Needing Staff Assistance

[calla]

Quote from the rules

 

"1. NO same-owner IP trading. If caught, unless you can PROVE you are legitimate family/significant other, you WILL be punished. (This does not legitimize breaking the rest of these rules). Proof will be determined on a case by case basis. Abusing same IP trading and/or lying will result in severe consequences.

3. Bag trading not allowed between same IP characters to bypass this rule.

4. We do not make exceptions for "well" leveled characters to be allowed to trade.

5. Owning multiple characters IS legal as long as they do not interact, and do not help each other.

 

 

My daughter and I would like some assistance.

Her and I used to play this game a lot, that is until one computer had issues to where we could not play. I have bought a new computer, and one of my old ones is being repaired. I have returned to this game and have re-read the rules, and noticed the aboved have just been changed recently during the months I was absent.

 

My daughter (jrcreations) and I (calla) would still dearly love to play this wonderful game together, without getting in trouble.

 

We used to own a guild together (and I still own it), plenty of users can verify that we are not the same person, we had coversations 3 way 4 way or whatever could fit in our guild chat and ally guild chat.

 

How can we recieve permission to play together and not risk our accounts that we have worked ever so hard for?

 

For example, I have a much better account, because I started way before and reffered her to the game. I can harvest some high items that she may want or need, she harvests and makes items that I find no time to make (pretty much a watse of time for my character's level), we had at the time traded, bought, ect for our items, we NEVER gave each other stuff to prevent staff thinking we were cheating. I had paid her for as I would for the rest of the Guild Members. I was treating my daughter the same as the other members of my guild.

Now I see that we can not do even what we were doing before.

 

We also had guild quests going where we had members collect and recieve things to where my daughter (being a co owner) collected the quest items from the members, and when I got off work she would give me them (because I am the like the Guild Storage).

 

Please feel to PM me any solutions you can think of.

 

If you would like to see general proof of our quest, guild commmunication, and our mother-daughter relationship to the game, pm me, and I will give the forum link we used back in July of 2006. Our is/was for members of the guild only, so you will have to sign up to the forum.

[bkc56]

I'd like to see a good solution to this myself. My son plays EL a little, and currently I'm afraid to help him or sub-contract any mixing to him for fear of getting accused of cheating.

[Entropy]

The problem is, it is very hard, if not impossible to know who is playing. I mean, not that I don't trust you, but if you start making exceptions everyone will ask for such an exception, including the cheaters.

[Happy_G]

i dont supose your records include what was traded do they?

[Chryzopraz]

Some time ago there was a thread for declaring multiple people playing from the same IP.

I did a quick search and couldn't find it anymore. So I guess the idea of declaring was abandoned.

 

So what happens if you find out for example me and someone else playing from the same IP?

At work I am in the network with 200+ computers behind one firewall with one IP. And I have a VPN from home to work set up, so even from home I play from the same IP.

I have shown the game to one of my friends recently. And I have given him some stuff of course.

So should you ban me now?

 

Regards

 

Chryzopraz

 

PS.

Although it seems he's not so keen on the game as I am, so the risk of us playing together is miniscule.

[Entropy]

There are many factors in deciding who gets banned and who does. They involve what was traded, how many times it was traded, how new the charaters were, if one of them looks like it is a mule, and so on.

 

In theory, you can trade stuff between characters from the same IP so long as they are not the same person. The problem is, if we suspect that it's multiplaying (same person), it is hard for you to prove that you are innocent, so it is much better if you don't do anything suspicious (just don't interact with people from the same IP).

[Khalai]

I think that if one person is playing two characters at once and more people playing multiple characters on their own is recognizable in the way they play. They usually login/logout in the different time, chat on various channels independently, and stuff like that. I know, you can object, that these actions can be easily imitated, but honestly...

For example, me (Khalai) and my father (Holar) are playing from the same IP (WLAN router + ADSL modem). He gave me some items (when I began to play over again, I quit almost 7 months ago) to help me in the beginning. Is it a rule breach? In the common sense, it is not, but it's hardly acceptable by rules as they are now.

