This is to help raise awareness about how horrible the majority of private servers are out there, not only do most of these servers lack originality and thought, they also use overwhelmingly immoral tricks/scams/cheats to get players/keep players. This is coming from a server owner that has successful server that has been running over 5 years now, and from a player point of view from when I was a player before that. I will not mention my server name, this is not an advertisement, this is to notify communities to evaluate where they play, and how supporting these abysmal practices only makes it worse. This is for all the legitimate, and honest servers that are out there (which there are very few).
If the server you play on, or are considering to playing on, does one or more of these things, they are much more likely to be corrupt, which means giving items to their friends, and just overall rigging things. Additionally, they are more likely to provide horrible GM Support and be extremely rude, and may not answer any sort of emails or messages you send them to help resolve a problem.
Fake Online players example 1: Many servers make it where it says much more people are online then are actually there.
Fake Online players example 2: Many servers don't take the time and effort to stop botters/fight them, or simply don't care at all about them, thus they have more online which are not really there, they are just botting, thus creating the illusion that more are online. Botters are not real players.
Fake Online players example 3: Often times these so called "big" servers create/buy/request special code and scripts that create fake players standing around in town or in farmzones or where ever they want, some servers even have them coded where these fake players move around once in a while to make you believe they are real. Go ahead and Google "fake online count l2j" you will likely find some threads on max cheaters or other websites people trying to request/buy codes that do this...
Advertising Contests: You have probably seen this before, many servers have some sort of contest ran by the staff, often times on their forums, they give you some text/information about their server and they want you to post it in as many places as possible, including other server's Facebook pages, other servers forums, and more. The more they do it, the more they get rewarded, often with donation credit/Not allowed bars. So basically its paid vandalism/spam, and legit forums and Facebook page are a victim of this trash almost everyday.
Advertising Bots: Some servers make bots (and/or hires bots) to log into other servers that sends automated in game mails to other players advertising their server. So if you get an un-solicited in game mail, on any server, that advertises another server, we would suggest ignore that advertisement, it simply means that server chooses to use immoral practices.
Social Media Tricks/Exploits: Some big servers, well known ones, have their websites code set up where it will automatically make you like their page on Facebook if you have your Facebook set up to auto log in. I'm not talking about the Facebook pop up and you accidentally clicking it, im talking about specific code to automatically make you like it with out your knowledge what so ever. This is them exploiting you and using you for extra/free advertisement. Check your likes on Facebook, did you actually "like" those servers? If not, they probably exploited you.
Constant Wipes/Closing/Renaming: Many players believe wipes every 2-6 months is healthy/normal. I strongly disagree, wipes are disrespecting your players and their time playing on that server, Wipes are for lazy admins/developers that don't know what their doing and lack the ability to design a server for the long term. Wipes are great for unbalanced servers that end up where only people who played their the longest can be the best. Wiping is a good way for greedy admins to make money, once the money doesn't flow as much though sometimes they close the server, then re-name the server and re-open claiming its a new/different server to try and get money again. My server for example has had 0 wipes and 5+ years, again this is not advertisement i will not mention my server, just saying its 100% possible if you use some common sense, and have programs to help new players etc.
DDoS attacking the competition: Many servers attack other servers with DDoS attacks, especially on targeted days like opening/sieges, this is mostly done by the competitions server, which has similar rates/demographics as theirs
So if you play a server that does any of these things, consider finding a new home. Stop supporting servers that do these things. Doing so could help them die out, and make them a less common problem. Playing on these servers runs you the risk of all your stuff being deleted and pretty much any moment, cause if their server does not do as well as they think it will close, or they will probably soon wipe anyway, so save yourself the hassle, and end this vicious cycle. To those who run servers, and are mostly out there to make money. Legitimate servers can make money too, you don't have to use horrible practices to run your business. If people see how hard you work, and you give them good GM support, they will still support your server, in fact, they may even support it more.
If there is any legit servers out there reading this, i encourage you to spread the word, and put this list in game, or in your forums, or both, to inform your players about this!
Linkback: https://l2topzone.com/forum/index.php?topic=23958.0
Topic: Anti-Sh*t Campaign (Read 2978 times)
