Hello everyone! After almost 4 months, the Warzone Diplomacy Discord server is shutting down at 12:00 EST tomorrow. We have been experiencing an uncontrollable amount of spamming, pinging, and trolling, and have lost many members already. I was away on vacation during the issue, so it only metastasized. I would like to say thank you to everyone who contributed in a positive way to the diplomacy community and helped unite the diplomacy players, your commitments will not be forgotten!

-cleebaar123

(an update: the server got back on its feet after a long long story I do not want to explain, this forum is now basically just a platform to discuss the drama, enjoy!)

Edited 7/31/2020 05:13:44

That is unfortunate :(

I haven’t been on that server, but sorry to hear that :(

trolls : community
1 : 0

Let me post here my favorite internet quote:

"As many of you are aware in the recent months we have been attacked by a group of botters and scripters spamming the chat, making false reports, gamethrowing, and all around ruining games. We have done many things to combat these bots but at the detriment of future development.

We have tried auto detection of common bot phrases, and suspensions based on these. The bots were able to turn this against normal users by tricking them into saying these phrases, while changing their bots to say other things.

This led us to try logging their IPs and IP banning them, but they would just rotate their IPs between accounts. Normal users would sometimes then be assigned these banned IPs meaning they couldn’t log in anymore.

Next we tried altering our client and server networking code to break 3rd clients. Within a few hours they had decompiled our SWFs, looked at the source code to fix their 3rd party clients and were back to botting.

We added email verification to make sure that only valid emails could be used to create accounts, but these users used forwarding emails, or sites such as “10 minute email” to make temporary emails that were valid long enough to activate the accounts.

Then we added captchas to several parts of the registration process to make it harder for them to register accounts, but again, they found ways to get around it, or go straight through it. This made it harder for normal users to make accounts, but didn’t really slow down the bots.

Lastly, we added captchas when a newer user tried to join a lobby, and these would trigger again on spamming reports. This method slowed down the bots, but only as long as we constantly work to add new captcha questions, and actively work to brick any automated solvers they are creating.

Currently, we can only keep up with the bots by devoting all our time to the upkeep of the captcha system.

The botters and spammers seem willing to devote all of their time to coming up with new ways to spam, troll, bot and destroy this game."

The replacement "Chill Warzone Server" has a #spam-the-n-word channel and a Mee6 bot configured to (seemingly) randomly say n****r. To be fair, so far only LoXIV seems to have taken advantage of the #spam-the-n-word server.

It seems like closing the server is only going to exacerbate the troll infestation (or the trolls' isolation from civilized society). The Warzone Diplomacy Server at least has a few items of value; why not pass on ownership to someone else (TBest? Make him volunteer) so the main diplo server doesn't get replaced with a full-on dumpster fire outright run by the trolls?

Edited 7/17/2020 23:41:07

lmao

I suppose we could vote to keep the server alive and transfer ownership

just turn it into a "Chill with Bill" Channel. Basically you can have the bot scream the N word when someone says , "whats up"

You could also consult with TBest and Min and whoever else to copy their troll-handling methods. I don't think WZ Public Chat could handle a troll problem the size of what your server has but their techniques could provide a solid foundation for building on top of.

In the end I transferred ownership to Dorex Time, people didn't want it to shut down, but it's heyday is effectively over

I didn't even know it existed, wtf.

Great, thanks. With the server still alive we can keep dabbing on Palestine in #politics-discussion.

You could also consult with TBest and Min and whoever else to copy their troll-handling methods. I don't think WZ Public Chat could handle a troll problem the size of what your server has but their techniques could provide a solid foundation for building on top of.

That behavior would get auto-banned by either the bot or any of the 16 moderators. The ban-list in our server is not small (notably the player known as karl, kept coming back with new discord accounts) and a few other rule-breaking things. We also have explicit media content filter turned on. I will say, that it's not like the WZ public chat never had problems. After all that is why we added the verification gate. I do say, it's in a safe place now, but the beginning had some hiccups. :)

With that being said, the server we have is open to everyone, which naturally includes the diplomacy community. If at any point, activity mandates separate diplomacy channels we will (re)add it, for example if any other server wants to move here. So far thru, WZ public never really saw use from the diplo folks. Which, is perfectly understandable as it might be easier for them to organize in a separate server.

Cleebaar I only made the Chillzone because multiple people were threatening to create new servers for growing horde of people unhappy with what you were doing. I know banning people because they broke the rules is reasonable but our punishment of the members was inconsistent and flawed in many ways. It would have been one thing to ban Loxiiv without asking anyone else if it was a good idea but then failing to provide a reasonable justification and ignoring us was serious fuel to the fire. We literally offered you the highest position of power on the Chillzone but you said you don't want to be a mod on our shitty server.

I never used the word shitty, and I provided justification

...you did now (...I'm not supposed to be here)

then leave, no one wants u here

Ok :)

thank u;)