Alt Abuse

[sami1337]

Maybe if you didn't live right around brodgar people don't spawn in your backyard and take stuff.

[Öx]

This won't solve the whole "spoof accounts" issue, but perhaps by combining this with only allowing one account per MAC Address or IP could fix that too. While rather draconian, this would go a long way to bringing griefers to justice while allowing chars to be rather independent, provided that legitimate "thief" characters can be respected and any more-respectable chars don't get unfair backwash.

I really wish this could be done. But many people's IP addresses can be changed by simply shutting down their cable modem or DSL modem, waiting a little while, and turning it back on. MAC addresses are almost trivial to spoof. OS-specific identifiers can be gotten around; for example by running several different virtual machines. (VMware Player and VMware Server are free.)

It's a very hard problem. The only way I know to truly solve it is to require use of TCPA, which is not widely available, not supported by the most widely used OSes (by demographics) and has serious privacy issues of its own.


Edit:

Perhaps it would be better to have some connection to one's account with each character... certainly not anything like floating names- though effective, it would be garish and ruin stealth.

I want floating names for my kin. They are my family, after all; I should be able to recognize them on sight.