Multi War: Everybody Wants a Twin

Day 1,152, 21:25 • Published in Canada Australia • by McMatty


I have been looking for something to do today as I really don’t feel like shoveling the driveway. This leads me to writing another article to which I struggle to find a topic. With the country starting to move away from the current theft, I figured it would be a good idea to write an article that does not relate to any hot button topic currently in the media. So I spun the “Article Idea Wheel” (patent pending) and landed on this.

Multi War: Everybody Wants a Twin



It is no secret that the single biggest problem that many online games face, including eRepublik, is the creation of multi accounts. It is a constant war between players looking to cheat the system and admin trying to defend their game. If there is a way to cheat, there will be people who find it, and when it comes to cheating, multi accounting is typically the easiest way to gain that cheating advantage. It requires no thinking, it requires little effort, and its rewards are usually the most noticeable. Heck, if one account gets caught, you just open another one. It is a cycle which is almost impossible to combat. Yes, I said ALMOST impossible. To me, there are quite a few common sense tactics that are surprisingly not being utilized by eRepublik to fight this clone war.

Tactic #1: IP Address Monitoring



I have to assume that eRep monitors what IP Addresses are used to log onto for each account. When you see 1 IP address being used for 10 accounts, it should raise a red flag that these accounts deserve a second look. Before you yell at me that you are playing this game at school with other people, I did not say ban right away. But a further look into is more than deserved. What I would recommend is adding a tab, similar to the donation tab, to every person’s account. This tab will list all other accounts that have used the same IP address as the account you are looking at. It won’t list the actual IP address, just the player name. The reasoning behind this; if players know that they will be linked to other accounts, the anonymity of multi accounting will now be destroyed.

Tactic #2: Bring Back Donation Lists



This was the strongest weapon that myself and fellow players used to weed out the “not so legal” transfers. It was also used to monitor government transfers but that is for another article. It is common knowledge that using the MM is the preferred method for “beyond the rules” transfers, however, monitoring donation lists allowed for the catching of the amateur criminals, preventing them from learning the ins and outs and really doing some damage. To be quite frank, I cannot fathom the reasoning behind reducing the donation page to only 5 days, let alone, deleting them completely. I don’t need to go into detail about the other advantages of having these lists.

Tactic #3: Allow Players to better police themselves



No matter how many complaints that are posted in the eRep forums, no matter how many times it is said that the eRep employees are not working, normal people know in reality, eRep staff are hard at work (working on good things or bad is a totally different can of worms). The majority of players are dead set against multi accounts and allowing players to monitor themselves opens up the multi hunting police from just a few moderators to potentially 200 000 active people.

I would like to use CSIS as an example. In a nutshell, part of their mandate is to monitor eCanada and act like a police force. Members of CSIS are doing what they do because they want to improve and defend this game and their country. Why not develop a streamline communication channel between admin and CSIS? The Average Joe will bring his evidence to CSIS, CSIS will investigate, and CSIS will determine what to bring to admin through a more direct channel. This will add some interesting aspects to the game as well as help in the multi hunt. It will bring in more role-playing, it will bring in more player involvement, it will reduce the huge amount of tickets submitted, it will only bring legitimate threats to admin and weed through the not so credible information, and lastly and most important, it will REDUCE multi accounts. Allow every country to have something like this and poof, 90% of the multi hunting is now taken off eRep staff and put onto the players.

I may be naïve in thinking that all these ideas are common sense and quite simple to implement, but let’s call a spade a spade, in reality they really are simple and cost eRep nothing. Not a single person out there can OR will argue that destroying multis is a bad thing. It is impossible to stop all multi accounting, but any disruption against them in this war is a win for the game.



Previous Articles from McMatty

Org Destruction: A Necessary Evil ?
Letter to the Leaders of eCanada

PS Because I know all of you were expecting a different picture when I mentioned twins, here you go.




😁^ Feel free to vote these up 😁^ I also believe the good looking twin wants you to sub as well 😉