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http://www.411mania.com/games/news/1247 ... awsuit.htm

As some may be aware of, Hasbro (owners of D&D) have sued Atari (publisher of NWN) because Atari illegally gave Namco Bandai rights to use D&D.

Since the legal mumbo jumbo takes a long time to get anywhere not much has happened yet. However signs of troubles ahead are for example that the release of NWN on Steam was canceled and that NWN2 hasn't got a new patch for half a year. Furthermore BioWare's new fantasy RPG Dragon Age doesn't use the D&D rules anymore.

I'm mostly interested in whether this will result in the master server going down. Are multiplayer servers still depending on it for authentication?

Please.. remember how long it took for nwn to get 1.69 patch?

Aside from that, I am not sure. Could be that nothing happens since it is quite uninteresting and NWN has been out for ages, there is no possibility of further profit so they ignore it and focus on more profitable things.

like consoles....

Fuck 'em all.

At least we don't use authentication any longer. Got our own authentication methods in use.

I heard a rumor that Gamespy will not be hosting sometime later this year.
Any truth to this anyone?

Jan wrote:

I'm mostly interested in whether this will result in the master server going down. Are multiplayer servers still depending on it for authentication?

Amia isn't. but it'd be a death knell for the community.

And anyways, the reason bioware worked on Dragon age is because Hasbro took the franchise rights away from them to give to another company to do DDO. We all know how fantasticly well DDO's doing.

Hasbro's execs screwed the pooch with that one. Bioware Did D&D right, and they were great with it. Now the 'masses' have no intro to the game system itself in the form of CRPG's or console games. NWN2 was a complete profit grab off NWN's success. From a game design standpoint, the original game had -nothing- in common with nwn2 except some asset files that were stolen, and using D&D system.

Bioware, has Dragon age, and in my opinion, their first game got the universe off to a GREAT start. Between those shennanigans and 4th Edition, and Gary's death, i'm pretty sure D&D is on the way down.

4th Ed I happen to like myself, minding that I make my own worlds mostly and just draw on the source material for crunchies.

To me a game universe is about the lore. That is the most important part for me, is the narrative.

The game systems in 4e are better.

But 4e just feels like they decided to throw out decades of lore to spoon feed it to people who wouldn't appreciate the game in the first place.

Honestly, I don't disupte Faerun's a good world. I love it, hell I'd GM a rendition of it where Shaundakul's still kicking around and Mystra's not dead.

.. Hell, if a group of reliable enough people wanted it and I could get the right permissions, I'd run a 4th ED game based on Amia.

I've got some contacts in Gamespy, considering XenoCorp Hosting Services has been hosting the Starfleet Command directory servers for them now for almost 8 years.

I'll see if I can't perhaps get a little more info on this from the inside.

Regards,

4e is awesome in that it does a good job of streamlining things, and preventing so many broken powerbuild combinations. Make a few changes to allowed races, and you definitely -could- run it in pre-Spellplague Faerun, Rogaku. I love the brutal rogue option. I looooove it.

Dwagin wrote:

[snip]NWN2 was a complete profit grab off NWN's success. From a game design standpoint, the original game had -nothing- in common with nwn2 except some asset files that were stolen, and using D&D system. [/snip]

Actually, NWN2 is, essentially, NWN1.5. The first and second games are incredibly alike. All that was changed was the engine, and even then, not a hell of a lot. You'll notice they're still using all of Bioware's scripts, and for interiors, they're still using tilesets, as well.

Nonetheless, NWN2 is heading down the drain, yes. Storm of Zehir sort of killed the chances of Obsidian/Atari releasing a third expansion, and we haven't had a patch update (as was mentioned earlier) for some time.

Personally, I think that even if they had the opportunity to use it, Bioware would have benefited from not using DND in Dragon Age. It's a horribly outdated system that's far too tied into Hasbro. Also, they'd have to use 4E, which I just sort of dislike. (Then again, I don't like 3.5 either... or 3. Or 2. Or 1.)

Didn't Bioware split from Atari anyway? I thought they decided to adopt EA as a publisher instead.

All I care about is that we get to keep our Amia.

The controls in NWN2 is what kills it for me. I don't start playing it unless I have nothing else to do and a lot of time on my hands. It's not completely fun to me when I have to focus like I'm performing a task rather than a game and pause it every time I encounter an enemy so I can figure out what the heck I need to click. Meh, maybe it's just because I'm new to it and can't be arsed to figure it out like I figured NWN1 out. The mystique is gone so I have little incentive, and semi-tasty graphics don't make up for the slowness.

Oh, wanna hear a joke? 4E. Wanna hear a tragedy? 4E lore. The defense rests, your honor.

4E is actually quite good from a game perspective. The mechanics are streamlined, alot of things have been made -alot- easier to handle 'on the fly', and general balance is a little more even overall.

It's just the lore that's FUBAR.

A side benefit of making your own world, and or modifying the one that exists.

Dwagin wrote:

The game systems in 4e are better.

And side benefit of owning your own IP:

No license fees.

Actually Bioware stated the reason Dragon Age doesn't use the D20 system is because they generally hate the D20 system. Most of the games they have created the D20 system was a pre-req to use to make the game in that world. Had they the choice they would have scrapped it.

