Ruling on character ownership

[KaVir]

Here's a situation I recently had to deal with, and I'd be interested to hear how other admin would handle it.

The ownership of a character had recently changed hands. The original owner claimed that the new owner had guessed his password. The new owner claimed that the original owner had given him the character, and now wanted it back due to a personal dispute.

What would you do?

[Sandi]

Cut the baby in half?



No, that can't be right.... I know, clone the baby!

[KaVir]

Strange you should mention that. Another case I once had to deal with regarded two players who shared a character. The players had a falling out, so one of them asked me if I could clone the character and give them a copy each...

[ide]

Since this is GW2 I think the only fair option is a duel to the death. Using the same character.

[KaVir]

Army of Darkness style?

Ash: What are you? Are you me?

Evil Ash: What are do? Are you me? HAHAHAHAHAH! You sound like a jerk!

Ash: Why ya doin' this, huh?

Evil Ash: Oh, you wanna know? 'Cause the answer's easy! I'm BAD Ash... and you're GOOD Ash! You're a goody little two-shoes! Little goody two-shoes! Little goody two-shoes!

[begins to sucker-punch Ash]

Evil Ash: Little goody TWO-SHOES! Little goody TWO-SHOES! HEHEHEHEHE!

[honk honk honk]

Evil Ash: LITTLE GOODY TWO-SHOES! HEHEHE

Ash: [cocks shotgun and points it under Evil Ash's nose]

Ash: [fires shotgun] Good, Bad, I'm the guy with the gun

[KGZotU]

Well, no idea what you should do in response to this situation, but it suggests a prudent item in the MUD's TOS. Something like:

Except in a clear case of our servers being hacked, possession of the password for a character constitutes possession of the character. Choose and maintain a secure password.

Now, that could raise some difficult questions if you don't have an encrypted authentication system or required e-mail verification for account changes. Obviously passwords sent over telnet can be easy to acquire.

--Joe

[ide]

This gave me an idea for a game -- where there is no player control of specific characters, but players login to characters shared by everyone. Some issues that could come up:


1). Players repeatedly login to get someone they want.

Give players a boost if they keep logins below a reasonable number per hour.

2). Players stay logged in when idle to keep a character they get.

Give players a boost for some difficult-to-bot activity. (though I'm not too happy with this solution, I don't really want to promote obsessive logins).


Alternatively players could get access to characters (temporarily?) through achievements. Afterwards the characters go back into a common pool.

Players could get recognized for notable achievements completed when playing a certain character -- each character then would have a 'Notable Past' where the player is recognized.

Theme-wise the players could be gods inhabiting mortal avatars perhaps? Or demons and angels in a war for possession of people's souls.

[chaos]

Probably accomodated whoever I considered credible, if anyone (and spent the rest of my life listening to the other guy screaming 'FAVORITISM!'), and if I knew nothing about either of them, left the status quo in place, then created some kind of formal transfer process (probably based on email, which would need to have not been recently changed) without which a transfer isn't considered valid.

My vague feeling is that account systems would tend to help with this, since it's more reasonable to secure them more aggressively than the usual character=account setup, and the case can be made that there's never any legitimate reason for the overall account to be transferred rather than an individual character.

[Deadsoul]

I had a buddy who was infamous for stealing characters.

As an immortal, and admin, I was taught fairly early on, that immortals and admins, will only deal with problems which require immortal intervention upon.

Said case is clearly a mortal problem, and thus, should be treated like one.

Was person A silly for having a guessable password, yes. Did they share the password, no idea, but, if the person B did not bounce back 100+ failed password attempts, then it was obviously a mortal problem.

Now, had person B used brute force to gain access to the password, and failed miserably with a long log of errors, then it 'might' be an immortal issue, but to error on the side of caution, it is obviously the dilemma for the people who play the character to deal with, and not one to be pestered to the mud administration.

But, since, it revolves around a character (who is obviously not immortal), and who cannot be split in half, I would always side with the obvious, who ever has the password owns the character.

This is just my 2 cents on the matter.