Sunday, October 21st, 2007
Issue: 45   Editor: Nyxxified


Family Accounts Page; A Useful Feature or Too Much Information? MrMoatilliatta
With this week came a brand new feature, a feature that aims to reduce the amount of bans because of the family account rules. This feature lets players view users, if any, that share an IP with them.

Ever since the beginning of the moderators new dupe detection system, the family account rules have constantly been in the spotlight, with players from all different ranks victim to a permanent ban.

Before Monday, there was no way of actually seeing what users, if any, share your IP address. This fact lead to many unnecessary and more commonly, unexpected bans. Now players are given a fair chance to obey the family account rules.

So how does it work? The system compares your unique IP address with every other user in the game. Your current and past IP addresses are displayed in the left column marked “Your IPs” and any other user who shares this I.P in the next column, marked “Users sharing an IP”. If this column contains a username, when interacting with this player, you must abide by the Family Account Rules.

But is this enough? Some players suggest that this may cause even more problems. For instance if a player was using a public I.P, he/she technically has the power to cause an innocent player to be banned by interacting with him/her, this increasing unnecessary work for moderators.
Another common suggestion is that when interacting with another player sharing your IP, anything listed in the Family Account Rules to simply be blocked. However, this creates a lot of unnecessary work in coding, when players could just abide by the rules.

My advice is not to play Bootleggers anywhere with a public/shared IP, and avoid any hassle that might arise.