So I believe this impersonation situation has come our of hand with many well known accounts being impersonated. Sure it is easy enough if the original has a membership, but I don't think that is good enough..

Since Fizzer has already banned some of those accounts, I believe he is mostly against this too, and I suggest he could solve this by adding a small text near the account's image (similar to Fizzer's which says "Warlight Creator") which recites something like "newcomer" or similar for players that have yet to play a sufficient amount of games. This should solve the issue and still allow for people to have duplicate nicknames.

The problem with adding a game requirement is that it doesn't stop them, just makes them go through more work. If you say they have to complete 5 games they'll just play 5 games and then post to the forum.

You could make the requirements more stringent, such as the first 30 days. It would deter some, but many people will go to great lengths to troll. They see it as a game anyway, so forcing them to jump through hoops just increases their enjoyment. The other issue is that this makes legitimate new players feel less welcome.

The sad reality is that some people just enjoy being a pest. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them. They're trying to provoke a reaction, and unfortunately people are giving them that. If they don't get a reaction and get silence instead they will eventually stop trying.

I was actually thinking more about 50-100 games. But maybe a combination of time/games played requirement would be more sound.

I agree that some may go to greater lengths for the sake of trolling, but I don't believe just ignoring them is a better solution. Sure some might actually go through the time/games requirements just for the sake of it (although I'm doubtful many would actually do that), but at that point it is really their loss rather than ours, since they've lost all that time/effort while their fakes can still be detected through their profile and be banned in matter of seconds.

Also it seems fairly obvious (at least to me, I might be wrong) that the recent attacks were done all by the same person. He would have to play, say, 50 games for each new account. If we discourage him then I don't think we will have to worry about dupes anymore for a long while.

The person doing it has been dealt with -- there won't be any more impersonation today. If they weren't a member they'd be banned (member accounts don't get banned without a warning first.)

But you're right - increasing the effort required is a good thing. There is a feature coming that will accomplish what you're asking for, but I can't announce it yet :)

Fizzer, I think you'll find that if the trolls get silence from their trolling in obvious troll threads, they will move onto constructive threads and troll away there. If the signal-to-noise ratio eventually becomes poor enough, you'll have a forum consisting purely of trolls and people with an agenda, since noone else will bother to post. This has happened to too many sites to count over the recent years.

Thankfully we have troll feeders who keep them in their cages where the trolls have their strange kind of fun, while it's still possible to discuss constructively other places in the forum.

I find many original accounts more of a pest than most of the impersonations. Actually I found them very amusing and entertaining.
I`d rather see a subsection of the forum for under 20 year olds. They became the real annoyance by taking over the forum with their urge to comment on almost any thread, with whatever hollow thought crosses their mind.

another idea to stop impersonations is just not allow the same name to be used for 2 people, that way if there were impersonations then it would be easier to tell them from the real person. They would have to do Ryen instead of Ryan

Myhandisonfire what do you have against younger players? You can not realy believe every player below the age of 20 is annoying,right? Anyway I was just wondering because it seems you complain about the younger players alot.

/begin{childish_talk}

he must be a really old person.. like 25 or something

/end{childish_talk}

Ban Bais. He impersonated a child.

ban rollo, he is taking the blacklisting thread where it doesn' belong.

WHAT IF every player has a unique code with numbers and letters in the place instead.

As their name? Please, no.

One month of one of the worst names ever, just to make one single joke.

Totally worth it. I laughed. Hard.

+1 to the gentleman with the unpronounceable name!

I'm not sure if i understand the problem, but it looks like there is possibility that more that one person use the same nickname in this forum and there are trolls who are pretending to be someone else?
Don't you think that putting registration date/last nickname change date just under nickname (same place where 'warlight creator' under Fizzer is) would make those trolls easy to identify ?

yes because there will be many cases of same names (i bet there are a few chuck norris')

not as their name but under where warlight creator is @joke weird name

Perhaps in there profile they have a different code. So if someone does have the same name as another person, just looks at their profile and check if the codes are the same. That way, only the trolls will suffer, and not those who happened to have the same name as someone else.

Yeah you could add it in several places.