Dragon Age was their first game that was solely theirs. Not Wizards, Hasbro or Lucasarts, but a 100% Bioware game. So they ran from D20 and all it's stupid little restrictions as fast as possible.

As for Atari giving Namco Bandai rights to D20, they deserve to be sued. Namco Bandai is a terrible JRPG producer, they basically are the japanese Hasbro, and given how the japanese industry loves to take Western stuff & mutilate it into some bastard frakenstein creation containing bright colours, silly music & 14 year old girls with breasts for weapons, if Atari did give Namco the rights they deserve to be sued.

Never been a massive fan of Atari, as far as publishers go they tend screw over players about as much as EA. Also they sold publisher rights for Bioware to EA...bastards.

Selvec Darkon wrote:

bastard frakenstein creation containing bright colours, silly music & 14 year old girls with breasts for weapons

Make the girls 17 and it sounds good.

From what I can tell, Hasbro are tards. Seriously, are they tryingto ruin any chance of getting new people to play their game?

WonWon wrote:

4E is actually quite good from a game perspective. The mechanics are streamlined, alot of things have been made -alot- easier to handle 'on the fly', and general balance is a little more even overall.

It's just the lore that's FUBAR.

The one thing that bothers me above all else is how they made the alignment system linear .... that annoys the hell out of me.

Jan wrote:

Selvec Darkon wrote:

bastard frakenstein creation containing bright colours, silly music & 14 year old girls with breasts for weapons

Make the girls 17 and it sounds good.

Have to be 18 in the USA

Dwagin wrote:

Jan wrote:

Selvec Darkon wrote:

bastard frakenstein creation containing bright colours, silly music & 14 year old girls with breasts for weapons

Make the girls 17 and it sounds good.

Have to be 18 in the USA

Not gonna happen. Has to be underage otherwise it ain't JRPG.

Didn't you know underage characters depicted in animation/art/painting in any sexual way is actually child pornography and you can go to jail now for possessing it?

Maybe someone should alert the feds to the JRPGs, and the entire lolicon subculture. But anyway, we should get back on topic.

So, I think I'm missing it, but what's the actual deal here?

Is GameSpy going down later this year or not? And if so, how would we go about accessing Amia, or is that just the ballgame?

I believe we could still direct connect fairly easily.

I don't know where the gamespy rumor got started.

There's no evidence i've seen cited.

Even if it does implode, Amia has its own authentication and you can direct connect via LAN.

Dwagin wrote:

I don't know where the gamespy rumor got started.

There's no evidence i've seen cited.

Even if it does implode, Amia has its own authentication and you can direct connect via LAN.

I... do no think I know what this means?

BlackDahlya wrote:

Dwagin wrote:

I don't know where the gamespy rumor got started.

There's no evidence i've seen cited.

Even if it does implode, Amia has its own authentication and you can direct connect via LAN.

I... do no think I know what this means?

Instead of clicking 'Internet Game' click 'LAN Game' and direct connect

We'll still be able to connect to Amia and all if Gamespy goes down, sure. But, the thing that is worrisome is that it's going to get a hell of a lot tougher to get new people coming in. As much as I hate Gamespy, if it goes, all the NWN servers will more than likely die a slow death.

Having said that, I also haven't seen anywhere where Gamespy has said they're going to stop supporting NWN. An over reaction to a silly rumor or does someone actually have some sources?

Yurell wrote:

BlackDahlya wrote:

Dwagin wrote:

I don't know where the gamespy rumor got started.

There's no evidence i've seen cited.

Even if it does implode, Amia has its own authentication and you can direct connect via LAN.

I... do no think I know what this means?

Instead of clicking 'Internet Game' click 'LAN Game' and direct connect

Oh. >.> Never tried that before.

EDIT: Call me daft, but what is different about it? I can still log in without typing a password. >.<

BlackDahlya wrote:

Oh. >.> Never tried that before.

EDIT: Call me daft, but what is different about it? I can still log in without typing a password. >.<

Using Direct Connect reduces lag. Not only for you, but for everyone.

Isnt Gamespy just a matchmaking service? Dont see how it would be effected by the lawsuit

Believe it, it can be affected, take Starfleet Command 3.

Activision sued Paramount over SFC3 due to "insufficient advertising campaigns to coincide with the release of the Motion Picture" and in the process relinquished any rights to the SFC 3 materials, or licensing rights.

About 2 months after that, Gamespy contacted me and made arrangements for me to host the Starfleet Command 3 Directory services, because they were dropping it (I had already been hosting the SFC OP / EAW directory servers).

I'm waiting for a response from my Lamespy contact.

Regards,

Should be to hard to still run the server without any outside support.. Basing this on the fact that I know some people who wrote their own online multiplayer support for Death Knights of Kryn (maybe some of you know the game. It's some old DOS DnD based game). What I heard they did it in a week between classes at school.

It's really not. All you have to know is the ports and what's being queried, and that's all of about a 10 second port capture of traffic to and from their servers.

Seriously, now that I think about it, I might just have our coders @ D.Net write up something just in case.

Regards,

The Atari vs. Hasbro lawsuit

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