Everquest Heroes' Journey emulator

[Tweed]

THJ's lawyer responded. I know zero about legal junk, but it looks like they're going for estoppel and laches over the fact that Daybreak sat on their asses for—however long they've owned the EQ IP and did exactly zero to change, curtail, or stop emulated EQ servers. Reading the documents, I found out that John Smedley actually liked the emulation groups, which is kind of interesting. The other thing being that Daybreak hasn't offered any actual evidence on how THJ could impact their business. Of course, they were hoping for a slam-dunk suit to shut the whole thing down and never speak of it again and that didn't work.

By rights, it seems like they don't have any because they didn't act when they first acquired the IP from SoE. The genie has been out of the bottle for two decades.

[rusty_shackleford]

By rights, it seems like they don't have any

There is no requirement to enforce your IP rights, and selective enforcement is entirely fair.
I really doubt they're going to get anywhere on the argument that daybreak can't enforce this. They'd have been better off arguing the legalities of emulation which has had repeated wins in court. Stripping the emulator of any recognizable IP would probably be enough, which really shouldn't be that hard.
IP laws are very strong in USA, so they're swimming upstream trying this.

[rusty_shackleford]

It shut down after the judge issued an injunction.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... 7.66.0.pdf

Furthermore, the Court is unpersuaded that Defendants’ operation of THJ is
protected by the fair use doctrine, given, inter alia, the commercial nature of THJ and the
evident adverse effect on the market for EverQuest

) Having considered the parties’
arguments, the Court finds that because Defendants’ THJ operations generate approximately $100,000 in monthly revenue

Unsurprising.

IP laws are very, very broad in USA and unless the IP owner is feeling particularly kind you're probably going to lose if you're profiting unless you go to extensive steps to distance yourself from infringing.

[Tweed]

Guess it's open season on emulated shards then.

[Tweed]

Guess THJ was pulling 100,000 in donations each month, but the thing is those weren't subscriptions, those were given as free-will by people. That's not 100,000 that Deybreak is suddenly losing.

[rusty_shackleford]

Guess THJ was pulling 100,000 in donations each month, but the thing is those weren't subscriptions, those were given as free-will by people. That's not 100,000 that Deybreak is suddenly losing.

Those were tips, not donations. Hope they were paying taxes.

[Tweed]

Guess the devs might be personally liable for damages too.

[Xenich]

Guess the devs might be personally liable for damages too.

Wouldn't Daybreak have to show the court that it was actually damaging their profits?

From what I understand, most playing on THJ would NOT play on the live servers, so technically there is no loss by Daybreak right? So how do they justify damages if they can not show where they are damaged?

[Xenich]

Guess THJ was pulling 100,000 in donations each month, but the thing is those weren't subscriptions, those were given as free-will by people. That's not 100,000 that Deybreak is suddenly losing.

Those were tips, not donations. Hope they were paying taxes.

Due to the success of THJ (and 100k a month I view as very successful for such a game), I wonder how well Monsters & Memories is going to do and their entire budget to develop the game is likely only a couple months of THJ income at most.

[Tweed]

Guess THJ was pulling 100,000 in donations each month, but the thing is those weren't subscriptions, those were given as free-will by people. That's not 100,000 that Deybreak is suddenly losing.

Those were tips, not donations. Hope they were paying taxes.

Due to the success of THJ (and 100k a month I view as very successful for such a game), I wonder how well Monsters & Memories is going to do and their entire budget to develop the game is likely only a couple months of THJ income at most.

Nowhere near as well. THJ removed nearly everything that M&M is trying to put back. Most of the frustrating mechanics of EQ didn't exist on THJ. Spawn timers were faster, levels came much quicker, and the multi-class system solved the boxing problem. You still need some people for certain kinds of content, but most of it could be solo'd and nearly everything was tradable, which meant there was a tidy business to be had in selling keys and quest drops to people who couldn't get them or didn't have the patience.

[rusty_shackleford]

M&M just seems like a worse version of pantheon to me

[Xenich]

Those were tips, not donations. Hope they were paying taxes.

Due to the success of THJ (and 100k a month I view as very successful for such a game), I wonder how well Monsters & Memories is going to do and their entire budget to develop the game is likely only a couple months of THJ income at most.

