Annonymous players

[decator666]

I have noticed that 90% or so of high level players have their characters set to annonymous...is there some kind of benefit to being discrete?  I'm not on a pvp server...

Just curious what the deal is with this.

[CoLD MeTaL]

decator666 wrote:

I have noticed that 90% or so of high level players have their characters set to annonymous...is there some kind of benefit to being discrete?  I'm not on a pvp server...

Just curious what the deal is with this.

A few years ago some 'plat sellers' figured out how to run a script against the 'who' command and send 'tells' to people advertising their plat.  Setting the character to 'anonymous' removed you from that script so you wouldn't get tells.  Very few people set it back once $OE fixed the script.

[decator666]

Ah I see...okay just curious on that because i like to know how far ahead someone is of my level 79 guy when they are still purple names...keep thinking they shouldn't be any more than red by now haha.

[Juggercap]

I set my characters that way to avoid random tells from people I don't know.

Hey, will you heal for us? Hey, will you tank for us? etc...

[Kraeref]

It can be very inconvenient though. For example, the one is trying to form a group with few friends. Instead ofif seeing what they are doing (already running some instances or just hanging in their guild halls) you see anonymous. So i sometimes end up bothering them with tells asking if they have time and not busy which wastes time for both myself and my friend. And i was talking about friends from other guilds. You can see what your guildies up to no matter if they anonymous or not. My two cents.

[Landiin]

Oh the days of eqlive and early eq2 where you would run anon when running to a contested. But yea, now its mostly used so you don't show up on the who as level/class/zone

[bks6721]

decator666 wrote:

I have noticed that 90% or so of high level players have their characters set to annonymous...is there some kind of benefit to being discrete?  I'm not on a pvp server...

Just curious what the deal is with this.

personally I always thought it was silly....  until I started to get 10-20 pms every day from some low level guy begging me to come powerlevel them.  So.. my reason that I do it is to reduce the number of blind invites.

[Rahatmattata]

I run anon in pvp or when I was in contested raiding guilds... but not anymore. I see no reason to keep my characters anonymous.

[DarkelfOften]

I set mine to RP, mainly because I hope it will encourge people to interact with me in character and read my charcters bio's.

[Amekoi]

I've never had to use /anon, I guess I've been really really lucky or something. I know I always feel a small twinge of irrirtation if I do a /who on someone and it comes back anon, so I always keep my tag off. If someone wants to know my class/level/race/guild, then I have nothing to hide and they are more than welcome to see who I am. Sometimes it gets me invites to random PUGs as well!

[Mohee]

I use /roleplay because it hides your level, class, and zone, without hiding your guild tag.

I do it so I dont get blind invites, or tells to join PUGs. Or low level beggers asking for plat or a free powerlevel.

Orignally I used it to stop the plat seller spam tells/mail.

[Darksea]

I think anon is awesome.  Head to SS. Pop up LFG, get an invite after while and roll. AFter a long session, all those /anon LFG are still LFG. Wonder why?

[Bumfit]

I was just about to point that out, I think anon is fine but it's totally ridiculous when your searching the LFG crowd and you see anon people.    

[Conandar]

I rarely use /roleplay or /anonymouse because it is not necessary.  When I used to get spam tells from plat sellers I would spam them back until they logged off.  "What" I spammed them back with was probably against the rules, but since they were breaking the rules already I don't feel too bad about it.  The end result is that I almost never get spam tells anymore...and by that I mean maybe once per year.

And no, I will not disclose the contents of the anti-spam spam I used...that would definitely be against these TOS rules.

[Juggercap]

Conandar wrote:

I rarely use /roleplay or /anonymouse because it is not necessary.  When I used to get spam tells from plat sellers I would spam them back until they logged off.  "What" I spammed them back with was probably against the rules, but since they were breaking the rules already I don't feel too bad about it.  The end result is that I almost never get spam tells anymore...and by that I mean maybe once per year.

And no, I will not disclose the contents of the anti-spam spam I used...that would definitely be against these TOS rules.

Heh. I use to have a macro set up so all I had to do was change the name of the spammer...

But again, I haven't worried about spam tells for years. It's the random tells from people I don't know to group that I'm trying to avoid. My guild knows when I'm on and where I am. Nobody else needs to...and on healers specifically, random tells are very common.

[Jexi]

I am usually known for decorating houses a lot so I get tells in general anyway, but there has been known to be people who actually hunt me down and follow me around. I stay on /roleplay mode all of the time now. Another reason is because I am a templar, I get tells all the time for random raid invites. I don't raid. I just decorate. It saves them a lot of trouble by not having to ask me to go anywhere.

[Jeepned2]

I turn on anon and role play for the simple reason I don't group outside my two guilds (one raiding that doesn't allow alts and a casual where all my alts reside). I don't want to be asked to help, don't want to be asked to duel, don't want to be asked to join a guild or a raid or a group. I don't want to go run BG's with you (or anyone else), and if you really want to irritate me, send me an LON challenge (very rude and very foul language will be heaped upon you, would care less about a possible ban), further showing my hatred of LON. If I see someone in 80-89 ask for help and I'm not doing anything, I will volunteer on my own. What I don't want is that same person asking me in tells to help (automatic ignore) when I'm busy doing something else. And that is the many reasons why I stay Anon, Role Play and have almost all the boxes underneath them clicked on. 

Note: this applies only to my 92 toons, no one seems to bother me when I'm on my under 92 toons.

[Laenai]

Back in the day when there were real contested raid mobs, we'd /anon to keep rival guilds to see us gathering for a kill. Back in the day in many guilds, when they recruited you, you spent a lot of time camping spawn spots.

George, who's been in for all of 3 days, might not recognize Fred from by name if all he sees is Fred in his /who for the zone along with 10 other people. He would give a shout out to guildies if he saw Fred + 10 other letting folks know to hustle it faster if they want to get the first pull in as there are alread 11 rival guid members in the zone.

But that was back when there was more than 1 competitive guild per server and the population supported that sort of rivalry and guild pride. Not so much these days.

[apwyork]

I've found people just like the tag.  It also helps you tell who is a new player and who is an alt since new players don't flag anon.  I generally don't bother to help anon flagged people who are asking for help since I have no way to check if they should even be doing whatever it is. 

[zehly]

Laenai@Oasis wrote:

But that was back when there was more than 1 competitive guild per server and the population supported that sort of rivalry and guild pride. Not so much these days.

Dem were de days!

[Hateeternal]

An anonymous tag is really not needed at all, it doesn't serve any means at all.

It's only annoying bc basically everyone has it enabled and they post something like "lfg for anything" or they answer a request of your's with a tell like "Hi I'd like to join ya' group" which would be no problem cause there is a way to find out about their class and level, but it won't do any use so you have to send another tell and wait for answer.

Also when newer players are asking questions about the class or need directions or anything, you could more often help them if you'd know at least class and level and maybe the zone they're in.