IRC McQuaid Logs (EQ as originally intended)

[greatdane]

Originally Posted by Trexller [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

tobacco is all but banned from games. but nudity, trannies, bestiality, homos of all types, child brides, general pedo shit, its all become the norm.

BUT GOD FORBID YOUR CHILD SEES A CIGARETTE THAT COULD BE BAD FOR THEIR DEVELOPMENTAL HEALTH

Of all these examples (some of which are batshit insane to even bring up as comparable items) none are going to convert the player/viewer. Nobody becomes a fucking homosexual because they play a game or watch a movie that has homosexuals in it.

Now, I don't think there was ever any need to ban cigarettes from video games, because they feature in movies and TV shows and all manner of other media, so eliminating them from gaming probably doesn't accomplish much.

But if a game features homosexuals, it's not going to turn a person homosexual. Same with transexualism. A game featuring child brides (are there any, except maybe fringe shit like Crusdader Kings, played exclusively by 30+ year old white dudes from the western world?) would not influence a player to become a fucking child bride, or to marry a child. I don't know what the fuck kind of games you've played that have featured "pedo shit," but nobody becomes a pedo from playing any video game if they weren't already one.

But what does have some measurable impact on people's behaviour is when media normalize things that are readily accessible to the consumer of that medium. While the effects are probably minimal on an individual basis (let's say 0.1% of players of a game take up smoking because it's an aspect of that game), it is a thing. It's been the same things with movies, with the music industry, with celebrities and societal influencers of all kinds. A non-zero number of people smoke because the pop culture thing that they followed in their youth featured smoking and painted it in a positive light.

The hysteria surrounding it is overblown, and that's the telltale influence of the modern "woke movement" and its tendency to push the envelope to the point where it defeats its own goals; but that doesn't change the fact that there are differences and nuances between one game feature and another. If a game features necromancy, it's not actually going to compel anyone to attempt to practice necromancy in real life, because it's not a belief or opportunity that they're ever presented with. If a game or movie features homosexuals, it's not going to somehow change the player's/viewer's sexuality because that's simply not how humans work.

But if a game mechanic encourages in-game smoking - say, by providing a buff if you do it - or a movie features a sympathetic character for whom smoking is a distinctive character trait, that does have a very real influence on the receiving party to whom cigarettes are available every time they step into any supermarket or corner store. That does make some amount of people smoke. Probably not nearly enough to justify the level of hand-wringing that has gone on in the last decade, but certainly more smokers have been created by media that featured smoking protagonists or game mechanics than homosexuals have been created by homosexal protagonists or NPCs.

At the end of the day, this overreaction in the modern zeitgeist is a result of a phenomenon on the other side of the aisle. The recent resurgence in racism, homophobia, transphobia and other related hateful ideologies from the right wing has compelled the left to combat it by injecting tolerance into media and pop culture. Sometimes, the left has gone too far and made it obnoxiously "woke" to the point where it counteracts their own goals; but at the end of the day, all of this is simply the result of the fact that the right has ramped up its hatefulness in the last decade. If there hadn't been a rise in homophobia, antisemitism, misoginy, xenophobia and whatnot, there would not have been a corresponding reaction from the woke crowd.

And who really does the most damage? The ones who hate or the ones who try to make things a bit too soft in order to fight back against the hate? While smoking is not part of the culture war, it has become embroiled in it as a second-hand element, if you will.

[Ennewi]

Originally Posted by Ooloo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I mean even in EQ there are still like disemboweled dwarves in torcher chambers and heads on pikes. Ogres look so wacky and bumbling until you see what they do in their free time.

Also worth mentioning the Neriak strippers and half elf "maiden" in Cab...

https://wiki.project1999.com/Dizra_To%60Biath
https://wiki.project1999.com/Tayla_Ironforge

[Dolalin]

Originally Posted by Swish [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'll bet some old time guides/GMs from the live servers have passed through P99.

I was a Guide on Mith Marr, my guide name was Pallad.

I'm the reason you have %t to macro your target in chat. I suggested it to Rowyl during Velious beta and he put it in.

There's my 10 minutes of fame done.

[Seducio]

Originally Posted by Dolalin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm the reason you have %t to macro your target in chat. I suggested it to Rowyl during Velious beta and he put it in.

I use that command all the time. Cool hearing about its origin. Cheers.

