[Chaos]

I once thought that Account Sharing wasn't an issue either, until:

If someone is playing a character without being the owner of that key, then that's another no-no for a variety of reasons and I consider it a bannable offense.

I have mentioned this a few times since I learned about it, but due to a lack of ability to edit the Server rules, this hasn't shown up on the Server Rules list specifically.

Regardless, the reason behind this 'rule' is simple: Accountability.

Whenever someone breaks the rules, we go after them, and the first thing we identify them by is their Key. For instance, if a character under the Key KFCScrub goes and harasses someone for the millionth time, we identity them as 'KFCScrub, the dude who keeps harassing people' and ban them accordingly. But all of a sudden, we get a message over Skype from a player who's known by 'Noscoper', who says that KFCScrub was his account that he was sharing with his friend, who got it banned, and thus he should be unbanned since he had nothing to do with it. Do you know what our response would likely be?

"Cut the crap and deal with it."

'it was actually ___' isn't an uncommon excuse to deal with when it comes to people and bans. In fact, there's a nice little portion of the The Unban Requests Forum (READ THIS) that highlights this:

Neus » Wed Nov 12, 2014 12:10 pm[/url]"]It is not acceptable to request to be unbanned on the grounds that you claim someone else is at fault. Be they your sister, your brother, your mother, you father, your pet, a hacker, a cracker, a snacker, a jiggy, a demon, a witch, or any other fantasy your mind cooks up and thinks will fool us. I have been on the internet for longer than is socially acceptable to admit. I have heard every excuse. I am not interested in excuses, I am interested in change.

Now, if you have some good proof, it's possible to prove that it wasn't you. Emphasis on the 'if'. Should it come down to simply going 'I DIDN'T DO IT OFFICER', I am less likely to believe your story. This is not due to me being an asshole; this is due to me having a harder time verifying that you weren't involved when the Ban went down. Even then, like Slydria said, you remain liable for sharing the account to begin with and beyond outrageous circumstances, you will still be stuck with the consequences.

It comes down to this: When Account Sharing, there is a very real chance that you can be banned for something you didn't do. In fact, this kind of scenario was close to happening only yesterday. Do you REALLY want to take this sort of risk? I have been around long enough to see where and how a lot of people get irrational, and something as simple as a grind trip can involve breaking a rule and causing a ban.
ESPECIALLY WHEN PEOPLE KEEP BREAKING THE 'DON'T PARTY YOUR ALTS AND GRIND' RULE.

If you truly want to take that risk of getting banned over someone else's actions, then I suppose there's a small chance of being able to grind someone else's character in the future. Mind you, I will still get onto you for it now. But we'll see what Dev has to say about it.

And no, giving someone an account of yours isn't the same as sharing. If more than one person is actively using a single account on SL2, that's Account Sharing. If you just give your account to someone and don't touch it, or you're the only one using it for SL2, you're fine.

P.S. Yes, I am fully aware that people will try to get around rules. Honestly, if they keep that kind of behavior up, they're going to result in more restrictions being implemented and ruining it for people who have legitimate reasons.

[Ranylyn]

The thing is, we're all basically already saying that. If we trust someone and they screw up, we deserve to be punished for placing our trust in them in the first place. Much like Dev, I've heard every excuse in the book (I used to mod forums, chat rooms, and small gaming communities) and screw the people who simply try to pin it on someone else. Bring down the punishments. Do it. Make people take accountability. I fail to see how this can be seen as a bad thing.

Let me give just two more scenarios of times account sharing can be helpful.

1) I no longer have a grind mage (guy got deleted for RP purposes - ran afoul of some renegade vamp hunters after being exposed while trying to get other vamps to stop making themselves such blatantly obvious targets, even if they're technically considered citizens and protected by law) and let's say someone on my Skype wants to make a noncombat character and asks me to help grind them to 60 for Al Abel and material collection and all that. If they trusted me enough to help them grind by using their own Grindmage, why should this be an issue?

2) As another example, two of my own characters know each other and go way back, tied into a singular, pronged backstory. Yet... they can never, ever team up? While I have a good RP reason to delibertely try to avoid working together when possible (That being the memories of the last time they did so - it wasn't pretty) there's no valid reason for them to, say, not work together to save their own necks if in Dormeho during a beast raid. Why should I not allow a friend wh understands them well enough to play one so they can actually party up in scenarios like this?


