Account Policy Rules - Phoenix Freeshard

My question is in regard to the following rules:

1.1 Multiple Phoenix accounts are not permitted and will be banned without warning. There may only be one account per person. Measures are incorporated to detect multiple user accounts. You are not allowed to login 2 or more accounts at the same time. This includes creating an additional Phoenix account when banned or suspended

1.2.1 Sharing accounts is NOT strictly prohibited but is done so at the user's own risk. The problem with sharing accounts is that it makes it almost impossible to determine who is playing the account, and thus both players (and both their accounts) become responsible for any misconduct on either account. Be safe and just don’t do it.

Now, im all for being allowed to share accounts with your friends, for various reasons: crafters, rvr group composition, pve group composition etc., so i very much support 1.2.1. What im wondering is tho, since rule 1.1 states multiple accounts are permitted, doesnt that somehow "contradict" 1.2.1? Since account sharing is allowed, how would you make sure someone is having multiple accounts/not having multiple accounts? You might get your friends account banned or your friends get yours banned for being accused of having multiple accounts. What if there are multiple accounts with characters on them with very similar names, they might get banned? Now, im no IT expert nor am i asking you to explain your "measures to detect multiple accounts" (as stated in 1.1) but i dont really see how you would do it. Someone with a dynamic IP might create two completely different gmail addresses and usernames and you wouldnt be able to differentiate between the two accounts of one guy or two different people who just happen to have similar character name etc.
What about 8 people forming a group with all similar character names, similar account names and email addresses for account sharing purposes?
What do i do once i reached the character cap on a realm - delete a toon?

Again, im not asking for explaining what youre doing behind closed doors to catch cheaters, rule violators etc. im just asking for clarification on the issue.

Sat 21 Jul 2018 4:09 PM by Arugula

I'm guessing they can see where the account is logging in from, so that would enable them to see whether it's a second account, or a shared account. (Yeah I know you brought up dynamic ip, I've got nothin for you on that :p)

If people were allowed to have their own multiple accounts, I think the temptation to multibox would be too great for some people (and they would just wind up getting banned.) Plus if you had two accounts, that would kind of negate the whole realm switch timer that they will have when the server goes live if people want to play on more than 1 realm.

You wouldn't want to multibox your friends account, as you risk getting both of you banned and making your friend pretty angry :p. I suppose there are friends who might end up on opposite realms and you could swap accounts/etc.... but I dunno. Not sure if there is a rule against that, or if there will be. I don't know how annoying it would be for the devs to police.

I'm not really answering anything, just being part of the convo lol.

Sun 22 Jul 2018 4:27 AM by Windhand

jkpix wrote: ↑
Sat 21 Jul 2018 10:59 AM
My question is in regard to the following rules:

1.1 Multiple Phoenix accounts are not permitted and will be banned without warning. There may only be one account per person. Measures are incorporated to detect multiple user accounts. You are not allowed to login 2 or more accounts at the same time. This includes creating an additional Phoenix account when banned or suspended

1.2.1 Sharing accounts is NOT strictly prohibited but is done so at the user's own risk. The problem with sharing accounts is that it makes it almost impossible to determine who is playing the account, and thus both players (and both their accounts) become responsible for any misconduct on either account. Be safe and just don’t do it.

Now, im all for being allowed to share accounts with your friends, for various reasons: crafters, rvr group composition, pve group composition etc., so i very much support 1.2.1. What im wondering is tho, since rule 1.1 states multiple accounts are permitted, doesnt that somehow "contradict" 1.2.1? Since account sharing is allowed, how would you make sure someone is having multiple accounts/not having multiple accounts? You might get your friends account banned or your friends get yours banned for being accused of having multiple accounts. What if there are multiple accounts with characters on them with very similar names, they might get banned? Now, im no IT expert nor am i asking you to explain your "measures to detect multiple accounts" (as stated in 1.1) but i dont really see how you would do it. Someone with a dynamic IP might create two completely different gmail addresses and usernames and you wouldnt be able to differentiate between the two accounts of one guy or two different people who just happen to have similar character name etc.
What about 8 people forming a group with all similar character names, similar account names and email addresses for account sharing purposes?
What do i do once i reached the character cap on a realm - delete a toon?

Again, im not asking for explaining what youre doing behind closed doors to catch cheaters, rule violators etc. im just asking for clarification on the issue.

The staff are human, we have tools at our disposal, and we will figure out the best way to handle edge cases like this going forward. Getting into details here isn't really possible as it goes into our detection and testing methods.