Ever wonder why a certain player got banned? Maybe you yourself have been banned from the game. A ban can be temporary (several days) or permanently. The reasons for the ban can be found in the pillory. Here are some of the reasons for being banned, and my own interpretation of why these necessitate a ban.

We will need some volunteers to facilitate the interpretation of the scenarios, namely,  Player A, Player B and a Gaming Official (GO).

Bashing

Player A attacks a single town of Player B at least 7 times in a 24 hour period and both players are not in an alliance war. As long as Player A’s attacks are successful, these are included in the count. If Player B successfully defends against an attack, it will not count. Both land and sea battles are included in the count.

Bug Using

GOs find out that Player A has been using a bug in the game. For example, Player A discovers a way to generate tons of gold but the developers did not intend this method to be part of game play. Player A will gain an unfair advantage over other players by using this bug.

Clarified (with Conditions)

This is not the original reason for being banned. Player A might have been banned for a light insult. This means that Player A and a GO were able to sort things out. Sometimes, GOs will give conditions such as naming a town using English text if a player was using Chinese characters. If Player A does not comply with the conditions once his account is reactivated, he might be banned once again.

Fleet Contact

I believe that this may have something to do with account sitting. Player A inform the GOs that he will manage Player B’s account since they are friends but Player B will be going away on vacation (where there are no computers or no Internet). But Player A uses Player B’s account to send resources to Player A’s account. Player B has a higher score than Player A so this isn’t grounds for pushing. Still, fleet contact isn’t allowed during account sitting.

Inappropriate town name/s

Player A names one or more of his towns using profanity or non-English text. I can understand why bad word town names call for a ban. Perhaps GOs simply are being cautious by preventing players from using characters such as Japanese, Arabic, etc. so that other players do not misinterpret the meanings. Player A could be insulting Player B using Japanese characters.

Insults (Light Insult to Heavy Insult)

Player A sends an inappropriate message to Player B. Player B informs a GO and GO determines the severity of the insult. Player A could also send the inappropriate message directly to a GO. Consult a guide on proper etiquette when speaking with people if you don’t know what an insult means. ^_^

Mass Multi

Player A creates multiple accounts on a single server. Player A also has several accounts on different Ikariam servers and does the same thing.

Multi X/X

Player A creates multiple accounts on the same server. X would probably be the number of accounts created.

Non English Message

Player A sends a message non-english message to Player B. Player B does not understand the message and informs a GO. GO uses translate.google.com to try and interpret the message but cannot find any malicious meaning to it. GO simply flags this as a Non English Message.

Pushing

Player B has a lower total score than Player A. Player A receives resources from Player B. Player A does not give any resources in exchange and in a sense, gets the resources for free. These can be grounds for extortion since Player A could be threatening Player B with attacks if Player B does not give in to Player A’s demands.

Spam

Player A sends a the same message to many players in his server. This is probably the reason why players limited to sending 5 messages in 5 minutes to players not in their alliance (if they have one). Admittedly, this is a popular way of inviting other players to join an alliance. Perhaps this becomes a ban if Ikariam server performance is affected by the tremendous amount of load. (i.e., Player A caused a server to crash because of spamming ^_^).

There are other reasons I have not discussed (such as Report Tool Abuse – any idea what this is?), but the above reasons are the ones I often see in the pillory. New reasons can be invented and if such is the case, then this list will have to be updated.

GOs are usually lenient with players if its their 1st offense. They will only ban a player temporarily. But if a player keeps doing the same thing again, and again, and again (emphasis), then that player can expect a permanent ban. What a waste of time and effort… building up a great empire… only to see it all taken away because one did not play within the rules of the game. This is another Ikariam lesson that will serve one well in life.

Play within the rules!!!

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Playing For Free: Ikariam
• Report: Microsoft bans 1 million Xbox Live players