27. CHEATING

Will you disable alt-tab?

No, we'd prefer real security. We know that most of our customers aren't big cheaters and we'd prefer not to treat them like such at the outset. We know you'll want to check websites, e-mail, etc. Go for it. It is your computer. If we detect you doing naughty things with our game, we will punish you - see below.

I've lost my items! Can I get reimbursed?

Absolutely. We will believe you - at least till we find out otherwise. The guy who petitions for lost items every month will get quite a different reception than the guy who is petitioning for the first time in a couple years of playing. If we find out that you've cheated us later, we will punish you - see below. But, we will start by believing you.

I'm a big cheater! How will you punish me?

Off to the Prison Server with you!

Assuming that what someone is doing that is naughty doesn't cause my servers to crash, etc (if it does, the CC, the IP address they used, etc - all perma-banned), I don't want to lose out on the revenue cheaters, exploiters, etc would give me. Some people would, but I am greedy and wouldn't want to. Plus, people who have been able to cheat once so successfully would doubtless find other cheats and exploits. But I don't want to keep them with the normal gaming group. And I want to punish them. Make them hurt and cry. Not so much out of a sense of retribution for messing with my oh so special game - but just because I am wishing to express my sadistic tendencies in a constructive way. So I began to put my mind to it. What group of players undergoes the main amount of pain, torture, unnecessary roll backs, unexplained character deletion etc?

The test server.

Suddenly, it became very clear. I would merge my test server population with my prison population. Though Kevin feels strongly that anyone who was sentenced to the 'test server' should be forced to appear to be always wearing black and white stripes, I feel this may not be necessary. Besides, I want them interested in showing off their cool items to the newbies. But I would also want some easy way of marking the inmates so that I could tell them from the very nice (gullible) people who have volunteered to test (i.e. work for free) my game for me. Hence, I would replace the prisoners names for numbers. Kevin suggested a fairly random numbering scheme, I like just assigning the player a number based on when they got to the test server. Gives me a sense of history and, should I ever grow weary or suspicious, I can go and spy on the lower numbered prisoners to see if they have come up with anything new lately. Plus, I can make my test server a bit more like "The Prisoner" TV show. Except for the masks.

How does it work?

You've had a long day duping equipment. You've been showing just how easy it is to transfer nodrop items around, showing matching sets (and whole backpacks) full of 'lore' items and duping entire stacks of coin when suddenly a GM pops in!

GM: "you've been found guilty of duping, hacking, packet sniffing, cheating and loitering, beotch!"

You hit /q just to get out of there and breath a sigh of relief. GM's can't ban you if you aren't around, right? You wait several hours and log back in.

Message of the day! This is a special recorded message for /leetd33d!

Only /leetd33d is getting this message. As I was saying, beotch, you have been naughty. By the power vested in me you are roxxared! We don't ban accounts here but we have moved your character permanently. If you want to appeal this decision, contact [email protected] and they may respond.

Welcome to the test server Prisoner 01442!

At this point, you notice you are in a small hut, stripped of all gear (OK Kevin, the newbie suit can look like a prisoner suit how's that?) wearing only a stripped suit sitting in a cell. Fortunately, the cell door is open and the bars have been bent so you are able to go out into the world and continue living your virtual life. There are people there with regular names (like "Sirmonte") and people with only numbers (0246).

After existing there for a little bit, you discover you can't emote anything but the basic emotes and can't be heard by anyone aside from the other prisoners. You can, however, receive tells from this servers other players - the non prisoners. Why? It was determined that bad players might bug the testers so their ability to do so was taken away. But the testers (i.e. 'your social betters') are still able to bug you. You later discover that the competent testers have been armed with "KillOZap2000's" to stop any possible form of harassment by the prisoners. As a rule, the prisoners and testers don't mix much. Bit of a one sided conversation. If a tester decides they would like to camp a spawn, they summon a Favored Tester who has been given a "KillOZap". He then proceeds to one shot kill the group of prisoners who were happily camping the spawn not moments before. In order to support the Favored Tester, the lesser testers then jeer and spam the prisoners till they get bored of it.

And now, back to Logan's thoughts:

From a game point of view - is this fair or even nice to do to my customers? Not at all. But by being cheating scumbags, the universe feels more right when we are able to make them second class citizens on some other server. Their credit cards and IP addresses fall under the classification of 'prisoner'. God help the kid who gets his brother's account exiled to the prison plane! But there can be appeals. Whether these appeals will fall on deaf ears or not is up to the vengeful and wrathful Evil Enterprises. Think about it this way - in the normal course of events, the bad people would simply be banned and life would go on. My option is potentially better for the customer as they can keep playing (after a fashion) and better for me as I can keep my hand in their wallet.

I'd also like to point out that only registered players can post on our message board. (If you are not paying us, we don't care what you think.) The only exception is the population of the Prison Server. They get their own special board. They are unable to post on the general board. We may even make them unable to post on their special board.

Also, we feel compelled to mention the things you can be permanently banned for:

Anything which causes problems with our servers.

Threatening to commit - or committing suicide. If you can't handle the real world, you don't belong in ours.