#BRING_BACK_BOB

I'll answer you in game now. 

Rikoo

Under the page: 

The system will require you to check the "I understand this: check box" and after that you may be able to click "Abandon Account"  and a prompt will pop up "Are you sure you want to abandon your account?" and after that another pop up will appear "Are you REALLY SURE you want to abandon your account?"   and after clicking that here you go - Account Abandoned!, and the game will move you back to the login page.

I think the devs created enough security measures and warnings on account abandon feature. Hacks - I think this happens when you share your login and password to several in-game players which is against the game policy and devs will suspend your in-game accounts too.

or we Players just wipe them away. we have growth charts to let us know if they are 

active or not 

true?

2) IP addresses, etc would not tell the entire story. Again, though, the player is responsible for maintaining their account.

3) As I said before, no matter what, we will not reinstate an abandoned account. 

Thanks all! We are aware of possible hacking attempts and -- trust me -- keep a look out for them. Pass this on as an example of the importance of practicing security through tough passwords, not sharing accounts, etc.

I will not be discussing the particulars of any one player's case, so need to ask.

Thanks all!

Rikoo

...so *no* need to ask.  

Is what I think you meant.  

NO need to ask. :)

Rikoo

I would also like to remind everyone that "hacking" is often the first term that is used to describe any number of situations that are quite possibly not hacking... at all. People also refer to a chat silence as a ban. :)

 

 

I agree with Pell, if there is a chance of a hack, even if it is only 1% chance, the problem should be addressed. I don't want to get fully dedicated to the game, and than have someone hack my account and abandon.

"This is to inform you that your account is abandoned" 

Wait no .. help.. now what? 

or Mail that says it will be .. that is same as cool down . 

right?  And agree nwith person that said, one time is to much for someone hacked.

we put money and time in here. 

And I know it's out of the question that you would return an account that has been abandoned, Rikoo, but maybe there could be some way of compensation? for those who lost their accounts due to hacking or w/e security compromise (whether they had a hand in it or not), like if they can provide info that they're the owner of said abandoned account within a certain amount of time, say 3-7days, they can get a new account with 1/3rd of their former account amount of cities and some kind of resource pack sent to them to help them rebuild, tho I believe the community itself can take care of that last part.

It's just an idea that I came up with on the fly so not sure if this would be possible either, It's just the players themselves are a huge aspect of Illy, and as Mr Damage said if I were them I won't bother starting over from scratch if I've been playing for 1+ years, so I think offering the means for these players to get back into the game won't be a bad idea at all.

Do you have sitters? There is a bug that "sometimes" gives your account access to your sitter.

http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/#/Player/Account?page=sitter

I dont know how to reproduce this problem, but it has happened to other people as well. 

Once a person reported this problem to GM Luna. (I can give name of the player if the devs wants to check conversation with GM Luna regarding this problem). I believe GM Luna asked for screenshots and he was in no position to give that because he had logged out from the sat account.

thats why a  timer would be best I think. or a code we get to protect our accounts. 

This could also find out if the abandon was done by a sitter, exploiting the bug in the game. (If he had a sitter that is).

This bug hasnt occurred to me lately, but it occurred 3-4 times in a span of a few months when I used to log into my sitter's account frequently (when i was taking resources from her city to build up). So it is not all that uncommon.

If there is a separate issue with sitters, etc, please use the petition system and send me the information. Let's keep this topic on track or it will not work. I believe we have already spoke in game about the sitter issue, but I received an IGM, ****not a petition****.

I cannot stress this enough:

PLEASE petition issues. If you think it is something urgent or gamebreaking, send me an IGM. If a petition seems important and has gone unanswered for months or years, LET ME KNOW. I CANNOT READ MINDS.

Seriously... we created a petition system that is a bit TOO good for such a small team. There are too many of them, most that can be shut down because the issues have been fixed or can be fixed now, quickly. POINT THEM TO ME. Help me out, please. 

Having said that:

1) No, we ***will not*** compensate players who have been hacked, claim to have been hacked, or somehow lost control over their account. We have successfully used this system for years, with tens of thousands of abandons, with barely any issues.

