Account selling/trading against the classic EULA

[happyhappy]

Any account name and password supplied to you in connection with fee-based content and/or service you purchase is personal to you and the members of your household, and you may not transfer or make available your account name and password to others, including, without limitation, your co-workers. Any distribution by you of such account name and password may result in cancellation of the fee-based content and/or service without refund and in additional charges based on unauthorized use.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030412173434/http://sonyonline.com/tos/tos.jsp

I know it's not a bug but more of a policy thing, but if we're gonna ban 2boxing (fully behind that ban) to promote player interaction, I really don't understand why selling and trading accounts it allowed.

[Nirgon]

Account sharing was definitely against the rules. Dunno anyone who ever got caught personally.

[Ele]

How in the world can you stop it?


One way I suppose it could be stopped is to have a grace period (1-2 month heavily advertised) to change passwords, then from the end of the grace period to forever make account passwords unchangeable. If you hand out your information, then the other person has it forever. If you buy an account, it is instantly compromised with no chance for restriction. Anyone that had the password before the sale also has it after the sale. This would either drive prices so low as to make it worthless to PL a toon up for sale, or would chill buyers from purchasing accounts due to the risk of loss. There likely wouldn't be anything to stop the seller from handing out the password after the sale thereby further compromising the sold account.

I don't know how this would affect the rest of EQemu, if it had any effect at all.

[Nirgon]

It'd involve even more micro management from the staff and IP requests of where you can play from etc. But even still, that only limits it (aka the entire guild sharing a cleric, porter or tracker) but doesn't stop it completely. Maybe limiting it is the only way to go.

I'd feel bad for anyone with 5 accounts they've leveled and geared up.

[uygi]

EQEmu accounts are for all emu servers. I have several accounts, and while I only play on P99, changing or hypothetically restricting access would alter those accounts' access to non-P99 servers.

The related issue I think about is that P99 account sales are rather likely to include sale of toons on other servers like EZ, PEQ, Hidden Forest, etc. Since it's all the same EQEmu account being sold, that theoretically violates the RMT rule. I have seen account auctions mentioning what they have on other servers.

[happyhappy]

How in the world can you stop it?


One way I suppose it could be stopped is to have a grace period (1-2 month heavily advertised) to change passwords, then from the end of the grace period to forever make account passwords unchangeable. If you hand out your information, then the other person has it forever. If you buy an account, it is instantly compromised with no chance for restriction. Anyone that had the password before the sale also has it after the sale. This would either drive prices so low as to make it worthless to PL a toon up for sale, or would chill buyers from purchasing accounts due to the risk of loss. There likely wouldn't be anything to stop the seller from handing out the password after the sale thereby further compromising the sold account.

I don't know how this would affect the rest of EQemu, if it had any effect at all.

Pretty much the same way we enforce 2 boxing: the community.

Would you buy an account knowing anyone that knew the character could report you, possibly get said account banned?

The issue I see is with accounts that would have been purchased before such a rule would be put in place.

[Samrothstein]

Well I did a transaction for someone with straight legit plat for what I thought was a safe account. 100k down the tubes and someone VERY pissed off at me.

If account sales weren't even an option I wouldn't be in this mess.

[Ele]

Pretty much the same way we enforce 2 boxing: the community.

Would you buy an account knowing anyone that knew the character could report you, possibly get said account banned?

The issue I see is with accounts that would have been purchased before such a rule would be put in place.

So anyone can report anyone they don't like claiming that the particular character was sold, shared, or transferred thus putting the person in the system? What about people that hand off the account to a family member, but that person doesn't know the game/class as well as the original person, so people assume they bought the account and it gets reported?

Sounds like a Do Not Fly list.

I agree that people that have already purchased/received accounts through legitimate transactions will hold a great advantage over those without if some stop-gap is ever implemented.

[Nirgon]

I think it's way too late for this

[happyhappy]

So anyone can report anyone they don't like claiming that the particular character was sold, shared, or transferred thus putting the person in the system? What about people that hand off the account to a family member, but that person doesn't know the game/class as well as the original person, so people assume they bought the account and it gets reported?

Sounds like a Do Not Fly list.

I agree that people that have already purchased/received accounts through legitimate transactions will hold a great advantage over those without if some stop-gap is ever implemented.

Theres already potential for this to happen with the 2box watch, cept you put two people on the watch list instead of one.

Nirgon is probably right tho, may be just be too late to get rid of it entierly, but something can probably be done to prevent from degenerating even more.

[Ferok]

I think it's way too late for this

Why?

[Nirgon]

I mean unless you say there's a cut off date and go that route..

No more account sales after day X? I mean that might work.