Account Sharing and "MultiBoxing"

[Habakkuk]

I play with my family, we all live in the same house together and we've reached a level where we can go to multiple zones. I had some free time so I had their accounts following me to collect some flight paths. Apparently someone reporting me for "multiboxing" . When explaining to the GMwhy I had the characters following I informed the GM that the accounts belonged to my family, being my wife and children. At this point he logged out all my accounts, then informed me that by logging into their accounts I was also account sharing and If i continued to do that I would be banned.

I get what you're trying to do, which is avoid farmers, cheaters and griefers and maintain a normal blizzard like experience. That's why were here, too. We're not botting, farming or PVPing. We're not being rude or crude or otherwise offensive. In fact we're polite, social and try to help players around us when we can. To put it plainly, we're good players. We're the kind of people you want on a server. That's a lot more than can be said of a large portion of the population ... Case in point, we often leave general chat because of volumes of crude, disgusting commentary, hateful remarks and racial slurs. If you play you know exactly what I'm referencing.

I'm not going to lie, it's very frustrating to see things like racial slurs, excessive disgusting often overtly sexual comments in public channels, as well as frequent griefing and corpse camping by high level characters seemingly unabated, yet if I log in my wife's character and have her autofollow me to an instance, or if I log in along a family member who can't join us to complete a quest hand in so we're in the same place when we start up again the next time, I'll be banned from the server. Quite frankly, that's 99% of the reason why we ever multibox, if one of us is available earlier they can get everyone to an instance so that when everyone gets here we can actually get right to playing.

It's your server and you can do what you want. From my conversation with the GM he seemed to indicate that if this was part of our play style maybe we just needed to find a new server, and that's just disappointing.

I suggest you to re-think your policy a little. If you have someone farming or causing issues, or doing something to impact other players I get it. But just taking a no-exceptions stance to this situation seems a little extreme. You let me know, we're low level now and maybe it's just not the right place for us to play so we should move along.

I can't get mad, it was a free game after all. As I said, I'd just be disappointed.

Hab-

[Pottu]

Greetings Habakkuk. Allow me to clarify some of the points you raised in your post:

Case in point, we often leave general chat because of volumes of crude, disgusting commentary, hateful remarks and racial slurs.

Please take a screenshot and upload it at imgur.com or any other free image hosting site, open a GM ticket, explain the issue and put the link to the screenshot in it. We will review the case and decide on repercussions. The more "disgusting" players get reported, more of them will be warned, muted and suspended, the better the chats will become. We cannot monitor all chat channels for both factions in every zone at all times and thus have to rely on players reporting blatant violations of our Terms of Use.

frequent griefing and corpse camping by high level characters seemingly unabated

This is part of the PvP experience. Only thing we do not allow is a high level character "shutting down" a quest hub/npc by repeatedly killing non-player characters for extended periods of time. Again, we rely on players reporting it. Note that raids are of course allowed, no matter what their target - it becomes griefing when there is obviously no point in it aside from griefing.

if I log in my wife's character and have her autofollow me to an instance, or if I log in along a family member who can't join us to complete a quest hand in so we're in the same place when we start up again the next time, I'll be banned from the server

Unfortunately that is an integral part of our terms of use. How are we to know that your multiboxing is completely innocent? There is no way to check, aside from monitoring you at all times - again something that we not have the resources for. I hope you understand this - the rules have to be the same for everyone.

Please remember that account sharing is not allowed on Nostalrius. You should not log to the account that your wife uses and vice versa.

that's 99% of the reason why we ever multibox, if one of us is available earlier they can get everyone to an instance so that when everyone gets here we can actually get right to playing.

Why should you and your family have such an advantage over all other players? They have to first find a group, which can take some time, and then travel to the instance, which can again take some time, before they get to "playing", though personally I view that everything you in Azeroth is "playing", not just when you're questing or doing instances.

[Habakkuk]

Thank you for your reply, and I sincerely appreciate the input on the items in general chat.

In response to your suggestion and query as to why we should have an advantage over other players, I contend that we actually have a disadvantage. Take this scenario, If I had my family members log in, and 2 had to step away for a period of time, I'd be breaking your rules of Multiboxing by putting them on autofollow. However, if the SAME THING happened to a group of people playing who were not in the same house on the same ISP provider (hence sharing an IP address) that would be totally acceptable.

I've often helped guild members get somewhere using autofollow, or helped in game friends who did not live with me while questing. We've even had players with small children who would sometimes need to step away during an instance and we could still progress down a DPS so we just had them follow us. Because we share an ISP, we can do none of these things without potentially being banned for multiboxing.

You are correct, we could have who ever is available log in each account individually and then log out but that would take 4 times as long. Our counter argument, related to the above example, why should other players have an advantage over us just because we happen to share the same ISP connection?

My Wife suggested another alternative, you've put in clauses for trade skills and banking, why not put one in for travel? i.e. Moving characters to a new location, but not actively engaging in quests/combat. That solves our issue and allows us and everyone else the same considerations.

Thank you again for reviewing my post

Hab-

[djriot]

I'd just like to chime in here, as well.

My wife and I have been playing the past couple days. We sometimes (but not often) set each other to follow while one person is running to the destination, and the other is doing guild chat or checking the site for bugged quests and stuff (just a couple examples of things we have been doing.)

