So. Today I received a warning on the LotRO forums. Someone asked in this thread this morning if they could post from more than one forum handle if they have more than one account. A reasonable question that I’ve probed myself in the past. Here was my response, nearly verbatim (because I’m kind of a smart cookie) that was deleted with an infraction:
You *can* have more than one handle and you can post from more than one account, although with the caveat in the above posted link to the community rules that you *may* or may not be asked to post only from a single account. It’s very possible that multiple-account family situations can exist where this can take place very legitimately, and aside from gaming the forum rep, it isn’t in Turbine’s best interest to be banning households for this, imo.
Here was my warning:
Harass, defraud, cause unwanted attention
Warning received for: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?5749667-Re:-Forum-Account.&p=5749667#post5749667
While participating on the Community Sites, you must respect the rights of others to participate in the community. To this end you may not harass, defraud, threaten or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other members or Turbine staff.(Community Guideline #1)
Comments:
Stop trying fooling others into breaking the rules. This is a warning!
First of all, this is not a properly written English sentence. Secondly, it doesn’t correlate. How exactly am I harrassing or defrauding anyone or causing unwanted attention or threats to the Turbine staff? I was simply stating facts that I have verified. Furthermore, the GM apparently does not understand “the rules” (brilliantly stated by GM, by the way), namely community guideline #16, which does not explicitly ban posting from two forum handles on two accounts–in fact, the second half of the article implicitly condones it while admitting that it cannot really be enforced, suggesting poor, rude, and mal-intentioned use of it will be punished.
This moderation language is frankly frightening to me, and now maybe I see where the recent off-handed moderation complaints recently on the LotRO forums have been coming from. Fine, Turbine. I will refrain from wasting my time, going forward, where I’m evidently not a desirable community member.
Kitty Kitty Boom Boom 
October 9th, 2011 at 10:54 pm
Why did you change the title from Epic Fail, LOTRO? Did you realize just how childish the title was and that you came across as yet another winy little “QQ” gamer complaining about something so minor, a warning on forum, that you had to tell the world I am wronged. I kind of expected more from a LOTRO blogger, its a shame.
October 10th, 2011 at 12:01 am
I changed the title to reduce the risk of making the wrong impression to readers who would make snap judgments without really understanding the issues, but evidently that did not work in your case. I’m not a LotRO blogger. I’m a critic, and I call it like I see it. Looking at the right, I’ve posted more about Rift, and this blog gets 200 reads a day, so it’s not “the world.”
I’m also the author of two LotRO guides and a popular custom UI that has been downloaded over 5000 times. I’ve also helped many people in the new player section of the LotRO forums for years, or at least until F2P hit.. In fact, I’d almost be willing to bet that I’ve been working for LotRO longer than that moderator has.
October 10th, 2011 at 11:32 am
A sure sign of what happens when you go “Free to play”. It is clear that support is being outsourced based on this type of approach, and Turbine is suffering.
But, as you can also see…careful of the LOTRO fanbois.
*Goes back to playing Rift and enjoying the awesome support and company…
October 10th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
It’s tempting to make general inferences like this about F2P and outsourcing. The thing is, coming back to LotRO, I was seriously resolved not to let F2P make me cranky again–I was going to just try to ignore it and play. So I’ve really done my best to refrain from saying anything negative or critical in the forums, and I’ve actually said a lot of nice things in my blog lately about LotRO. That’s how I ended up blind-sided by this.
October 10th, 2011 at 12:39 pm
@Elementalistly
I love how what you believe what you posted is correct without any proof to backup your claim. So LOTRO going “Free to play” over a year ago has now has caused them to outsource monitoring of the forums, really? I must have missed the Job postings for that from Turbine.
And because I do not agree with a blogger’s post about the Epic Fail of LOTRO, I am a fanboy .. you know what I am a fanboy, damn proud of it too! I am MMO fan boy of LOTRO, RIFT, DCUO, Fallen Earth, Guild Wars 1 and 2, The Secret World, and SWTOR. I am also a HATER of bloggers and commentators who post childish and petty things thus making all MMO gamers look bad.
October 10th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Hate is a little strong, but critics of all kinds are welcome here. Frankly, adoring fanboi blogging gets a little boring. I’ve always been a fan of Keen (see blog link at right) because he just tells it like it is and says how he feels. Sometimes I don’t agree with his opinion, but it’s almost always interesting reading.
October 11th, 2011 at 7:55 am
I think you are mistaken here: Turbine’s rules are quite strict; you can only have one forum account you use, and using more is grounds for banning.
How do I know this? Like many existing Codemasters customers, I had a f2p Turbine account for posting on the Turbine forums. When we CM customers got returned to Turbine, we had it explained to us VERY clearly by Sapience that a: we would have to choose which account we posted with, our previous Turbine f2p accounts or our newly tranferred CM accounts; b: we had to mail Sapience and/or Customer Support, informing them of our choice; and c: failure to do so would leave us in breach of Turbine’s strict ‘one forum account per user’ policy, and liable to be banned.
So I think, essentially, that you’ve given advice to someone that, if followed, could get them banned – and thus you received the warning, explaining pretty much that.
whether this is a sensible or justified policy, or whether the policy is frequently bent to accomodate specific circumstances, are completely different questions. but it looks to me like you got a warning because your advice could in fact have led to someone getting banned from the forums.
October 11th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Thanks for your excellent perspective spoken from experience, Sean. Looking at it again, my wording *does* look more like I’m giving advice (go ahead) than I intended. That’s not really what I meant. I meant to do say three things: to observe that it’s quite *possible* to do, suggesting that I also have some experience in this issue; to observe that the actual enforcement of the rules is not strict at all and the exact rule wording is not as clear as other people were stating, and to suggest that I disagree with this banning action, which is frankly silly and forces everyone through a square hole to the detriment of legitimate cases. For what? To prevent gaming the forum rep system is the only thing I can think of, which is just another thing that I disagree with. Players should not be made afraid to speak due to peer pressure and threat of punishment in an official public product forum.