This will be my position of record. I do not care how long you have been here, since the beginning or sinse yesterday. If you are willing to insult and insert inflammatory remarks to the chat with random aim and chance destruction prepare to have your cities razed and razed again. I will not tolerate insults and slander. I will respond with full action available. If anyone has a problem with this...I am sure I will find out soon enough. Gloves off for trolls and players who will summon up an alt just to cause chaos. This practice is indeed cowardly. and I deem them to be worms with no back bone at all. Anything I have to say to anyone will come from Amroth. Not some alt I created cause I lacked the sack to say what I wanted to with my own face. I am a conscientious player who tries to respect all in Illyriad. It has become obvious that not all players here are of that caliber. This is regrettable. 

Thoughts and feed back from Illy community would be appreciated.

Regards, Amroth Anguireal

Amroth wrote: Thoughts and feed back from Illy community would be appreciated.

Actually wanted to ask you about this earlier when we spoke in GC briefly before you posted this. Gets my backing 

Gemley wrote: They are like rabbits! I love having a pet rabbit, now I need to get a pet troll!                                      starts making a trap to capture Lionz Heartz

2nd, how come no one told me Lionz Heartz was dead!?

What if you have two "mains?"

He would attack only if you insult him and you are much smaller than him. Right Kurfist? 

just kidding.. no malice towards anyone 

 

I have read this thread with interest. I wasn't going to comment until I saw that some of other posters seem to think that bulllies  are a far  more  frequent problem in chat than trolls. Let me be clear. By "bullies" I mean players with 2 or more cities who deliberately threaten to destroy a  newbe with a single town because the newbe said something that the bully didn't like.

 

Yes it is a problem and players would be far better served if the bullies were made to tone it down a bit.  Let those who claim to play with honour "apply it".

 

As for dealing with trolls, people who make insulting or inflammatory remarks. Leave that to the GM's .

 

They may have had a hand in the tizzy with LH and they claim to have shut down El T's latest accounts.  Pretty good huh?  Won't catch me though because I play by the rules 

They are alts to each other.

Regards, Amroth

 Ratujone is right. This the simplest and most honest solution and yet it is the one which has been avoided by the Devs since the game was in its ealriest stages of development. 

 

Just as news editors like to create moral panics and folk devils to boost their tabloid's circulation so Illy's GM's have encouraged the labelling of trolls by categorising their tactics as "metagaming".

The use multiple accounts is not confined to "Trolls" but, in fact, is widespread throughout the game. Especially amongst alliance leaders who will tend to  "sit " more and more inactive accounts in order to maintain the alliance's rank. They have also been tempted to multi account with a view to influencing the outcome of Tournaments.  I have evidence on two longstanding alliances where this practise has obviously exceeded the permissable number of accounts controlled by one player. My guess is that the Devs must be aware of this also but, for their own reasons turn a blind eye to it or alternatively redefine the issues that come from it as "metagaming".

 

A return to the simple application of the rules and norms of browser games as suggested by RatuJone above would, I am sure, bring Illyriad back down to earth (pun) with a bump.  We can start returning Illyriad to the direct one player one account strategy game that we all want....

 

...but do the Devs have the integrity to do this across the board applying the rule in a uniform way???? 

1. Link or merge forum accounts to game accounts (the current separation is just a technicality of two different login systems), then users will have reputation to consider.

2. Require users to link their accounts as belonging to the same real person, and make this part of ToS. Game rules to prevent in-game exploits are enforcible, corruptive meta-gaming isn't so easy if these links are available for inspection, and anyone found failing to declare links can face GM-Banhammer consequences.

It's unfortunate that we're thinking about ways to tackle troll/cheat problems, as it indicates that trust alone isn't enough in all cases.

In my opinion, generally no.

A troll is someone who has no intention of interacting with the game, but only of causing trouble.  (From wikipedia: an internet term for a person who, through willful action, attempts to disrupt a community or garner attention and controversy through provocative messages)

Raiding new players is a valid way of interacting with game mechanics, albeit one I think may be counterproductive to the growth of Illyriad because it may discourage new players from continuing with the game.  I also think it is legitimate to use game mechanics to inhibit other people's ability to attack players who cannot defend themselves, if one so chooses, both by providing education and resources to the new players themselves and by more direct intervention, depending on the situation.

It might be possible to be a troll by attacking new player in hopes of garnering attention and controversy.  In that case, a player who is attacking players just out of protection, or for example randomly sieging smaller players and boasting of these attacks to provoke a confrontation, could be seen as acting trollishly.

However, in my opinion, all uses of legitimate game mechanics should be given the benefit of doubt with regard to motivation; the line between metagaming and pure trollery is a very fine one.  Therefore, although I might have private thoughts about particular behaviors being engaged in primarily to garner attention and create controversy rather than for legitimate game purposes, I try to remember that my judgments are influenced by my own biases and life experiences.

In particular, I try to keep in mind the fundamental attribution error, which is "tendency to over-value  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition" rel="nofollow - dispositional  or personality-based explanations for the observed  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviors" rel="nofollow - behaviors  of others while under-valuing  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation" rel="nofollow - situational  explanations for those behaviors." (Also wikipedia, although it corresponds to what I recall from my social psych texts.)  In other words, one's own experience of one's motivation might be that one was provoked to take a particular action, or that it was legitimate based on the game context, while another person might attribute the same action to a desire to start trouble or create controversy.