Hypothetically - if someone wanted to investigate a career in writing and wanted to use elements from the NCSoft City of Heroes game.
They would undoubtedly require a signed release from the IP Rights holder allowing the limited use of terms and phrases from their IP.
Eg: wanting to use the Kheldian race out of context from the City of Heroes universe.
There are ways of doing it without this document
eg: Fair Use etc- proving that it is for non-profit etc
this is a thin line question, I was going to post a whole big post on player's rights a while back in another thread but I decided against it. but here it is now anyways.
if you made a character in city of X (which by now with all the player databases deleted they have no way to prove that you didn't) purely going by the ToS/disclaimer provided with the game, you own your character in it's entirety as long as it is not infringing on IPs held by other owners.
what that means is so long as it's an original character of your own design, you own it.
this actually entitles you to a lot. you can claim that your character's iconic looks are derived from CoX's costume designer (citing the costume pieces and color schemes) this gives you a right to utilize these costume assets for your character in whatever media form you want (even though you were not the original creator of the assets) this includes the rights to rip and use the actual 3D models of your character for whatever you decide, profit or no profit.
in effect the individual costume parts used become properties of the public domain.
to the same effect, you were encouraged to make characters with the given archetypes, kheldians being several of them, this allows you to utilize them to your heart's content. they become public domain so long as you made an original costume/story, you own the character, you own the looks, you own the story to that character and you own the right to use the type of origin the character had. for the shape shift forms, you share the public rights to them.
To a similar effect, you were encouraged to make characters which live and operate and have origin stories and interactions with the CoX universe, including zone maps, contacts, enemies, enemy groups, powers and power names, items and item names, missions and TF/SFs ETC. This allots you SOME LIMITED right to the usage of these assets in anything made about your character. the limitation being that you can't just go infringing the whole game claiming that your character interacted with all of it, you can use it 'situationally', and you should come up with a unique story to any such missions, encounters ETC. this does even allot the right to use any art asset from the game, just so long as you're not deemed to be using enough of it in one place to be considered "too close to a functional reproduction of the original".
For example Titan Icon and Paragon chat utilize ALL the art assets and some of the game assets such as the character designer, this is actually well with-in the realms of OK.
The line is crossed when you start duplicating enemy spawns as they would happen in CoX, or start using the CoX stat system to program battle calcs in an MMO game, or produce exact copies of CoX missions with no original unique personalizations by yourself, or use proprietary characters as more than a non-playable cameo appearance, or use the entirety of one or more enemy groups from CoX, or sell rights to use the character designer to output character files for another game, or reproduce the UI elements exactly as they were for your own game ETC.
We all own the right to use atlas park, it's a shared public right. but our usage of it must be unique as necessary to the story of the character we made in CoX that needs it, and it must not be an exact functional replica if it's game based, think level-based gaming "LV 1 atlas park" and think "never /all/ the spawn points, never the /whole/ map".
so there you have it, NCSoft does own all this stuff but by giving you ownership of your character and the ownership of your character in the context of CoX you may use thier assets to some limited ability for profit or not for profit.
you would not need any other agreement than the original disclaimer provided by NCSoft which logically should have the lines pertaining to what you used included in whatever it is you made with it. you must also add in your own disclaimer that [list of things][/list] are owned by NCSoft, I am using them only as allowed under 1; NCSoft's own disclaimer and 2; rights to the assets as found under the laws regarding the public domain. and you must never charge directly or indirectly for these assets.
You can charge for a game based on your character in paragon or the rogue isles, praetoria, pocket D etc., but you can't charge to unlock the rogue isles or any of those places! not even allow it to be unlocked with "game coins" for which someone paid real money (indirect), not even if using game coins as optional along side in-game currency, Not even if using game coins to play a lottery where you could win the right to unlock these assets, not even giving the assets away for free as a listed bonus with a purchase!
