I have been seeing this question asked by GMs quite often in the "Ban Appeal" section of the Forums: "Please list all of your characters." Seeing as how often this is asked by GMs, I thought it would be convenient to make a slight alteration to the ban appeal page, written at https://royals.ms/forum/threads/think-you-were-banned-read-this-first.2257/ to address this. This is what is currently written at the thread: Your post must be written in this format and posted by the person who owns the account: Your Character Names: I would suggest here you change this to "List of ALL Character Names". Maybe have ALL in bold and caps. I believe stating this in the format page will skip the step of the GMs having to ask for all the characters. For some of the appeals at least. Last thing you did: This is fine the way it is. Why do you think you got banned?: This is fine as well. Ban message when attempting to log in: This is helpful, especially if its a timed ban. What GM banned you (optional): I personally have never seen someone who is banned know which GM banned them (except for a self ban when the person asks a specific GM to ban them lol). Failure to write your post in this format will result in your ban appeal being closed without staff intervention. This thread was written in September, 2013. A couple of updates to the format wouldn't hurt. I just thought this would make the GMs job slightly easier and skip the "Please list all of your characters" step, which so many ban appeals seem to have nowadays. Would save time for both the GMs and the person submitting the appeal.
I've added the "All" as suggested. I'll be keeping the rest as sometimes it might be helpful. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Another idea I have would be adding a new thread to the top of the page addressing the number of ban appeals that deal with connection issues. GMs telling people who aren't banned to restart their computer/router and then try logging in again is also a common ban appeal. Maybe making a thread with the suggestion of restarting the computer/router before making a post would cut down on some of those ban appeals.
I reckon that if people still fail to list all their characters, even with the change, it should be made clear that failure to list at least one character on each account would lead to the appeal being outright rejected (this might need to be added to the rules). Cause from what I've seen, people "forget" if it seems convenient to do so. Would save staff time, in the same way that the "my brother logged onto my account..." excuse puts an immediate end to the appeal.
I have seen Ban Appeals since I made the suggestion to include the word ALL where they have copied the word ALL! Also, one ban appeal where they list like 40 characters o.0 Glad to see my suggestion is working! If you are certain that you did not violate any rules but received the banned message, please restart your router / modem and try again, as you may have been assigned a banned IP address. I like this message. Straight and to the point. Hope it saves the GMs some time with Ban Appeals that were simply connection issues! Thanks for helping out Kai! I have seen some ban appeals like this too; people "forgetting" some IGNs that they know might raise a red flag in their appeal. But I think closing any appeal where a person doesn't list all their characters will eventually grab a person who simply didn't read or legitimately forgot an IGN. Although I see this suggestion as helpful in cutting down some back and forth between the GMs and the person, I think outright closing the appeal is a bit too harsh.
To clarify, I mean that the staff should have discretion to make that judgement. If the character hasn't been logged onto for awhile, and the issue is with a more recent character, then that should be fine. But if the problem was on a character they were on yesterday and they failed to list it, then after establishing that they do indeed own it, the GM's should be able to put a swift end to the discussion at that point. Actually this probably just falls under the existing rules about lying on ban appeals; intentionally omitting an IGN would be a form of lying. And the GM's already close ban appeals for lying.
So, based on this Ban Appeal, I've had another idea: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.174080/#post-1017341 Gert asked how many accounts the player owns. So, maybe it would be a good idea to include a question in the Ban Appeal Format that asks the player to list how many different accounts they own. Not sure if this would be helpful to the GMs when they research that player's names. Just another suggestion!
Another issue we have is players knowing fully well what they did wrong, and they choose to "forget" a character when they do their ban appeal. I've seen quite a few of ban appeals where they've listed every other character except the one they were caught hacking on (even though it's in the same account as some of the ones they've listed lol) and outright deny owning that character... It's a very good suggestion though! thank you for suggesting it!
How do you have THAT MANY characters?! I understand it's all for making money off fame, but still, over 100?! That must be so confusing. I've had one account for almost 4 years. Only recently made another account just for another storage mule. I have a hoarding problem. Luckily, most people who know they've done wrong don't even bother appealing. And some just play it cool and accept it like this guy: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/banned-appeal.170438/ There was another ban appeal that I remember from a couple months back where the guy was like "I just started hacking 5 minutes ago and you banned me already? Dam you guys are fast" Wish I could of found that one, that was super unique.
So, after trying to find this ban appeal for over a half hour, I gave up. But I did find another common theme in the ban appeals I did read. Seems a few of them are done by people where more than one person plays on the same IP address. So, maybe another question could be added to the appeal to address this. Maybe something like: "Does anyone else play from your IP address (Ex. sibling, partner, friend, etc.) Or do you play from a shared IP address (Ex. student dorm, internet cafe, etc.)?" Might help with a few appeals.
It's disappointing to see so many Ban Appeals lately where the person still only lists one IGN. Oh well, there's only so much we can do. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" right?
I know this post is kind of old, but I happened to find the ban appeal I mentioned in this earlier post. It was actually from the Shoutbox. Here is how that went: - BigNewts: Damn johnny i have to ask, did you really follow me into horntail? or were you patrolling? either way gg i literally tried it and got banned in like 10 seconds. dont hack people back to real life - Johnny: - Traductus: Yup, Johnny is very quick with responses sometimes...VERY quick - Jesseh: johnny always seems to be spot on! - Johnny: - iEatEmoKids: "haHAa! u caught me hacking! very goOd gM !!" Just as funny as I remembered it! Back when Sen was still iEatEmoKids!
