Registration open: O RLY?

[Takora Drakan]

A handfull of old Unity Players wanted to sign up on the forum, but they cant.

They get the Reason: You don't qualify for Forum Membership.

Nice move Virtium/wahtever. Just silcence the EU players that they dont need to bring up the unity shard. This company should fight for his loyal players, but they just piss them off with such silly actions.

You need a payed account to register? They want to pay, but they cant, BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO FIGGIN SHARD TO PLAY ON!



Such childish action make me so angry!

[Lunhilde]

It's prolly an old EII thing (my first guess) - or happened recently cause I know the first day I came back to the forums (a couple days ago) there was one of those 'hey check out this cool link I found!' *insert picture of small asian girl doing something illegal in all 50 states here*

Soo... maybe someone can figure out a way to let them come back and not let the pornobots post? Cause theer defintiely was a VERY nasty pic and a very random name post when I first got here (thast got deleted like 2 minutes later, but still)

[Takora Drakan]

Yeah its friggin hilarous that a spambot can sign up and post but not old players that want to post contructive things here to let Horizons live again.

[Lunhilde]

Well that was a couple days ago but didnt happen since then, so they may have closed registration cause of it - I think maybe the forums got opened, the spambots started posting, they went 'ohpoop' and locked sigups. Menkure or other mod, is there a way to put the random letter 'enter this codehere' thing for signing up so these people can get in? I'm sure it wasn't intentional.

[Menkure]

Takora: I understand your frustration, but we are not trying to lock players out of creating new accounts because they aren't paying, or for any other reason. The moderation of newly signed up accounts is unfortunate, but not because we don't want people signing up for accounts. It has to do with people creating accounts for all intents and purposes of causing problems (such as spamming, etc..)

I'm sorry that you are angry, but it is not because we are acting childish.


The spambot post (if it was that.. the legal and moral issues relating to the post and images though put the spam thing into question) was pretty disheartening.

They're trying to get something worked out that'll allow people to register, and yet keep people/bots like that out. We're all doing the best we can, with the time we have available, real-life aside (I had to drive cross-state for 3 hours this morning, and I gotta drive back again *sighs*). Cause of everything that is going on, I can't guarantee a quick fix....

We'll let you all know as soon as we have a solution.


Thanks!

-Menkure

[Steelclaw]

Ah, the thing you describe is a captcha. It doesn't have to be complex with images and audio and an ink-blot test. The one I use on my site is a simple math problem with random numbers. (Example: "5 + 3 = ____")

[Lunhilde]

Ah yup - I know a site that runs on this software that uses one so there has to be one availabe for it (or a way to rig one).

[Steelclaw]

VB is PHP based -- an interpreted language, which means the source code is the program.

Whether they're allowed to modify it and whether they have someone with time to do so is another issue. I heard they're busy working on a new billing system. :P

[Lunhilde]

Well I know the software can have catchyas cause eq2flames (grin) is the same forumoard software. Beyond that, I am computer 'specially educated'. But my thought is that if it is a module it might be something a moderator can do, and doesn't have to be one of the Trinity

[Steelclaw]

It should require someone with more privliges than a moderator or even admin. Adding code for the server to run (what a module does) is not something you want just anybody doing. It makes for maintenence headaches and makes it easier to compromise the forum and machine.

If you share your computer with anyone else, you've probably gone "WTF is this doing here? We already have something that does this!". Same thing happens if you have too many people with too many privs.

[Chaldor Itieles]

Well I know the software can have catchyas cause eq2flames (grin) is the same forumoard software. Beyond that, I am computer 'specially educated'. But my thought is that if it is a module it might be something a moderator can do, and doesn't have to be one of the Trinity

Well a good antispam mod that keeps bots and ads out need a little more then captcha, because most bot softwares have today ocr tools in background and are able to read the digits out if they are not good enough "cloaked".
If you want it run best, you need a system that checks the IP's with a blacklist and also checks each post for advertisements (like spam links).
Well but im sure there exists a complete mod vor VB already, its only a point of money.

[XiaoChanLung]

The Horizons CS profile is right there, and clickable. Send a list of your mates you know are players and want to return, and they'll okay them. Until they get the forums sorted, this has to be done manually - I had to do the same.

[LOVWYRM]

*puts herself together,
cleaning her throat, coughing,
rubs her ears
tries to wipe away the fireworks in her eyes*

uhhh- Takos breath of fire

*grins*

I love you, when you`re upset

[Spartikus]

Anyone who has run a forum before can testify to what a massive problem spambots are. What you see in the forums is only the tip of the iceberg. They register 10-20 accounts a day sometimes.

Most forum software requires some tweaking in the registration area to put a stop to the spam. I dont know about VB specifically since all my sites use PBB. Took me a couple months to figure out the best method of stopping the bots. Once I did though it was a 100% stoppage.