New efforts!

[triedac]

Yeah I don't know what mmos other than city of heroes that you've played. But if you liked the pace of combat in City of Heroes, you'd like an nge server more. Original swg was a much slower paced game and it lacks all the great new content and features that came later on. Including the chronicles system which was the swg version of AE. All versions of swg have pro's and con's of course; which is why some stayed and others wanted that pre-nge server instead.

Projectswg is a legal emulation effort of an nge server that I've been following for a few years now: http://www.projectswg.com/cmps_index.php

You can expect it to be complete eventually but it's going to be a long haul.

SWGReborn is the leaked source code version: https://swgreborn.com/forums/index.php?forums/

It's in testing and includes all of the features swg had until it's shutdown. You can sign up and play provided you have your swg dvd/cds or a steam account with the game. Or a nice friend to rip the files for you. Just follow the setup instructions. Expect character wipes once testing completes because dev mode features are active so you can grant yourself armor and gear to play around.

Pre-CU was the original aim - the original game.

Going from pre-CU (the original aim) to CU(pre-NGE) changed quite a bit, but it still had the feel of it with the exception of Medical based gameplay being completely different - made me sad, but what can you do. CU (Pre-NGE) stopped at Mustafar. During the closed beta it was pre-nge, but 3 days before the expansion release, it went open beta and NGE hit the beta servers for everyone to test before going live. It was quite disturbing. There was so much rage that the forum moderators, and even the devs, would delete threads and tell the nay-sayers to shut up. Obviously the game would only stagger a few more years before going under.

NGE brought the game to a halt in terms of individual player progression, and it became very linear. It also got rid of creature handler profession, and replaced it side option with minor purpose and no ability to tame wild creatures; Which was one of the most loved due to its uniqueness from any other MMO, and nothing has replicated it since. You have to spend tons of money from a bio-engineer to buy a pet due to the difficulty of making one, and the fact that it took a week or 2 to make a decent one. Along with that was TKA (hand to hand combat) becoming available as an optional play style for musician/dancer class only - Something else that garnered much hate on SOE. One of the biggest changes was the jedi becoming available to everyone at lvl1. Instead of questing to earn it, making it somewhat unique with its semi-op play style and rarity, it was watered down to a pale comparison and became the most played profession. So there was no longer excitement in play, or simply seeing a jedi character in the game - lost its uniqueness, and also lost its place in the timeline. Had they progressed the timeline to post-empire and later on to the jedi academy phase, then it would have made more sense to have jedi everywhere. Their lack of TKA and creature handler profession was stupid though.

They turned SWG into a crappy version of SWTOR. They took 36 individual, customizable, and unique professions and turned it into 9 base classes with very little customization. Their major fail in all this stemmed from the very beginning. You could only have 1 character per server - 1. The only exception was if you unlocked a force sensitive slot for jedi then you could have 2 characters. So if you had a crafter, you could never join in combat without respec'ing your character, but at least you could respec. With NGE, you would have to delete your character and start over - so stupid.

In all fairness, going to NGE simplified the game and made it easier to tweak/balance professions. This allowed them to focus more on content. So I do see the logic in doing it. However, they basically made it a new game (they were sued over this actually) and removed creature handler so they get no forgiveness  :'(

*gasps for air* you went there - you opened the can *passes out*

[Noyjitat]

Yeah I certainly understand the anger of nge. Its like so many huge changed like our ED and global defense nerfs. If your there before it you certainly hated it. I will say that from my perspective that swg in the end did become a better game but it took awhile.

[triedac]

Yeah I certainly understand the anger of nge. Its like so many huge changed like our ED and global defense nerfs. If your there before it you certainly hated it. I will say that from my perspective that swg in the end did become a better game but it took awhile.

True, very true. And I'll admit they did pan it out decently toward the end. Content was much better during NGE. Prior to that it was mostly profession balance bickering threads for pvp. JTL was always good stuff regardless.

