Gaming News Round-Up: January 20th, 2005

Today's round up includes further information on the NCSoft versus Marvel case, and additional Japanese MMO mayhem involving item deletion and arrests. - NCSoft has filed a Motion to Dismiss in the suit Marvel recently brought against the company for trademark infringement within Cryptic/NCSoft's superhero MMO City of Heroes. The motion points out that NCSoft cannot be held responsible for what players do with the flexible character creation tools offered them, and toward the end of the motion underlines its argument with some pointed language. "If [the game] should be banned, then so should the #2 pencil, the Lego block, modeling clay, and anything else that allows one to give form to ideas," reads the motion's concluding statement. - A Japanese woman in Fukushima in the Toyama Prefecture has been arrested on criminal charges after hacking her way into her ex-boyfriend's account on Lineage, a popular Korean-developed MMO, according to Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun. The women 'hacked in', presumably through password knowledge, in order to delete some of her boyfriend's character's prized possessions such as equipment and armor. "I did it as revenge for breaking up on me," said the un-named woman, who met the hapless roleplayer through the game. The woman had apparently been accessing his account since April 2004, and only recently began using her access maliciously.