Headline: "Dungeons & Dragons tries to lure back players"

[norcumi]

So, on the one hand, this article intrigues me. On the other, it feels a lot like a marketing ploy, and there are times when I just want to toss my hands in the air and say "Good gods, TSR/WotC/Whoever-owns-D&D-now, haven't you gotten enough money from me over the years??" And on the gripping hand, it DOES look like it has pretty art.

Mostly, though, I want to know why the hell CNN has an article on this.



In the end, not having anyone around to play with makes the whole mess easier to deal with.

Comments

[norcumi.livejournal.com]

.... I haven't heard about this. Dare I ask?

[justicevoles.livejournal.com]

http://mmofallout.com/category/lawsuits/dd-suit/

In a nutshell, Turbine created Dungeons&Dragons Online, an MMO based loosely on D&D that failed so hard it went free-to-play and supports itself selling premium content and in-game items to the 200-odd remaining people who still play it.

DDO was published by Atari, who held the licenses for all things D&D computer gamey.

Turbine sued Atari claiming fraud, demand of unreasonable royalty payments, and deliberately under-promoting the game's FTP relaunch, as part of concerted plan to torpedo DDO, take the license back, and develop a new D&D MMO, possibly based on Neverwinter Nights.

Hasbro then sued Atari for entering into D&D licensing deals with Namco-Bandai, a Hasbro competitor, thus violating their licensing deal with Hasbro, which in turn puts the license Turbine acquired from Atari in the first place in legal limbo until the whole thing is resolved.

What effect Turbine's acquisition by Time-Warner a couple months ago will have on all of this remains to be seen.

All in all, a lot of legal wangling over a free-to-play MMO with all of 7 servers left in the world...

[norcumi.livejournal.com]

...wow. Drama I did not know about. Thanks for the info!!