Adar_ICT

Hence the reason that I specified "or rather the group wanting to reverse engineer the servers". I am aware of what Plan Z is, and that officially it is not directly related to the reverse engineering project. My point didn't need to be specific to Plan Z OR the reverse engineering of the server code. I was making a point about the statements being made regarding the legality of reverse engineering in the first place.

To be honest though, I suppose if someone out there believes that fair use allows them to reverse engineer anything they want, then what I have to say on the subject isn't likely to deter them anyway. I don't truly care one way or the other, as it doesn't directly affect me anyway. Just making an observation and giving my personal experience with the subject.

I tend to think that especially in this particular case, Tony was responding more on an emotional level and may have just used the wrong tone (speaking almost in absolutes rather than acknowledging the alternatives). Easy to do when things are so charged up. I tend to give Tony the benefit of the doubt in most cases. He is probably fully aware of the points I made. He may or may not AGREE with them, but I thought it only fair to bring up an alternate point of view.

Tony,

While I respect your experience and the many things you have done and tried to do for the community over the years, you are not entirely correct in this case. The specific example that you gave is false for the majority of programs out there that able to open and edit Word Documents. Wait, let me clarify. LEGAL programs that do so. In order to view and edit Office Documents, you use an API provided by Microsoft. Depending on what your project is, and how it is going to be used, you may or may not have to pay a license fee for said use. That is the legal way to do it, and if you have a commercial project in particular, not doing so is liable to get you in trouble with Microsoft (yes, am am aware that getting in trouble with Microsoft is not the same thing as being illegal). I know this first-hand, and was personally involved in the process. The company that I work for had created an interface that utilized a combination of third party utilities and our own reverse engineering to create something that would work with the files. We were told in no uncertain terms that we would be fined if we continued doing it without the use of the Microsoft API. Now, we didn't have to pay anything extra for it, mainly because of our numerous other contracts with Microsoft, but that doesn't change anything.

Are there programs out there that have reverse engineered things from Microsoft and NOT gotten in trouble? Yes. Is reverse engineering itself completely illegal? no. It is the results of what you use the reverse engineering that gets you in trouble. If you can reverse engineer the files to figure out HOW they work, and then you write something that accomplishes the same task WITHOUT duplicating how they did it, then you are generally safe. If you re-use anything that you learned from the reverse engineering (something that is NOT public domain as an example), then you are liable. It still violates copyright/trademark law. Or rather, it COULD. Since I don't know anything about the code being used on the server or client side of CoH, I have no way of knowing whether they have proprietary functions that could cause a problem.

As I said, it is not inherantly illegal to reverse engineer, and you are correct in that. The problem is, reverse engineering, and basing your work on things you learned from that reverse engineering CAN violate license agreements, and lead to civil repercussions. Large firms in particular are very interested in enforcing their IP. IP doesn't just mean things like the ideas behind characters in a game and things like that. If they found a novel way of accomplishing something within the code, that counts as IP as well.

Specific to Plan Z (or rather the group wanting to reverse engineer the servers), I couldn't say for sure whether they are on shaky ground or not with the reverse engineering. I'm not involved with the project, and don't know how much of their work is derived from proprietary information gained through the reverse engineering process. It could all be completely legal. My two problems with the whole thing are, firstly, I don't believe that the majority of the people involved in the reverse engineering project are honestly not planning on just re-using what they find. Based on how they present themselves and what they are doing, it would definitely put them in a bad light if it DID come to legal proceedings. The second problem I have is that you, as well as some others supposedly involved with the reverse engineering group, coming here and just saying that reverse engineering is not illegal. That is categorically untrue. Yes, there are lots of circumstances that CAN make it legal, but a blanket statement saying that it is legal, is just asking for trouble.

Again, I am not personally involved. I can't say for sure one way or the other. People can believe me or not. All I can say is that I have extensive experience in this particular area, and I am not personally vested in either position in regards to Plan Z or the reverse engineering people.

I would just like to point out one problem with this. Although the "Plan Z" project DIRECTLY may be trying to avoid infringing, any number of members of Plan Z are pretty openly discussing reverse engineering of the server code. Just because the actual Plan Z group may not officially be trying to reverse engineer it, having members of that group participating or even supporting such a thing, is extremely bad practice for ANY game company. yes, I understand that Titan network does not equal Plan Z, but the fact that it is so openly discussed just boggles my mind.

