f13.net

Courthouse News (http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/08/26/Atari_Accused_of_Playing_a_Rough_Game.htm)

"The complaint in New York County Court alleges that Atari granted Turbine a sublicense to "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" so that Turbine could develop and operate a subscription-based MMO called "Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach."
...
Turbine claims that Atari's purported "termination" was part of a strategy it conceived prior to the May 13 agreements that it would either terminate Turbine as part of a shakedown, or proceed with termination in bad faith to benefit from its own competing product at Turbine's expense.
...
And it claims that Atari's purported termination of the license agreement, in addition to threatening Turbine's past investment, threatens the goodwill that Turbine has developed with the thousands of players who play "DDO: Stormreach" and are expected to use the "DDO: Unlimited" service."

Ouch.

Not sure what this means. Lawyer to English?

Short version, if you read between the lines is that Atari is trying to torpedo DDO to make way for another MMO.  My personal guess is Neverwinter Nights Online, which hasn't been officially announced, but is rumored to be being made by Cryptic.  Atari is looking to basically cause a breach of contract with Turbine, so they can shut the game down and not cause a conflict between players of the two games.  This obviously makes Turbine unhappy.

Ah, yeah. Low blow.

When did Atari revoke Turbine's license?  Is that way the August 8 launch of Unlimited was pushed back to September?

The actual filings linked there (http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/08/26/Atari.pdf (http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/08/26/Atari.pdf)) are alot better information than that news article.

You know, part of me wants to say no, since this goes back before May, but now that I'm thinking about it, that's around when this whole DDO Unlimited thing came out of the woodwork, isn't it?  I'm wondering now if the f2p bit is because they were losing Atari's backing on the game, and this was a last ditch attempt to salvage it, one which Atari wasn't really going to play along with, planning on shooting down the final iteration.  I hope this turns out okay for Turbine.   :|


edit:  geez, after reading the filing, those are some seriously condemning charges against Atari, and I hope Turbine takes them to the cleaners if true.

If they shut down DDO how will Cryptic market their replacement? :why_so_serious:

Man, that was on point. Good show.

Seems, from day one. Turbine has had to do just about everything to bring DnD online to life. With Atri constantly not supporting them.

If anything, this reinforces that Turbine is an incredible developer, Atari failed time and time again on every single thing they were contracted to do, and Turbine picked up the ball time and time again and carried on and would just eat the loss in time, money, and manpower.

Of course, that's turbines side of things.

LOTRO is the best game I don't play but after Microsoft, Turbine management reminds me more of someone with terrible taste in girlfriends.  A falling out with Tolkien Enterprises in the next few years would certainly fit the pattern.  That's not to say Microsoft and Atari didn't both separately shaft Turbine, but you would think once bitten...

uh.... AC2  :uhrr:

One out of four ain't bad. They also essentially recycled AC2, it now powers LOTRO and DnD. They have come a long way.

And if memory serves, and mine usually doesn't, isn't most of the blame for AC2 at Microsoft's feet, not Turbine's?

This

The best thing with this lawsuit is the precedent it sets for the multitude of other games that have or will follow the same fate as DDO (if it gets shitcanned).  Fact is, many of these studios are more than willing to keep their creations going w/o a red cent from outside sources... but, these outside entities then try to destroy the game inwardly so they can rape another product down the road w/o market competition.  It's sick.  I remember crap like this being a bullet point in examinations on why MMOs generally SUCK.

edit:
And you guys yell at me when I say how assenine in today's market it is to even HAVE any kind of 3rd party involved in these games.  You're setting youself up to be assraped every time.

That's the problem with using licensed IP, the owner can take it away from you.  Turbine should have followed Blizzard's use of GW's IP...  copy it all and call it something else.

And you have to pay for it.
And you have to munge it to fit an MMOG.

Good lord that's a mess of a lawsuit. They're saying Atari was trying to trump up an audit to try and back out of the agreement, while actively signing another agreement with Turbine and taking a whole mess of money for it? If half of this is true, Atari's about to beg for settlements.

On top of it all, this is a doubly-licensed IP. From Atari by Turbine, and from WotC by Atari. I wonder if WotC have any involvement or interest in how this proceeds?

I honestly think that if Turbine can take Atari to the mat over this, WotC might just step in, taser them in the nuts, and revoke the license for the same reasons Turbine sued them for, in an effort to protect their IP.  At least, that's wishful thinking.  Lets get the license into the hands of a company that'll actually do something useful with it.

That's probably why WOTC might be indirectly behind this. The clock might be ticking for Atari to put something out with 4th ed. rules.

The lack of games since Atari has gotten their hands on the license has been depressing.  Yes, games now take longer to make, but it's not like the brand in general doesn't have a history of selling.  SSI cranked out a ton of games when they had it.  Interplay kicked out a ton when they had it.  Now, both these companies had their hits and misses, but they at least used what they had.  Atari has done what.... three games, two of which barely count as separate games?  That's just silly, and they've had the license since what, at least 2001?

edit:  my bad, they had 5 seperate games, but one was that weird dark alliance knock off for the xbox, and the other was a gameboy remake of eye of the beholder.  They haven't done anything new outside Neverwinter Nights  since 2003 though.

