I learned something this week.

I have 5 characters on my account. There are mine plus I have kids in the house that play, one regularly and one seldom.

Two characters I tried to not tie to Harpo in any way. Barly chatted with them, ran them mostly in other parts of the universe. Got them to decent levels.

Finally brought one to the sedina area. Started interacting. Started getting /messaged things like 'Hi Harpo' from a few different people. Was puzzled. How was I found out?

Turns out there are one or more groups of people who run scripts against the website active-players page to build stats for the purpose of discovering alts. In my opinion this is detrimental to the RP aspect of the game. I'm considering deleting my new characters that took me months to build. Is this a fair use of the website? Are we entitled to privacy regarding the names of alts?

I'd like other people's thoughts on this.

--Harpo

To be 100% honest, I rarely use a uhum, alt checker when determing alts, they are not very accurate anyway, I personally prefer to use ingame methods, like how they fight, how they talk, how many vote mutes they have ;) its a much better way.

Me isnt worried about alt checkers, they are VERY easy to confuse.

I heard the alt checkers base thier information on how fast some one logs out and back in. I think the window is 5 min. So say you log out with 1 char and log right back in with another. They detirmine tthat is your alt after a couple of times checking.

so just log out wait 10 or 20 min then come back on then no one will know who you are.

I agree, Harpo. Reveiling or not an alt's identity should only be the account users choice.

Alts should stay hidden... it ruins RP when they're not.

I mean... sure... if you want someone to know... it's fine... but if not... it's not cool.

-Zoras

Agree with Harpo. While some feel it beneficial, I really think that the game is TOO open to outside programmers who wish to nitpick at it for any little bit of info they can. The website should be secured and all this stat checking and alias checking and bot programs should be completely removed. If certain bots are deemed worthy by the devs to still have around then they should be hosted by Guild not players. This includes relays, alias trackers, race scores, lisence levels, etc.

hmm well its fun to figure out if some person is some alt, but then again it sucks for you cause you are like wtf i dont want to be associated with that idiot version of me. damn people stfu about alts its just boring and ruins the game for people.

What's the point anyway.... Guild can't do nothin about it.
Even if they could they're too busy and should direct their efforts towards more substantial long ter......... BLAH BLAH BLAH.

I knew it was you by how you were flying.

I was one of those who figured this out with Harpo (I think), but I use other informal/lackadasical methods than Alamar's over-the-top obsessive Blak.hive.

I treat all alts as different people, regardless of whether I know who they are or not. It saves time and keeps the RP as fun as possible.

Those who wish not to be found out should *NEVER* hail, *NEVER* accept buddy invites, and be cautious about logging off of one alt and RIGHT back into their other alt. Especially doing it 2 or 3 times in a row, when both the alts are on my buddy list...

There are a veteran group of players who have information regarding who is really who, and sometimes information makes its way around. I never tell anyone anything unless they have maliciously infiltrated [IA] and through my feeble passive info gathering I find them out. Even THEN it stays within [IA] until the matter can be dealt with.

That being said, I'm really good at keeping secrets. And your alts are safe with me, Harpo. I'll never let ANYONE know that you're a1k0n.

Whoops.

For the record, my alts are CameraBot, Domo-Kun, and ScurvyMac. Nothing else. Alamar can feel free to confirm this. LeberMac is always LeberMac >:P

you told! you! you!

bah

I understand that the method Jestatis Bess refers to is properly termed "traffic analysis", and it's a useful method for identifying people online in all sorts of areas, not only games. So if you want to maintain anonymity, consider that traffic analyses like the one Bess described can be run on your AIM chat, email, web surfing, etc., too.... as well as banking, shopping, telephoning, and driving habits. Just a general note to the wary, or the interested.

I haven't given it much thought, but it did occur to me that, as with Bess's theory about the shortness of gaps between logins [coupled with recurring patterns of player X being followed by player Y], another useful area of analysis for discovering alts is to look at "time zones" of play: what times of day are players usually on? What days? How long?

