On characters that aren't quite yours.

Every kind of story has been written, countless times. I guess you could break a concept into a name, a costume, a backstory, an alignment, and a powerset. Copy any four together and you're probably ripping something off. But really, it's all about intent. You know whether the character is your idea.

I create homages, and borrow from origins if I need some help getting over a hurdle, but I try not to blatant ripoffs. Shows lack of imagination.

Just know that 'Thor' isn't completely off limits

I have a Thugs MM called "Bloody Thor"

Just be ready with a modifier and you're golden

It's pretty simple. Here is the TL/DR version: NCSoft doesn't have to have a reason to generic you because they own the character.

...

- Anyone can petition any character they see, for any reason or no reason. The petition will likely be ignored unless you at least give the employee who looks at it reason to think the owner of the property might sue NC Soft. The employee will probably at least run a quick Google search to check your reasoning.

- If the employee even thinks the owner of the property might sue NCSoft, they should recommend your character to be genericed, just to be safe.

- After you are genericed, you are then asked to give alternative names for your character. This is your chance to get the decision reversed, by presenting whatever argument you have. The point of the argument should be 'the owner of this intellectual property absolutely cannot/will not sue NC Soft and here's why'.

- Remember that NCSoft does not want to have to deal with a lawsuit, even if they would eventually win.

- If your character is close enough to an owned and maintained intellectual property to be recognized/mistaken for them via name, bio or costume, that's too close. If they are not close enough to be recognized, then what's the point of copying?

- Remember that Cryptic Studios has been sued by Marvel for exactly this: they are not going to take chances.

- Remember that they do not have to have a reason for genericing a character. You do not own whatever name/costume/bio you give them (unless you already legally do), so they can change it if they want. It's their property, made with their tools on their servers. Even if you own the IP, NCSoft doesn't have to allow it in their game.

- This does not mean NCSoft will act on every petition. They don't have time, and probably have a database of things that they have previously checked and decided thumbs up on. Even if they act, don't expect them to tell you about it.

I never use a blatant rip-off name, but some of my toons do have rip-off costumes in their repitoire. My AR/Trap corr has a Spawn Costume, for instance. He was originally designed as a longbow defect, and named Wrong-Bow. It's not a costume he runs around with all the time though, but he's had it for a few months. I suppose that's not very blatant.