It all goes back to one of the main problems I have with the whole Plan Z thing. It is not their goals that bother me, it is their methods, and more specifically, their public behavior. Not ALL of them. I don't want to start hearing people griping about me for labeling all of them unfairly. You can find plenty of examples both here and on the Titan boards, where members of Plan Z have said and done things that are indefensible for a software company to endorse or just turn a blind eye to. Chalk it up to having a LOT of people joining in on a community driven project, that don't actually know how to behave in a corporate environment, or who don't understand the business repercussions of those actions. I sort of feel sorry for Avel, as he has suddenly become a focal point of attention here. I think he came in here with the best of intentions, to show that Plan Z isn't just some flighty operation. Unfortunately what he presented, and how he presented it, doesn't match the experience of many of us. I said before, there may have been a lot more going on that he hasn't shared. Truthfully though, even if he had come in here with undeniable proof that he followed the correct procedures, and knew exactly what he was doing, he still would have been attacked. Why? because others from the Plan Z group have so soured a good portion of the playerbase here, that there is no way to recover, short of suddenly brokering a deal that DOES allow them to purchase the game from NCSoft.

I think you may be overstating your evidence and information. The support ticket functionality has been shown numerous times over the years to have little to no interaction with anyone outside the support techs. At best, they will forward the ticket to the account management support, or to the community manager. That is about the extent of what the ticket system is for. At best, all you are likely to be able to do legally, is get some support rep in trouble for not forwarding the communication. I'm not sure how much experience you have with large software organizations and their support tiers, but in this case, you were using a ticket system that is NOT specific to this game. It is for all of NCSoft's games. Most of the people responding to such tickets, are low level support reps. All they are aware of is, the game is being shut down. Therefore, anything beyond immediate in-game support, or questions about accounts, are not likely to be considered. Again, I am only guessing here based on my own experience in large software groups, but the most likely effect of your ticket involved a bunch of the support reps on a smoke break telling stories about the weirdest tickets they got that day.

If you have been with the game as long as you say you have, I have to assume that you have not had many occasions to actually USE the ticketing system, otherwise you would not be surprised by people's reactions that you used this as your primary means of communication with NCSoft. I don't know you, and I don't know what further communication may have occurred after the initial ticket was submitted. Obviously, a LOT of other things could have happened. Maybe the ticket WAS forwarded to where it should have gone, and your reaction was completely justified. I don't know, and it is relatively immaterial. Your reactions here indicate one of only a few things. Either you made a mistake in how you proceeded, and are now trying to backpeddle to avoid looking foolish, there were other things going on that you are unwilling or unable to share, or you were just unaware of the specifics of how the NCSoft ticketing system works. I don't know what the correct answer to that is, nor do I really care.

The point I am trying to make here is, you are fighting a losing battle continuing in the fashion you currently are. You aren't gaining any supporters, and are merely reinforcing the negative feelings your detractors have. Don't get me wrong, I find the entire exchange terribly entertaining, but if you are going to continue, I would prefer you understand WHY some people are so vehemently against your current position, because I truly don't think you are understanding the other side. Even if your credentials are precisely what you say they are, it does not preclude making a mistake. That is what it looks like happened.

Feel free to ignore my comments, or argue against them. I have pretty extensive knowledge of very large international software firms, and how they work, both in design, support and QA. There are a few people here who know who I am and what company I work for. No, I am not some president or owner. Just a guy who has worked in the field for going on 17 years now. I will say, that it is not a game company, so I could be just as incorrect as you are about how their communications work. Based on my own experience, both within the company I work for as well as with NCSoft in the past, I think my understanding of how inappropriate the channel you chose was, is more correct than yours.

Bill, before everything goes away, I would just like to say, you have been one of the shining lights of this place. Back when I used to participate in the tech board, you were one of my favorite posters. Intelligent, and funny as hell. I can honestly say, I will miss seeing you post once this all goes away.

I think you over-estimate the impact the success or failure of Plan Z will have. I don't think there will be anything spectacular about its failure at all. In fact, my guess is, it will disappear gradually, with the majority of people (at least those currently on this board) not even aware that it went away.