 

But Entropy is correct, it's hard to say, who is cheating and who is not. Either there will be rules, which would allow some potential cheaters or there will be rules, which would persecute some honest players.

[Eublepharis]

In theory, you can trade stuff between characters from the same IP so long as they are not the same person. The problem is, if we suspect that it's multiplaying (same person), it is hard for you to prove that you are innocent, so it is much better if you don't do anything suspicious (just don't interact with people from the same IP).

I saw a discussion on /. saying that AOL Now Supports OpenID. So I went to the OpenID's site and saw what it was.

Then you finish your comment, submit it, and the someblog.com server validates your identity behind the scenes, doing some mild crypto stuff explained in specs. If someblog.com is playing by the rules, nobody else can fake your identity. Of course any site can lie, but what fun is a thousand people all saying they're Bill Gates, and message boards allowing it? So respectable sites (where you'd hang out) would play by the rules.

Could this be one solution for the problem?

[Entropy]

OpenID's purpose is to provide some unified log in so you can use the same username on multiple forums/sites without others being able to impersonate you (or at least making it harder). However, this does not address the issue of having multiple accounts, you can have as many OpenID identities as you want, since they are free.

 

The only way for us to do it in a quasi reliable way is to require credit card registration for every player, so that we can tell if one person is different from another. Of course, you can take over your friend account (if he stops playing) so you can still mule.

 

An even more reliable way would be to require users to have a webcam that is turned on all the time so we can see them, but we are already moving on Orewlian territory now.

[LabRat]

An even more reliable way would be to require users to have a webcam that is turned on all the time so we can see them, but we are already moving on Orewlian territory now.

Umm teh God, I will happily switch on the webcam, but there are some issues:

1. You'd see me teh nekkid at the moment
   
2. You'd be jealous*
   
3. My living room is a mess
   
4. My webcam has been modified to be infra red so it is in black and white (not really an issue but it can see through bottles of Coke like they were pure water \o/)
   

http://www.hackaday.com/2005/03/14/make-an-infrared-webcam/

 

* All animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others

Edited February 25, 2007 by LabRat

[Happy_G]

5. i dont own a webcam

[calla]

Thank you for your replies. We have found we will just play and not interact with one another such as trading.

[Atlantis]

5. i dont own a webcam

Only for people that have multi users per house...

[Happy_G]

i didnt necesarily mean me.

[flinto]

Lets be controversal - why not scrap the rule - who are the multi-character players cheating anyway - themselves only and for what benefit a few extra numbers on the server somewhere. Publish mulers names and let the community decide the punishment (maybe no trading etc) and of course you could make them have the antisocial perk without the PPs.

 

Flame on *ducks into a faraday cage to avoid teh god's lightning bolt*

[Entropy]

Well, it's true that we have cheaters, every single MMORPG in existence where you can macro or mule has some cheaters. Just like there are, for example, people that don't declare/pay all their taxes in the real life.

 

However, by having rules against it there are 3 advantages:

1. Some people are afraid of doing it because they know that if they get caught there will be consequences (fines, account suspension for a certain time period, or even a total ban).

 

2. Those who still decide to break the rules and mule will usually do it less than if it were legal. For example, there are illegal drugs in the real life even though they are illegal, but if they were legal people would open stores and sell them on the street, advertise them on TV, etc. (for what is worth, I think all drugs should be legal)

 

3. If we notice people cheating, we can punish them.

[Eublepharis]

OpenID's purpose is to provide some unified log in so you can use the same username on multiple forums/sites without others being able to impersonate you (or at least making it harder). However, this does not address the issue of having multiple accounts, you can have as many OpenID identities as you want, since they are free.

Thank you for the answer in this, I thought it was something a bit more robust than what you described...

