Thanks for the clarification!

Just a note on vulgarity monitoring, because it still comes up from time to time.

This is an automated system that just handles everything on its own. Certain conditions need to be met, but it's not a perfect system. Certain acronyms do trigger the vulgarity system. Vulgarity will not be monitored when you are truly alone (meaning no one is hidden either), in private rooms (tables, major sanctuaries (spell 220), and bath houses are NOT private), or you're whispering (the receiving player can still report any vulgarity). Using POLICY REVIEW will tell you the conditions of the room you're in if you're ever unsure. The monitoring will eventually go away if you're don't use vulgarity, but it resets the moment you do. Unless a GM uses a [SEND], staff isn't following you around or intervening on a personal level.

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Wyrom, PM

>>It's like inheriting the prior driver's DUI convictions when buying a used car.

GameMasters and offsite staff have no records of who you are. We have characters and accounts, that's it. We aren't going to be able to dig into who all was who or if someone is trying to escape from any sort of policy violations. This has been the case since this game has even allowed character transfers. It's nothing new, I'm just repeating the policy.

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Wyrom, PM

>>This doesn't make any sense considering you're linking accounts together for purposes of lootcap.

We are not linking anything to your identity. That is an entirely different thing and nothing to do with with policy violations.

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Wyrom, PM

>> If you can track who is who for lootcap you should be able to do the same thing for who is HMC or not.

Unless I am mistaken... lootcap is per account - there is no need to know anything about other accounts or player identities.

>> Sounds like a disease if so.

Practice safe character management and you too can avoid the Combined Libelous Account Predicament.

-- Robert

>> A mongrel kobold points at you and yells, "Mine! Chasin!"

When you make plans to takeover another character or account, understand, their history follows you. If they have warnings, vulgarity monitoring, or have been marked as high maintenance customer, this will impact //your accounts//. Please make sure you're discussing this with all parties before settling on anything. These decisions when placed on accounts are typically permanent.

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Wyrom, PM


GameMasters and offsite staff have no records of who you are. We have characters and accounts, that's it. We aren't going to be able to dig into who all was who or if someone is trying to escape from any sort of policy violations. This has been the case since this game has even allowed character transfers. It's nothing new, I'm just repeating the policy.


____

So....I am confused. The initial statement seems to be indicating it will somehow impact our "Accounts", plural, but then the next post says you have no record of who we are. So should the first statement be corrected to it will impact the account it is transferred to or did you mean to imply it would effect all of our accounts? If it will impact all of our accounts....you obviously have some kind of record of who we are at least enough to link our various accounts under some umbrella.

Ok....I think I was misunderstanding your post to assume transferring naughty character from account 1 to account 2 would also somehow impact account 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and so forth.

>>Ok....I think I was misunderstanding your post to assume transferring naughty character from account 1 to account 2 would also somehow impact account 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and so forth.

If account transferring naughty character from account 1 to 2 happens, and you're also account 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, if account 8 gets busted for a POLICY 18 violation, it's the cumulative warnings across all your accounts. That means naughty character on account 2 now will impact account 8, and all your accounts.

If you don't violate policy, none of this means anything. This is only a concern if you plan to violate policy.

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Wyrom, PM

Stop buying characters then? Most of the character sales occur on PC and we all know what that place is like.

As I gaze over the horizon, the wind tugs at my cloak and whispers, "Adventure" in my ear.

A squeaky halfling nearby asks, "Why you playing with orcs heads and troll rearends?!"

> Stop buying characters then? Most of the character sales occur on PC and we all know what that place is like.

this_all_of_this.gif

Also what Winterdawn said. This is why Simutronics doesn't sell character name changes. It would be all to easy for a person that decided to be a not very nice person to change their name/features and pretend they weren't a jerk without having to start over from level 0.

As I gaze over the horizon, the wind tugs at my cloak and whispers, "Adventure" in my ear.

A squeaky halfling nearby asks, "Why you playing with orcs heads and troll rearends?!"

Yeah.... because clearly verifying which accounts are linked through billing is a technological impossibility in the 21st century. Even though they can already do it just fine for loot cap purposes as well as for issuing linked account bans, but let's just disregard that inconvenient fact. So yeah, the solution is clearly to just punish a bunch of random people for the mistakes of prior owners. That seems entirely fair.

Wyrom, when you said "Warnings only impact your account over the last 365 days from the last official warning. If you have 3 year old warnings, we don't do anything about that."


Several clarifications:
1) Is there a difference between "warning" (what you said above), "violation" (which is what policy 18 talks about)?

2) Policy 18 section on violations don't say 365 days or any time frame...

So for example, I bought a character that had 2 warnings on them from like 5+ years ago. Does that mean my account now also has 2 warnings? Or is it zero because it hasn't been added since I owned them (maybe 2 years) or is it zero because its been older than 1 year?


