Destruction of Alts

[Maebius]

I admit that I also made alts to experience a different version of MD.  (partially a RP-reason, so be warned).

 

My first batch of alts were stopped at teh end of MP4 as I was testing/exploring mapping out different StoryMode paths. 

That was fun, but I don't really consider them alts as they just got played to a point and abandoned.

 

My others were to RP a bit of a different style of character, and challenge myself in a few different strategies.

 

One remained MP3 and only used Barren Souls. I wanted to see if I could stay balanced, while helping out other MP3s with even random defenses being "non-damaging" and easy to grind on. That worked, except the whole "stay balanced thing" It would have worked if I spent more time with them, but I at least stay out of skill damage there.

 

Another alt was meant to be a bit mean and snarky and took the Story into Necorivan (pesky gates changing shortly before I finished the Story, and locking from AP instead of keys!     I didn't have as much fun as I initially thought trying to make oen character embody "the mean bits of me"   so I mostly stopped playing them too.  It was kinda fun seeing how people treat someone who was intentionally irritating, but not blatantly insulting.      

 

Another alt was a challenge to myself to see if I could communicate in a different way, and still have people understand, and feel like I was still "experiencing MD" as fully as I could.  That experiment worked very well.   I just wish I had more time to dedicate to both Maebius, and her.  :P    

 

In my case, I would answer anyone who asked "are you an alt?", but never offered it freely. 

Not that I tried to keep it entirely secret, but I figured it wasn't necessary to openly share "Hey, I'm Maebius, and this is also me, and this one".  

 

I still play the characters the same way as I started, even once they are known.  Some of them remained secret for far longer than I expected. 

 

There are MANY ways to 'play'  this 'game'  we call MagicDuel.  

That's the beauty of it.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Maebius

[DARK DEMON]

I myself have alts, but I don't care if they are revealed or not (only one is known so far).

 

I make them for reasons all into one: to check other story mode paths, for roleplay which my character can't do, to check people's reactions when a player would act a certain way, etc.

[Zyrxae]

This topic reminds me of this.

 

 

I never ask newbie questions from my own alt (which I just made check alternate story mode options) but from my own DARK DEMON account. Why use this account and not a newbie account? Cause it has a greater reputation and greater means to get hold of that knowledge due to age and experience.

Sometimes the reverse is true: those in a position to answer newbies’ questions perform triage—they attend first to the questions of those most likely to leave MD for good if their questions aren’t resolved quickly and leave oldbies’ queries for later.
 

Personally I prefer to know whom I'm dealing with from the start rather than finding out later.

Wouldn’t it also be fun to never find out? I still believe Innocence is a unique person, not because the evidence says so but because it can be nice to not read into everything for a change, to accept people as being who they say they are.
 

@Change: too much RP does affect your other skills.

How so?
 

I don't like RP, I have fun with it at times, but I find it boring.

So spare me the details (the nonRP type) I simply don't understand you.

On the other side, I used alts (see the "4 military alliances takeover") ... so ... all I can think is that you intended the same thing.
Are you RP type (with strange reasoning) or military type ?

I am fascinated by the extent to which you base your assumptions of others’ motives off your own experiences/beliefs. (Everyone does this somewhat to varying degrees; you seem to do it very often.)
See Maebius’ and Amber’s posts on althood for accounts of other “types”; they’re maybe the most encouraging part of this thread so far.
 

One reason why new players might be turned away from MD is the mini 'alt trial' that goes on....It's really awkward trying to play another character and feel like you have to prove that you're not an alt. It's also not a good advertisement to actual new people to MD.

Being told you're not you can really be dispiriting. I came back to MD the December before last and still faced this in August. Worst is that althood can never be disproved, only proven, save by the authorities. (At least things like "Here's a sawdust, now go pass it to Person X to prove you're not their alt. If you say no, then you're definitely alts, because why else would you refuse to do it?" don't seem to happen too often.)
 

I haven't been asked if I'm an alt yet.

Must be doing something right.

You hadn’t been asked because you established your return on the forum before [I saw you] interacting much ingame. Since multiple accounts aren’t allowed on the forum, it’s a great—but not foolproof—tool/sticky giveaway for determining whether someone is an alt. On the flipside, it’s all the more reason to introduce oneself on the forum upon [re-]entering MD.
 