Alt checkers, sounds like a bunch of geeks with no other way to waste their time ingame. alts should remain secret for RP purposes.

Notions like Alts should stay hidden else RP is ruined, and "I treat all alts as different people, regardless of whether I know who they are or not" take for granted that folks here privilege the idea of "characters" who are not their players, and that a player should be entitled to more than one persona depending upon who they feel like playing in VO. I actually agree with this perspective--I like RP and arrive with all sorts of notions from MMORPs that work this way (namely NWN and don't gimme no sass about NWN please, you sassy bunch of VO players).

New guy thinks this game still has an uneasy truce with RP. Good RP would efface this problem, wouldn't it? A different pilot would be a different pilot. But VO seems very close to the formulation of one player=one character. Alts are said to "infiltrate" an enemy organization, as though the player behind it were inseperable from the in-game character.

The guides seem to set this game in motion with minimal intervention--there is no penalty for what elsewhere would be called metagaming--VO doesn't even have a notion of metagaming, and perhaps rightly so. That is you sassy folks might be glad nobody talks about such rules in VO.

Every good online RP game requires some thought--how do I roleplay through this medium? In VO I am a voice and a vessel moving through space. Even for someone who is invested in PvP, It is entirely concievable that a player could fly different characters differently. Isn't it? Or is "twitch" too personal--a player will play the same in combat and "twitch" is "twitch" whatever the circumstances.

The developers are building more RP into the game. That's good if you like RP--anything that draws attention away from constant dueling and PvP will allow more character to come through. Less twitch-dependence means more roleplaying, I declare it.

Just some thoughts.

I play Chano.

P.S. I thought this was the Nobody Reads... thread!

Alt-checkers are funny. AFAIK, the way they work is if one character logs off and the other logs on shortly, they are marked as possible. Of course, if both characters are online at the same time, it's impossible for them to be alts, so I would imagine most of the better "checkers" account for that. But it's still quite possible to get false positives and false negatives. Anyhow, there's nothing the devs can do about this other than removing the active players page, and that's a wholly different thing. If you simply use your brain and don't log out of one and onto another in close proximity, no problemo.

Oh this topic let us also not forget many people do not RP in any way. And even more people use alts to spy or other wise gain information that their other alt would not have privilege to.

Also is good to remember that any thing a computer makes has rules, there for all one must do is find said rules and then beat them. Now then if only we could get one of these "Alt checker makers" to tell us how they work we will be all set. :)

Why go through the damn trouble? It's overly retarded to even use an alt checker. Just another thing to add on your comp to take up space. If they ruin your RP fun kick their ass. Or even possibly ignore them all together, yes i'm sure he/she will tell others maybe but if you completely ignore it all the things they said will go away. And if they are very easy to trick I wouldn't worry too much then. I just find the fact that someone would use a script just to expose somone, it's just a game.

True, it is just a game.
However, the discovering of alts is the "game within a game" that I'm quite frankly tired of playing. Hence my alt policy.

Because I used to try to ferret out these alts, to see who was really who, etc. to make sure no one could infiltrate the Itani Alliance, blah blah. I was mildly successful. But in the end it just made everyone suspicious and paranoid. So I stopped doing it.

The only "real" way to determine who an adversary "is" in real life is to fight them, and to fight everyone else you come across as well, and compare them. It's hard to choose different ways of fighting since it's such a personal style, although there ARE a few folks who can do so.

The sad thing is, that once you start down this path, you realize how many players that you thought were separate are actually just alts of another player. It's depressing when you see that the hardcore VO playerbase is under 100 actual "players" with some new folks sprinkled in every few months. <sigh>

Doesn't it kindof depend on the depth you get into the game? I like to know about alts because some of them are true RP alts and some are intended as spies. Im a pirate, and having good information makes my job easier.