Muckbeast :

By agressive, you mean how aggressively they SELL gold to companies like IGE and other gold selling companies?

Seriously, do you really think Blizzard would let all those companies make BILLIONS off WoW gold without getting their cut?

Those kinds of accusations were insultingly ridiculous when people bandied them about with EQ and DAOC, and they’re even more ridiculous with WoW. Mainly because….

Muckbeast :

And is there any other explanation for idiotic things like 20,000 gold mounts and 1,000 dual spec unlocks?

Blizzard sells more gold than anyone.

Your ignorance of the post-60 WoW game is showing. 1000 gold is almost trivial now for even the most casual high level player. The 20000-gold mounts are vanity pets for people with nothing else to spend gold on.

Blizzard’s main weapon against gold farming has been to make gold farming by players trivial. The primary currency in the high end game are raid tokens, which are non-transferrable.

By agressive, you mean how aggressively they SELL gold to companies like IGE and other gold selling companies?

Seriously, do you really think Blizzard would let all those companies make BILLIONS off WoW gold without getting their cut?

And is there any other explanation for idiotic things like 20,000 gold mounts and 1,000 dual spec unlocks?

Blizzard sells more gold than anyone.

Eduin :
People are shouting and shrieking about hoping Worlds lose just because they never heard of them.

No people are shouting a shrieking because they don’t believe a patent for something so non-specific and overreaching should have ever been granted.

True, Worlds.com being a complete nobody and having a business model that primarily entails stifling the games industry makes it all the more egregious. But, I think you’d still be seeing the same outcry against our patent system whomever was attempting to exploit this flawed patent.

Jessica Mulligan :
Let’s note the filing date on the patent in question, #6219045: Nov 12, 1996
Meridian 59 release date: September 27, 1996
That’s called ‘prior art’.

Wow, how did all the lawyers miss that?! Their mistake I guess! If you hurry over to NCSoft, maybe you can save the day. Perhaps drop by Harvard for an honourary law degree on your way.

ahem….

It is not automatically prior art.

In order to invalidate a patent with prior art, that prior art must specifically implement or demonstrate the claims within the patent. Simply having a 3D MMORPG up and running before the patent was filed is meaningless if that MMORPG does not implement the claims of the patent.

One of the claims of this patent is a way of rendering other players’ 3D avatars such that they are culled from the render process (ie not rendered) if there are too many avatars in view. The furthest avatars from the player are not drawn. (This is why it is ‘scalable’.)

I didn’t play Meridian 59. Does Meridian 59 demonstrate an implementation of this claim? I’m doubtful.

I’d just like to add that the patent system is royally screwed and I hope this patent troll and the people behind it fail and lose everything.

Go check out SSRN (www.ssrn.com) and look for “patent troll” or “patent extortionist.” For example:

Rantanen, Jason,Slaying the Troll: Litigation as an Effective Strategy Against Patent Threats. Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 159-210, 2006. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=963191

Vasagi :
Damn. Makes me wish that I had patented breathing. Then I could sue all of you bastards and make MY fortune!

Over my dead body!

Jessica Mulligan :

Eduin :Just to add.I used Alphaworld before i used Meridian59 (yes their IP is that old). And all the time I thought “this would rock with gaming content”. And lo and behold along came M59, then EQ, then WoW…Regards,Eduin

Let’s note the filing date on the patent in question, #6219045: Nov 12, 1996
Meridian 59 release date: September 27, 1996
That’s called ‘prior art’.

Patent filing usually takes place some years after the initial design. This gap can be decades for some patent filings. To some extent the date is irrelevant as the Pursuer only needs demonstrate when the technology was first implemented and/or designed.

Worlds will be able to demonstrate Alphaworld running as early as 1993 internally and, IIRC 1995 externally.

Meridian59 is not necessarily classed as 3d remember, it was sprite based. Even UO was Isometric. Everquest was first with the truly 3d based world (I’m not a programmer, I don’t know the technical description for this) and that was, hmm 1999 release, probably 1997 at the earliest for internal demonstrations.

Regards,
Eduin