Tonight I had someone log on under my real name and a variation of my older nickname, Khral. This individual proceeded to mock me and hinted on some of my personal information through private messages. Basically he was invading my privacy and he was playing under a false name with bad intentions. I don't know where he got the information from and who he usually plays under, but I certainly don't appreciate someone playing under my real name as well as giving out personal information about myself. And no, I don't have any siblings that play.

While I realize that the internet isn't the most secure of places, I still feel a player's privacy should be protected in game, as well as anyone who has intentions of ruining someone's reputation via impersonation. I have sent a copy of the log to the developers, and I really hope it will be dealt with seriously. No matter how angry one player may get towards another, the private information of any individual should not be used for their personal enjoyment or for mockery. Unfortunately Vendetta has quite a young audience and some kids have yet to mature beyond that.

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Unfortunately Vendetta has quite a young audience and some kids have yet to mature beyond that.
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I've found that most humans in general are unable to mature. And before anyone slams me with that comment, that was spoken from my own personal experience. If the rest of the people in the world are anything like the idiots in my town, then my statement holds true.

As for the rest of your message, I find it interesting how that person managed to gain access to your private information. It should be noted that this site collects some personal information. The user could've also gotten the information from someplace else where you might have entered your personal info. It's all pure speculation, but the user had to have gotten that info from somewhere.

Cross that. Talked to the devs about it.

I'll say this, whoever it is that is doing this you better pray I don't find out about you. Your little tricks will backfire and a certain someone will be contacted to handle it properly. Under no circumstances should you let your in-game emotions reach a personal level as it did this night. Grow up, it's just a game.

I don't know where the guides for Vendetta Test went, but I do know that some of the activities which have recently been occurring are starting to get a little out of hand. I certainly hope more guides will be hired soon, or the current ones get out of hibernation. I hate to contact the devs and interrupt their work on the game just because some immature brat starts acting up. Nobody benefits from it.

Zeratul, I trust Guild Software with their privacy policy and there is no doubt in my mind that the information they hold from me are kept secure. I've been around the devs long enough to know that they won't even give out the names of other characters for each account. I know it's not them and I'm thankful that they even have such a strict privacy policy to begin with.

I suspect that this individual got my name through a forum profile from a third party website, or through the /whois command of IRC. Once you get a full name it's not hard to work off of that to get even more information, with the help of Google or just about any other search engine. So it was partially my fault in that respect. I guess I was being naive to think that nobody would stoop this low.

Anyway, what's done is done. Let this be a lesson to the rest of you. Keep your personal information low profile, especially if you're below age 18, and don't trust anyone unless it's an official company that runs a secure webpage. Practice a little common sense and you'll be fine.

So to recap, I only play under Arolte. I only have one character. I don't hide behind other characters as some like to do. So anyone else who claims to be me isn't.

I wasn't trying to say the devs had something to do with this. But when you're as paranoid as I am, you tend to look at all possibilities.

Still, now that you mention IRC, that was probably how they did it.

That is a shame Arolte. No one deserves to be treated like that. If I knew people were doing those kinds of things to others I definately tell them to stop.
There definately is a lack of moderation, though we can't put Whistler at fault for that. Even though this is just a test and should be treated like a game of its own, it appears to need its own enforcement of rules and more people to help enforce them. I don't think this community should tolerate such things either. Guild has been kind enough to let anyone test their game, and in return some people return the favor by impeding upon the test, alienating other testers and also making Guild's job much more difficult.

I'm curious, was it like personal personal info as in stuff no one else should know, or was it just a name? I mean just a name isn't that bad

In fact, gentlemen, I am STILL on DAILY, and usually for several hours. It annoys me to be characterized as "hibernating", given the huge amount of time I give to the game. I was on tonight as Sherpa and have been lurking around most recently as Beldar and BattleDrone (these will change immediately, and I never use aliases to address players about guide issues, so ignore imposters). I can't be on 24/7 as I'm sure you are aware. I also disagree that things have been generally out of hand recently. During the times I am able to be on, things are pretty dull and I don't have to intervene as much as I used to. There have been fewer complaints as well. I'm sorry I couldn't be on to intervene for you, but I am not an appropriate target for your frustration.

Ok, to clear things up, I snagged the "Khral" nick a couple weeks ago... but haven't been on as it (well apart from as soon as i got it for a little while)

[shaggyvoice]It wasn't me.[/shaggyvoice]

1) I agree with Arolte...anyone using personal information in-game for any reason is wrong and I feel that person should be warned/banned.

2) I disagree with Arolte...Sherpa is on quite a bit as himself or a 'lurker' name.

