Lost accounts

[Harkins]

We were just kicking this topic around in #bbg after Nox asked some questions about storing user data and I'd really like to hear from people currently running games...


Game owners, how do you deal with lost accounts? When someone has forgotten their password and lost the email address they signed up with (perhaps because they left a job, graduated school, or forgot that password), they may get in touch with you to ask for their account back. Has this happened to you? Do you ask them to prove it's their account some other way? Do you say "no" to automatically? Do you have a standard policy?

[Chris]

We deal with such cases, it is rather simple.
- first administrator (such issues are never escalated below administrator level) determine probability of the player saying truth, this is actually easier than it sounds.
- then they send a request to generate a new password to me - game owner (we NEVER give old password also admistrators can not use this option on their own)
- administrator sends the new password to the player

As for determining the validity of the request, it is mostly about common sense.
- does the account became inactive in the last days?
- who can (faction/clan mates) back the claim?
If an account of an active player became inactive in last 48 hours and a high rank person or two from his clan says it is the person in question then it's not much to think about Also the email still is associated with the acccount (there is no email change option) so the original player (in case of successful scam) can back his claims easily.

[Shrapnel]

What if it's an old account?  Say someone leaves for a couple months and decides they want to try the game again.  Or do you delete accounts that are inactive for a given period?

[Chris]

I never delete accounts. As a result I have 98% of inactive accounts in database

There are 2 tricks. First, I have resets, so game related data is purged on regular basis. Second, I use only 1 table to store inactives. Once they return upon first login all required table entries are created.

The inactives are not processed by cron, not visible on any ranking page. Only register and login functions  + admin tools ever query the table that holds inactives.

[Sunchaser]

In Medieval Europe, we delete the character (not the user), if it's inactive for some days.

The user then has to create a new character. for safety, a copy of the character relevant data (stats, resources) are saved into some archive tables.

Users can put their character in holiday mode for two weeks, the inactivity counter is then stopped.

[gnoh]

I also do not delete users accounts however game data is purged on resets.

For players that become inactive during a round there data is stored however they're removed from a kingdom, so if they go on holiday for a few weeks they just have to login and join up to a new kingdom.

[Shrapnel]

Ok, so for those who do not delete accounts and the person has been gone for a while, what do you do if they forget their login and password?  Chris's test would not work in this case as he tests that they were recently active.

[Chris]

Ok, so for those who do not delete accounts and the person has been gone for a while, what do you do if they forget their login and password?  Chris's test would not work in this case as he tests that they were recently active.

Send an email to the email address associated with the active account. If they know what was in the email they can have the account

BTW, it is extremely rare case, I think it happened to me only once (per 150,000 accounts). Players usually create a new one after they were inactive for a long time or do something else.