So I found a Monarchy (clone?) out there--opinions?

[Jokingjoe]

http://www.monarchyonline.com/

I recognized a few names from there. Any one have any info on them *gossip on!*

[Grunt]

Wow they could of at least changed some God's names

seems like could be an infringement of some rights
as Mav he is a Lawyer

[Kaz]

That's Lazaruss / Halo / Orion. He worked with Dauthi on the original incarnation of Halodreams, and with me on Elementium (a game that never was finished).

He originally claimed he was making it for us, but doesn't seem to have followed through with that since his 'go live' date.

I've not logged in since a month or so before he went live, but his version was map-based and much more complex than the classic monarchy/canon game.

From a legal point of view he was involved in roleplaying the back story, so has as much rights to the names of the old Gods as we do. When it comes down to it, Angelque, Barnabas, Leto and Oleana were sold to Shareplay, then to Gameloft. Although several years ago shareplay did restore the monarchy subdomain for a while pointing to evernight, and a Gameloft search for Monarchy finds nothing.

Stealing the massacre concept and Teanos' name is a bit cheeky. But to be honest, neither site makes any money so the only people that'd end up winning anything would be lawyers. I suspect that monarchyonline will disapear eventually when he gets bored of it.

Feel free to play though if you want. I'm not too worried, evernight points here, facebook points here even the old MPoGD game of the month from 2001 points here. Maybe in the past there would be an official boycott campaign.. but that's not my style.

[owly]

Dirty bastards well atleast everything under the sun points here

[Jokingjoe]

I was thinking more along the lines of "absorbing" their player base

[Kaz]

They dont really have a seperate playerbase to absorb

As far as I'm aware, the majority of names in the scrolls at monarchyonline, are names already registered here, or alts of their staff team.

[Nether]

checked it out, wasn't impressed

[owly]

I liked the cloud picture on their message board. But that's all I liked.......

[MoP]

Their boards don't even have an owly... What a cheap spin-off!

[owly]

You know what would be funny if everyone here went there and tried to get banned

[Maverick]

If this bothers you, just tell me.

[Kaz]

You know what would be funny if everyone here went there and tried to get banned

Why? What would be the point?

[Kaz]

If this bothers you, just tell me.

It doesn't bother me enough to seek your services. Although I appreciate the thought.

I was happy to bring him on board here, he's a really good artist. But he's not interested in working under me, or helping recode the existing game, just wants to do it his way. While some help would be great, I'm not interested in bringing on someone new on an equal footing to myself, who's not spent the last few years trying to help the community survive, and not on the same page as me when it comes to preserving certain aspects of the game.

If he succeeds, then it might bring people to the original looking for old names. If it fails, then we've lost nothing.

[Maverick]

No problem, offer stands.

[Teanos]

Hope it works out for him, in all honesty. Maybe it will lead him to develop something that isn't a total rip-off of other people's hard work. So many people have tried to copy this game and community, and to the best of my knowledge every single one of them has failed. If every Halo/Dauthi/Calbrenar who had the talent to make pretty pictures in photoshop and write a few lines of code could make a successful community on their own, then you probably wouldn't be reading this. The fact that the whole site is based around stories that people have written for the past 10-11 years (none of which are original to him, mind you), shows its not that easy.

Isn't there an old saying that says something like "Why do all the hard work when you can just steal someone elses and pretend its your own?" I think a lawyer came up with that, as he was counting the money he made off the lawsuit.

Glad this is Kaz's headache now, have fun with that.

Oh, just as an aside - Mav, was it you who specalizes in copyright law or was it Brad(Thyarr)?

[owly]

I was just joking, it would be funny though......

[asoc]

Interesting.
I used to hang out on one of Halo's previous sites. But it was mostly to just keep in contact with him. We used to bs a lot on ICQ. Then I stopped visiting it. Now years later he actually found me on facebook. Probably a couple months ago. Never mentioned his new site though. He does some good photography and photoshop work.

[Lady Maven]

Hell, *I* do good Photoshop work, it is kinda idiot proof (which is good for me) and I have even taken several game programming classes at a university (until Calculus kicked my ass and I switched to business major) and this is not een up to MY level. and trust me, I am NOT good.

I am not sure I know the game.. admin..? though, did he go by another name here?

[asoc]

Erm, I wasn't speaking to anything on that site.

The guy does make a living as a photographer though from my understanding.

[Lady Maven]

My only point was that photography and Photoshop do NOT a game designer make. And I am speaking from the experience of one who THOUGHT those skills applied and found out ery quickly they do NOT.

I had no intention of ever going into the game design, (I want to be a storyline writer, but you start at the bottom in those places and work up to the creative dept so a knowledge of design was nt just adised but mandatory.) and yet I could knock out something like that (with help from a few designer friends on a couple of finer points) from scratch. If I could rip the code from elsewhere and did not even have to write a storyline? I could probably do that much with my limited skills in three days. And do a better job. And it would STILL look like a cheap crappy knock off of someone else's game. Just like his does.

It isn't cheeky, what he did, it is fucking illegal, immoral and WRONG and all the mad 'leet photo skills in the world won't cover that up. And for a guy who makes his living as an artist to steal someone else's creatie work disgusts me. And only the fact that the admin here are choosing to ignore it means this guy is not looking at a fortune in attorney fees and damages.

This guy is your friend? Tell him to take a photo of a moral person and have it tattooed over his own face. That would be the ONLY way his skills would apply here.