[MUD-Dev] characters per account

[adam at treyarch.com]

On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Darren Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Brian Green wrote:
> This argument is presupposing that you can tell that someone has multiple
> accounts. Something that I don't believe is true. Many people have
> multiple credit cards. Heck, even if they have only the one credit card
> there may be multiple people who can use it. Would you count a husband and
> wife as one user and only being entitled to one account (or charge them
> a premium for a second account?).
> 
> It would be very nice if you could id the person on a the other end of a
> connection, whether its to limit a person to one account or to keep people
> from sharing an account or for some other purpose, but I know of no way of
> doing that in any sort of reasonable manner even if you're just aiming to
> catch a majority of the users.

I mostly agree that ID'ing users is pretty pointless if you intend to do it
on a broad scale, but a large service *could* experiment with it, probably
without hurting the large part of their market.

Simply launch multiple servers (the UO "shard" thing), wherein one of these
servers is designed for people that want a one-character-per-player system
and the player responsibility that comes with it.  Perhaps this server
would be invitation-only (if you catch the eye of the admin for impressive
roleplaying or good deeds on one of the normal servers), but either way
players would be required to send in a photocopy of their driver's license
or passport.  You get one character, and from then on if you are banned, you
can NEVER return to this server, although you're welcome to continue to play
on all of the other ones.

Naturally most people can still get their hands on multiple driver's license
(hey honey, can I photocopy your license for a sec?), but I still think it
would be more effective than the credit card in terms of making people
more responsbile online.  Coupled with the need to 'prove' yourself on one
of the mainstream servers, this would probably prove to be a pretty effective
filtering mechanism.

Of course, the question is whether this elite server would be an empty
graveyard, or perhaps full but totally boring as everyone goes around doing
good deeds for each other, while the mainstream servers are considered the
"real" game.  Or, perhaps it would be the other way around - the mainstream
servers would denegrate into a wasteland of PK, whining newbies, and k00l
d00dz, a gauntlet that worthy players must traverse as quickly as possible
to get to the "real" game, on the identification-required server.

Would be an interesting experiment.

Adam





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