Nowhere near as well. THJ removed nearly everything that M&M is trying to put back. Most of the frustrating mechanics of EQ didn't exist on THJ. Spawn timers were faster, levels came much quicker, and the multi-class system solved the boxing problem. You still need some people for certain kinds of content, but most of it could be solo'd and nearly everything was tradable, which meant there was a tidy business to be had in selling keys and quest drops to people who couldn't get them or didn't have the patience.

Hmm... will be interesting to see though. I think M&M will do better than you think, but time will tell.

From my view, other than the interesting multi-class concept of the game which allowed you to solo I found rather detrimental. I found it so off putting that the game became boring rather quickly due to little challenge and a very common feeling of modern MMO decay with its fast paced level, easy access, easy travel, buy over earn play.

I had hoped the new features would have made it better to slow the progression, but as the game was, I had no real interest in playing it again.

[Xenich]

M&M just seems like a worse version of pantheon to me

You didn't play much of Pantheon though did you? I think you said you logged on and did a couple of levels, so what do you mean? Pantheon did a lot of good, but missed the mark on many aspects of play, specifically its stupid elite grouping system which made any form of limited non-ideal grouping near impossible, which even EQ didn't go that far to push.

M&M I can't comment too much on, but if it follows EQ format, I would assume solo is possible under certain conditions (ie class, mob, and location selection) and unless they are ********, less than ideal group makeup should still be able to work its way into group content with skilled and clever players (this was not possible in a lot of Pantheons group content, the design forbade it in most situations).

Time will tell though, but I think M&M will do well on that front. In fact, the bulk of the players I saw on Pantheon were expecting more EQ style grouping and were disappointed with its hard forced "perfect group" concept of group play.

[Tweed]

Due to the success of THJ (and 100k a month I view as very successful for such a game), I wonder how well Monsters & Memories is going to do and their entire budget to develop the game is likely only a couple months of THJ income at most.

Nowhere near as well. THJ removed nearly everything that M&M is trying to put back. Most of the frustrating mechanics of EQ didn't exist on THJ. Spawn timers were faster, levels came much quicker, and the multi-class system solved the boxing problem. You still need some people for certain kinds of content, but most of it could be solo'd and nearly everything was tradable, which meant there was a tidy business to be had in selling keys and quest drops to people who couldn't get them or didn't have the patience.

Hmm... will be interesting to see though. I think M&M will do better than you think, but time will tell.

From my view, other than the interesting multi-class concept of the game which allowed you to solo I found rather detrimental. I found it so off putting that the game became boring rather quickly due to little challenge and a very common feeling of modern MMO decay with its fast paced level, easy access, easy travel, buy over earn play.

I had hoped the new features would have made it better to slow the progression, but as the game was, I had no real interest in playing it again.

If they hadn't been sued into oblivion, the play modes would have been in and made things quite interesting.

[Xenich]

Nowhere near as well. THJ removed nearly everything that M&M is trying to put back. Most of the frustrating mechanics of EQ didn't exist on THJ. Spawn timers were faster, levels came much quicker, and the multi-class system solved the boxing problem. You still need some people for certain kinds of content, but most of it could be solo'd and nearly everything was tradable, which meant there was a tidy business to be had in selling keys and quest drops to people who couldn't get them or didn't have the patience.

Hmm... will be interesting to see though. I think M&M will do better than you think, but time will tell.

From my view, other than the interesting multi-class concept of the game which allowed you to solo I found rather detrimental. I found it so off putting that the game became boring rather quickly due to little challenge and a very common feeling of modern MMO decay with its fast paced level, easy access, easy travel, buy over earn play.

I had hoped the new features would have made it better to slow the progression, but as the game was, I had no real interest in playing it again.

If they hadn't been sued into oblivion, the play modes would have been in and made things quite interesting.

Absolutely. I still would have had issues with the fast leveling pace. It made you fly by too fast on content. Yeah, Yeah... I know I could lock my exp with AA during the low levels and just slow pace it, but I will admit I am not good with self handicapping in games, it just... feels wrong, if there is an angle to win, I will find it and push it, that is the "game" to me. Also I would have liked an option at character start that turned off the Bazaar, locked you out and forced traditional travel. As sadist as it sounds, I absolutely loved having to spend an enormous amount of time traveling the world.

Other than that and a few other QoL stuff they added, the modes would have been fantastic and I was really looking forward to a slow paced, dungeon by dungeon gear acquisition treadmill. It really is a shame.