X-Realming is Good for the game.

[VMblast]

@Genisaurus
So what are those two options?

[Genisaurus]

@Genisaurus
So what are those two options?

1. A permanent faction lock.
2. An "Open Enrollment Period" that occurs every so often (bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.), where you select the faction you will be locked to for that period of time.

Both require an ability to enforce a one-account-per-person rule, for obvious reasons, which we cannot do yet. In fact, because we cannot do that, we generally ignore 99% of the posts in these types of threads. They happen weekly, are poorly thought out, and new ideas are rarely suggested.

[Grimmrog]

@Genisaurus
So what are those two options?

1. A permanent faction lock.
2. An "Open Enrollment Period" that occurs every so often (bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.), where you select the faction you will be locked to for that period of time.

Both require an ability to enforce a one-account-per-person rule, for obvious reasons, which we cannot do yet. In fact, because we cannot do that, we generally ignore 99% of the posts in these types of threads. They happen weekly, are poorly thought out, and new ideas are rarely suggested.

as if anyone would ever be able to proof a "one account per person" thats technically impossible if the one doing it wants to stay hidden. Would just require a proxy on a second pc and its done.

So the real question is, how would it "hurt" to allow it? How can you currently ensure someone isn't just playing the other faction on another smurf account?

[Genisaurus]

@Genisaurus
So what are those two options?

1. A permanent faction lock.
2. An "Open Enrollment Period" that occurs every so often (bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.), where you select the faction you will be locked to for that period of time.

Both require an ability to enforce a one-account-per-person rule, for obvious reasons, which we cannot do yet. In fact, because we cannot do that, we generally ignore 99% of the posts in these types of threads. They happen weekly, are poorly thought out, and new ideas are rarely suggested.

as if anyone would ever be able to proof a "one account per person" thats technically impossible if the one doing it wants to stay hidden. Would just require a proxy on a second pc and its done.

So the real question is, how would it "hurt" to allow it? How can you currently ensure someone isn't just playing the other faction on another smurf account?

Obviously, it would not be something we could enforce 100%. Even on live, it only cost $15 a month for the ability to switch factions on any whenever you liked. But there are still things we could do to make it so prohibitively difficult to bypass that it's effectively not a problem. I'm not going to talk about those, but they are coming.

[VMblast]

@Genisaurus
Actually those are pretty good ideas!

So why dont you do it, this seems quite plausible solution?

[Genisaurus]

So why dont you do it, this seems quite plausible solution?

...which we cannot do yet.

When we can, we will. As-is, we lack the ability to control certain things.

[Sizer]

But there are still things we could do to make it so prohibitively difficult to bypass that it's effectively not a problem. I'm not going to talk about those, but they are coming.

Oh good, I was waiting for this games population to reach the thousands outside of primetime. As its obvious that something to prevent xrelaming would be flat out silly without population hitting those levels. But hey, if you guys are confident that it will, this is great news to hear. Playing on one faction 24/7 would be a dream, as long as you know, theres people to play against for all 24 of those hours, not just a few of them.

[Shandar]

Hey all. Maybe t4 would be a good time to implement some x-realming prevention. Let's see if I can get my thoughts clear...

-Let's assume that population imbalance for 1 realm's total domination is 55/45.

-Let's assume that people will focus on max leveling their main (which belongs to 1 faction) before leveling alts.

These would be the rules:

-People having characters from 1 faction only will always be allowed to log in.

-People having characters on both factions might be locked from playing either side if the imbalance is greater than 55/45, forced to play the underdog.

The good thing is that if you're forced into 1 realm, you know you can't switch to the other as the population is imbalanced. Also people dedicated to 1 realm only can enforce realm pride. If you play both realms, you might be forced to play one or the other depending on imbalance. You'll be able to level your mains from both sides but not as quickly as someone dedicated to 1 realm (which i think is fair).

Now, people who already split their order/destros on 2 accounts will bypass this rule. We can also argue that people can create a new account to bypass it. But if this is implemented along with t4, creating a new account will force you to start your characters from scratch; while doing that, you won't be leveling your mains in t4...

Just my 2 cents.

[Reyan]

Talking about loyalty to certain realm, why not reward it?
For example you can use character playtime as loyalty points.
Cheating can be countered easier that way by research of character activity and community support.

[bwdaWAR]

-People having characters on both factions might be locked from playing either side if the imbalance is greater than 55/45, forced to play the underdog.

Apart from having same problems the account lockout under the current conditions would, logging in with one side does not at all guarantee those people will play in the lakes. They may do PvE, scenarios, craft or just idle and socialise. Not to mention if this is based on server population, that may mean they can still log with a character that's a dominant side in one of the tiers. Login restrictions based on population, especially server population, would be just an arbitrary rule that doesn't actually address the problem it's meant to solve as much as create a number of new problems on its own - specifically, being unable to login on one side at all due to circumstances you have absolutely no control over regardless of what you actually plan to do. And lack of choice in what you can play. Just a comparision, that's sort of like forcing someone who only wants to play Destruction or Order (or just a single character) to play the other side "because server balance requires it".
This kind of thing would work very well in a game where the only possible activity is PvP in a single match, such as a classic multiplayer FPS server running one map at a time. But on a MMO like this, it really wouldn't help.