It's the internet. People will try to shirk responsibility and dodge accountability everywhere you go. Just make it clear in the rules that the account in question is what gets punished, not the player. "Baaaw, but I didn't read the rules!" Congratulations, you ignored the link to the rules during the tutorial you need to complete for every single character you create, get the heck out of here, you chose to be an ignorant fool so it's your own damn fault.

Yes. I'm saying "be ruthless with rule enforcement." People deserve it. But I'm also saying "restricting account sharing shoud not be a rule."

[Neus]

Don't account share. I won't help you recover lost items, unban you from misuse, or transfer your saves that are involved in account sharing.

If I am aware of you account-sharing a particular key, I may just ban that key altogether. So don't do it.

[Egil]

So instead of letting people deal with the consequences of account sharing- losing items, the key being banned from misuse, etc- you're just going to outright restrict it for everyone anyway? That equates to outlawing weed because it can make you really hungry and lose focus for a few hours (which I also think is ridiculous). The point of rules should be to make the game fair and balanced- not arbitrarily restrict someone from doing something that inherently possesses risks/consequences anyway. These sorts of rulings only serve to alleviate perceived stress the wrong way. If someone breaks a rule and then uses the excuse 'it wasn't me, it was so and so' but don't have any proof, the answer isn't 'Let's ban account sharing', it's 'Let's ban this asshole who broke this rule and is refusing to take responsibility for it like an adult'.

If you banned trading items because of the risk of people later wanting the items they traded back and causing drama over that sort of stuff, or if you banned casual sparring because you could get your feelings hurt OOC'ly from losing, or if you banned mentioning the word 'Rape' IC'ly because it might trigger someone OOC'ly; I would feel the same way. These arbitrary, meaningless rules do not serve any just or productive purpose- if that isn't obvious from the majority of responses, I don't know what to say, then.

tl;dr remove this rule and replace it with a common sense 'if someone fucks around on your account, then it was your b for letting them use your account and punishments will be dolled out anyway'.

[Neus]

It's hardly arbitrary and meaningless. You'll find similar policies for many other online games. I need to have faith that if someone contacts me/a GM with an account issue, that I'm speaking to the owner of the account and not one of his friends he let on it who may or may not be trying to get him in trouble or rob him blind. If you can't understand why I would want to close off accounts I know that could happen with (ones that I know multiple people have access to), then that's too bad, but that's just how it is. Let's not bother getting into the obvious issue of how this is an RP game and that letting someone else play your character goes against that.

[Egil]

Oh, I can understand why you feel that accounts shouldn't be shared. I still hold the view the opposite view, because the reasons you cited for holding your view do not hold up to the scrutinity I presented in my last post. I've played dozens of online roleplaying games before, and this is the first time I've ever come across a literal 'no account sharing' rule- and I feel that that is because it's a rule that doesn't work. The people that are going to account share for malicious purposes are going to do it regardless of the rule because it's incredibly difficult (and meaningless, yes) to enforce, while those that would do it for benevolent or otherwise non-harmful reasons are arbitrarily restricted. So, for example, you could have it be like 'you can't have a character that's a kid unless you have GM permission first' and make it so that you need permission to account share. That would be a significant improvement to the ruling.

Beyond that- If someone comes to you with a complaint about an account and you find that they were account sharing, you can have a policy where you simply say 'nah we can't help you, your warranty is voided when you account share lol'. These numerous alternatives that I believe would work better than the current ruling of 'that's just how the way it is' aren't hard to conjure up, at all. And let's not be naïve and say that multiple people participating to the actions/development of a single role or character somehow invalidates that role/character or goes against the notion of this being an 'RP game'. A roleplaying community, in general, is a group of writers of varying quality and styles contributing to a larger work- so who are you to say that this cannot be replicated on a smaller scale within a single character successfully and productively? You haven't established any reason for feeling that way, so it's safe to assume that it's arbitrary until you do.

Thus, unless you're going to elaborate, it stands as a bad rule, to me.