I doubt any of us girls would envy your relationship with tarq magistra. You were just 'one of tarq's girls'. We have different preferences. There's absolutely nothing to envy there. Be assured bout that. :P

You still didnt answer my ques though. Let me post it in bold. Just in case you didnt notice it.

WHAT PREVENTED YOU FROM APPLYING TO GOLEMUS AS MAGISTRA?

I can’t answer that, but attitudes toward Magistra such as the above can’t have helped much.

 

Overall:
I’m torn between agreeing with Menhir that one should not expect even intrinsic reward for freely helping others and acknowledging that LHOs and newbie helpers are human, and thus have limited time and effort to expend showing newbies around.

We must find a balance between retaining new players and leaving open the opportunity for old players to explore the realm free of others’ preconceptions. Maybe LHOs could encourage newbies to post a greeting/background on the forum, because the guessing game shows few signs of stopping any time soon.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Zyrxae

[Chewett]

Overall:
I’m torn between agreeing with Menhir that one should not expect even intrinsic reward for freely helping others and acknowledging that LHOs and newbie helpers are human, and thus have limited time and effort to expend showing newbies around.

We must find a balance between retaining new players and leaving open the opportunity for old players to explore the realm free of others’ preconceptions. Maybe LHOs could encourage newbies to post a greeting/background on the forum, because the guessing game shows few signs of stopping any time soon.

I agree with most of your sentiments, I dont really care who i talk to and if you are an alt or not. I will answer as much as i can. But if i find later that you were an alt and were purposely wasting my time with stuff you already known, im not going to be impressed. With an empathasis on "wasting my time" rather than asking me questions.

I dont care if you are an alt, thats why i ahve little problems letting alts into my alliance.

[Burns]

We're getting a little off the original point, and several reports say that we're getting too far from it.

Please try to keep it civilized, i've disabled a few posts already, don't want to get more work here.

[DARK DEMON]

Sometimes the reverse is true: those in a position to answer newbies’ questions perform triage—they attend first to the questions of those most likely to leave MD for good if their questions aren’t resolved quickly and leave oldbies’ queries for later.

 
You ~totally~ misunderstood me. I meant that I MYSELF would not ask newbie questions to others from an alt account. Whenever I would want to ask a newbie question, i.e. a question a newbie would rather ask, I would rather use just my DARK DEMON account.
 
You thought I meant asking questions to newbies :mellow:
 

I agree with most of your sentiments, I dont really care who i talk to and if you are an alt or not. I will answer as much as i can. But if i find later that you were an alt and were purposely wasting my time with stuff you already known, im not going to be impressed. With an empathasis on "wasting my time" rather than asking me questions.

I dont care if you are an alt, thats why i ahve little problems letting alts into my alliance.

EXACTLY, except that I still care. :P
 

Edited June 8, 2013 by DARK DEMON

[DARK DEMON]

I’m torn between agreeing with Menhir that one should not expect even intrinsic reward for freely helping others and acknowledging that LHOs and newbie helpers are human, and thus have limited time and effort to expend showing newbies around.

We must find a balance between retaining new players and leaving open the opportunity for old players to explore the realm free of others’ preconceptions. Maybe LHOs could encourage newbies to post a greeting/background on the forum, because the guessing game shows few signs of stopping any time soon.

 

Since a long time, even before I applied to become LHO, I've been trying to make newbies stay in MD. Another person doing the same was Fang Archbane, and I must say both of us were successful (the rate of people staying in MD increased a loooot). I dunno about Fang, but I personally would spend lots of time with them and guiding them with everything they should know.

 

As you may have already guessed, it is very time consuming, and sometimes I can't even give time to the actual newbies... and then alts come in. Can you imagine how pissed one can get after spending quite a long time and then finding out that the person you helped was an alt? NOT fun.

 

(Ravianna, Magistra's alt, was one of these people, but she got caught in my alt check. See below.)

 

Due to this, I devised a manual "alt-check" a while back, in which I seem to get a good idea if someone's an alt or not, and it does work. I check all of the newbies before I spend too much time on them.

____________________________________________________

 

Basically, my point is that there are more than enough people in MD who are willing to help (notice I haven't even mentioned the LHO's in this post. Other than normal MD players, they are there too). Whichever newbie asks, his question 95% of the time gets answered.

 

From my experience (and I have a lot of experience with this) , those who want to stay in MD will definitely stay no matter what, and those who don't will definitely not. All we can do is make the realm more comfortable for those who want to stay, which is very important.

