Posted by Hmmm on October 21, 1999 at 19:14:14:
In Reply to: RE: Cheating, pots talking to kettles, and the like posted by SphereMaker(IMM) on October 21, 1999 at 10:35:50:
> Large in part, it is not against the rules to play with RL friends. You and your buddy enjoy the game and might enjoy playing together once in a while. That's great. Problems arise when two factors are not taken into account: Role-playing and Character Mixing. > Role-playing is a pretty big topic, a little bigger than I want to cover here. But suffice it to say that people who know each other outside the game (significantly, not just in passing) tend to let that color their RP between their characters. That'd be fine except that it gives them a distinct advantage over those that are going this game alone. > Character Mixing is where the real trouble begins. Let's say some RL friends always log in together, always travel together, etc. That probably isn't coincidence. There's probably some out-of-game communication going on there. There's a section of the rules that reads "Nor does it mean everybody from your site can group together and kill everybody in their PK range". That's an important section to remember. > Now, several sites have been banned in the past for blatant disregard of that little quote above. Neosoft, the last site to be banned in this way has returned through Illuminati Online and begun again. After being given a gentle (but clearly apocalyptic) IC warning, they seem to have let off. That's a good thing; it's a shame to have to keep nuking people for the same offenses again and again. After having watched Yagar/Palan/Tamuera for a while, I would agree with you that they are ignoring that clause. If they continue it will result in denial of all three and/or further site banning. I will tell you this: as an Immortal I view people playing from the same lab differently from people playing at the same time from different locales. Other immortals probably don't make the distinction and would bust players doing either. Alright, that's good and all, but why is it exactly that all same site players are regarded as cheaters? What if everyone from the same site decided they want to make characters that DO have roleplaying reasons to get together...like all masters, or all part of the same religion...Now why is that cheating? They all have a legitimate reason to gang together and kill all the enemies of the Tower. This topic touches me cause I do have friends that play, and I think that one of the greatest things about online gaming is that you get to play with people you don't know AND friends in real life. I myself have made masters knowing damn well that one of my friends was making another master, and we just felt it was a great thing so that we can interact together. There wasn't a time once that we thought we were cheating, even though we DID gang together and kill ragers, and we DID gang together to explore new areas, and we DID group together a lot(but then again, I DID group with other masters to kill ragers, explore new areas, etc) Let's face it, if he was a rager and I was a master, how much interaction we gonna have besides killing each other over and over again.