2) We will not add a delay or a chance to "take back" an abandon. Imagine: Tony marks his account as abandoned, gets a bunch of attacks coming in, then claims it back and goes "HELP!!" - drama ensues. 

We will look into other possible things we can tweak, but the system works great as it is. 

Rikoo

if I sign in and see my caravans going to your castle I pretty much know whos the bad guy 

(Brand you are not a bad guy. in fact a hero type) 

But Just saying 

Why not make some sort of a delay, or password reentry, or email verification, or that account abandons don't fully wipe out everything? You can make it so then Tony's account is only marked abandoned when everything is officially wiped, and not when there is still a chance of recovery, during a (3 day?) period. And the password reentry would stop, say, an account abandon when you're on a bathroom break. The email verification would serve to ensure that a player consents to such an abandonment, and if the email address is changed right before the abandonment, the gms can recompensate such players.

In overarching sense, yes, the system might work "great", but remember, just because no one complains, it doesn't mean that all the parachutes are fine. Maybe there were more cases of mysterious abandonment that went unnoticed because the players didn't want to go to the trouble of rebuilding everything, or other players that simply went solo.

2) We already discussed why a delay would be a bad idea. We cannot allow a player to mark themselves as abandoned, only to return shortly... for many reasons.

3) We have already taken suggestions for email verification, etc, in this thread and in communications with you.

4) We do not register problems only when people complain. We have other ways of noticing when an issue is an issue. Again, the system has worked almost perfectly for many years. 

If anyone has any new suggestions, please feel free to post them here. Going over the same points we have already gone over would do no good, as I can only copy them down once.

Thanks all!

Rikoo

I think Illyriad has properly put security processes in place. 

I think the real problem here is when we share our passwords to other in-game players. 

I suggest you change your passwords: put something like in UPPER CASE + lower case (Letters) + 5p3ci@l Ch@rat3r$ + 1234567890. 

GM Rikoo wrote: We have successfully used this system for years, with tens of thousands of abandons, with barely any issues.

i read this as "the burden of proof is on you (BobTron) to demonstrate there is a problem with a system that has worked so well for so long." if information will help you construct a timeline, ask for that (privately, not via the forum).

GM Rikoo wrote: 2) We will not add a delay or a chance to "take back" an abandon. Imagine: Tony marks his account as abandoned, gets a bunch of attacks coming in, then claims it back and goes "HELP!!" - drama ensues.

i'm not sure i'm in favour of this, but the way to make this work is to allow a player to register his/her intention to abandon and then execute the actual abandonment after a three days absence (or appropriate period). nothing is done to the account during the countdown. if the player signs into the game during those three days, s/he is greeted with a "glad you changed your mind" message and the game tosses out the timer. if the player stays out for the required time, the account is abandoned at the end of the waiting period. (again, not trying to convince anyone of this, just laying out how it might be done *if* the devs were interested.)

Um. This is actually much more alarming than I had previously thought. You have a blanket policy against reactivating abandoned accounts even if you know that it's unlikely and/or effectively impossible that the person who actually owned the account pressed the Abandon button?

Just by way of example here's the scenario I have in mind: Say you've happy-go-lucky Illyriad player Billy. Billy lives in Australia. Two years playing Illyriad later Billy tries to log in but can't. Apparently his account has been abandoned. He whines a bit about how it's not him that abandoned the account.

Meanwhile, you've got one (or more) of the GMs sitting at a computer looking at the login details for Billy. They know that Billy's account was abandoned from somewhere in the United States. Somewhere that he's never logged in from before. They do nothing.

I'm being (hopefully obviously) a bit flippant here so that you get my point. It's not reassuring, in the slightest, saying that you know all of this information if you have no intention of ever using it to undo clearly malicious actions taken against someone's account. A further layer of player-side security isn't a sideshow in that scenario, in all fairness.

they've agreed to what you were suggesting to avoid this type of abandons .

please let me know if i m wrong

It doesn't sound that way. GM Stormcrow said;

That certainly implies (to me at any rate) that they have no intention of implementing any sort of further verification process to the abandon account option.

If you have questions about your specific account, please let me know in game or at community@illyriad.co.uk.

If we change or alter the way things are done in any way, we will of course let everyone know as with any other update.

Thanks!

Rikoo