 

3. If we notice people cheating, we can punish them.

The banning of an IP range sometimes from what I saw on the Bans forum as well as experienced myself (sometimes I fall into one) has some problems for the game. Like banning more people than just the troublemaker. There was one instance that EL apparently blocked a large ISP for a state in Brazil. I remember one day hearing that two people couldn't login from there, since than, they have been whitelisted however.

 

Couldn't there be a way to write a registry entry when the game is installed, and just banning maybe that number from using the game? Could the same thing be used for two people using the same IP? If a IP has two different registry numbers than it would be alright?

[Aislinn]

The banning of an IP range sometimes from what I saw on the Bans forum as well as experienced myself (sometimes I fall into one) has some problems for the game. Like banning more people than just the troublemaker. There was one instance that EL apparently blocked a large ISP for a state in Brazil. I remember one day hearing that two people couldn't login from there, since than, they have been whitelisted however.

Yes this is a huge problem, and we do a lot of research and weighing of the crime vs others affected before doing range bans, but obviously there are drawbacks to it. We have to make a value judgement, and do not do range bans lightly.

 

 

 

Couldn't there be a way to write a registry entry when the game is installed, and just banning maybe that number from using the game? Could the same thing be used for two people using the same IP? If a IP has two different registry numbers than it would be alright?

What's to prevent somebody from just downloading and installing fresh? They would just get a new registry number.

[Eublepharis]

Yes this is a huge problem, and we do a lot of research and weighing of the crime vs others affected before doing range bans, but obviously there are drawbacks to it. We have to make a value judgement, and do not do range bans lightly.

I see the work you do (along with the other staff members on the bans section), and I know it's a hard thankless job sometimes. Thank you for your work in that area, Aislinn.

 

What's to prevent somebody from just downloading and installing fresh? They would just get a new registry number.

To edit the registry on Windows takes a bit of knowing where it is and stuff, and there are some cases in which there is no way to edit it at all. The registry is one way some companies enforce the 30-days trials on their software. So, to get a new registry number, the person would have to either reinstall the OS, use another computer, Duo-boot, or run something like VMWare. I don't think most scammers would go to that length in order to mule.

[Khalai]

Maybe make the registration number dependant on HW configuration as is the Windows registration process. How many cheaters would change their HW just to be able to play again?

[Chryzopraz]

Maybe make the registration number dependant on HW configuration as is the Windows registration process. How many cheaters would change their HW just to be able to play again?

You seem to forget that this is really easy to fake in an open source game.

Just get the source and fill the code with some random number or something.

 

Piece of cake.

 

Developers are unable to enforce anything on the user side. It must be done server side.

 

Regards

 

Chryzopraz

[ttlanhil]

Maybe make the registration number dependant on HW configuration as is the Windows registration process. How many cheaters would change their HW just to be able to play again?

quite a lot would be able to seem to. add/remove a USB keychain and your hardware profiles has changed. and of course, EL shouldn't be able to see that many details about your computer (it can in broken systems like windows, which inflicts all sorts of bugs on us, but that's another issue)

it's easy to get around, and the following is almost completely true:

Developers are unable to enforce anything on the user side. It must be done server side.

the exception, as covered before, is if there's something else we can rely on to be reasonably unique. it's hard to do, since even credit cards can be borrowed or stolen, but it's the only non-server option.

a while back I was reading about a company that issued digital certificates for individuals (you can use them for proof of identity online) where part of the registration was going into their office, as well as the identity requirements for getting a drivers license or passport (unfortunately, I don't have the link)

something like this bound with a for-fee service that provided unified logins to many sites would work pretty well... if you loan your EL account to someone and they mess up, you could lose your ${market site} account as well. probably not that severe, but you get the idea

 

of course, adding all that would be a nightmare and ultimately wouldn't be that much more effective than what we have now

 

to eublepharis: there's software that includes software uninstallers... these things run in the background during the install... and naturally record every single change, and can back them out.

ultimately, the client is untrusted. and you can't get around that without some evil like DRM (which is not only evil, but can be broken, and if you've trusted it, you're then in big trouble)