[MegaWatt]

When JTL came out i barely spent any time on the ground, only the trip to a trainer and back.

[Vee]

Starting to realize how many pages of this thread depended on the regularly scheduled why-haven't-we heard-anything/game-is-never-coming-back posts.

[JoshexProxy]

I must converse all my worries here, all possibilities that may explain the wait to see whether people think they could be valid.

Disgruntled employee tampering/corruption of the server image - 0% chance - Arcana

what about NCSoft stringing the THeM along for money, and using the NDA as a silencing tool?

that seems likely and with an obvious motivation to me.

lets face it, NDA's were meant to cover crucial sensitive information, to make your NDA cover /everything/ related to an issue, even the status of negotiations or a simple sentence like "things are going along, albeit slowly", to have the NDA restrict such basic non-sensitive information about the deal is NDA abuse. NDA abuse is often a shadow of corporate bullying.

so my new conspiracy theory is this; NCSoft is scamming the THeM and using NDA as a protection from legal action.

I remember the first words we heard about the negotiations before all went silent said that NCSoft will set-up a transfer company to aid in the transfer of the server image. I am guessing that the THeM are paying for this 'transfer company'. And I am also guessing that NCSoft is stringing them along and giving excuses and refusing to cooperate to allow progress to be made in negotiations so they can keep this free THeM funded company. I think NCSoft is using the company for something entirely non-CoX related, like a guildwars technical support call center, or even a guildwars server hosting company etc. doesn't have to be guildwars but could be any of their current games, then NCSoft says the money the THeM are paying for it is purely maintenance fees to keep the transfer company active during the negotiations. in effect nCSoft would be having the THeM paying for the operation of another game without telling them. OR maybe NCSoft did tell them and scammed them into it like "well theres drama with nexon, because of that we need to pause these negotiations. But it's important that we keep the transfer company active; sign here to allow us to use the transfer company for guildwars server hosting and technical support centers in the meantime to keep it active and possibly offset some of your costs." and then when asked why they are still paying the full brunt price for it "well guildwars isn't doing that good lately it's losing value so the transfer company still requires your funding."

you know the old "make it seem like bad luck, but plan it all along"

end this conspiracy theory description.



another conspiracy theory:  somehow, someway one of the 'problem' employees responsible for development, registered intellectual properties for some of his/her creations before sneaking them into a CoX release. So the wait isn't NCSoft, it's legal drama regarding the component(s) of CoX that aren't owned by NCSoft. I'm guessing that employee isn't selling (for a reasonable price) and I'm guessing that employee brought it up when he learned negotiations were happening, that would stall the negotiations because then those aspects would either have to be removed/replaced or if they are core aspects like characters, story or code then NCSoft may be in a THeM funded legal battle in attempt to have the courts issue them ownership of the aspects because they were willfully inserted into a project known to have all rights owned by NCSoft.

it could have even been a cryptic employee, I remember several years before the shutdown NCSoft said they were going to remove the cryptic logo as cryptic's ownership of the game components had fully expired. But they never did remove it! hinting that maybe Cryptic secretly double-handed NCSoft and hadn't sold the IPs to key features, hence why the cryptic logo remained. infact I can hypothesize that one such thing would be the factory in the rouge isles meant to be a symbolism of Cryptic's logo, obviously cryptic did not sell the rights to it's logo yet it's part of the game. situations like this could be our waiting woes.

end this conspiracy theory description.

Starting to realize how many pages of this thread depended on the regularly scheduled why-haven't-we heard-anything/game-is-never-coming-back posts.

+1 for your records.

[Aggelakis]

I must converse all my worries here, all possibilities that may explain the wait to see whether people think they could be valid.

Please keep this stuff in mind when you're writing insane theories on a board: If you post insane stuff often enough, people start believing you are insane. They stop caring. Your validity nears zero. People stop reading your posts entirely. People start putting you on ignore/block lists. Keep this in mind.

