One Account with many alts

[Wurmhole 3,650]

I know account management has come up before and is probably more work than anyone at CC cares to tackle, but with all the account trading and questions of who is actually running the account, or the desire to have character name changes, what if we did this:

 

One player account - One forum Account - Many characters, which can be added or removed from the Player Account.

 

 - All characters can purchase name changes, but you must have a "family" name, associated with your player account, which is visible to anyone via mouseover in any text box, or mouseover of the character when you are face to face with them.

 

 - Only 1 email needed, for the 1 player account, regardless of how many characters/alts.

 

 - Link Player Account with a real life identity, so people aren't making multiple player accounts, which would defeat the purpose of this system.  This will prevent banned people from just making or buying new accounts and using a proxy to bypass the IP bans.

 

 - Web Management of the account and all characters/alts in one place.  Pay premium for all alts, Pay upkeep on all deeds, buy silver for alts.  Setup Auto Pay!  How many people take a break, forgetting they didn't put more into upkeep, then come back, only to see everything looted and gone - then quitting in frustration.

 

It is funny how many ways people make suggestions for ways to have CC collect more money and be more successful. We players want Wurm to last and improve.  Some things need to happen to pave the way.  Better account & character management is required if any growth is expected.  Right now, account management is no better than scribbling our fake names on a sign up sheet.  A dream scenario for anyone with wicked intent to scam others.

[Propheteer 7,139]

im ok with this, basically like EVE?

 

im a bit iffy on the RL details part, outside of what is needed to pay for my subscription. I would also like it to have a character trading system similar to eve, where it takes a little bit to transfer, but can pay ISK for someone elses character.

 

+1

Edited April 6, 2015 by Propheteer

[Kruggan 519]

+1

[Wurmhole 3,650]

im ok with this, basically like EVE?

 

+1

I want to say yes, but been so long since I played Eve.  I may have to resub and see.

[Outlaw 697]

Link with real life identity - that might be the tough part.

Could always link it to your credit card I guess...only easy way I can see of doing it.

 

Not many people are gonna send in pictures of their passport of anything to play a video game

Edited April 6, 2015 by Outlaw

[tage 3]

Agreed that this is a very good idea. This community consistently brings up thoughtful and fairly easily implementable ideas. Will cc do it? Lets hope.

[bangzuvelis 549]

totally agree with this one. always had my fb connected to anything i do, so people can see who i am in RL, it makes so much easier to work things out. and tbh made at least 5 WL friends with who i meet up regularly for holidays and share not only sand box interests... 

[KanePT 699]

 - Link Player Account with a real life identity, so people aren't making multiple player accounts, which would defeat the purpose of this system.  This will prevent banned people from just making or buying new accounts and using a proxy to bypass the IP bans.

You do understand bans aren't really meant to keep people from playing the game right. You get banned as a punishment, you lose access to one account, but nothing in ANY game will prevent you from just subbing a new one. If you repeat the behavior so much for the better. The more accounts you PAY without playing for them, the better.

 

This shouldn't be done for the benefit of CC, CC doesn't really need better character management, the we have now is actually more profitable for them, because they can milk a single player for several characters.

Plus most like you wouldn't be able to play on alts within the same account simultaneously. So that's gone down the toilet.

Only reason for this is for player commodity and Quality of Life, simple as that. Its nothing to do with enforcing bans or whatnot. Its not about you being paranoid and requiring some sort of comfort that the guy that wronged you is away forever. What wurm needs is better standards, because honestly this game was substandard in 2006, we're in 2015, things that don't evolve tend to get culled.

 

There's also no reason for ingame accounts to be linked to forum accounts. If anything we have VERY STRONG reasons for it to be otherwise, specially given the debacles with the forum security being breached last year. Don't forget this forum is hosted on a pre-built code, on a different database, which will make it pretty hard to link with ingame. Which, again, is pretty much not recommended, at least with the current setup.

 

All in all better account management is desireable, as are a ton of other things that wouldn't really be hard to do, and would improve the game tremendously, but the devs are too hellbent on doing random "big" (which are actually small, usually useless, mostly cosmetic) additions, instead of working on improving the overall systems ingame. (Fighting, trading, permissions, account security and management, to name a few).

[Hordern 2,177]

I don't see how viable the using RL details bit is, I also don't see how it would prevent people from creating further Player Accounts as different credit cards can be acquired, different ID documents used etc etc.

 

I do however like the idea of having one account with 'alts' for the purposes of management, player identification and similar. This is all assuming that premium is still paid per 'alt' rather than just once for the player account.

[Wurmhole 3,650]

Link with real life identity - that might be the tough part.

Could always link it to your credit card I guess...only easy way I can see of doing it.

 

Not many people are gonna send in pictures of their passport of anything to play a video game

credit card or legitimate payment account, SSN, Tax ID (or whatever other countries use).  Not really thinking of Facebook or more personal things.  Just a better way of tracking fraudulent behavior.

