A Server That Breaks All The Rules: Australia Server 2

Hey Guys,

I've been debating with myself, as well as a couple of friends, whether to report this or not and I finally came to the conclusion that if I don't talk about it then it'll just be the ramblings of .au players and staff members who have heard the rumours. Anyway, all of you know that .au is a pretty dead domain, they have some excellent players but other than that I don't believe the domain has ever had more than 10,000 active players (don't quote me on that) and the admin Loki has decided to try and spice up the domain by launching a special server.

This server (when it restarts, the date has not been decided), shall be a server where the following things are allowed:

• Multiaccounting - That's right you can have as many accounts as you like!
• Password Sharing - You can share your password with anyone else who has an account!

The MultiHunter will only be responsible for dealing with other rules that are being broken such as insulting language and using a foreign language and not English. Before I go on about what I think of the server I'd like to point out that this server was Loki's idea and NOT HQs however it was done with their knowledge and supposedly their consent.

What I Think:

First of all I'd like to mention I hate cheaters in all forms, that is precisely why I became a staff member to start with along with wanting to pass on some of my knowledge. However I think it is good that this idea is being tested out, it will allow us to see publicly what effect multiaccounting has on the game and whether it actually is the menace that many people think it is; when it is against the rules it is very hard to detect how it is affecting the players around these multiaccounters and I think this will give us a good impression of what is actually happening. I personally believe it will be the new players who will lose out, those who have no knowledge of what multiaccounting is and just joined from an advert will find themselves hopelessly beaten down by players who have been able to rapidly grow due to having numerous accounts.

The problem I foresee is that Headquarters may like what they see (I hope they don't), or atleast think it's easier, and decide to legalise multiaccounting on all servers (most likely to happen when the final worldwide rule set is created, due late 2010 or when Travian 4 launches) like when they started to allow duals after they found it hard to enforce rules against dualling. If this happens without public consultation or at the minimum one server per domain I would foresee a major drop in players accross Travian and a much smaller number of new players deciding to carry on in the game.

But anyway that's enough of the doom and gloom. Personally I very much doubt that multiaccounting will be adopted in Travian for a variety of reasons, some which we will see in the server and some that are just common sense, but for the sake of keeping positive (and keeping the post to a decent length) I've decided not to list them here.

The server will have more players than the rest of the other Australian servers, or at least it should have if the .au admins do what they should be doing and make sure word of month spreads it around a bit. The main group of players will probably semi-serious players who are really there to see how this idea works and pans out and only plan on playing on account or maybe a couple but not to be a major contender. The next group will be the newbes who were unwittingly sucked into this server without really knowing about the rule changes and they'll probably end up completely farmed out of the game or outgrown faster than on any other server. The final group is the truely serious players, these are the people that will either be password sharing on a fairly large scale and/or multiaccounting a fair bit as well; they'll be zooming a head in population and raiding totals from quite early on. You'll probably be able to tell which are which by looking around their 7x7s.

I also am pretty sure (although people will disagree), that the player average gold spend will be reduced on this server, a sensible player would take advantage of the much larger resource production they have available to them to avoid using the NPC as much as possible. I don't think it'll go down by a massive amount but I think the admins (and HQ) will see a dip in the amount per player spent.

As yet I am undecided whether I am going to be playing the server to cover it and see what happens, but there's a very good chance I'll be doing further updates about it and if possible trying to talk to some staff members in Australia about the server, so watch this space.

Steve