Tyler Replogle wrote: > I'm working at this site that has an MMORPG, a big online game, and we > have > this ban script. it bans the ip for the user and the user acount for an > amount of time. This doesn't seem to be doing its job because people just > change there ip and make a new user. There's no way you can stop them from changing their IP -- Hell, for most of them, there's no way *THEY* can stop their IP from changing if their ISP wants to change it out from under them. So using their IP is a Bad Idea. Get rid of that part of the code now, before you piss of a real user whose ISP change their IP out from under them. There is NO WAY to identify a user unless *YOU* id them on *YOUR* server. So the only part of this process you control is "make a new user" Now, you probably don't want to out and out CHARGE money for people to play MMORPG, do you? Thought not. But, in order to remove the problem people, what would your userbase say to this: "New Members, who are not already 'proven' to be not trouble-makers, will pay a DEPOSIT of $25.00 via PayPal." "DEPOSIT will be refunded when: A) A user closes out their account by their own choice B) A user has proven their ability to play well with others" "B) is totally at the whim and discretion of the Game Master" "DEPOSIT will be *LOST* if you get booted off for causing trouble." So now if they want to make a new user and cause problems, it's gonna cost them $25.00 every time. Don't think you'll have too many users doing that for very long. And if you do, well, hell, you've got a pile of money out of it at least. :-) Just one thing: Don't even *THINK* of borrowing money from that DEPOSIT to cover any kind of emergency expense or anything like that. You'll end up in deep deep trouble if you do. You may need to give other people (GMs) the ability to "vet" people and refund the deposit on their say-so. Then set it up so a GM has some money on DEPOSIT as well. If they clear somebody who then turns into a trouble-maker, guess what? The $25 comes out of the GMs DEPOSIT. Yeah, you're gonna lose some players. Yeah, you may have to approach this *REAL* delicately and get the existing GMs to agree that *something* has to be done, and if having $25 on deposit is the only answer, so be it. But you'll never keep out the problems without some kind of control on YOUR end that makes it very expensive on their end to keep making up new usernames. -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