Thanks for clarifying.

>>HMC is a whole different can of Wyroms.

I feel like a whole can of Wyroms may be quite high-maintenance, even when individual ones aren't... ;)

- Andreas

Over a decade ago I got a warning for swearing on the Albatross. I quit playing shortly after and didn't return until a year or two ago. I rerolled the character because I had anxiety about the warning. After getting him near level 20 again I realized the warning didn't go away when I rerolled. I deleted the character forever and have disliked the current warning system since then.

"Over a decade ago I got a warning for swearing on the Albatross. I quit playing shortly after and didn't return until a year or two ago. I rerolled the character because I had anxiety about the warning. After getting him near level 20 again I realized the warning didn't go away when I rerolled. I deleted the character forever and have disliked the current warning system since then." -- Aitken

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Over the course of 25 years I've acquired 12 warnings on my character.

I too wish the system would phase out old warnings for good behavior over time.

That said, I understand the anxiety, but I want to say that if you truly are not trying to be intentionally disruptive, warnings of that type and age are meaningless except for the annoyance of us knowing they're there.

> "It's good to hear at least that prior character/account history isn't permanently held against you..." -- Roadhog

Definitely not. Staff only cares about RECENT activity, and to truly get in trouble it also has to be egregious. One of my warnings was for harassment of another player, and it almost had me end up with a 30 day ban but the GM investigating the situation decided it didn't call for it as long as I left the character/player alone (which I did).

> "BTW, I didn't realize you're locked out forever after 3 warnings..." -- Roadhog

I haven't been reading Wyrom's posts verbatim, but I don't think it should be considered "3 warnings" but instead "3 very serious warnings within a couple of months of each other." Please don't focus too much on the exact timing, but more of an explanation of what staff is looking for. Again, I base this all on my history as being a troublemaker at times. You're not going to get banned for vulgarity unless you're absolutely flagrant CONSTANTLY.

Extreme mechanics abuse, player harassment, getting warned all day every day, those are the things that get you banned. The things that make you not worth the money you bring in.

> "..because I think we needlessly lost some decent people to that policy over the years." -- Roadhog

I don't necessarily agree with this. That said, I also don't necessarily disagree either.

We've all heard the stories of GMs that abuse power, of the wild west days before current staff accountability. I'm sure there's been some players that got targeted by a GM unfairly.

However, just like when I get a red light ticket and go "What?! I didn't run a red light!" and then go look at the video and sure enough I turned the corner on a red without stopping.. players getting banned are getting banned for a reason. They aren't shining innocents. If you want an example of how players can be.. go look at the vitriol that can be found in areas that have no consequences (Lich net, Player's Corner, private Discord servers).

However, we've all done dumb things we regret. I believe accounts that have been banned for extensive periods of time CAN have the ban removed and given a second chance. I think I've heard of a couple of banned characters getting allowed back in these days.

"So if warnings are ignored after 365 days, can we just remove them from the account and policy review record then?

Because its irritating to see the warnings from 20 years ago when as you said, there's no practical implications in any case." -- Nenmoonia

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As much as I take pride in my 12 warnings.. I too would like to see this happen.

My 12th warning was July of 2013 for vulgarity (and intentional at that to trigger it, heh).

I wanted to do a recap of this thread, with a little more information where I can after talking with both senior staff and onsite. This all got posted because there is a specific situation causing a lot of grief with staff and players. We have a number of false narratives and outright wrong information being spread, which we want to make sure you all are aware of. This situation involved a specific player creating multiple accounts to appear as multiple different players, all to support themselves and keep falsehoods going. This was happening on our official forums, Discord, and various other platforms. We feel it is important to explain that this is a very specific and contained situation, but we want to make sure it doesn't escalate further.

Just because this was spread across several posts with clarifications and such, I'd like to try to give a condensed summary here.

- Warnings stay forever. Your character and account history do not get wiped out. For the most part, only activity in the last 365 days since your last warning impacts you when it comes to POLICY violations. There are cases where your full history could come into play.
- HMC status is permanent. This is where your entire account history comes into play. There are currently 8 players who have been tagged with this, and not all of them are active. This is over a stretch of 18 years, I am unsure if there are others before that. We have never had an issue where someone purposefully tried to cause problems here until this year.
- Transferring characters in either case transfers their history to you. It also remains on the account they transferred from.

After talking it over with everyone, there are a lot of reasons why the POLICY is the way it is. We will review some of the POLICY on people who are indirectly getting tied up into this situation, but this has never been an issue in 18 years.

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Wyrom, PM

>There are currently 8 players who have been tagged with this, and not all of them are active. This is over a stretch of 18 years, I am unsure if there are others before that

Considering how insanely rare HMC status is, you should just ban these accounts from doing character transfers.

~Land Pirate Maylan~