[Zakizo]

I doubt he's going to budge on this, Egil. It's true that this poses a risk to players who account share, and if something happens and Dev didn't do anything to discourage it, I'd imagine it'd be hard to avoid feeling at least partially responsible, especially if he were deceived into having a hand in it (restoring a character to a previous save is one possible example). Saying "it's your responsibility when you account share" doesn't magically make that go away, or give peace of mind when trying to help with problems. I can see why the rule is inconvenient for people who don't have a lot of grind time, but I fail to see how it hurts role-play to not be able to share your account. To spin an argument from Sly the other way around: collaborating with other people to help role-play a bipolar character may seem like an appealing idea, but when you do that you rob yourself of the experience of trying to represent that faithfully yourself. I think it's good enough to know that this rule shouldn't cause problems with accounts that were given away.

My personal stance on the rule remains neutral. I don't think it's a bad rule, but it will neither hurt nor enhance my experience with the game itself. But then again I don't think either are the reason the rule exists in the first place, which is why I think any argument against it on the grounds of "this hurts grinding/role-play" doesn't hold much weight.

[Egil]

Why should rules be made for the sake of anyone's feelings? If Dev is going to feel partially responsible in those instances, then that's an issue that he needs to address on a personal level. The same goes for everyone. If I happened to be bothered by use of the word 'retard' and someone used it around me, I wouldn't call for the word to be banned in IC or report the person- I'd just move away from that person or log off, because it's my problem, not the game's problem.

Furthermore, you're not wrong in thinking that allowing or disallowing account sharing isn't a huge deal. It isn't. The point is, however, that it's an arbitrary rule that, as you admit, doesn't enhance roleplay experience or effectively stop the mentioned abuse. It just gives Dev piece of mind.

To the larger community, those sorts of rules are useless. We need rules that make the game better, and not pointless restrictions born from emotion.

[Zakizo]

Even ruling out emotion, whether the risk outweighs the reward is still up to opinion in this situation. You apparently think the reward outweighs the risk, and Dev apparently thinks the risk outweighs the reward. "Addressing the problem on a personal level" suggests that he should leave the rule out, but refuse to help people with account issues at all since he wouldn't be able to do so with peace of mind.

As for which would be more useful for the larger community, that would depend entirely on whether the majority would like to know that if something happens with their character/account (and things happen often) that Dev would be able and willing to help them, or if they're that obsessed with being able to share their account with other people. I think I would prefer the former to the latter, because if my house explodes I would like to know I could have it restored. If my character explodes, I'd like to know I could have it restored.

You're basically asking Dev to walk away from handling any problems that occur with accounts so that you can have other people play your characters, or so that you could play others'. I'm not sure you realized the magnitude of what you said when you said that he should address this on a personal level. He created the game, so as long as he plans to develop it, he can't walk away from its issues. It's already personal.

[Egil]

I don't disagree with your last point. It's Dev's game, so he can do whatever the fuck he wants with it, whether it makes sense or not. However, if he does something that doesn't make sense to a particular player, then criticism should be expected. I'm not going to censor myself and not point out something I think is stupid just because he's the owner or because you feel that it's unlikely that he'll change his mind- and by 'he should address this on a personal level', I meant that, in my opinion, he should create a solution for himself that doesn't restrict others (atleast, not as much as the current ruling does). For example, he could:

- Make it so that if you share your account, then any complaints related to accounts (lost items, etc) are void, like a warranty.
- You can only share accounts with express GM permission, putting a competency check on the act.
- Implement further anti-twinking checks in the code to stop people from 'sharing accounts' for the purpose of getting past that rule.
- Allow people to only share accounts for RP and not for grinding.

I came up with these four in less than a minute. If the community at large brainstormed for a few hours, dozens of plausible alternatives could be presented. Not all of them would be better than the current way of doing things, but isn't that the point of criticism in the first place? To seek improvement where one perceives error. In the pursuit of improvement, you may stumble across worse scenarios or ideas that wouldn't be beneficial. The overall goal, though, should be to move away from what is seen as unnecessarily restrictive while also maintaining-... well, I'm not really even sure anymore. Dev's peace of mind? Dev's stress levels? He wasn't really that clear.

tl;dr I'm not obsessed with account sharing and don't think it's a big deal, but if the actual ruling is enforced the way it is, plenty of people who don't deserve to be banned will be removed from the game. (Hell, I broke this rule unintentionally 3-4 weeks ago when I grinded someone's character for them, both because I wasn't aware of the rule and I didn't see it as a problem at all, and still don't.) So, to me, the rule is bad for SL2 and should be adapted/removed.