[Zombie Hustler]

Starting to realize how many pages of this thread depended on the regularly scheduled why-haven't-we heard-anything/game-is-never-coming-back posts.

Not at all, is pretty clearly the answer.  ;D

[Abraxus]

I am in it until I hear something definitive, one way or the other.  Until then, it is all speculation, and letting our worst fears/suspicions run rampant.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Please keep this stuff in mind when you're writing insane theories on a board: If you post insane stuff often enough, people start believing you are insane. They stop caring. Your validity nears zero. People stop reading your posts entirely. People start putting you on ignore/block lists. Keep this in mind.

Using fractured grammar/bizarre word choices and phrasing helps. And i have few to no doubts about the sanity in question. My own i question all the time, but i have yet to receive a convincing answer, so in a way i do appreciate those who strive so hard to dispel any doubts.

[Balince]

lets face it, NDA's were meant to cover crucial sensitive information, to make your NDA cover /everything/ related to an issue, even the status of negotiations or a simple sentence like "things are going along, albeit slowly", to have the NDA restrict such basic non-sensitive information about the deal is NDA abuse. NDA abuse is often a shadow of corporate bullying.

What do you think most corporations do? Treat people fairly and decently? lol, no. They use them and get the most they can possibly get out of them and make them struggle to the max.

[Brigadine]

I must converse all my worries here, all possibilities that may explain the wait to see whether people think they could be valid.

Disgruntled employee tampering/corruption of the server image - 0% chance - Arcana

what about NCSoft stringing the THeM along for money, and using the NDA as a silencing tool?

that seems likely and with an obvious motivation to me.

lets face it, NDA's were meant to cover crucial sensitive information, to make your NDA cover /everything/ related to an issue, even the status of negotiations or a simple sentence like "things are going along, albeit slowly", to have the NDA restrict such basic non-sensitive information about the deal is NDA abuse. NDA abuse is often a shadow of corporate bullying.

so my new conspiracy theory is this; NCSoft is scamming the THeM and using NDA as a protection from legal action.

I remember the first words we heard about the negotiations before all went silent said that NCSoft will set-up a transfer company to aid in the transfer of the server image. I am guessing that the THeM are paying for this 'transfer company'. And I am also guessing that NCSoft is stringing them along and giving excuses and refusing to cooperate to allow progress to be made in negotiations so they can keep this free THeM funded company. I think NCSoft is using the company for something entirely non-CoX related, like a guildwars technical support call center, or even a guildwars server hosting company etc. doesn't have to be guildwars but could be any of their current games, then NCSoft says the money the THeM are paying for it is purely maintenance fees to keep the transfer company active during the negotiations. in effect nCSoft would be having the THeM paying for the operation of another game without telling them. OR maybe NCSoft did tell them and scammed them into it like "well theres drama with nexon, because of that we need to pause these negotiations. But it's important that we keep the transfer company active; sign here to allow us to use the transfer company for guildwars server hosting and technical support centers in the meantime to keep it active and possibly offset some of your costs." and then when asked why they are still paying the full brunt price for it "well guildwars isn't doing that good lately it's losing value so the transfer company still requires your funding."

you know the old "make it seem like bad luck, but plan it all along"

end this conspiracy theory description.



another conspiracy theory:  somehow, someway one of the 'problem' employees responsible for development, registered intellectual properties for some of his/her creations before sneaking them into a CoX release. So the wait isn't NCSoft, it's legal drama regarding the component(s) of CoX that aren't owned by NCSoft. I'm guessing that employee isn't selling (for a reasonable price) and I'm guessing that employee brought it up when he learned negotiations were happening, that would stall the negotiations because then those aspects would either have to be removed/replaced or if they are core aspects like characters, story or code then NCSoft may be in a THeM funded legal battle in attempt to have the courts issue them ownership of the aspects because they were willfully inserted into a project known to have all rights owned by NCSoft.

it could have even been a cryptic employee, I remember several years before the shutdown NCSoft said they were going to remove the cryptic logo as cryptic's ownership of the game components had fully expired. But they never did remove it! hinting that maybe Cryptic secretly double-handed NCSoft and hadn't sold the IPs to key features, hence why the cryptic logo remained. infact I can hypothesize that one such thing would be the factory in the rouge isles meant to be a symbolism of Cryptic's logo, obviously cryptic did not sell the rights to it's logo yet it's part of the game. situations like this could be our waiting woes.

end this conspiracy theory description.
+1 for your records.

