Don't ip ban
 

(no I'm not raging, I am not banned in any way nor is anyone I know)

I hate how Stefan and the gms think that they're stopping hackers by ip banning them. They are not solving problems, they are only causing more.
We all know local account bans are overrun by making a new account with a device id faking program or a new fb account. However, a whole network can be blocked using an ip ban,or at least they think. Admins think this stops the best of hackers, but in reality it only causes more problems. Allow me to explain.

Player h4xor(made up) hacks walls and is invincible. Admins ban his account but he keeps returning with new accounts so they ip ban him.

Now h4xor uses a proxy server to connect to graal, which basically puts another server in the middle to change the ip received by the server.(highly simplified) He can now connect by using various proxy servers on new accounts.

We now know that ip bans are easily avoidable, but what harm can they do?

I recently went to a local fast food restaurant in an urban city and attempted to log into graal. Apparently someone got ip banned there so I couldn't connect. If Graal becomes a large game, then this could become a major problem. People getting permanently ip banned at public networks can lead to graal becoming unplayable away from home.

How about another example, Player A is Player B's bro, Player A is a major hacker however Player B is a model player, So Player A gets an IP ban, now neither can play :(

How do you know the restaurant wasn't blocking ports so Graal couldn't connect?

Graal uses ports 14900 and onward to connect, so it wouldn't be a stretch for the restaurant to prevent people from abusing their service by torrenting (which uses a wide range of ports to attempt to connect) or using other applications than the internet (port 80 [HTTP] and 443 [HTTPS]).

There's a lot of "Player B"'s already that seem to show up after Player A was banned. It's ridiculous.

Also I'm pretty sure that the IP Bans are scripted/different now in that it doesn't just display a 'can't connect dialog' anymore.

We "Admins" are fully aware of the problem (and drawbacks with IP Banning) but do you honestly expect us to not do anything about it?

What do you mean no longer show a cannot connect dialog? It still does that for me. Then again, XOR went all out on me, my facebook, my ip, my graal account, my era account, my secondary ip, my pc trial account.
Permabanned globally.

O_o what did you to get all that.

Same sorta thing as you. Complain. Criticize. Tell people about all the crap Stefan and unixmad were doing to make the game worse, protesting staff abuse and prices being outrageous, lack of quests. Too many stupid shops. Telling everyone Xors secret about how he gets paid by them.

I agree with fp4 about the ports thing.
At school I can browse Safari fine on my iPod but it won't connect to Graal.
And unless graal is way more popular than I thought I'm pretty sure no one got ip banned
on graal while on the school's network..

I think it's fine the way it is. Don't start a war over frikin IP bans, especially if you don't have one.

Don't do the wrong thing.

O_o perma banned? When I was admin I was told we weren't allowed to ban anyone for rioting or complaining. This game is officially corrupt...

If the restaurant didn't block Graal's ports, and someone really was IP banned, isn't the real problem that kid who thought it would be funny? It is not the end of the world if you can't log onto Graal at a certain restaurant. The ban solves more problems than it creates. For example, if your brother got IP banned and you can't log on at home, have a chat at the dinner table with your brother. Talk to him about why he shouldn't have gotten the IP banned. What would you rather do, let people take advantage of staff and hack new accounts, ruin Graal for other people and make the staff team look like idiots? Or get caught up in a small problem that is fixable?

If you don't like the game, don't play it. If you like the game, but think you can do better yourself, get Playerworlds and make a server by yourself. See how that turns out, and compare.

About 15 people are talking to their fictional brothers at the dinner table now.

0 people understood that... I gave an example, you clearly don't understand what that means either.

Sorry but talkin to ur brother does absolutely nothing, it doesn't change that u r banned for no reason

I LOVE IP BANNING!