Hm. Another way to read it is just that Atari could give a fuck about using the intellectual property themselves, but that they recognize that the license is an opportunity to play troll-under-the-bridge and get Turbine to cough up some more money to keep clip-clopping across the bridge. Which is the substance of the complaint that Turbine's filed.

Addition: Yes, it's possible that this is at the bottom of things coming from WoTC, who wants to do something new with the license, or wants to squeeze more from existing licensees.

I'll be interested to see what Atari's response is.

To take Atari's viewpoint (and I'll have a shower after) DDO was a flop that is now moving into the MMO equivalent of streetwalking for cheap tricks in going F2P. I can understand them wanting to get rid of it if they had a replacement on the way.

Atari, Inc OWNS the D&D IP. WotC bought TSR. Hasbro bought WotC. Hasbro bought Atari (cheap). Infogrames bought Hasbro and rechristened themselves Atari, Inc.

Huh, interesting.  I missed Hasbro acquiring the remnants of Atari.  That puts a whole new ugly spin on this.

edit:  ah, wait, no, hasbro used to own the old incarnation of Atari.  The new version is Infogrames rebranded.  I didn't miss it happening after all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari#As_a_division_of_Hasbro_.281998.E2.80.932001.29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari#As_a_division_of_Hasbro_.281998.E2.80.932001.29)

I have no idea what legal legitimacy the suit has, but DDO was terribly managed and executed and I'm not surprised that someone wants the license put to better use.

It's possible Atari/WotC wants DDO killed to further production of the D&D Gametable (and other relevent 4e stuff).  They've got a lot invested in it and lately it's just been vapourware.  With DDO out of the way they can legitimize the gametable.  'Cause right now I'm hearing a lot of "why use 4e's gametable when we can play DDO for free?"

It is probably as simple as the contract may state that Atari only gets a slice of subscription revenue, and not microtrans.  And hence Atari might be trying to force Turbine back to a sub model, or they pull the license.

Yea, because Wizards and Atari have done SUCH A BETTER JOB IN THE PAST.

The history of the D&D license is a comedy of errors.

Maybe Atari wants to make a Pathfinder MMO   :why_so_serious:

That is a strange thing to hear considering they have entirely different purposes[Gametable was to have no AI or iirc any scripting at all and isn't like an MMO in any way].

What they should have been saying was "Why would i use 4e's gametable when i can use maptools for free, people can create and distribute modules for use, it has a reasonably established playerbase, and will allow me to automate pretty much any of the functions of 4e that I want?"


Edit:
Are there any New York Contract lawyers in the house who can tell what "[turbine asks that the court declare] that Atari's purported grounds for termination of the parties' Agreements is entirely unfounded" means?

Because it looks to me that Turbine isn't asking the court to stop them from terminating the agreement...

I wouldnt be surprised if they want to try and get a 4th ed. mmo on the market, the rules are much more suited to a computer game than any previous ones.

I'm reminded of this old thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=6250), (it later turned out the first Ken Troop quote was taken out of context from an email).

Not a lawyer.  In plain English it asks the court to ignore Atari, because Atari is just being a bitch.

Asinine.

I wonder who made the decision to place it in Eberon instead of Forgotten Realms.  That has as much to do with it as anything.  Other than a handful of people, no one gives a flip about the setting.

Its a guess, but I would think that was stipulated in the license, at the time, I think there was a push for that setting, I bet turbine didn't have a choice, other than dont make a DnD based game.

That would almost certainly have been someone over at WotC, given that Eberron was their new setting that came out right around the same time frame.  The game, as it exists, could have been made in pretty much any setting, and probably wouldn't have required major tweaks.

edit:  As it was when it launched, nowadays it has an awful lot of Eberron specific trappings.

To terminate a contract before it expires, you generally (depending on the contract's language) need to have a reason to terminate. Most game development contracts have ways in which the contract ends. (If one didn't, it'd be a pretty shittily drafted one.)

Turbine is asking the court to acknowledge that Atari's reason to terminate the contract is bogus.

Eberron sells really well, actually.

I care about Eberron, its much better than FR.


No they are not.

I mean, they're more balanced than 3rd ed, and that is suited to a computer game, but they are actually much less suited to the type of system you would use for an MMO since you cannot[reasonably] have a turn based MMO.

The key point is the focus on interrupt and reaction abilities which do not translate well into a real time setting.

Turn based single player game, yea it would be great. MMO, it would not work. You would have to bastardize the entire system to the point it was unrecognizable.

Atlantica is a turn based mmo where you control a squad (party) of different classes. I'm not familiar with 4e rules, but Atlantica was a decently done turn based mmo so it can be done.

