From now on, you can only sit an account for a maximum of 90 days before your sitting rights will be automatically cancelled by the system.

90 days after being appointed as a sitter, the system will automatically remove a sitter from the holding account.  

A 7-day warning email will be sent to both the sitter and the account holder before the 90-day period is reached.

You can see the "sitting time remaining" on your Account Sitters page, here:  http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Player/Account?page=sitter" rel="nofollow - http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Player/Account?page=sitter

Once you have been removed as a sitter, the account holder can log back in with their username and password, and reappoint you as a sitter - which resets the 90-day countdown clock.

This also means that the 90-day clock can be reset at any point by the account holder, simply by cancelling and then reinstating a sitter.  This may be useful if, for example, the account holder is going on holiday, but their sitting arrangements are about to expire: before they leave on holiday they can reset the 90-day countdown by removing and reappointing their sitters.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind players that sharing account credentials and/or passwords is strictly against the Terms & Conditions of service.

If you have forgotten your password then you can retrieve it from the account login page using the "Forgotten username/password" link directly beneath the "Log In" button.  Instructions for resetting your password will be emailed to the email address provided when the account was created.

Regards,

SC

Thank you for this one SC. I think you guys have just made ALOT of Illyrians happy....possibly a few grumpy too but this is a right step for the future. :) 

Perhaps we need a "permasat war" for all of the big, old alliances to at least have some fun with their permasats before they go the way of the dodo?

Thank you.  (though please make sure you do keep a tight reign on players multi accounting)

With the new city counts.. WHAT A BOON we shall have!

Sorry, hard for me to sit an account 2 weeks, much less 90 days!!

I suggest the developers consider sending a notification of this change to all the e-mails that have been registered to log in to the game.  Maybe with an invitation to return?  Possibly we could get some long-absent friends back.

This will break some supply routes, but that was very necessary. Now the only way to get lots of towns is the HARD way up the pop ladder =)

Is this reallyl going to free up any slots?  It seems like it will take a long time from now until the map gets any clearer.. and with players able to get more than 10 cities, it might actually be more crowded

90 days is a BLIP in Illy time. There are people who have been playing here for the entire 5 years.

Well, the second 90 days you would have to rely on thiefs then... as you won't have caravans/cotters to send out, and can't place new item building orders...

Do me a favor. If you know someone is multiaccounting or sharing passwords or anything that breaks the rules, REPORT it to me. Especially if you know of so many.

Otherwise, you are just speculating. Either way, please help make my job a little easier. Thank you!

GM Rikoo

I don't know what's so bad about having big players in a game designed to build up cities and pop. You don't have to fight those few. If you do, try to be allied to another big player 

You'll hardly find a 1 on 1 in Illyriad, and for alliances/powerblocks it will equal out anyway...

And I welcome the change from sitting to big "standard" accounts... it doesn't feel like using a loophole any longer and it's nearer to roleplay.

this will make future battles more exciting.. :D

wonders* what will happen first - battle of permasats or live player battle?

hehe. grats Devs! 5th year anniv was a hell of a boom!!!

But any query can be tricked by using more than one computer, different proxies, etc... then there is NO chance to get them by tech alone.

Also there had been cases, where there were some signs of multiaccounting (which got immediately reported) like more than three accounts with almost the same name doing patterns on the map, someone signing a mail with the other accounts name, etc... had been more obvious before sitting was implemented, of course...

Further: As the case with the money generation showed, the DEVS won't hesitate to also punish helpers... maybe an advice to any friends in question to report themselves and get less hard punishment would be highly adviceable... 

This stands out above any IP-based attempts to cover the identity of the player. It's also a good way of spotting player bots and mis/mal-configured search engines.

But at least you won't get old players getting 10+ cities on their own account and then getting 10+ cities on a sat account to boot.

I see nothing wrong with an alliance continuing to claim ownership over and redistributing cities of players who have become inactive. Those cities were likely built with assistance and resources supplied by members of that alliance and should be guarded as the investment that they are.

So this already happens.

1) Sat accounts have not been "abused" -- they were always allowed by the rules. You could have done the same thing.

2) There was action taken about sat accounts. We just took action. 

3) This isn't a question of "effort", I can promise you that. Do not assume that you know what my normal work month is like. :) And I think you know that I am not afraid of confrontations.

Again, players, if you see something that is off, REPORT IT. No one will stick a shiv in you while in the exercise yard, I promise. All information is kept between us.

Thanks for the input, seriously. Great so far!

Rikoo

 

GM Rik,

Unfortunately I do know of players that are multi accounting/account gifting/sharing accounts, whatever you want to call it and I would imagine they are quite concerned about the fact that I am speaking here about it, some accounts are on their 3rd or more owners. I can assure both you and these players however that expecting me or anyone else to dob them in is simply not going to happen, it goes against some of the moral standings that I adhere to. I am not saying your job is easy to stamp it out, such tactics go on in every online game and the sitting option was a wonderful tool to discourage or remove the need for players to share passwords and user names. In most other games if you go on holidays your only choice to survive whilst offline is to share passwords, here it is different thanks to sitting.

I'm glad sitting is being fixed and I urge you to publish every time you find a multi accounter or gifter and ban them. As you can see from all the responses to the posts about the recent releases, people here care almost as much about this game as you Devs do and communication is both a great morale booster and a great deterrent to the cheaters. These people are out there and whilst you may not get them all immediately, as long as you are getting them regularly and letting us know, the game will be better for it.

I didn't know that either, thats good to know

Fine. Let me put it another way.

If someone is cheating, hacking, duping, multiaccounting, or anything that actively works to cheat the game and its players, then that person AND the players who knew about the exploits/cheat/hack and said nothing can have their accounts terminated.

As I said, this is not the prison yard; it's an indie game that we work very hard to leave free and open for those who cannot normally afford a game with such a community and gameplay. If someone thinks it is OK to cheat such a game, they will not be playing here long. 

GM Rikoo

I think there is a bug here, with showing the number of days left.

For people you appointed as a sitter, it shows 'Remaining <number> days'

For people that appointed you, the <number> is missing, but the display tags 'Remaining' and 'days' are there.

I tested this on Opera and Chrome.

Not knowing any of those persons,... is there a possibility for milder punishments on self-indictment? Might give you some more indications from players so far fearing the full power of the ban hammer when trying to report anything...

I apologize. I did not mean to say that all people involved with knowing cheats/exploits/etc will be banned. I have no idea, frankly, until I see the situation.

What I said was that all people who knowingly hide information or otherwise get involved CAN (as in possibly) be banned the same as anyone who might be doing the actual cheating. 

We have had this discussion in the past, so I don't want to go over it again, but feel free to contact me in game! The point is that if you see something or even DID something, the best thing is just to go "Here's this, in case you can use it." 

Anyway, our playerbase is mostly honest and plain kick-ass. Seriously; maybe it's the PvP but the players tend to keep things clean and mean. Sportspersonship maybe? 

GM Rikoo

Thanks for the Quickfix, TC. 

No offense taken, and many thanks for the clarification! Thus end of digression, back to topic...

Hmm... cheap siege tactic, although a bit slower than throwing stones 

I can see many scenarios where it will, indeed, be too hard to log on and reset your sitter. Each one is uncommon, but they do occur often enough that it is quite possible somebody playing Illy will be affected. 

That said, I think the change will benefit us all.

You're really talking 180 days or more (inactive accounts don't disappear if they're under siege, you can stretch it out as long as you want).  The inactivity ticker toward deletion isn't going to start until the sitter stops or can no longer log into the account which is 90 days from the announcement.