3) I disagree with Piro...using someone's real name in-game is very bad. There is way too much information available on the net if you know a person's real name. Given that Arolte /might/ have enemies that have a true dislike for him, nothing is stopping those persons from using that information to do him serious harm.

It should be a simple matter for the Devs to determine who this person is. Let us hope that swift recompense is forthcoming.

I agree with Arolte, as I've had many people either spoof my name or make a mocking char ("Serco Fighter 1 is an ***hat," among others). Sometimes someone will make the name "Serco" or "Serco Fighter" for kicks and type "/me Fighter 1> Blah" and rant on and on about me. Happened on the DSG as well.

I hope Guild finds the person, Arolte.

My full name was used as his character name and he hinted on some information he had about some of my background, such as what colleges I went to recently etc. I don't know if he said anything more after I logged off or whether this has been going on for a while. It's not really an issue of personal safety or anything like that. I honestly don't care if a handful of Vendetta beta testers hear about whatever dull information this abuser had to provide. I just felt a little creeped out by this kid who thought it would be funny to give out information like that as a way of getting revenge for some stupid in-game event(s) that may have occured between us. It's just a case of him crossing the line between roleplaying and personal attacks.

As for Sherpa, I don't know what aliases he goes by anymore, but I do know that in the past three or four weeks I've been on I've never seen any kind of intervention with the behavior that has been going on in the late hours. Maybe we're on at totally different times or whatever. I don't really care. I just know that I don't like what I'm seeing and if time is an issue then maybe it's time to hire some more guides to get better coverage. I certainly don't expect Sherpa to have superhuman powers to be on every time. We all have lives and we can't be everywhere at once. Nobody's playing the blame game here. I'm just saying maybe it's time for the next step.

Yeah, UncleDave, you told me about that. This guy attempted to use Khral by typing an "i" at the end, but it was obviously misspelled. As long as my current nickname isn't used I don't care what others do with "Khral" as a nickname. But anyway, the main concern here was real names. Heaven forbid someone who knows me in real life logs on and sees this guy acting like an ass, giving this person I know a false impression about me. My roleplaying character's personality is nothing like who I am in real life. I don't expect any of my in-game enemies to act the same out of game either. I'm pretty sure most Vendetta players are friendly down to earth people in real life. I don't judge people or threaten them at a personal level if I have a problem with a character in the game.

In my opinion the whole real name usage issue is something that should be counted as abuse. The culprit has every intention of giving his victim a bad name by means of exploiting his/her privacy or personal information. It's the same reason lawsuits occur if movie directors use the names of real life people for his/her actors, with the intent to defame the individual. I don't expect Vendetta to be any different in the treatment of such people; even if the internet is such a huge source of information where anything can be acquired. Look at it this way. The internet has porn, spam, vulgar language, hate speech, etc. If these freely available content are censored within the game, why then isn't something like personal information counted (esp. in use of personal attacks)?

Ah, full name, here i was thinking one of your own nicks. Also arolte, timezones are a major thing, ,remember that:P

Arolte, if you're really that freaked out about privacy, perhaps you should be a little more careful about how you do things. Information is way too easy to find/figure out about someone if you try a little, for instance, anyone you've ever emailed knows your real name, your college could be determined by your hostmask in IRC pretty easily, and personal details could be logged by anyone ingame on in IRC. While you do have a valid complaint, and I'd probably be pretty freaked out if someone logged in as MY real name, if you don't want people to know about stuff like that, don't talk about it. Biggest thing is hiding your real name, if you're a privacy freak, because people can get loads of information with just that.

Again, I doubt it was his full name. If the name "Arolte>" was registered, the player could use /me and it would type this:

"/me I'm such a loser"

And it would show up as:

"<Arolte> I'm such a loser."

The trick is ask them to use /me or talk in something other in global chat.

Blatant self-plug: If global chat were removed, we wouldn't have this problem.

Suggested fix: Put *** before and after messages using /me

If I typed

/me puts another Valk-shaped notch in his hull

It would show up as:

*** Serco Fighter 1 *** puts another Valk-shaped notch in his hull.

A variation thereof could be used as well.

Well, I'm pretty sure it was his full name, especially since it was two words. Yes, I was there, and oddly I no idea what was going on, until Khrall logged on.

It's easy to spoof a two-word name, like I mentioned:

"<Serco"

"/me Fighter 1> hahahahaha"

"<Serco Fighter 1> hahahaha"

Well, it wasn't a spoof. Since Arolte's real name wasn't taken as a character.

Nevermind everything i've said. I'm wrong, it's been fixed.