How to cheat other players with an alt

[Orgonwukh]

This situation has happened to me before several times:
A "new" player asks me if I would help him, teach him how to roleplay, or invite him to my guild. The player tells me he is new to the game. I waste huge amounts of time with explaining and teaching. In the end I find out that the player is someone who has played PS for a along time already.

This is annoying and disappointing.

It may be good if someone does not know about who the player behind a char is. Sometimes it even helps if you do not know the other players chars/alts. It can help you to judge the char and player without being biased. But please: Do not waste other players' time by making them tell you about things you already know just for the sake of giving the impression that you are a noob.

If you insist on not giving away who you are (or who your other chars are), I recommend that you do one of the following.

1) Simply say that you have other chars and know how to play, but that you do not want to tell about them because you want to keep the RP without bias/influence. I did this myself sometimes and the other players understood that. If someone does not respect this, they are not worth playing with, because they obviously have other goals than enjoying the game as it is meant to be.
2) You lie that you did not play PS before, but you played other MMOs, RPGs, etc. You can also add that you read the forums and already know a lot of things because of that.
3) You lie that you played PS a long time ago, but you forgot a lot about it. You did not forget how to roleplay, but you do not know the players/chars. This at least prevents other players from wasting their time by teaching roleplaying.

So please:
Do not waste other players' time by playing the noob!
If necessary lie, but do this in a way which does not waste time (yours and others).

Thank you.

[verden]

Ran into this often during my 6 month stint in WoW as well. I agree with the premise of the post as this can be ... depressing and disappointing. The only methods I could see for trying to get around this would be to somehow flag the character in a visible fashion, maybe based on cumulative age of characters on the account. But they could always make a new account, so nuts. Or do something based on comparing IP numbers, which is going to slow the server down, so nuts. Perhaps this behavior should be explicitly added to the play nice policy, not there would be any easy way to enforce it. Ultimately, the polite thing to do is to not do this to other players. Jerks do this.

[Illysia]

I can see not making the player go through everything, but I often play new characters as being new to Hydlaa and thus they have to be shown around and told about different things. Now mind you, I will often eventually just say that this is an alt and all the questions are RP stuff, like "What lies beyond the city walls to the north?". But I don't see how playing your character as new is a problem unless they are asking stuff like "Where is the help tab?" or some such thing.

[Liadan]

Heh. I think he's complaining because his character, Orgon, could have better spent the time doing something else. Remoe has a nickname for Orgon, but I can't repeat it here, due to it's nature.

*whistles*

Although, I have done that with new characters, but mostly to either a) get directions somewhere, since I haven't been playing for a year or so, and if you don't use it, you lose it or b) i felt like RP-ing being new. I don't think i've ever once taken advantage of it, and i usually tell the person that was helping me eventually that the character is an alt of 'liadan'...seems to work.

[Lhaa]

I'm pretty sure the thread isn't about players who have new alts go around asking in-character for directions or such, but about players who fake being new to the game and ask about all sorts of questions about the mechanics or else just to reinforce the impression that they are new. This has been done to me... and to Orgonwukh as well.


However, I disagree with this:

1) Simply say that you have other chars and know how to play, but that you do not want to tell about them because you want to keep the RP without bias/influence. I did this myself sometimes and the other players understood that. If someone does not respect this, they are not worth playing with, because they obviously have other goals than enjoying the game as it is meant to be.

Whenever I recruit a player for either my guild or the RCO I tend to ask who their main characters are. Why? Well, I'm giving them access to our forums and this can be easily used in a disruptive way considering the amount of infos we do post there both IC and OOC. We have already run into this kind of behavior so now we are careful as to who does get in and who doesn't.
I sure want to enjoy the game as it is meant, but situations like this can easily take the fun out of it... and they are not part of how it is meant to be played.

[Orgonwukh]

I do not mean those players who play a char who is new to Hydlaa. I am fine with that, most of the time I recognise that the player is an experienced player and I do not care about this. It does not disrupt my and/or others' gameplay. Experienced players who ask me things like "how do you roleplay", "how do you make my name appear in blue" and other OOC things (in [] and/or guildchat) while they already know about it do though.

[kiou]

um, guild war, guild are secre

make an alt approach the other leader to join

and you have a guild members list, fair?
i think not

[Orgonwukh]

kiou, I do not get you. During guild war, you just attack everyone in sight, if you can attack them, they are the enemy

[Rigwyn]

I think he's saying its unfair to join the opposing guild to obtain an ooc member list.
He's correct in that would be cheating since that info cannot be used ic.

* Integrity can be lost much faster than it can be earned.

[Garile]

Have had several OOC spies. In Planeshit thankfully there is little to gain from it but yeah it's quite annoying.

[Tuxide]

You just gave my guild a new idea to do on EZ-PC.

EDIT:  I've seen long-term players (in other games) do some outrageous things, like pretend to be newbies that are reviewing games for Game Informer.

[LigH]

* Waoki shakes his head: "You are not the one."

[dragnoor]

Well said Orgunwukh : I suspect alot of Guildmasters have experienced this problem. Guild spys are the usual excuse. I for one propose a ban on ALT's. 

[Illysia]

I object...  alts are useful and not everyone uses them for spying. I for one need at least one of my alts.

[Keldrena]

Yes, I just started playing alt and like her a lot. It gives me a chance to stretch my creativity.