Not sure what you're drinking, or how it works in some plan for you, but yeah, you should stop.

Mostly I feel bad now for whoever, but whatever, I did my part. Carry on.

You have a lot of tells as a player. Some you share with a couple other players; a few are unique to you specifically. Ieralaine had all of them. Most players don't have as many; a few of yours happen to be very obvious to me.

So basically you want me to believe that someone knows your tells pretty well, is intentionally playing a character and trying to make people believe it's you, and it just happens that a "wrong" done to this character is the one thing that brings you out of lurking to champion, as you chronically cannot help but do when you believe yourself to have been wronged?

Or there's a much simpler explanation.

It doesn't really matter. You wanted a response and you got it without having to publically admit to playing again after the last time you promised you wouldn't until Thror redressed the last time you believed yourself wronged. You don't like the answer you got, but realistically you never were going to.

really not. think what you want, i don't really care, and frankly it's entirely possibly someone is doing what you say, and equally likely if not more that you're just lying about it, as you have before.

Either way, it's all a deflection so you and your wife don't need to explain what was done. Maybe you did everything right. I have no idea. But the way it's been handled now, it's pretty obvious you're both covering up.

Answer, don't answer, I'm done on this one. Someone else can worry about it.

I repeat, when you're willing to tell the truth I'll consider giving you a more in depth response to your goodbyes.

Not everyone knows your tells, but everyone does know what kinds of things you cannot let go and cannot resist arguing about until the other person gets bored.

At the end of the day, you were warned that you were doing something that if continued would result in an alignment change and could not handle it gracefully. If you absolutely cannot play Battle without serually killing good mobs, then don't pick the good alignment. Period, full stop, no ifs buts or qualification.

Sites are often dynamic, and it would take a hell of a lot of log grepping to stick a site to a specific player... particularly if said player uses one of the big providers.

That doesn't even get into the complications that are routing. I for one often appear as if I'm from WI, MI, Ohio, New York, PA... And I'm not even in the States.

So that leaves... What? Equipment tells? The container they prefer for water? Post and cross character interests?

Are ya'll the NSA with huge dossiers on each site that connects and plays a character over 50 hours?

The only other way I could even BEGIN to imagine is that you get the information via word of mouth and guess work. Which in many cases is going to be totally wrong. I've often heard that various people think my characters are the following: Torak. Graatch. Pro. Rogue.

I'm none of those players, and to my knowledge, never have been. Also wasn't Ieralaine, despite my record of playing less than stellar good characters.

Everyone has tells and some of them are pronounced enough that its easy to peg who they are playing even if they drastically switch up their roles.

They can be
common typos
common reactions to criticism
How they argue in character (this is graatchs biggest tell everytime you end up in an IC disagreement he just switches into lawyerly batter the hell out of the conversation mode regardless of his role)
Gear they favor
Spots they rest up in
General approach to preping
General approach to hunting/risk
The way they phrase prayers and seek PC interaction
Writing style in roles

Yup.

There are probably less than ten players I can spot easily, but there are a few. There are a handful more that are easy to spot under the right circumstances. For example, there are probably a half-dozen players who each melt down in a very distinctive fashion when they really lose their temper -- but then they'll play a character where that never happens or I don't see it, and I have no idea.

Sites are often dynamic, and it would take a hell of a lot of log grepping to stick a site to a specific player... particularly if said player uses one of the big providers.

IP addresses might be dynamic, but the provider won't be.

It only takes a couple minutes to grep for IPs and tell where someone is playing from, if they're coming in via proxies, and who previous characters were. That said, only Implementors have access to the log files.

"It only takes a couple minutes to grep for IPs and tell where someone is playing from, if they're coming in via proxies, and who previous characters were. That said, only Implementors have access to the log files."

I believe you can do the first two. I even believe you can tell when a player has two or more concurrent characters.

Previous Characters? I really don't think you can do this very accurately over the span of months. And the further back you go, the more you're going to be guessing and doing a lot of grepping for similar addresses... Which may or may not belong to the same person.

I can believe you "knew" Graatch was Ieralaine the same way I "know" that the CIA gets most of its funding via selling cocaine. It's obvious, but not really evident.

If you'll note, I didn't make any claims about Ieralaine; I was merely commenting on the general process and how it can work.

Previous Characters? I really don't think you can do this very accurately over the span of months.

I disagree, though some players might require more interesting pattern matching to track. That said, even dynamic IP addresses do not necessarily change very often. In the case of Ieralaine, after having looked, I have no doubt about previous characters who share the same IP from a provider where I would not expect multiple user access. Were it appropriate, I could list--according to IP matching--Ieralaine's previous characters and I think you would find the pattern very compelling.

I used Ieralaine as a relevant example, and I'm glad you took the time to check and feel that it's compelling. That's enough for me on that case. I also assume that connecting previous characters is something that is only done in the case of a rules violation.. And I imagine most of those violations are repeat offenders. Otherwise the effort expenditure seems kind of.. Extreme.

Meaning... If Graatch's pride hadn't been so extreme as to try and get someone else to post his goodbyes for him, we'd have just straight up dealt with that post normally- and no one but you guys would have really known he had played another character. Much to his chagrin, now we all know.

Thanks for the replies.

I also assume that connecting previous characters is something that is only done in the case of a rules violation..

Even in the case of rules violations, there's not much reason to go looking for IPs like this. In the majority of cases, who really cares? You deal with the violation and that's it.

Meaning... If Graatch's pride hadn't been so extreme...

Don't misunderstand me--I'm not actually claiming that this is Graatch (and this thread is the first I've even heard of Ieralaine, FWIW). Since the player uses proxies so heavily, it appears they don't want to be identified if at all possible. Settling on a static IP over several characters was sort of a mistake, though, if they didn't want us to be able to ever track that. Given the patterns of the characters in the sequence, though, I can see from an IP perspective why Graatch would be a good guess.

Do you believe this should be an Imp only ability (lvl 60, and I am talking about IP checking, grepping etc.) to ferret out cheaters or solve issues like these. Considering the automated alert system seems to have evolved for cheat tracking, gear passing, etc, actual IP checking doesn't seem like it really needs to be used that often.

This can also save the lower immortal staff from being forced to know what player is behind what character as this is rumored to be a rather prevalent thing. Should each character not get a fair start unless it is cheating that you are worried about? This may fix a lot of the grumblings of your rather thinning player-base, honestly.

IP checking is only available at 59+ and grepping is only available to someone with log access on the servers (currently Implementors). So, lower immortal staff don't have access to that information at all.

Which isn't likely.

Favouritism and even grudge holding requires a very high amount of effort. I don't really think anyone is willing to expend that kind of effort for no tangible gain whatsoever.

I should really be the poster child for the fact that previously abusive players can turn over a new leaf and play unmolested. I can't remember how often I'd end characters in RotD in melt down fashion and I wouldn't be surprised if I was one of the players Daevryn recognizes by their kind of melt down.

I have no idea who was playing Ieralaine, but the very few interactions which occurred with this character were ridiculous.

Not only was there significant evidence of self-entitlement, there was some borderline sketchy things being done as both a Goodie and a BattleRager.

There was a redeeming moment but it clearly didn't clear the slate for the the entire history of the character.

then I'm so sorry.

You should either a) kill yourself, or b) figure out how to be less of a horrible person.

Other than that, you're good.

Ow! My ovaries!