[Wurmhole 3,650]

I don't see how viable the using RL details bit is, I also don't see how it would prevent people from creating further Player Accounts as different credit cards can be acquired, different ID documents used etc etc.

 

I do however like the idea of having one account with 'alts' for the purposes of management, player identification and similar. This is all assuming that premium is still paid per 'alt' rather than just once for the player account.

Absolutely per alt, but in my case, with the current system, I have had several alts slip and go non-prem.  I make a dang spreadsheet to try and track them all, but even then I forget and wurm emails like to go to spam.  If I could have them in one spot, with an auto resub in place, my life would be so much easier.  Same for deeds. I've been shutting down deeds because it is too much trouble to manage the payments.  Not good for revenue.  In fact, by montly spend to CC has dropped from 200+ to maybe 100 now.  Mainly because of the business side of CC is a pain in the botox (sp intended).

 

I'm in sales in RL and it is amazing how sometimes the smallest things make or break a company.  Something as simple as auto resub could boost CC profits by 10-20%.  But CC is small and probably every paid employee writes code.  I've seen many a small business, run by brilliant engineers/devs.... crash and burn.  Business generally isn't their greatest asset.  Inventing, coding, solving is.

[akaedis 429]

credit card or legitimate payment account, SSN, Tax ID (or whatever other countries use).  Not really thinking of Facebook or more personal things.  Just a better way of tracking fraudulent behavior.

 

If wurm used my credit card info for anything but a payment(Like we agreed on upon paying) Id sue CC AB. Id be completely within my right to do so, I did not send personal information to cc to be used for their account protection or anything other then payment. I payed money to support codeclub ab & in return they gave me premium time, And thats the only way i would be okay with my info being used in such a way. IF It was changed, id demand my info be removed from the system immediately, If this cannot be done, Id go after the company and i would get it removed, Because we did not agree that they can hold my information and use it in ways they see fit. 

 

Not that i hate CC or anything, But if they broke their terms we all agreed upon(on payment), i would not be afraid to protect my personal information. If it would require me to go after CC, I will without a doubt. And im sure others would aswell. Not all of us are so easy going with personal information like you are, Specially with our card info. 

Edited April 6, 2015 by akaedis

[Wurmhole 3,650]

It is just a means to verify identity when creating the player account.  Not used for anything else.  It would naturally have to be PC compliant and meet any standard security policies.  But if you used your card to make payments already, they have that info.  They have to maintain a transaction history. Not suggesting any special permissions, other than us granting permission to do things like auto pay.

[Chiqa 742]

While it sounds like a great idea using rl info is not something I would support.

[Naio 675]

+1 like the idea

[Lupe 19]

I don't see the problem with real life info on most games or for whatever I sign up. I don't see the point of it here and not sure it is worth the hassle. I not even sure how safe that is here. I think it great for convenience. The linking is a start for keeping people straight with all the accounts. Maybe in 10 years.

[Kagrenac 812]

It is just a means to verify identity when creating the player account.  Not used for anything else.  It would naturally have to be PC compliant and meet any standard security policies.  But if you used your card to make payments already, they have that info.  They have to maintain a transaction history. Not suggesting any special permissions, other than us granting permission to do things like auto pay.

Why does Code Club AB need to verify who you are?

[Clatius 455]

I would not trust these guys to keep any personal information safe. Not in a million years. 

 

I don't understand the underlying reason for this. Paranoia? Is this another PvP problem that's being pointlessly spilled over into PvE? More information please. 

[Baloo 709]

+1 Account management definitely needs improvement - atm it is v. cumbersome.

[Alyeska 2,621]

+1 partially - I am for one also not keen on having my real life information used to manage my accounts - however better account management and identification would definitely be nice, it can be rather confusing and annoying to keep track (the 5 accounts per email thing is annoying, too!)

[Ayes 3,715]

Wurmhole, The account management side of your proposal is a nice idea. Blizzard (WoW) has this sort of system where you log on to your main holding account to access and pay for your various characters. The setup is handled through a credit card with the associated name and billing address serving as all the "personal identifying information" required.

 

It would then be convenient to have all one's characters and even deed payments available on this page but the work involved to set up and manage this system would be much more costly than the current system. This makes me think that it is impractical for Wurm to set up this type of system when the current one functions well enough. Many more improvements to the game and even Wurm Shop offerings could be substituted for a system like this with time invested.

 

A nice pipe dream on a lovely spring night as the lands slowly loosen themselves from winters frigid grip...

 

*dozes off*

=Ayes=

[KanePT 699]

credit card or legitimate payment account, SSN, Tax ID (or whatever other countries use).  Not really thinking of Facebook or more personal things.  Just a better way of tracking fraudulent behavior.

[LorenaMontana 3,008]

+1 but not the credit card stuff, many europeans dont have a credit card

[AcidinmyFridge 5]

+1

[Trake 360]

+1 but not the credit card stuff, many europeans dont have a credit card

  what do europeans use?