Opinion: Sitter for Someone that Left The Game

Rorrorgash this is just one of the troubles Dev’s would have administering a policy regarding account sitting.  

1.       Extended sabbatical. I am familiar with an instance where an individual was leaving for an assignment of a year or two. Think about what would happen to this player’s account if they couldn't have a sitter. It would get listed as inactive, probably get kicked out of an alliance if it had one, then the city would be seen as abandoned by the community and looted/pillaged or worse razed to make room for a new player… and no one would be able to tell of the injustice of this action. As I understand it, the aforementioned event had an unfortunate ending. The sitter was subsequently accused (reported to the dev) of using this as a multiple account, this caused the sitter to cancel the arrangement, and then the cities were sieges, and upon returning to their devastated account the player left the game.

2.      2.   Alliance management. Simply having a back door into alliance management is important. I can recall an instance where an officer was on vacation for a week or so. During that time an important event came up and we didn’t have access to any of the officers with the alliance control required.

3.       3. It is an exploit not a Cheat. Keep in mind this is not a violation of the rules. Just remember that if you use it as an exploit you are “less of a player”. That being said Exploits can be ways around Bugs… and then we need to ask ourselves how much of an exploit it really is.

4.       4. Times of Crisis. I recall having read somewhere not having the ability to sit accounts caused several problems for an alliance when it was at war (I think it was the Harmless [H?]/White [W] war) the use of Sitting accounts has allowed alliances to protect alliance members who weren’t able to log on 24/7. 

perhaps a limitation on the extent an account can be sat without the owner logging in needs to be established but in any case this is up to the developers to design and implement. furthermore such a policy would have no impedance on players who use this as an exploit. they probably log in every 24 hrs just to get the prestige bonus. so i guess the question is how can you design a policy which enforces the spirit of the law and not (just) the letter of the law. If Stormcrow could do that, he really would be God... then Rill and i would have a knockdown drag out battle for his heart. 

      Copy Past from word = massive fail :-( (on a side note way too many emoticons, where is the simple frown face)

     Further reference:

Exploit vs. cheat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_(online_gaming) & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games