Edited June 8, 2013 by DARK DEMON

[Change]

@Dark Demon

 

I'm really curious as to what these introductions that take a few hours involve. Is most of the time spent just casually guiding a newbie around the realm, or is a lot of it spent on actual information?

 

If some newbies are given a hours worth of information, I'd like that information myself. I certainly didn't know an hours worth of information until I was 200+ AD old. I guess I need to get it into my head that MD is a game of 50 questions instead of 'figure things out for yourself' (ironically enough, asking questions does go hand in hand with figuring things out.. but that's another subject).

 

What about the supposed 'vets' like Change? Do their questions get answered too?

 

Yes, I'm quite dense, but this has been bugging me a lot lately.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Change

[Tarquinus]

For me, roleplay is about expression of character. No one says he spends enough time being himself; I roleplay precisely to be someone else. Tarq is not I, and I am not he. I use an aspect of my personality for part of his character. Keith is far closer to the real me - he's me as I might have been, 17 years ago, in a parallel universe. I did not create Keith to confuse anyone. I created him partly because I wanted to investigate a certain alternate path I'd learned about in story mode, and once that was done I had fun fleshing out his personality. And though his story is similar to mine, he's not I, either.

 

That said, I've never understood two things about the way some people RP in MD (and other places around the web): roleplaying without reference to a system and roleplaying to the detriment of the setting. In any roleplaying game I've ever played, rules define reality and sharply constrain what a character can and cannot do. I once heard an MD player say, "It [RP] is like 'let's pretend' - anything can happen!" I strongly disagree. The 'anything can happen' approach to RP requires an implicit understanding between the players that they will respect each other's imaginings. I find that tedious. In a proper RPG, character actions (especially combat, 'powers', and skills) are maintained by the system, and therefore the system should be used. That is precisely why I find it odd and disappointing when MD players choose to ignore the combat engine and outer magic system almost completely in favor of their 'RP combat' and/or 'RP powers'.

 

When using the setting to define a character, you help expand that setting, but when you ignore the setting to make your character a robot samurai werewolf fairy, you undermine it. MD has a very rich (and rather thought-provoking) setting. If you are going to ignore it, you should at least ensure that you do not detract from it with your character concept's oddities. Tarq is an older guy who thinks he was a wizard in another world, but there's reason to think he's more than a little crazy - and the powers he does have all come from being a character in MD doing things in the world of MD. Keith is just an ordinary guy who, like some others, learned about the MD world and grew powerful from his interactions with it.

 

On a tangential note, I think it is just plain rude to ask game lore/systemic questions as an alt if you already know the answers to them. I can assure you from experience that such deceptions are not necessary for creating a character that the people who know your main account are not likely to recognize for quite a while.

[DARK DEMON]

@Dark Demon

 

I'm really curious as to what these introductions that take a few hours involve. Is most of the time spent just casually guiding a newbie around the realm, or is a lot of it spent on actual information?

 

If some newbies are given a hours worth of information, I'd like that information myself. I certainly didn't know an hours worth of information until I was 200+ AD old. I guess I need to get it into my head that MD is a game of 50 questions instead of 'figure things out for yourself' (ironically enough, asking questions does go hand in hand with figuring things out.. but that's another subject).

 

What about the supposed 'vets' like Change? Do their questions get answered too?

 

Yes, I'm quite dense, but this has been bugging me a lot lately.

 

The usual case is that I "pick" them up from the park/GoE and take them for personal papers to MDA, and in the meantime they ask me any questions about anything they like. I am careful not to give spoilers; rather I ask them questions to make them realize the answer themselves. I tell them about combat-related things if they want to know, and give them the forum link to my guide after telling them to make a forum account (forum account is part of the alt-check). I tell them to check out the MD shop and see if they have 5 credits (another part of the alt-check since alts don't get those 5 credits). As they grow and train, alongside answering their questions, I tell them about the different lands and tell them to try different things, eg: Berserker's Way quest, Loreroot guards, spells when they get their first wishpoint, etc.

 

It doesn't last a few hours, but weeks.

[Nimrodel]

I still didnt get the answer to my question >.> (since the second time post was hidden) and this is the third time I'm posting:

 

WHAT PREVENTED YOU FROM APPLYING FOR GG CITIZENSHIP AS MAGISTRA?

