#11
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Also everquest has some on the largest time sinks to date. The whole point of the game was to have things take a lot of time to slow the player down. Everquest is one of the most challenging MMO's. There is a reason that only 1 - 2 end game guilds existed per server, and everyone else was 2 expansions behind. | |||
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#12
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Oh... My... God...
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[ANONYMOUS]
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#13
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The lawsuit didn't actually have anything to do with TorilMUD.
Back in 1991 or something, a group of people at Copenhagen University created DIKU. It was a MUD, a text-based game vaguely similar to any given MMORPG, and it was so popular that they released the source code in the form of a DIKU stock that anyone could download and build their own MUD around. It was nothing more than the foundation of a game, barely playable until re-designed, and it was free to use and modify in any way you liked provided that you did not make money from it. TorilMUD (previously Sojourn, Sojourn II etc.) was a DIKU-based MUD, and Brad McQuaid played there. Toril was very popular at the time and had hundreds of players, so Brad got the idea to adapt the concept into a graphical game. The owners of Toril agreed to let him do this, and so he created Everquest. The similarities between Toril and EQ at the time were huge, from classes and races being almost identical to the gameplay being pretty much the same. The only real major difference is the actual game world as Toril is set in the Forgotten Realms setting which is the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast. TorilMUD is still running to this date, however it is a shadow of its former glory in this generation of WoW and all that. Since Brad McQuaid's source of inspiration was a DIKU-based MUD, EQ shared obvious similarities with various elements incorporated in most MUDs. However, while they were primarily just similarities that are now considered standard elements in all MMORPGS, a few things were identical, most importantly the stock emotes. Even though these were fairly inconsequential to gameplay, the fact that they were mostly copy-pasted from the DIKU stock caused some concern that more than just the text echoes from /smile and /yawn etc. had been appropriated from the DIKU code. Since the DIKU source was freeware with the condition that you make no profits from whatever product you modify it into, it turned into a legal case (although I don't think it was the owners of DIKU who initiated it) which was eventually dropped as it turned out that nothing else had been used, and the stock emotes had been kept more for nostalgia's sake than to steal from the work of others. Since DIKU is 100% text-based, the source code would not even have been compatible with a graphical MMORPG to any relevant extent. | ||
Last edited by Throttle; 11-13-2009 at 08:18 PM..
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#14
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That certainly sounds plausible.
But how do you know this? What is your source of information? I already knew about the race and class structure similarities. Personally I never played Torilmud, so I can't vouch for the rest of it. But it seems to me I remember reading during the court case that parts of the database were lifted directly into the game. Things like what NPC's said and including quests. I never read exactly what these were but my impression was it was things like "You've ruined your own lands, you won't ruin mine." or "Natural selection at work." You may be right. Parts of that story sound pretty fishy though. The TorilMud folks just out of the kindness of their hearts let a large multinational corporation develop a game based on their work? Which incidentally was a branch of another groups work? (Note: I just looked this up on wikipedia, so I hope this is accurate. According to the wiki I read Verant was spun off from Sony at the end of 1998, and before this was a branch of Sony. EQ was released March 16, 1999 so for most of the development was directly a Sony operation.) I dunno about this. I'm working off memory a lot here as I followed what I saw in the press about the case, but didn't save the stories. I seem to remember it was settled out of court and the records sealed but I may be wrong. Exactly how do you know what you say? And as to the rest of the comments people have made, well it's an old argument. But it is still valid and it was never properly addressed in old EQ. With a small server population you are going to see these issues moreso than original with it's huge server populations at the time. Also one other thing, "Since DIKU is 100% text-based, the source code would not even have been compatible with a graphical MMORPG to any relevant extent." I totally disagree with this statement. At least as regards this particular game. It pretty much is a text based mud with a gui and some very rudimentary collision detection. | ||
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#15
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Just an addendum about the source code thing. I think you could use it to some extent with this game. I kind of doubt they put it directly in the game, but you'll never know unless you had a copy of the EQ engine to compare it to the original mud code.
Specifically what I am thinking of is the database of NPC's, quests, mobs, the sort of thing that define the world you have. It really shouldn't be mysterious. Somewhere out there is a copy of the MUD McQuaid played and any number of others that may have been used. Or maybe someone here played the same MUD back in the day. I dunno. But just reading through the database ought to answer a lot of questions. Of course I didn't play it, and I don't have the database. | ||
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#16
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(Is it possible that a warrior bound in freeport that wants to hunt in guk could get faction with oggok so they could bind in feerot or something? Is there a workaround so they don't have to cross several zones?) | |||
Last edited by stormlord; 11-14-2009 at 01:23 AM..
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#17
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Last edited by stormlord; 11-14-2009 at 01:22 AM..
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#18
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#19
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"(Is it possible that a warrior bound in freeport that wants to hunt in guk could get faction with oggok so they could bind in feerot or something? Is there a workaround so they don't have to cross several zones?)"
I grouped with a wood elf ranger once that bound in grobb. Of course he could sneak and hide, and camo. He had some spot in there that was safe to spawn in. If anything happened he just memmed spells and sat till he was ready to go. You might be able to get faction with some of the oggok guys. I think there was a quest with one of the merchants outside oggok that you could work. Over and over and over again. If you killed dorf guards you might have gotten faction with one of the oggok factions as well, I can't remember. Offhand I dont' think I've ever heard of anyone getting faction with grobb that couldn't stroll in there. Maybe because no one bothered really after it got easy to get around, and L. Guk wasn't the spot most of the 40+ crowd tried for after Kunark. Remember the 'sneak' feature and quests made some things easier. And god knows everyone had lots of time to run these faction quests hundreds of times if you were picking up the items as you xp'ed or bought stacks of bone chips. | ||
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#20
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