I am very very confused, and I don’t want to get in trouble with any games I might play in the future.
I thought that multiple accouns to help your main was the norm. I thought this because in Jade Dynesty, whenever you’re having trouble getting something because of your level, people tell you, “Make an alt.” The market square is full of shop-alts. People go on quests with groups of their other characters “Excuse me- this account is going to be afk for a few minutes while I get my alt to come help us.”)
I just kinda got yelled at in Kingdom of Loathing, because they don’t like multiple accounts. As in, if you have two characters that trade with each other and help each other, that is seen as a bad thing because it might hurt the market or something. It had honestly never occured to me that it might be a problem. (Also, I have trouble with understanding vague instructions like “multi-abuse is when your character progresses faster than it would otherwise.” I mean, half the stuff they were telling me I shouldn’t have been doing, I wouldn’t have thought would fall under that).
Should I be on the lookout for more rules like that?
If it’s a pay-to-play game, the developers would *love * for you to have multiple accounts- 'cause hey, extra money. On a free game, though- you’re taxing the server more with no benefit to the game developer.
One of my coworkers ran a bank of five computers, all playing WoW together. He gets a full team that does whatever he wants, and Blizzard gets a hundred bucks a month from him.
I haven’t played Kingdom of Loathing, so my information has holes, but as I understand it you’re given a limited number of actions per day. If you create an alt account and use its actions to aid your main account, then you’re getting around that daily limit. Given that the game is built assuming that daily limit, bypassing it can give you a significant advantage.
Most MMOs should have a defined policy on multiple accounts. At the very least, you can always test it by trying to make a second account using the same email address/contact info. If it doesn’t stop you, multiple accounts are okay.
As far as the Kingdom of Loathing thing goes, did you actually get in trouble officially – like did you hear from Multi Czar – or was it another player who kind of yelled at you?
I ask because it sounds like somebody is definitely mistaken. Trading with yourself is a problem, but it isn’t because of the market, and having the other account in the first place is totally OK.
I said something about getting a shirt for a multi*, and the people there started telling me that was a bad idea and I asked why.
*I think what happened was this: I read the rules when I signed up, which was a long time ago. I never planned to ever have more than one account- I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want one- and so I must have skimmed over the section on abusing multiple accounts. By the time I did get a multi, I’d forgotten about the part I hadn’t read.
The other MMORPGs I play are techincally free, too. (The sort of “free” where they try their hardest to get you to buy stuff with game tokens, but you don’t have to pay anything to actually play).
With KoL, like Bosstone said, since the limitation on resources is turn-based, giving yourself effectively infinite turns is giving yourself infinite resources, so every game that gives limited “adventures” has to be careful. If the only limitation is real-world time, I think they care much less what you do with it. I used to play KoL a lot in the first few years after it launched, and I remember there being a clan back then that had like 100 members, and their names were Meatfarmer1, Noodlefarmer1, Meatfarmer2, Noodlefarmer2, and so on. Since the gameplay can be trivially automated, this one person was using thousands of turns every day to benefit one account. That’s the reason it gets treated as some unspeakable crime by some people. I agree with you that it’s very hard to know for sure what’s OK and what isn’t in the less extreme situations. I am certain they do that on purpose because, like the mods here, they don’t really want to get rules-lawyered to death.
The people who told you not to get a shirt for a multi were just in the chat or something, though, right? From my experience with some of the players compared to my experience with the people who run the game, I’d say there’s a good chance players were making a big deal out of something that wasn’t a big deal. If you’re spending turns on one account to accomplish something for a different account, you’re at least technically in violation, but what they’re really worried about is systematic abuse.
Incidentally, I still have a lot of stuff in that game and don’t really use it, so I could probably just send your other account whichever thing you were talking about. That’s not against any rules, and it would give me a good reason to log back in. I kind of miss it.
There doesn’t seem to be any easy rule for it, besides that for commercial MMOs where multiple accounts are no problem. Ages ago when I played Archmage, multiple accounts was a banning offense because it was a pvp game with limited turns. Estiah, which I played 2-3 years ago, was totally ok with them because it is a pve game where you can’t trade with the different accounts at all – though even that game had a rule saying you can’t attack your own accounts in pvp to farm them.
The players who are “making a big deal out of something that wasn’t a big deal” were doing so to make a point. It’s not like #6 is going to disable someone for buying a shirt for their multi, and he’s not out to get anybody, but it’s best to make sure you get into the habit of keeping your nose clean.
If you have any questions about what might or might not constitute multi-abuse in KoL, let me know. As always, if you aren’t sure, kmail MultiCzar, but I’d probably be able to give you a pretty good idea of whether something is kosher or not.