Just a statement to point out that we do not, in any way support "outing" people's alternate characters. All private data (ie, that which is not publicly visible to all, in-game) is considered sacred, exceptions are highly unusual and (though I imagine they have existed) probably come through me personally.

At this time, I am unaware of any instance in which a Guide has given out alt information in the game. I say this after spending several hours combing through a years worth of logs, just to further satisfy concerns. (My doing this in no way reflects any distrust in our Guides, more my tendency to be thorough).

Last year there was one instance of confusion, due to a guide mis-speaking, and giving a fake "negative" response about an alt rather than simply refusing to say anything (the guide never checked any player data), but that situation was addressed back when it happened. However, some perceptions may still exist about guides "confirming" alts. Again, as far as I can tell, this HAS NEVER HAPPENED.

Opinions differ about the viability of so-called "alt-finders", which statistically correlate login times and eliminate people who log on at the same time. I can only say that we will be getting rid of the Active Players page and replacing it with a series of informative graphs, but I don't know exactly when this will happen. We will also take steps to prevent excessive automated "walking" of certain areas of the VO website. Personally, I think concern over alt-finders is far overblown, they should require considerable time to make accurate eliminations.

That's all for now, just wanted to post and clear this up, after various log analysis and so on.