| Author | The lack of law and order... |
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I suspect the legal issue isn't so much about Kingdoms as it is about copyright infringement from the existing games. It won't matter how much or little LoWM looks like Kingdoms, it will matter how much it looked like their earlier intellectual property (HoMM). Since Kingdoms came after LoWM, Ubi will likely say that LoWM infringed on their copyright from HoMM and issue a cease and desist order.
It also probably didn't help that Alexander and Maxim registered a domain very similar to the Kingdoms domain and pointed it back here. I can imagine that stoked the legal flames quite a bit. They may have been willing to ignore us before, but once an effort was made to openly take some of their audience, we became a fairly large target.
I'm definitely not a fan of Ubi... they have ruined quite a game franchises especially with their DRM packages, as triplebuzze noted. That said, they really don't even have to win a lawsuit, all they have to do is keep the case tied up in the legal system for a few years, which isn't really that hard. They could effectively kill this game without ever setting foot in a courtroom for final disposition of the case. Being a large corporation, they can afford to pay a lawyer for a few years just to keep the case alive. I doubt our administration has the same financial wherewithal. |
| You know what I think about this whole situation? That we should stop worrying about things that we cannot control. Would it be smart to donate money to a project that may not be around much longer? Probably not. I say we enjoy what we have as long as we have it. When we try to access this website and we get a 404 ("Cannot find server") error, then it will be officially over. Until then, I'm going to continue playing. |
Agreed, Javi. The things that we can control, that can make our lives better in the meantime, were the intended topic of this thread. If we could lure Arctic back and get him active again in helping to control the level of cheating, our lives and the time we have left here will be the better for it.
To highlight my point, and why I feel strongly about this... please take a read through this thread, with particular attention to the last several posts by kulu8...
https://www.lordswm.com/forum_messages.php?tid=1876772
Now look at his profile and transfer log...
What we have here is a blatant, admitted cheater. He was fined, but comes on to brag that he's untouchable since he already got his TGI through cheating. This is a BLATANT slap in the face to the community. He should have been blocked permanenty within 24 hours of posting. Yet he still plays, silenced maybe, but a living breathing reminder of all that is wrong here. |
Right now the game is somewhat boring and repetitive with swarms of cheaters.
If we could lure Arctic back and get him active again in helping to control the level of cheating, our lives and the time we have left here will be the better for it.
Then we'll have a boring and repetitive game without cheating.
Lots of things need to be done but most probably nothing will. They didn't even bother to translate the "Woman's Day Celebration" (was on .ru a few days before), an event similar to Valentine's day, that would need 2 rows translated. What makes you think they will process over 2000 untouched cases in CaA? |
What makes you think they will process over 2000 untouched cases in CaA?
That's a good question, Erekose. Honestly, I'm hopeful that they will, but I'm far from optimistic at this point. In the end, that too is sadly beyond our ability to control. All we can do is make our feeling known in a constructive manner and hope that action is taken. If it is, great. If it is not, then we have to choose whether we continue playing under the current state of affairs or move on. |
| About CAA: From what I've heard, they process the cases but sometimes they don't lock the threads. |
i really feel that it's unlikely that the admins would pull the plug on this server, unless coerced into doing so by ubi
eve though clearly they don't care much for this server, presumably because they're engrossed in devolping the server they actually play on, it is a big jump from that to dropping a site like this with a community of 2000+ regular players, with its potetial income and potential for growth.
i doubt they would shut this place down as it's not in their interests to give up what they have created here.
even though their priorities are elsewhere. |
About CAA: From what I've heard, they process the cases but sometimes they don't lock the threads.
Not really. Examples :
https://www.lordswm.com/forum_messages.php?tid=1848899 Date : 2009-02-27
https://www.lordswm.com/forum_messages.php?tid=1849172 Date : 2009-03-02 |
If things somehow work out for us here and we move forward, what they could do is to send out a general message to all players announcing an amnesty program of sorts.
