CalvinistGadfly

http://www.figureprints.com/wow/Default.aspx

um, how do we make this happen? I would totally and completely buy statues of my character in his various costumes -- especially at $30 a pop!

We have two accounts in our family, and sometimes we have characters who can't play together because they are on the same account.

It would be awesome if we could migrate a character from one account to another. We might even pay for the service.

Note: I don't just want to move to another server. I want to move from one paid account to another.

Possible? Or crazy dreaming?

Support gave me a snail-mail address to send in my business proposal for use of characters -- apparently their "bizdev" e-mail account has been locked out.

Will update when I have more info; thanks to all for following along.

That's actually a great idea which I will take under advisement. Using the Coh/CoV content as reference rather than using it directly eliminates a ton of problems.

OK -- one comment before I tell you the update for today in this saga: all the very smart people here with ubiquitous pessimism toward NCSoft need to reign it in. A little anyway: is NCSoft's intention was to squash any player from having real fun with the character s/he has created in CoH/CoV, they'd have a canned rejection speech for requests like mine at Support. Ask Coke to co-license the trademark, and the first voice at 1-800-drink-coke can tell you, "fuggeddaboddit".

Support has given me the e-mail address for business development to make my case for licensed use of the character. That's good news for anyone who is thinking about this as they see this as a fair question and not as a bone-crushing rejection of what paid users can do with content they have created.

Stay Tuned.

For those following along, Support's first reply is an escalation to a higher power at NCsoft, so they don't have a canned answer for this request. I see that as good news for user-supplied content: the default position at NCsoft is not IP-greedy.

FWIW, having worked in publishing for about 10 years on the production side, I se the reasons for NCsoft's written policy: they want unlimited use of the characters created on CoH/CoV and zero liability for people who, as an example, try to knock off Captain America or Superman. I think their Terms of Use there is very good for them in that respect -- but I think the pessimism of some of the commentors here about NCSoft's willingness to allow players to create extra-gaming buzz about their characters or the game is unwarranted. NCSoft is a gaming platform company which isn't really marketing gifts and memorabilia.

I agree that if someone leveraged their character and its likeness into real money NCSoft would want a slice -- they'd be entitled to it for being the platform provider and a service provider for the "parts and pieces" of the character's design. But I'll bet we're going to find out that NCSoft isn't dead set against players making much of their toons and creating traffic back to the MMO.

Stay tuned ...

Just for the record, of course I wouldn't reprint their e-mails here word for word. However, the info regarding use of character images from a practical standpoint seems to me to be a useful bit of information for the forums.

Stay tuned.

All -- I didn't think I get this much useful feedback on a SUnday night so quickly. Thanks!

I had a feeling that there was a joint ownership clause, and that's going to restrict for-profit use of characters rendered in CoH. I've sent a note to NCSoft for more info. If you're interested, I'll log the conversation with them here.

This question may be more complicated than normal gamer questions, but here goes.

About half the reason I bought City of Heroes is to build a character I could use as a mascot for my blog http://www.calvinistgadfly.com. (The other half is that I have been dying to play CoH for years) So I have taken some screen caps of my hero in different poses and places and have used GiMP/Photoshop to edit the images for web use.

My question is this: can I use images of my hero on t-shirts and gift junk for sale for profit? Are there restrictions by Paragon & Co. regarding my use of the character I designed? I think I can sell some shirts and some mugs to my blog readers -- but I don't want to violate anyone copyright or other IP rights.

Thanks for your help -- love to play and love CoH.