Ban character selling/sharing

[Nordlys 1,425]

1 hour ago, Mataleao said:

We would have lost proven and loyal long-term supporters and gained casuals with no staying power.

But from a philosophical view - could we possibly know this? Yes, we could (only the devs knows this) know that we could loose paying customers. But we cannot know if we gain paying customers, it only an assumption.

 

Im just saying that if there was a method of getting rid of the buyers of said toons, and gain the same amount of players - its philosophically not bad. Im by no means claiming that im right. Im just speculating.

[Mataleao 104]

47 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

...Massive building projects is Wurm's real gameplay, not the grind. Even giving every new player insta-100 in everything couldn't touch that...

 

Massive building projects are certainly one of the many ways of playing Wurm Online. It's pixel Lego and I enjoy spectating. I admire the work of folks like you, building the beautiful deeds I have come across.

 

If terraforming and building are all there is to the game, and there is absolutely nothing else, and we eliminate the skill grind and rng mechanics etc, then we are left with something like Deed Planner.

 

The way I see it, if something is too easy, we human beans tend to not appreciate it so much. I can imagine droves of new players coming in and just tearing up the land, messing about for a bit before losing interest and bidding us all their everlasting goodbyes.

[Roccandil 959]

50 minutes ago, Mataleao said:

 

Massive building projects are certainly one of the many ways of playing Wurm Online. It's pixel Lego and I enjoy spectating. I admire the work of folks like you, building the beautiful deeds I have come across.

 

If terraforming and building are all there is to the game, and there is absolutely nothing else, and we eliminate the skill grind and rng mechanics etc, then we are left with something like Deed Planner.

 

The way I see it, if something is too easy, we human beans tend to not appreciate it so much. I can imagine droves of new players coming in and just tearing up the land, messing about for a bit before losing interest and bidding us all their everlasting goodbyes.

 

While using Deedplanner, I was struck by how much I enjoyed simply designing. It was, in a way, more fun than all the grunt work involved in actually doing it in Wurm.

 

What I like about building in Wurm, however, is that it feels logistically ponderous: you -can- remove that mountain, but it will take time. In no way does it feel too easy, even with 99+ skills on Epic.

 

Minecraft is increasingly making sense to me: Wurm has an awesome building "feel" once you get there, but getting there is gated behind hundred of hours of really dull "gameplay", whereas Minecraft skips the gating and gets you immediately to the building.

 

The difference in popularity is obvious, and I don't get the impression that Minecraft players are insta-casuals (really impressive stuff has been built in Minecraft).

[Milkdrop 278]

While I can't say that I totally love grinding, I like that things are slow - it gives you something to do and look forward to, so I just don't mind it and i mix it in between other things I do.

 

All the insta-reward games out there (WoW, FFXIV, etc.) you return only to play the new content for 2-3 days or 1-2 weeks if its a entirely new expansion and then you drop the sub again cause done and bored.

Wurm does not play like this, we get no major expansions so if we were to gain everything within say 1-2 months and people left cause everything is done... no expansion in the future to spike the population as other games do.

 

That being said, there is only 2 games on my long list of MMOs that I played consistently for more than 5+ years and that was EverQuest and now Wurm.

Maybe i'm a weird minority, idk... it's also why I can not play on a WU Server, when I tried it... well why bother right? Plop GM status on... get stuff done... bored...

 

To add to the actual topic, that's why I never would buy a character.

However, I do not mind if other people do, probably because I do not work in trades where I can see why people would prefer old accounts to wittle away and it is a valid point.

On the other hand, it opens up a new avenue too... say someone starts new, wants their "own" character and not a skilled one, well they can still mildy p2w it a bit by buying high end tools and stuff of the crowded market.

 

As things are there is a way for everyone to play Wurm Online as they want and then there is WU on top of that.

Limiting the options available seems more of a "either everyone plays the game as I want them to play it or bawwww".

 

I don't think either action taken in this will make Wurm significantly worse or better in general, not to a noticeable degree for the usual player anyhow.

If anything, removing character sales has only one negative aspect - that it was allowed for so long and then is "taken away", taking things and options away from people never went well.

So unless there is a new law or alike that would require CodeClub to forbid character sales, I see no reason to do so.

If the Staff thinks it would improve the game and risk the move, I would not tell them not to either though.

One Staff member said once that they would take any step to improve the game, even if it risks to annoy the current player base (see fountain pans and so on) and that is what I can get behind, gota believe in those guys at the helm.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Milkdrop
typo v.v

[canie 1]

those god tier accounts used windows of opportunity and skill exploits to gain alot of those skills. latest exploit was the trebbing 100 animals in a pen to gain 100 treb skill in a few hours. people who exploited that skill didnt lose the skill when it would take a new player years to get 100 treb they got it in a few hours. through the years there was loads of those kinds of exploits

[MrGARY 12,421]

3 hours ago, canie said:

those god tier accounts used windows of opportunity and skill exploits to gain alot of those skills. latest exploit was the trebbing 100 animals in a pen to gain 100 treb skill in a few hours. people who exploited that skill didnt lose the skill when it would take a new player years to get 100 treb they got it in a few hours. through the years there was loads of those kinds of exploits