NDA's need to be illegal. Totally abused.

[Vee]

I remember the first words we heard about the negotiations before all went silent said that NCSoft will set-up a transfer company to aid in the transfer of the server image.

I'd forgotten that was said but that would add another level of paperwork and lawyers and thus more time not actually negotiating. I'm no business expert but I highly doubt said company would be the kind of company with things like employees and offices and computers that could be co-opted for another game. More likely it's the kind of company that only exists on paper.

[Aggelakis]

... I remember several years before the shutdown NCSoft said they were going to remove the cryptic logo as cryptic's ownership of the game components had fully expired. But they never did remove it!

Obviously what you actually saw was someone third-hand saying this, because Cryptic's ownership never expired (in fact, it remains even to this day): the game engine was leased in perpetuity - it was never purchased - there is no way that Cryptic's ownership COULD "expire". NCsoft never owned it. NCsoft leased it.

This is why people dismiss you out of hand.

[Arcana]

lets face it, NDA's were meant to cover crucial sensitive information, to make your NDA cover /everything/ related to an issue, even the status of negotiations or a simple sentence like "things are going along, albeit slowly", to have the NDA restrict such basic non-sensitive information about the deal is NDA abuse. NDA abuse is often a shadow of corporate bullying.

Going to have to make it two in a row.  NDA's are not just common in negotiations such as these, it is extremely rare when they aren't used.  Furthermore, they virtually always cover all aspects of the negotiations.

I should also point out that of all the NDA's I've ever signed (and I've signed more than a hundred of them) more than half explicitly included within the NDA's terms a restriction on disclosing the specific terms of the NDA itself.  And that includes the one I signed with NCSoft.  Its pretty standard language.

I remember the first words we heard about the negotiations before all went silent said that NCSoft will set-up a transfer company to aid in the transfer of the server image. I am guessing that the THeM are paying for this 'transfer company'. And I am also guessing that NCSoft is stringing them along and giving excuses and refusing to cooperate to allow progress to be made in negotiations so they can keep this free THeM funded company. I think NCSoft is using the company for something entirely non-CoX related, like a guildwars technical support call center, or even a guildwars server hosting company etc. doesn't have to be guildwars but could be any of their current games, then NCSoft says the money the THeM are paying for it is purely maintenance fees to keep the transfer company active during the negotiations. in effect nCSoft would be having the THeM paying for the operation of another game without telling them.

This is so far fetched it barely encapsulates a coherent thought.  I know these words sound to you like they express a logical idea, but not really.  I'm not sure where you got the idea that anyone would set up a "transfer company" just to hand someone a hard drive: that's nonsensical.  But even if that were true we're talking about legal entities on paper.  To suggest that this hypothetical legal entity was capable of being "used" to perform some other task for NCSoft is literally like suggesting that the reason why NCSoft doesn't want to part with City of Heroes is because they have secretly enslaved our characters into manning their help desks.  Those words also sound like they express a logical idea, but they don't.

My recollection was that the acquiring entity would set up a holding company which would become the legal entity that NCSoft would deal with in legal terms: they would sell and/or license the appropriate IP to the company, not a bunch of individuals.  Which makes perfect sense: you don't deal with people in situations like this, you deal with corporate entities.  This company wouldn't necessarily actually operate the game; for various legal reasons that holding company would then relicense the rights to a company that was devoted specifically to running the game itself.  Its sort of like how for legal purposes pretty much all movies are not actually produced directly by the movie studio that owns the rights to do so: a specific legal entity (basically a company) is created for the sole purpose of making that movie, and that movie only.  The studio grants the rights necessary to do so, provides funding, and gets a return on its investment in the company.  There are financial and legal reasons why its done this way that would be also generally applicable to acquiring the rights to, and then operating City of Heroes.