So far we've been okay. Obviously if one of us has to step away from the computer for longer than five minutes we safe the one person up at an inn or camp and the other goes forward. Or, we both wait. I think the idea here is that two accounts equals two people actively playing the game. Occasionally setting follow won't flag their system, but gratuitous use of it with little independent movement I suspect would be reason for suspicion.

[Mimma]

We sometimes (but not often) set each other to follow while one person is running to the destination

I would consider that quite risky! Even it is only for a short time, it is still worth asking yourself: is /follow for 5 minutes really worth an account ban?
I am not calling you a cheater, but seen from a GM perspective (or one reporting you's perspective) 5 minutes of /follow'ing IS multiboxing and grounds for a report.

I would'nt risk it if you ask me

[Habakkuk]

editing/reposting my reply to another similar thread... in response to the person above, I'd discourage anyone from using autofollow from a shared ISP with their current terms and conditions. She's right, it's not worth the potential ban. It appears that's just how it's going to be with the rules/enforcement they have in place today and you'll have to live with different/stricter rules if you play with anyone on a shared ISP.

I just find it fascinating that people are so emotional about this topic to be honest. Sometimes you just have to step away for real life ... and when you're playing with 4 people you're effectively forcing 3 others to pause while you step away. That's one of the NICE things about playing with the family is you don't feel like you're creating a huge issue by stepping away for 5-10 minutes if you need to. This game is demanding enough that is honestly hard enough to get all of us together to play. And yes, you're right, when you play by yourself you don't get this 'benefit'. Absolutely true, but when you're solo you also don't have to try to coordinate 4 different peoples lives to create 1-3 hr windows where you can play together. You can just pop on solo when ever you want, or you play in guilds where there can be stand ins and backups, and recruiting. I think the biggest issue is that people simply don't understand because it's not their life.

I have 2 adult children who're in college but still live locally. This is one of the very, very few things we all actually LIKE doing together, and I'm not going to lie not having to pay $60 a month for the service was nice ... but if a GM sees 4 characters from the same IP in an instance together, is he going to ban us? Am I going to have to continually explain why we have a single IP running multiple accounts as we play? If my wife steps away and I reach over and click a few spells in an instance, have I violated the terms and conditions on multi-boxing and account sharing? Quite frankly, what if they just choose not to believe me when I tell them what's happening and they just ban my accounts anyway? I really have no recourse if that is the case.

On the other thread there were several people who said I should be banned, I honestly have no idea why they even cared enough to post... but it will make them happy that we've just decided that Nostalrius isn't the place for us to play after all, so we're leaving of our own accord.

In the end, we have no desire to invest time into accounts on server where there's a chance our accounts will be permanently banned/locked because the powers that be decide we have too many IP's from a single service provider, or because logging into a wife or a son's account is account sharing. I didn't hide it because I didn't feel I should have to, and still don't feel I should.

I wish everyone the best of luck, and happy gaming ~ To those who play with family, be very careful. Don't say anything like "Let me log into my wife's account real fast" or use autofollow when logged in on the same IP and you should go unnoticed. If your ok with that, then you'll probably be fine. For us, it's just not worth the hassle and always worrying about losing the characters we've invested so much time and effort in.

If they ever choose to update their Terms, we'd come back because it's otherwise a pretty good server

Hab-

[djriot]

5 minutes of /follow'ing IS multiboxing and grounds for a report.

I don't think we've ever followed each other for five minutes. During those times we're generally attacked by mobs and we start acting to defend ourselves.

Anyway, quoted what I wanted to pick at. Five minutes of following when two people are sitting at their own computer is not multiboxing, that's two people enjoying a game together. Am I dragging my wife to the next set of mobs or town while she's reading how to play her class better because I want to be banned? No. It's convenient. Along a similar vein, me following her while we run back to town while I'm chatting with new guild members or updating spreadsheets still has me in front of the keyboard. Furthermore, we don't always follow. A lot of the time we're both looking for gathering profession stuff, playing independently.

Is that multiboxing? No. I have one account, and she has one account. To be honest, I pondered the idea of setting up a bank alt for a while but I decided that would be a bit more risky - as you put it - and I don't want to risk my account for bagspace.

Anyway, I have plenty of rock solid evidence there's a person at each computer and the game logs themselves are not incriminating of what I'm saying, so I'm not worried. I'd hope that people who have family that play really do, and keep it real. But thanks for the note of care. It is appreciated!

[Pottu]

but if a GM sees 4 characters from the same IP in an instance together, is he going to ban us?

No he's not.

Am I going to have to continually explain why we have a single IP running multiple accounts as we play?

No. It is usually very quickly clear that actual humans are playing each character.

If my wife steps away and I reach over and click a few spells in an instance, have I violated the terms and conditions on multi-boxing and account sharing?

Yes, at that point you have. If your wife steps away from her computer for some reason, you need to let her character be idle, just like any other instance group would have to do.

[djriot]

but if a GM sees 4 characters from the same IP in an instance together, is he going to ban us?

No he's not.

Am I going to have to continually explain why we have a single IP running multiple accounts as we play?

No. It is usually very quickly clear that actual humans are playing each character.

If my wife steps away and I reach over and click a few spells in an instance, have I violated the terms and conditions on multi-boxing and account sharing?

Yes, at that point you have. If your wife steps away from her computer for some reason, you need to let her character be idle, just like any other instance group would have to do.

Nice. It sounds like there's a mix of common sense and server law as it were guiding the admins here. That makes me feel good. And it's refreshing.

Thanks!