Also a surprisingly advanced and customizable… ‘class’ system, which was really more like a whole bunch of branching skill trees you could mix and match basically various ranks of… allowing many weird, but often effective, hyrbrids of ‘classes’ that… could either focus on one main ‘class’, but augment it with certain abilities from other ‘classes’…

And then the Combat Upgrade happened, and everything got streamlined.

Also… being a Jedi/Sith used to be… exceptionally rare and difficult to pull off.

IIRC, basically, some kind of insane random seed type thing gave each of your characters a very, very tiny chance of being force sensitive… but you wouldn’t even know this unless you also found basically a hidden event/questline, and then that would unlock a whole set of force skill trees, allowing for a range of jedi to sith abilities, with some kind of mix effectively being a ‘gray’ jedi.

Finally… SWG … still appears to me to be the only MMO that actually attempted to implement a working, player vs player, bounty hunting and tracking system, within an mmo… as a core game mechanic of a player ‘class’.

Though I haven’t played all mmos, so I may be wrong about that.

… Also an entire skill tree for basically being a mayor and running your own player built town. A whole skill tree dedicated to like… administrative capacity and zoning laws.

Do MMOs even… do player built cities anymore? Or did they just mostly switch over to ‘you have a house in the set aside ‘suburb’ instance’?

I mean, I can be as much of a pedant as you and post an unsourced definition of ‘ip theft’ … or maybe you could just admit you’d never heard of the term ‘ip theft’, or are unaware of its use.

Its a pretty commonly used term, especially amongst government regulatory and business organizations, as well as academics who study policy, in the US.

The term itself, its phrasing, is intentionally constructed to frame copyright infringement as a form of theft, stealing something that doesn’t belong to you.

The psychological framing of the term is meant to frame losses from someone committing copyright infringement against you as equivalent to losses from being robbed.

The entire point of the usage of this term is to mold public perception.

Here’s some examples where very prominent US institutions/organizations use some construction or variation of ‘ip theft’ as an umbrella term to refer to all kinds of copyright, trademark and/or patent infringement:

FBI

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/countering-the-growing-intellectual-property-theft-threat

KPMG (huge business consulting group)

https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2022/theft-intellectual-property.html

DHS (Homeland Security)

https://www.dhs.gov/intellectual-property-rights

IPRC (Intellectual Property Rights Center)

https://www.iprcenter.gov/

And finally, literally IPTheft.org, which basically functions as an all-in-one training/resource hub that connects business people to all kinds of resources to report when they have suffered… IP theft.

https://www.iptheft.org/

The entire original comment chain that lead to what I replied to … was all about playing word games with slogans, progoganda, public relations.

The law may be ‘clear’, but it is clearly bullshit.

It is absurdly deferential toward the rights of megacorps and hostile to the rights of consumers.

Laws are supposed to reflect and codify morals and ethics, arise from them… not determine them.

But, as we slip more and more into a cyberpunk dystopia of hypercapitalist megacorps being able to basically just buy legislators, judges and laws, it will become more evident that the government is just entirely a facade directed by them.

This whole article is about a lawsuit in America, you know, the land of the fee, home of the early and very expensive grave?

The place with the ongoing fascist coup that’s dismantling all the government agencies that regulate corporations, after the richest man in the world just bought an election, and more recently openly tried to buy a state judge, and though he didn’t succeed, will likely face no penalty for doing that very obviously illegal thing?

Also, as far as at least acquring a pirated game?

Its not that hard.

Now hosting them? Sharing them?

Yep, you’re right, that’s a bit more difficult… but hey, be clever enough to not get caught, and thats the same as being rich enough to write your own laws.

copyright infringent is commonly also referred to as IP theft, theft of intellectual property.

unauthorized use, sale, or distribution of ip is ip theft.

when it comes to software, basically , unless your software is distributed under some kind MIT or GPL or other copyleft liscense… all of the software legally is ip, and using it in an unauthorized manner is copyright infringement… which is also referred to as ip theft.

so yes, ip theft is a form of theft, and gaming companies and lawyers and other lawyers have been successfully suing other people and other companies into oblivion over this basically since the industry began.

have you just never head of the term ‘ip theft’?

Every AAA game company’s have been for 30 years and still currently are arguing this in courts all the time.

The actual public facing employees don’t have to, but sometimes still do, though usually in an unofficial capacity these days.

AA / indie devs are more of a mixed bag. A few will openly say ‘fuck it, pirate it if you can’t afford it, idgaf’, but the majority will denounce piracy if its relevant or if prompted.

Looks like I’ll be pirating Black Flag for my next replay.