Quote:
Originally Posted by spoil
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Yeah, I asked in another thread where someone was making this plagiarism claim how enchanter played on the Everquest MUD with charm, mez, lull, etc. No response. I wasn't even being clever, I don't know the answer, I just suspect it. I believe Geoff Zatkin invented those spells. There's so much originality in EQ, why focus on the fact they stole the idea of making a game or whatever. That MUD probably ripped off D&D who ripped off Tokein who ripped off European folklore and so on down the line.
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Yeah I mean I read OP's long post from 2020 as well and really there would be no possible claim for plagiarism (at least in the actual law suit sense). I agree that you can certainly argue many things were ripped off Sojourn (such as the two human cities and their characteristics, the Barbarians, the Ogre city, etc.) but none of this rises to law suit level. OP's posts are really interesting, but his adamant statement that Sojourn could've sued them had they been a for profit entity shows a lack of understanding of how IP law works (not that he should have an understanding of course, he's not a lawyer so that's not intended as a criticism).
Plus as you note much of what was in Sojourn was already in D&D. For instance, Dwarves being in the mountains? That was Tolkien and followed by D&D, not a Sojourn situation. Classes and their abilities? A lot of that was D&D, not Sojourn. The only real way Sojourn could've sued Brad/SOE would've been if they actually used the same code, the same names for the cities and the same lore, etc. I.e., if they basically stole the actual code and the entire game itself and imported it into EQ. Which they didn't.