Amelinda, is this something that could be crowd-sourced, or are the security implications too great?

I posted this earlier, but I do feel that the IPExemption system is too slow given that it is often the "first contact" players have with the games. My opinion is that "fast enough" is totally unreasonable to expect from you, Amelinda, without software assisting you in your unsung efforts.

I'd like to see an audit based system which grants IPexemptions temporarily, immediately to characters in good standing (i.e. have not already been caught botting), and then have you come along and check all petitions after the fact. Maybe set criteria to minimize the risk of botting. While I care for those who are already a high level and want to run a LAN party, my big concern is the new player. Maybe only offer automated temporary IP exemptions when both accounts have no character above level 10. That would target the "first contact" users, while preserving your ability to handle higher-level characters on a case by case basis... as they can damage the economy more.

Nothing to hide here.

My brother. Goodness.


Iksars for life.

That's the thing cmdrrickhunter... my boyfriend has a couple of toons that are higher level, but as his and his regular gaming buddy's schedules no longer jive, he wanted me to create a character and play with him occasionally (as that's all I usually have time to do) for zones that are a bit more difficult to solo. He's been asking me to get back into gaming pretty much since we shut our server down 2 or 3 years ago. We played on a private shard for a while and I didn't really care for it, but he really wanted me to give it another shot with a higher population. Our oldest daughter (11) also enjoys playing and has played on the private shard, but doesn't necessarily have time to level a character due to homework and sports obligations. We thought this would be perfect, not realizing that we wouldn't be able to log on together.

Eris, I'm so glad to hear that someone else who would like to see things change in that way! I was worried I might be crazy!

Thinking off of your story, perhaps the rule for automatic temporary exemptions could be "One account may have characters of any level, other accounts must only have characters below X" (In my head, X should be around 10). Any higher level accounts could go through the normal process -- if you've invested hours in leveling the characters, you can easily wait your turn in Amelinda's normal queue. That would satiate both my argument for "first contact with the game should be as painless as possible" and Eris' particular use case.

(I'm not thinking like a programmer... there should be some transitive closure for 2 accounts with high level characters which already have IPexemptions to take on new low level accounts... but that wording is best left to the programmers who know how the exemptions are handled)

Thank you for the response Amelinda, good news. Hopefully My buddy and his wife will get theirs soon as she has already started playing on another server and took some friend's with her. We were all looking to play together so once that's taken care of everyone can come here =)

absolutely cannot be crowd sourced. Right now there is a lot going on behind the scenes and people just need to be patient. It's not like you have to wait 4-6 weeks to get them down.

1-2 weeks is a pretty short time to have to wait.

Do you have any idea how many people ALREADY abuse ip exemptions? do you have any idea how much more rampant it would be?

That's a shame. It's unfortunate that a few irresponsible children ruin it for everyone else and make the devs lives harder. I remember my boyfriend spending days making "counter terrorism" scripts to prevent that sort of nonsense on the DAOC server we hosted. They worked, but it was time he could have been spending on content. He even had code in there that would kick people for inappropriate language in global chat because we had some parents that played on the server with their kids.

I understand and appreciate your position, it's just a little disappointing for those of us who just want to play. I know no one in my house is looking to cause you any trouble.

Running around as a level 1 waiting on my friend to get his IP exemption here as well so his wife can join us.

Can't wait to play this game again. :D