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Ironwolf

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #12 on: January 27, 2014, 02:21:55 PM »
I hate to be that guy - however here it is - it would likely be a violation of the Privacy Act for NCSoft to sell you the account details of various players.

I would think that after the game was sold you would have to rebuild all characters and accounts from new.

Eoraptor

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #13 on: January 27, 2014, 05:03:16 PM »
I hate to be that guy - however here it is - it would likely be a violation of the Privacy Act for NCSoft to sell you the account details of various players.

I would think that after the game was sold you would have to rebuild all characters and accounts from new.
Actually no it is not. Account Data is generally held to be the property of the customer AND the company both. This is no different than when any other service provider merges, or sells its operation outright. when Alltel sold a lot of its cellular assets to verizon in a region, it did no have to get its customer's permission to transfer their accounts information to verizon. all it had to do was send out a letter saying "we've sold your account to a new service provider as we will no longer be doing business in your area. if you don't agree with this or don't wish to continue your business with veriozon, here is how you cancel your account"

the account privacy laws in various states and nations only apply to sale of the data separate from the service. (and even then are fairly nebulous and poorly enforced) such as selling your account data to a telemarketer or a data broker. they don;'t apply to selling of the entirety of the service.
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dwturducken

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #14 on: January 27, 2014, 05:05:22 PM »
It seems like, if there were some privacy prohibition, all of the Champions accounts would have been wiped when PWE bought out Atari, but I may have an inadequate understanding of the events involved.
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emperorsteele

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #15 on: January 27, 2014, 05:50:27 PM »
The only issue with "account transfers" is that if a particular customer previously or currently plays any other NCSoft title, there'd be some hurdles to overcome there. Like, I can't imagine too many Guild Wars or League of Legends players would be very happy if one day they couldn't log in because "You once played CoH so we sold your account to the new owner of that IP". They could simply transfer the data without losing it, of course, but I feel like there may be a legal issue there.

Aggelakis

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #16 on: January 27, 2014, 06:16:10 PM »
Any company worth anything would compartmentalize their account data. They wouldn't get your peanut butter in my chocolate.
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JetFlash

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #17 on: January 27, 2014, 07:17:18 PM »
I would think that after the game was sold you would have to rebuild all characters and accounts from new.


I think I speak for many of us here when I say I would be perfectly OK with that if it meant having our game back, away from NCSoft's miserly clutches...

JetFlash

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #18 on: January 27, 2014, 07:23:00 PM »
*: As I understand it, the CoH servers were re-purposed for other games, so we'd have 0 hope of obtaining all our old character info. However, this brings up another possible issue: What if NCsoft didn't keep ANY backups and don't have the source code or server-side info anymore? What then? Is it possible one or more of the old devs backed everything up somewhere and is sitting on it?


The game servers were very likely VMs (Virtual Machines) run on virtual hosts.  Those were probably backed up to archives, and then removed from the host servers.  They could be spun up on alternate hardware without too much fuss.  Certainly less than setting up from scratch, anyways...

Taceus Jiwede

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Re: What, HYPOTHETICALLY, would be needed?
« Reply #19 on: January 27, 2014, 09:45:44 PM »
Any company worth anything would compartmentalize their account data. They wouldn't get your peanut butter in my chocolate.

Reese's account data, sound delicious.