 

Just because exploits and windows of opportunities existed doesn't mean everyone with a great account used them.  Many people that have been caught abusing exploits to gain skill have also received penalties/bans for it.  There was a trebuchet window of opportunity, but it was not what you described and it was far far far from the few hours you claim, and it was also deemed intentional to use and not an exploit.  As far as I know, only one person even grinded it long enough to get 100.  However this window was closed I believe around 2 years ago.  If what you described still exists, you probably should have reported it long ago

[canie 1]

6 minutes ago, MrGARY said:

 

Just because exploits and windows of opportunities existed doesn't mean everyone with a great account used them.  Many people that have been caught abusing exploits to gain skill have also received penalties/bans for it.  There was a trebuchet window of opportunity, but it was not what you described and it was far far far from the few hours you claim, and it was also deemed intentional to use and not an exploit.  As far as I know, only one person even grinded it long enough to get 100.  However this window was closed I believe around 2 years ago.  If what you described still exists, you probably should have reported it long ago

well all old accounts did use windows of opportunity but not all used the exploits since only gm's had access to the exploit reports + the person(s) who reported it.

[Hailene 362]

Something needs to be done about the top-heaviness of the Wurm population.

Having the same few accounts turned over like the town bicycle isn't helping.

[Wargasm 1,928]

Thing is, this isn't really enforceable.  

 

Take Doctorchaos for example.  Great account, many many kills, very impressive battle rank and crazy amounts of affinities.  How is CCAB going to know the account was sold?  Because it logged in under a different IP address?  CCAB doesn't have access to paypal and bank accounts to know that money switched hands.... hell, my friend was just being nice and gave me his account..... Yeah... really I promise!

[Wilczan 2,048]

Like I said before, no way to check such things, and no any way to stop selling accounts even if they agreed to forbid selling.

[Gladiator 968]

lol yeah cause people wanting to come back into pvp sure want to grind through one year in order to do it lol XD hehe

[Mclavin 3,704]

+1 let's ban them

Runescape banned me twice for sharing account. It can be enforced on 200 million accounts it can be done on wurm.

Also wtb dadd before this comes into effect. Ty

Edited December 17, 2018 by Mclavin

[Sjach 30]

The ability to "legally" buy/sell almost anything in the game, including accounts, is one of the appeals of Wurm.  

I have purchased accounts.  With several dozen tiles to collapse in just one project, I purchased a priest to collapse tiles as it was a lot cheaper and more convenient to pay the going rate of someone else doing it.  I realize this might anger some players who may have felt "cheated" out of potential large amounts of profit, the truth is, I would have simply moved on otherwise. 

Also, I don't have the patience to do the grind to get a new character up to the level required to do this, so purchase was the best option for me.  Especially while trying to do other work at the same time.  

 

On a side note (sarcasm included free of charge):

If you want to start banning what you didn't do yourself, where do you stop?  Banning account sales, deed transfers, gear ... did you craft, improve and enchant the gear you wear all by yourself?

Yes, someone can start the game and buy a high-skill character to play with.  Where is the harm?  I don't see any harm to others outside of PvP, where complaints arise when new players don't roll over and hand over ransoms of gear or praise.  

 

But, more seriously, I would also like to see a method where character ownership could be tracked somehow and character transfers could either include a name change or a method of noting that the character has changed ownership.  No, not sure how this could be implemented.

 

[Druidnature 1,118]

20 hours ago, Hailene said:

Something needs to be done about the top-heaviness of the Wurm population.

Having the same few accounts turned over like the town bicycle isn't helping.

 

Solution, I’ll keep buying all the top end accounts and never let anyone else touch them, despite the offers. 

 

THEY ARE ALL MINE, MINE!!!!

 

problem solved. Carry on

[Holar 1,484]

pretty sure all of chaos would be banned if this ever became a thing. lets make wurm even less attractive to returning players and force them to waste 5000 hours of their life to be bare minimum ready for pvp let alone grind any crafting skills...

[canie 1]

7 minutes ago, Holar said:

pretty sure all of chaos would be banned if this ever became a thing. lets make wurm even less attractive to returning players and force them to waste 5000 hours of their life to be bare minimum ready for pvp let alone grind any crafting skills...

wurmaggedon #2 change rules dont reboot epic remove wurm unlimited this is the only way to breath new life into wurm online

[Mclavin 3,704]

just make a new epic cluster and start us from scratch there with moderated account selling/sharing

[griper 537]

There is no practical way of enforcing a sales ban.

And buying a high end charachter in my opinion is like only listening to the last 5 seconds of a good song.

 

[Drathania 49]

If the end-product is to reduce circulation of high-end level characters, a more prominent feature would be to decay skills based on a flat %/month for accounts that go inactive for say... Longer than 30 days. A lot of characters prior to being sold sit around on the bench so-to-speak for some time before being traded up.

At the same time, ignoring acc sales, there are also an awful lot of players that go inactive for 3..4..5+ months, skill in my opinion should reflect that.

Edited December 26, 2018 by Drathania

[Roccandil 959]

I'm against decay on principle. But I don't think account selling is "the" problem; it's only a symptom of something deeper.