I am thrilled that the Plan Z people are doing their project. I hope that it turns into something playable. I doubt it will. I have seen too many of these kinds of projects spring up. Hell, the old COHEMU project looked to have a lot of steam. They had a pretty good project plan, and a lot of people chipping in. Over time, more people started dropping out, and eventually, the whole project just vanished. Sure, there were other considerations. I know they had been skirting legal trouble for reverse engineering (ok, I don't KNOW that, it was what was being said about the lack of progress). I foresee Plan Z going exactly the same way. A group of well-meaning people, who will lose interest. It is hard to put a ton of effort into something with no monetary return. Some of the people involved can get away with it, because they have enough money to not worry about recompense in the near term. For most people though, they have bills to pay, and other obligations. Even if the entire group stayed together, the amount of time it would take to get something beyond a rudimentary game, would mean that very few people are going to be interested in even playing it.

Does it mean that it will never happen? No. Crossroads of the Elements was an old BBS game on MajorBBS/WorldGroup. It was very popular. After the whole BBS scene disappeared, due to the internet becoming so big, one of the original programmers, and some other fans, got together, and set up a version on a standalone server that anyone could play. Then they began doing a complete remake of the game. This has been going on for YEARS now, and the project still isn't available. It is being done the same way as Plan Z, and the people involved are quite talented. They also have the added benefit of having one of the original programmers there to help them figure out how the underlying system worked. Plan Z won't have that benefit.

In any case, I still enjoy watching all the bickering between the Titan people and anyone who doesn't think they will succeed. For those vocal Titan people, just a small observation from me, take it as you will. I've been playing CoH since right before I3. The game is extremely important to me, for a number of reasons. I don't particular support Titan in their endeavors, almost entirely because of the attitude presented, both here and on the Titan boards themselves. Do I think that many of you are being unfairly targeted? Yes. There are any number of people over there that are involved in this project, that I have quite a bit of respect for. The problem is, so many of you "stoop to their level". That isn't exactly the best way to garner support for a project. I am not going into the other types of posts I have read from people that smacks of either a cult, or just people that have no clue what they are doing. That is a whole other discussion. Being passionate about a project does not mean that you can just turn off your filters and type out whatever pops into your head. It makes the entire project look bad. And I am well aware that some of the more vocal people, aren't even directly related to the project. The fact that the people in charge of the project aren't keeping reign on their supporters, or distancing themselves from the more ... out there supporters, is what really makes me not want to support the project.

OK, carry on.

I stopped really paying attention to many of the things people were doing with the SaveCOH movement quite a while back, as I saw most of them as either without merit, or just plain silly. My opinion on this whole situation is really rather irrelevent at this point, however, you have piqued a bit of curiosity on my part. I am not aware of what a kibun attack is. I gather from the context, and the other example you gave, that it somehow involves something in Korean culture by showing some shameful thing they have done, but I am curious as to what specifically this attack was. As you can tell, the threads around here on these topics tend to be quite unwieldy to say the least.

As it isn't actually adding to the specific "argument/discussion" in this thread, I would be happy if you PMed the answer to me if you would prefer not to explain in the thread. Truly, I only want to know for my own understanding of a cultural thing that I find interesting.

You aren't really giving him a chance. I mean, sure, his suggestion is half crazy. You could get rid of the Tanks, but no one could ever take getting rid of Defenders seriously!

You are a bad, bad man.

So the guys should also have at least 2 little black dresses in their closets... but not wear them.

G'nort

That biopic was quite entertaining. I enjoyed it. It is one of those movies that shows up on Sunday afternoons when there isn't much on television.

As far as I know, the Farrely Brothers specifically said it is NOT going to be a biopic, but a couple of shorts set in the present time.

No offense, but...

You post a "Look at me! I haz a real girlfriend and everything!" message, and the responses you get are considered unsociable? Actually, the more disturbing part to me is your need to "prove" she's real by posting emails. What are you, 14?

You could have just rolled with the amusement, and everyone would have a nice little chuckle. Instead, you just want to egg people on, and call THEM incapable of being sociable.

If your woman is indeed real, and considers herself a cougar, congratulations to you. Personally, I'm not so sure I would be proud if I had to bargain with my wife to be able to play a game. To each their own though.

Why do you always hurt the ones you love???

See how he is? A token blue side raid just to kill time until he does a red side raid! I'm on to you Cel! This shall not stand!

See how you are? Ignoring red side!

Coming soon in Issue 20: Hands that don't look like oven mitts!