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Pokemon Online - A baldly faced lie?

J

Jorgur

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Lately I've been active in a community known as POL (Pokemon Online). The community aims to create an MMORPG of the original pokemon games.

At first glance, I thought "Hey, this looks pretty good, wonder when game gets released?". In time, however, I started having second thoughts about this whole "project".

After doing some research, it turns out a 17 year old named Haris Akhmed, apparently from Scotland, is the founder of the project. Though much of the work, like sprite and background drawing is done by the community, this guy claims to be the "owner" of the game. Some people write that he has been banned from pokemon forums over the net for behaving inappropriately. I haven't seen much proof of this, but I discovered that he has been repeatedly trying to advertise for "his" game on several forums, even though it is against the rules.

Knowing this, I'm starting to question the seriousness on the project, and doubt the fact that the staff will be able make and maintain such a game.

As if that's not enough, I just found this article on the net:

Pokemon Online taunts Nintendo's lawyers:
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/04/pokemon-online-taunts-nintendos-lawyers/

The article itself isn't of much interest, as it is obviously biased, and not entirely honest. However, there are a few interesting comments to the article below.

26. I'm a moderator at GameDev.Net, which is a fairly popular community for hobbyist, amateur, indie, and pro game developers. Some time back, Pokemon Online posted a thread in the forums asking for contributors.

Several members raised concerns about the legal status of the project. The poster assured us that Nintendo had authorized the project, and went so far as to post a copy of the letter that Nintendo had sent him, authorizing the project. We thought this was a little unusual, to say the least.

Another moderator contacted a legal firm who represents Nintendo and whose signature appeared on the letter which the POL developer had presented. We were informed that the letter in question has been forged and that Nintendo had never given any sort of consent.

So just remember. They're not just copyright violators, they're liars. If they tell you they have been granted permission to do any of this, they're just making it up.
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Before anyone asks, this new POL project is not the first.
There was a similar project also called POL in development around the year 2000, but was discontinued for reasons other members may know better than I do.

29. My name is Liam Pomfret, more commonly known as Archaic, and I'm the webmaster of Bulbagarden, a popular Pokémon fansite, and host of the original POL project, back in 2000-2001.

Haris, the organiser of this new POL project, contacted me on occasions throughout 2006, first attempting to get his project hosted by me (which we refused, citing concerns by our former staff member and original POL programmer Konidas), and then asking for affiliation with me. On July 6th last year, I received an email from him, showing a supposed email he had recieved from Melissa Morgan Nelson at Perkins Coie LLP (ie. Nintendo's laywers), showing that he had received permission for the project.

That of course was a baldfaced lie. While I assumed as much from the beginning, I did contact Melissa, who confirmed that fact for me.

I'd be most happy to put up copies of my email correspondence with both Haris and Melissa, should anyone want to see them.

Long story short...this POL project is a stain on the Pokémon internet fandom. Haris has been banned or blocked on every respectable Pokémon forum, with his posts and those promoting POL deleted on sight.

Hopefully, after an article like this, on such a well visited site, perhaps the news will get around a little more, and NoA might actually decide to follow it up and shut it down. They've turned a blind eye with community projects like Netbattle before (even allowing threads discussing it to be stuck at the top of their official forums), but that's where the thing was run by respected members of the fandom. This....well, to say that it isn't would be an understatement.
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These two people, of which one claims to be the host of the previous POL project and this site, accuse Haris of faking the permission he supposedly got from Nintendo.
When I posted these statements on the POL boards and asked for their comment, the thread was immediately deleted, even after posting them a second time. I waited a while (until a certain admin named Platinum logged off), then posted them a third time. The thread lasted a bit longer, but was also deleted before long.

So, if by any chance there are people here who knows more about this, I'm very interested in hearing your opinions.
 
I used to be active at POL. Then I read that thread. Leave while you can.
 
Judging by the progress going with the franchise, I would expect Generation 5 to have even more online features, making this entire project moot even without the creator behind it being a weasel.
 
Zeta said:
Judging by the progress going with the franchise, I would expect Generation 5 to have even more online features, making this entire project moot even without the creator behind it being a weasel.
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The next installment of the Pokemon games will probably appear about 3-4 years from now.
By then, POL would be almost completely developed.
 
Nintendo should wait until the day before the full release, then shut it down. XD
 
Please note: The thread is from 19 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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