[Magistra]

I told you. I didn't want to be abused for a while. I was in hospital and very sick.

[Magistra]

Thanks, my friends, There are 3 people with enough power to distroy an alt. I am the enemy of 2 of them. The first is hostile because she does not like sex, the second is a person who just wants to have power. The 3th one? He did not even bother to talk to me. He is Mur.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Magistra

[Chewett]

Thanks, my friends, There are 3 people with enough power to distroy an alt. I am the enemy of 2 of them. The first is hostile because she does not like sex, the second is a person who just wants to have power. The 3th one? He did not even bother to talk to me. He is Mur.

Actually there are a load of people that could do what you say, three seems incredibly conservative. But, of what you said, I interacted perfectly amiably with your alt, had some suspicion that it was you, actually getting two pms from people telling me it was your alt since they saw me talking with you. Did it matter to me? No. From what I saw you annoyed a Great deal of people and wanted a fresh start, this seemed fair so I didn't care who you were.

Your dislike for me appears to being represented in blaming me for all your problems which is sad and I pity you for this. I have wronged people, my friends, I am sorry for this, but you were not one of them.

[Burns]

Guys, really, the topic is quite interesting, so stop attacking each other. Hid some more posts, but worry not, dear civilized readers, not a single word was added to the topic in those. I'm also sorry that i didn't send out any PMs for the posts i hid friday night, it just slipped my mind, and i'll work that list off now instead.

 

 

Next time i'll probably need to lock the thread. If you have problems with each other, discuss them in a PM, not on the forum.

[Rophs]

Reading this reminded me of the multiple 15 page flamewars we ad about the GGG.

Good times.

 

edit:

I always get the first post in the next page O.o

Edited June 9, 2013 by Rophs

[Muratus del Mur]

In concept, md should be totally friendly to alts creation/use. Abuse is an issue so Md, through its tools and involved people, can not be ignorant to alts use. All efforts are done in both knowing who someone is as an alt but also to protect that identity. This is the concept from my view.

As a player, i played my characters fully identified with them, i never considered them "alts" they were part of me, some dormant some sculpted in my personality by time or people.

A person has many sides and faces, a virtual world allows us to see and explore these faces, both about us but also about those around us. At some point, these faces communicate. I believe it is then when abuse happens, when more identities unite or are created to obtain an advantage of any sort.

In RL, this is also happening but since there are no set rules so to speak, its not called "abuse" when two or more sides of your own self unite. Its actually sonething amazing. but when more separate people unite forces to cheat, its called organized crime.

in md each character the equivalent of one person... as they might be in fact faces of the same person, they need to respect the rules as if they are independent people.

thats my view..in part

[Handy Pockets]

In my beginning, I only played Handy Pockets. Then one day I had to read about Nacirema.  I loved the name so much I made Nacirema Asu.  She has not walked around the lands in a long time.  I would tell those I talked to that I was *kets if the conversation turned to one that I thought I should say who my main character was .  

 

Did Nacirema break some rules in her early days?  Yes, did she change her ways?  Yes.  

 

After a while i enjoyed the avatar part of an alt so Nacirema could wear avatars that I would buy because I did not want to change who *kets was as far as her avatars look.  My very simple reason but one I enjoyed.  

Edited June 19, 2013 by Handy Pockets

[VertuHonagan]

Next time i'll probably need to lock the thread. If you have problems with each other, discuss them in a PM, not on the forum.

 

Finally! This is exactly the thing I was talking about on another thread! Thanks Burns! :D

 

As for the topic, I think that all alts "true identities" should remain hidden, or not brought out into the open unless the owner wishes for the realm to know. Otherwise it could ruin the whole experience for the owner.

[No one]

@Vertul : Read the topic from the beginning. Stop spamming.

 

 

 

 

__________________________

....

Edited June 19, 2013 by No one

[Fyrd Argentus]

I always like to find a RP explanation for manifestations and powers in the game.  Fyrd Argentus had a mental breakdown and is acting out his inner child as alt Fyrd Alyzer - which should be obvious to everybody but him, because he is in denial.  If his mental state flops back and forth, so be it.  Totally split personality.

 

Why did I do this? 1) I want to keep MD as a game (relief from real life), and too much karma was hanging on my head for it to be fun (same reason i dropped MP6), - which parallels Fyrd's mental breakdown nicely,  and 2) a fresh new set of clickies to draw on!