Shattered Kingdoms

I have never been accused of multiplaying or improperly playing alts and don't know anyone who has been, but I think it is important to discuss and clarify the issue.

Amadeo suggested I make a new thread since newbies won't understand so here it is.



This is my main point of disagreement. No information is shared between characters in the above example. I will demonstrate this through a hypothetical log snippet:




Ok so I'm bored and I see Aneira online. Maybe I have another character who wants to kill her! (or maybe just RP about religion). Let's see how much IC info I have to transfer to my new character to contact Aneria:



No information has been transferred.

Alternate ending:



Or


No information is transferred between characters in any of the above cases.

If such things really do constitute punishable offenses, I would like to see clear guidelines posted since they clearly do not violate "help multiplay." Is waiting 5 minutes enough? 10 minutes? Can you log on if your friend calls your cell and says you should log on because there is a cool RP going on? Do we need to plan in advance at what time we plan to log in each night?

I'm going to play devil's advocate. Who list information is not 100% identical for any two characters. Your first character might have superior detection abilities (detect invis, etc) that allow him to see people on the who list that your other character would not know about.

But honestly, this is more about what you do with the knowledge than the knowledge itself. If your second character is a darkie that is waiting for a lightie to log on because he wants to kill him, but all the lighties are also waiting for him to log on so that they can kill him, then you are definitely multiplaying for information if you are playing your lightie alt until your target logs on and then you pull a quick switch.

On the newbie board I was a strong advocate of 'administration gave its decision, and such is how it is.' I didn't want to have the newbie question devolve into a discussion of greyness, but did see merit if there was further discussion required/special cases, and the likes it could carry on. Alshain's answer was very black and white, and that seems to be the tone set by staff. The grey is usually left undefined.

The problem with that is a lot of players may not even be intending harm (note the examples provided at the start of this thread), and yet depending on staff's interpretation of what they see & the actual circumstances of what you were doing with your 2nd character, you can get varied results. I suppose that's what Alshain meant by 'flirting with deletion.' You run the risk of an issue, as the rules are presently defined. Not that you will be deleted, just that the risk exists.

Thus, the players are being some flexibility to consider what they are doing, and the potential problems they will have. A player then knows the intent of why they are switching characters... as Dulrik said "this is more about what you do with the knowledge than the knowledge itself."

Switching characters due to seeing someone on the who list and wanting to interact with someone may be considered against the multiplayer rules. It is subjective in nature & one could be flirting with deletion.

If you're looking at that line, you could be stopped and questioned. It sounds like Dulrik at least is accomidating the position that 'you have the power/knowledge... be responsible in how you're playing if you're switching characters.'

Me personally? I don't think I'd want to run the risk of catching an imm on a bad day & struggling to explain my intent. There's also something to be said about the road to hell.

There is a certain level of frustration when you pass to IMMs logs of players switching between characters doing EXACTLY what Dulrik just said is illegal and nothing happens to them.

It is pretty darn suspicious when someone logs in, runs to grab items from a fallen foe's corpse, then logs out. All within 5-10 minutes.

Or when you have logs of trying to talk to one character, suddenly it logs out, in logs the alt, then out logs the alt and in logs the other.

I find it highly disrespectful when you have a character involved in RP that you log out your main, log in an alt to go help someone else, log out the alt, log back in the main and go, "so where were we?"

And it has been done.

If you are having a day where you can't decide which character you want to play, pick one, log in. Try to RP or do whatever for awhile, still not feeling in the mood? Log out, do something else for awhile, log in the other.

I have had instances where I got bored on one, saw people I wanted to interact with on my other character. I would finish up what I was doing, log out, go do something for 20-30 minutes, bring in the other. Come to find out the person I wanted to interact with was gone. Oh well. It happens that way.

Logging out one character to go PK someone else is CHEAP.

This whole thing is always going to be a 'grey' area because in the end, it is going to depend on players being able to police themselves. Someone who doesn't see the above examples of logging in and out for lame reasons as cheating, is never going to see it as cheating and stop. They don't see it as 'trading' information between characters.

I forgot the other time I would switch chars. If one has been dead for a while, I will wait until I see a compatible priest/priestess online. Waiting in the River is only barely less boring than sitting in Jail.

I have often in the past caught myself logging my main character to play, see that nothing's going on around and according to the who list it will be a boring day, then log out and log my alt, play with him a bit, when the who list gets updated and I see ppl in it that I can interact with (in any form, friendly or hostile) I may log out my alt and log my main back.

Although this, imo, IS indeed use of knowledge in the game that you obtained via another character, if your other character does not automatically "know" it and you do not make any "abusive" use of it (like knowing WHERE a person you want to interact with is), I THINK it is fine.

If however you know that your buddy died, and you log your priest on, instantly casting spiritual sight etc just to rush into finding it out, it's at least lame. Or if you find out with one character that someone lost a piece of equipment, and you log your other character who "randomly" casts locate object and "by luck" finds out about said item. THESE cases should be severely punished imo, so that simple cases of switching characters do not feel terrorized.

I didn't mean to provide a black-and-white "you will be deleted" example, because I don't think there is one.

I did however want to provide newbies with a black-and-white example of how they'll never have to ever worry about being deleted for multiplaying within the confines of character-hopping.

Hope that clarifies my aims in the newbie thread, as far as providing clear-cut explanations vs. the grey-area.

*huggles Alshain!*


Good ole faithful!