Those who have cheated can be given a period of time to correct their mistakes and turn themselves in. That is of course if the cheating was not on such a large scale that it can't be reversed.
This would keep quite a bit of players who can reform their ways and continue playing instead of getting banned. If we do move forward, I want a clean server and a level playing field. |
| That's a good suggestion. The follow through would have to be certain and relentless though for those that did not change their ways. Otherwise, we would likely be back in the same position after some period of time. |
for Slynky:
Oh no doubt for those who ingored it....blood in the streets! |
strange thing is that we as players and community, want to help, like Modi and others want to use Their time to make server more fair and clean, the question is: Why admins wont even try to give them some possibility to punish the most bad ones?
hope is bad word for future of this server, but im still playing, still having some fun, we need improvements, and it would be nice if admins give us some time too |
| *ignored ^^ sorry for typo |
for dziadu:
Heck yeah. Look at all the players who took the time to do detailed reports on cheaters, or those who pushed the "vote for LWM" campaign. Admin always had a willing group of partners here who wanted to help....for FREE! |
@52
I don't think such power should be given to any player, I wouldn't even trust my self with the block button. It's not like a Mod that can just cease your forum or chat access for some days, that action can disrupt the whole game for a player. Remember all the fuzz over a warning fine impose for giveaway combat? Imagine what would happen with a blocking case.
Though I understand the juries frustration putting up so much effort checking for cheaters and nothing happening. |
I have so far seen a couple recurring arguments here against a strong crackdown on the cheaters. I'd like to take a moment and offer my opinions on these arguments and open the floor for further discussion on them if warranted.
Argument #1 - Getting rid of the cheaters will result in less players and could result in the shutdown of the server
My thoughts: If this were an advertisement supported game, I would agree. However, this is a donation supported game and all funds for it come from player donations. These donations need to cover expenses for developer time, server hosting, and bandwidth. I would actually counter that removing the cheaters could IMPROVE the profitability of the game as it could result in smaller bandwidth charges (less players online at any given time). This, of course, depends on the cheaters not making donations, but I feel fairly comfortable that that is a safe assumption.
Argument #2 - There are few cheaters at higher levels, so this doesn't bother me.
My thoughts: See my earlier post regarding indirect impact. Further, please consider that getting to higher levels takes a significant amount of time. Many of the early cheaters were likely caught and stopped when regular enforcement was occurring. We now have multitudes of cheaters slowly climbing the ranks and their numbers are not being thinned with enforcement. Sooner or later they will be up their in the ranks of the high level players unless they are stopped. I doubt that the cheaters hit level 12+ and suddenly stop playing or stop cheating merely because they have hit a high level. I see the rationale in this argument as temporary at best.
I'm open to further thoughts on these arguments. Perhaps I am overlooking some fundamental consideration which changes the situation. |
To go along with my thoughts on argument #2, I wonder if one of the jurists could offer any insight on the trending of the level of discovered cheaters over the past several months. Have any of you noticed that as time has gone on you were finding higher and higher level players cheating? Can you make any correlation between this and the lack of penalties being imposed?
Just curious if there is any empirical data to back my theory. |
for Erekose:
What we need is the ability to do IP checks. That is the first thing that should be done when looking at a suspect. Admins said we can't have that ability. So we had to continually ask Arctic to run IP checks and that slowed everything down, leaving half-finished reports all over the place. Block/fining ability is not what we HAVE to have. We do need to be able to run IP checks on our own though or it is pointless trying to clean things up from our end. |
Wow... the jurists don't have the ability to check IPs? That's very surprising.
I'm a current/former moderator on a few different sites and in every one of those, even the moderators can see the IP of someone. That people charged with compiling verified list of cheaters do not is shocking.
Wow... just wow. |
Oh, if that's the case it seems right.
Though if admins don't show up to enforce punishments it'd be meaningless and you'd just waste your time.
Anyway, only time can tell what will happen. |
