Draug, since Oginoob has made himself known in a few threads I have seen in the last couple weeks, he has displayed a distinct lack of tact or understanding, and it seems not uncommon for his responses to be inconsistent with that to which he (seemingly) is responding. I'd probably consider yourself fortunate if he muted you....might save you from unnecessary frustration in interacting with him...

Why all the hate for Ogion? It all sounds very reasonable to me, apart from changing usernames.

I only play anonymous games. That means you're just playing the game, and not doing research on all the other players' profiles to see who's kinda bad and who's pretty good. Also no grudges or friendships which could influence how a player moves. Knowing the other people may be more "authentic" to the original tabletop way of playing, but playing over the internet with on average a day for each phase already is so radical a change I don't see how we can rely on authenticity as an argument.

And, of course, who cares about any of this? Do what you want.

"I'd probably consider yourself fortunate if he muted you....might save you from unnecessary frustration in interacting with him..."

omg, i can highlight text and then drag&drop it into the textarea to post - instead of using copy&paste, this is just too awesome... sorry for the offtopic post, but WOWzers!

"omg, i can highlight text and then drag&drop it into the textarea to post - instead of using copy&paste, this is just too awesome... sorry for the offtopic post, but WOWzers! "

That was fucking cool!

Speaking of dragging and dropping...that's what mapleleaf and Putin do n a reagular basis...

Two drag queens droppin' trouser for each other in the closet...

That sounds like a quote from someone I've muted

@orthaic.

I should clarify. I've been playing Diplomacy off and on since the 1970s and have actually designed and game tested several new boards (including the crowing achievement a 6' x 9' world board with 32 countries, complete with unique sets of pieces for each). However, after a long hiatus, I'd thought I'd give the online version a try and so I tried this and playdiplomacy as well.

If you want a pleasant Diplomacy experience here, join high-pot anonymous games and stay off the forum. There's no easier way to get a good, rewarding game online than on this site. But here on the forum madness lies.

Well, if he has me muted, I guess I can mute him and save myself the frustration.

Thanks, invictus! I will take your advice

boo hiss, playdiplomacy stole our code... ok it's not their fault, they paid a shady developer who 'borrowed' this opensource project and sold it.

Kestas doesn't mind much, infact i think he encouraged them to use the code more clearly so they can get updates from the project. (actually, his version of events probably explains things better: http://kestas.kuliukas.com/fyb.ro/ )

That is hilarious because this site is far superior. The interface is better, the structure of the game options is better, and my god! How did they end up with such garish colors?!?

(I'd love to see a board with the classic color scheme though. - England/navy blue, France/light blue, Austria/red, Italy/green, Germany/black, Russia/white, Turkey/yellow

Holy crap, how have I never heard that story before. Thank you for sharing that link orathaic.

Just my two cents: In my opinion, non-anon is one of the incredibly important aspects of the game. Knowing each player's playing style by analyzing their past games is incredibly helpful (and is analogous to chess players analyzing their opponents' playing styles, so it's not like that behavior is isolated to webDip). If you want to play only anon games, hey, that's what that option in making games is for. Making all games anonymous would force all of us to conform to an ideal shared only by some. In all fairness, I appreciate the anonymous option. It adds more mystique to the game, as you have no idea who you are playing with/against. But I also appreciate playing non-anon games, as then you know exactly who you're playing with/up against--and I really enjoy being able to look up a specific player's past games to learn their playing style. This is an ability not found in the real-life game. I wish that past games had an attached chat log, so we could analyze exactly what was going on and who said what to whom when, but I understand that is unlikely/impossible because of the enormous amounts of bandwith/storage such a feature would use (it'd be awesome if it could be implemented--maybe even just store that chat log for games won by a player in the top 10%, so novice players could analyze how the top players position themselves, and learn how to up their game?)

@josh - I would advise you to look through a public press game, but those are an entirely different beast unfortunately. I want to say that Tru Ninja (I think?) was doing a project game where everyone saved their chat, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Frequently, high quality games have EOG's by all the players so you can go through their thoughts, though

Josh, goldfinger, I have to say I am glad I asked because you all have changed my view of it. Thanks!

To answer your other question then, changing usernames is not permitted because user accounts are defined by their records and their points. Each account has a unique Ghost Rating as calculated here (http://tournaments.webdiplomacy.net/theghost-ratingslist). If we allowed user name changes then anyone with a bad record would simply make a new account, rendering points, GR, and records worthless. As for actually changing an account's name, that would simply cause confusion and allow people to change their name after behaving poorly in games or on the forum. It would also make extra work for the moderator team.

Certainly option 2 makes more sense to preserve records, but I wonder how much extra work it would also cause. On the first point, if one hasn't behaved badly then there shouldn't be any objection based on what other people do. Certainly for new accounts neither argument makes a lot of sense

listen, the whole game was invented to be non-anonymous ... you play it on a board around the table with drinking friends, everyone knows each other

The first rule of this site is that second accounts aren't allowed for any reason. We have enough work finding the people who are cheating with multiple accounts. Having extra connections showing up because people wanted a name change just isn't worth the extra complications. I'm sorry if you disagree, but it's a policy that's been pretty effective over the last 7 years.

Well there are several different easy solutions. Sure, there is a solid rationale for not having multies, but "because that's how we have always done it" isn't much of a rationale. The question ought to be does it makes sense

However I will say I don't think anyone but me thinks this is an actual issue

' If you want to play only anon games, hey, that's what that option in making games is for.' - i think the option was originally added to prevent gunboat players from using pm's to communicate in violation of the rules... But i could be wrong.

Needless to say it is advantageous to have, though we're looking at some other improvements, like perhaps a SVG map, and drag&drop interface; a Fog of War option (seeing only one territory of the map away from your units, say), and a touch-play communication limit (only being able to talk to players who have units within two moves of a SC or unit of yours)

At the risk of totally derailing this, I would love to see fog of war on here since that's basically the only reason I do anything over on vdip.