As long as you don't have anything larger than 6-8 players in a single combat (which in a D&D based game is an entirely reasonable limit) and NPC's can all take their turns simultaneously/instantly it seems like turn-based would be a good and possibly very interesting combat system in an MMO.  Give each player ~10 seconds for their turn, allow them to queue up actions even when it's not their turn (that way if you don't need to change anything when your turn comes up, you can just click confirm and proceed onward without delay) and you have each round of combat lasting less than a minute, usually.

That said, 4th Edition feels utterly wrong to me on so many levels, the couple times I've tried to play it.  I'm probably more likely to enjoy it as a video game than I would be trying to play it pen and paper.

The problem isn't thae turns themselves so much as it is navigating the 5-10 reaction powers that each player is going to have and the fact that 4th Ed is not designed with "1 monster" in mind as 3e was. Its designed with many monsters in mind. Players, in general can't decide in that amount of time whether or not to interrupt or react[not to mention the problem with interrupting a power in a computer game like an MMO] and monster turns can take excessively long when each monster[of say, an average size of 5 monsters] takes 10 seconds/turn. Without reaction and interrupt commands its not really 4th ed.

Then, on top of that you have to navigate the AI required for enemy interrupt actions and dealing with things like marks. Which, while entirely possible, should be much more complex than standard aggro mechanics.[Your monsters need to make complex logical choices, but at the same time, cannot be too good so as to break your players, and this is before dealing with issues about who knows what and when]

This.  Try running a campaign with only one player in 4th ed.: this is what soloing would be like in a D&D based MMO.  It's not balanced for it at all.  You're looking at basically a mandatory grouping environment.  You'd either have to let each player control 3-4 guys/hirelings to give them a reasonably interesting game (which MMO companies seem reluctant to do for some reason) or you're looking at a game where you need at least three players to get anything done, and that kills MMOs (speaking of which, does this mean that "DDO for free" is dead in the water if Atari wins this one?).

Turbine's forum reply to that question was along the lines of "This lawsuit will not change DDO:U release plans."  Whether that's reflecting reality or not, who knows?

DDO's Free to Play isn't very free, unfortunately.  I spent the last couple weeks on a 10 trial in stormreach and played quite a bit.  What I noticed about the lower levels was that regular account holders had 8 or so super twinked characters and were leveling up new characters by running the same old quests over and over as fast as they could.  As a cleric they would be me along to heal-bot.  So I got a new sense of the game from old players.  For some reason I can now play the "unlimited" version and I find it very limited. 

The Game now feels deserted.  I used to get group offers all the time (cleric) but now I see 80% less people running around.  Here are some ideas why (other than they are off in the new content without me)...

In unlimited you can only have 2 characters.  When I logged into unlimited I had to cancel 3 characters that I'd rolled up. 
Want more slots to get back Twinkie?  about $8 each. 
Was it a Monk? $5 more to roll a monk OR get your old monk back. 
Want to level a new character past level 4? $4 please.  Past level 8? $7 please.
Would you like to go to steam tunnels? Buy the module for $8
3 barrel cove dungeon? $8
etc. etc.

I THINK you can find some of these prizes as loot in dungeons.  Example: while playing my level 2 ranger I found a thingy that allows me to level to level 8 but I haven''t seen anything else.  Also, you earn points (that you'd otherwise buy) by doing dungeons and etc to earn them, but the rewards haven't actually been given to my account.  Pricing is a bit steep, imo.  I have 25 points so far.  It takes 1400 to open a third slot.

So, as a cleric I cant go many places without buying access to them individually and I cant level past 8th without paying for it and I cant find a group because I don't have the same modules as everyone else in the party and since I cant find a party with a cleric and sure as hell cant solo the free stuff in a cleric... I cant access a level 4 monk I made to screw around on because I haven't paid for the slot and haven't paid for "monk" and couldn't level him past 4 anyway.  And think: I'm like 3 weeks into this.  Imagine how you'd feel if you had 3 years of characters who had an "E" ticket to all the features of the game who suddenly would need to spend $100 or so to get back to situation almost-normal?

I could be wrong about the mechanics, i.e. there might be an "E Ticket" option buried in the store where I cant find it, but I think maybe they shot themselves in the foot.

This doesn't feel like Free 2 Play to me.  But what do I know?  I'm just a potential customer.

Find a $5 box somewhere.  My lapsed (as of August 9th) account is now a Premium with four character slots per server and I got 500 points to spend in addition to what my character had earned through faction.  I am assuming they will still honor old keys, so it should make you VIP for a month, then revert to a Premium account.

In beta I had the option of the level limit token once as a hard reward, in the tutorial missions.  I rarely ran hard missions, so I do not know how common they are, however that is how you can unlock the higher levels.  You should still get xp, you just can't redeem it.  (I'll avoid comment for the most part on the need to farm to obtain the level unlock...)

A somewhat annoying but fairly quick way to get a few free points is to make a new character and run through three tutorial missions on normal on each server.  Reaching five favor will net you 50 points on your account.