[reznor_]

Great read, thank you so much for posting. Lots of great information in this thread

[aussenseiter]

Originally Posted by greatdane [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No it wasn't. DIKU is not a game, it's a codebase. It's like a game engine. You use it as a framework on which to build a MUD. Calling Sojourn a copy of DIKU is like accusing Borderlands of plagiarizing the Unreal Engine. It doesn't even make technical sense.

Every MUD is built on a codebase, just as any video game is built on an engine. There's a number of different MUD codebases, the most popular at the time being DIKU, ROM, Circle, and some others. The DIKU codebase does come with some stock features, but Sojourn/Toril was highly customized and bore no meaningful resemblance to the stock attributes of the DIKU codebase.

Technically, the DIKU codebase does sort of come with a playable game. If you install the stock engine, it has a very primitive framework for classes, spells, skills, and basic areas. Any MUD worth its salt would customize these heavily. There has never been any such thing as a popular MUD that resembled the stock version of its codebase. No such game would ever have become popular in the first place. The stock version of DIKU is about as interesting as Everquest's original offline tutorial, the one where you meet Soandso.

Sojourn was built on the DIKU codebase but plagiarized literally nothing whatsoever from that codebase's stock features. Even if it had, the DIKU license prohibits monetization of any game built upon the engine, so there's no basis for plagiarism. The old EQ vs DIKU controversy stems from the fact that EQ had used a select few text strings (specifically the text shown when you use socials like /grin) from DIKU, which prohibits using any of its properties for commercial ventures. Since so little was used, there was no real case to be made.

Think of it like EQEmu's stock installation. You can set that up and it comes with a playable game, but you can then change everything. Sojourn kept virtually nothing from the original stock installation. No classes, skills, spells, areas, items or anything like that. Every possible aspect of that game was wholly unique, it was just built on the mechanical foundation of the DIKU codebase.

Meanwhile, Everquest stole wholesale from Sojourn and directly copied many of that game's unique concepts. Classes, races, area concepts, quite a few items, etc. Since SojournMUD was a hobby game run by amateurs with a playerbase of a few hundred people, no action was taken. If it had been a commercial game, it would have been a slam-dunk win in a plagiarism case against EQ. Everquest really is pretty much a direct port of Sojourn onto a graphical engine, just scrubbed of names that belong to the Forgotten Realms IP.

Sojourn had no case no matter how many pretty flowers they put on it, because they didn't own the engine that ran their game. DIKU group did.

Notice that Sojourn never filed a complaint.

[greatdane]

Originally Posted by aussenseiter [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sojourn had no case no matter how many pretty flowers they put on it, because they didn't own the engine that ran their game. DIKU group did.

Notice that Sojourn never filed a complaint.

That's why there never was any legal action from Sojourn (I don't know who instigated the look into EQ's code; possibly lawyers from Datalogisk Institut Københavns Universitet, aka DIKU), but they most certainly had a "moral" case, or a right to be aggrieved by Brad McQuaid's wholesale plagiarism of almost all gameplay concepts from Sojourn. In almost every possible way, Everquest is just a port of SojournMUD to a graphical engine, just with namechanges for the cities and gods and whatnot. Literally down to the general stat spread of the races.

Nearly every mechanical aspect is lifted directly from that MUD. There are some exceptions, such as mana instead of traditional D&D's "Vancian magic" system where you memorize x 1st level spells, y 2nd level spells, etc. But all in all, Everquest is a shameless copycat job of Sojourn, so much so that if that MUD was a commercial product with its own IP, it would have automatically won a lawsuit against EQ.

But since it wasn't, there was no basis for it. Still, the fact remains that old Brad and his crew were not quite the creative geniuses that some suppose. He basically just grabbed a game he had played and translated it to a different engine. It was only ever legal because the game he plagiarized had no commercial rights of its own, due to the fact that the DIKU license expressly prohibits this. Still, the consternation over Everquest's genesis did have some merit, given how it all went down. It's just that since SojournMUD had a few hundred players, their grievances were pretty meaningless.

[Fammaden]

So, Brad just ripped another property off to turn into a 3D video game, no wonder he never made another successful game.

[Jimjam]

If you’re gonna steal then steal from the best.

[Cecily]

Originally Posted by Dolalin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I was a Guide on Mith Marr, my guide name was Pallad.

I'm the reason you have %t to macro your target in chat. I suggested it to Rowyl during Velious beta and he put it in.

There's my 10 minutes of fame done.

Thank you.