BOOM! Swedish Paradox acquires White Wolf

Blooded wrote:

That patent seems to cover the idea of tapping, and the logo. So if we were to somehow find another way to mark a card as used for the turn, then we could get around that problem, correct?

That is technically possible, but I was told in an in-person meeting with Steve Wieck (who is on the Board of Directors for CCP) that CCP would be unwilling to license out the WOD IP for the purposes of making a V:TES-compatible game that cuts out the Wizards part. The primary reason for this is the albeit-very-small-but-still-non-zero chance that Wizards would file a likely-to-lose-but-still-too-expensive-for-CCP-regardless-of-outcome lawsuit. Paradox might have a different view on this, but I would not expect so.

P-dox has stated that they bought everything. Lock stock and barrel. Of course, if WW never owned the card art, that's a problem.

Invalid consumer key/secret in configuration

The patent's language, aside from the specifics of card orientation, refers to 'energy elements.' Card orientation can be worked around and the rest is a lot more applicable to a direct rip-off of Magic's lands and mana pool than it is to the concepts in Jyhad/VtES, which are (1) more similar to other CCGs and deck-building games that WOTC has not challenged as far as I know, and (2) in some aspects, directly taken from V:tM.

A digital edition would avoid any headaches w/r/t new print runs. If successful, money could be thrown at reprints or new expansions down the line.

Ashur wrote:

BenPeal wrote:

The two main things are US Patent No. RE 37,957

Wasn´t that the one from 1994 that expired last year?

Did it expire or was it renewed? Regardless, CCP was unwilling to license the WOD IP for a V:TES-compatible CCG that cut out the Wizards-owned parts.

BenPeal wrote:

There may be other elements - I honestly don't know - but those are the two most significant ones.

What about the icons? Symbols? Who owns them?

I. Honestly. Don't. Know.

Sorry for being uninformed, but I haven´t payed much attention to this, but I feel that this moment might be the right to approach Paradox, before they make any wrong decisions about this.

Depends on your definition of what the "wrong decisions" would be. It might be the right decision for them to create a WOD-themed CCG that cuts out V:TES. It might be the right decision to simply perpetuate V:TES. It might be the right decision to re-launch V:TES, but with a fresh set of cards that wipes out all the wallpaper and failed mechanics and such. But yes, Paradox should contacted ASAP. It is to my knowledge that at least one of the V:EKN ICs (Vincent) has reached out to them already.

Several swedish players, including myself, know senior people at Paradox, and many of those Paradox people are old VTM-roleplayers. Just let us know if we can helt VEKN in any way with this.

Whatever you can do to help would be greatly appreciated. If you can point their eyes at VEKN.net and the overall V:TES community, that would be great, as it seems Paradox is keen to reach out to the player communities of WW games. Get them in touch with the VEKN ICs. Ask them to post a public statement - even if the statement is "We don't know yet" - to the public forms here on VEKN.net so the whole community can hear from them. And thanks!

There is also the possibility of Paradox simply working with WOTC, if it turns out their IP is integral. If they do that, a digital VtES project might be able to be jumpstarted by leveraging the codebase for either Magic Online or Duels. Everybody wins. And who wouldn't want to work with Paradox these days? They are a very different company than CCP. They have a great rep and a stable of very strong properties. WW, WOTC and Paradox franchises already have a lot of fans in common.

Even though it's exciting news, I cannot see how an online VTES game would effectively work without the face-to-face interaction with other players.

It would be nice that they did a PC game with updatable content (new expansions etc.), just to have a centralized support to playtest decks etc (maybe similar to the old school MTG computer game). It would also be cool to play some drafts with friends.

Anyway, the important thing here IMO is the relaunch of VTES, hoping that they also include the VEKN expansions. That would just be over the top!