Somewhere in there, I think your train of thought met the six-thirty freight going the other way.

[Arcana]

another conspiracy theory:  somehow, someway one of the 'problem' employees responsible for development, registered intellectual properties for some of his/her creations before sneaking them into a CoX release. So the wait isn't NCSoft, it's legal drama regarding the component(s) of CoX that aren't owned by NCSoft. I'm guessing that employee isn't selling (for a reasonable price) and I'm guessing that employee brought it up when he learned negotiations were happening, that would stall the negotiations because then those aspects would either have to be removed/replaced or if they are core aspects like characters, story or code then NCSoft may be in a THeM funded legal battle in attempt to have the courts issue them ownership of the aspects because they were willfully inserted into a project known to have all rights owned by NCSoft.

nb: Work for hire.  Whenever you work for a company where you are producing intellectual property like this, part of the work contract you sign explicitly states that anything you create while on the job is work for hire, which means you don't own it: your employer is the copyright owner by law the instant you create it.  The only way to create a problem like this would be hypothetically to steal someone else's work and contribute it as your own.  Which would create potential licensing issues, but it would also be a crime.

[Arcana]

NDA's need to be illegal. Totally abused.

I sincerely hope you have some justification for that opinion that doesn't rely on a recent post in this thread.

NDA "abuse" is not really a thing.  The only general area of NDA "abuse" I've ever really heard more than two people care about at the same time involves the intersection of NDAs and whistleblowing or crime reporting.  Otherwise, NDA's are not "abused" any more often than any other area of contract law.  As a technology professional, and specifically as a security professional, I'm exposed to and required to agree to NDAs all the time.  Rarely have I found a generally problematic one.

In fact, lets take this example.  Hypothetically speaking, if it was me that was negotiating for the rights to the game, then first I would have told exactly no one else and second I would not have disclosed any element of the negotiations including that they were occurring and third if someone somehow found out about it and attempted to threaten me with disclosure I would have counter-threatened to drop the entire thing if they did.  The NDA would be meaningless to me, because I would have no interest in actually disclosing anything because doing so would be stupid in the extreme.  That's actually why NDA abuse is not usually a thing.  For most deals, its generally in the interests of both parties not to disclose anyway.  Singular high-profile cases aside, deliberate NDA violations are not very common** (accidental ones, on the other hand, are a lot more common).

I have never signed an NDA where the terms required non-disclosure of something I actually felt bad about not being able to disclose.  And as I've said, I've signed more than a hundred (so many, I can't really count them all).  And the people consistently antsy to break them?  Usually those people are people I wouldn't want working on anything that required an NDA in the first place.


** "That we ever hear about."  In reality, virtually all NDAs are broken in some fashion, usually within some closed group of people.  A husband will tell his wife something they shouldn't, a sister will tell a brother, and you get a bunch of professionals in the same "biz" together and drunk, and some stuff will come out.  There's even a code among most professionals that ironically self-polices this sort of NDA leakage.  But I'm talking more about public disclosure.

[Biz]

A husband will tell his wife something they shouldn't, a sister will tell a brother, and you get a bunch of professionals in the same "biz" together and drunk, and some stuff will come out. 

Who is getting drunk and doing what inside me?

[Ultimate15]

Hot off the press: NCSoft and Nexon end 'business relationship':

http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/nexon-ncsoft-end-alliance/

[Talon Blue]

Hot off the press: NCSoft and Nexon end 'business relationship':

http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/nexon-ncsoft-end-alliance/

This is good in a way for us. Maybe now we'll finally get an answer from NCSoft.