Last updated: [DATE].
These are short on purpose.
A long rulebook does not produce good behaviour. It produces people who read it looking for the gap between what it says and what it meant, and a queue of disputes that all begin "well, technically". We would rather have ten rules everybody understands than fifty nobody finishes reading.
The only rule that really matters
Do not make the game worse for someone else on purpose.
Everything below is an example of that, not a limit on it. If you find something that is technically permitted but obviously ruins someone's evening, it is against the rules — the list not having caught up with you yet is not a defence.
And the reverse holds, which matters just as much: if you are not deliberately harming anyone, you are almost certainly fine. You do not need to check.
What staff will step in for
This is the whole list. Each one is something we can look at a log and answer yes or no, which is why it is on the list.
- Training. Deliberately pulling NPCs onto other players. Dying and running is not training. Doing it to make a point is.
- Playing while away from the keyboard. Anything that kills, loots or gains experience while you are not there.
- Third-party software. Anything that plays the game for you, automates input, or reads memory. A log parser is fine.
- More than one character at a time. One client per person. If your household shares a connection, tell us first and we will note it.
- Breaking a loot agreement that was actually made. If a split was agreed beforehand, we will enforce it. If nothing was agreed, we will not — decide before you pull, not after something good drops.
- Real-money trading. Selling anything from this server for anything outside it. Permanent, no appeal, both sides.
- Exploits. Report them privately. Using one you did not report is the bannable part.
- Harassment and bigotry. Targeting someone to distress them, or slurs of any kind. This one is judged by effect, not intent.
What staff will not step in for
Also the whole list, and just as binding.
- Camp disputes. Who was there first, who "called" it, who should move. Talk to each other or find another spawn. We will not measure aggro ranges or rule on whether a zone counts as a dungeon.
- Kill stealing between reasonable people. Mistakes happen constantly at contested spawns. If someone is doing it to you repeatedly and deliberately, that is harassment and it moves to the list above.
- Handshake deals. Loans, favours, "I'll pay you back", guild politics, promises about future loot. We are not a small claims court.
- Regret. Bad trades, items given away, characters shared with a friend who turned out not to be one. We do not restore items, and we do not un-give them.
None of this means we do not care. It means an argument you can only settle by deciding who to believe is one we will settle badly, and every hour spent on it is an hour not spent on the server.
Raid targets
Raid mobs are the thing every server argues about, so ours are settled by the server rather than by staff.
- Killing a raid target locks your characters out of its loot for a set period. The lockout is on the characters who were there, not on the guild tag, so changing guilds does not clear it.
- While you are locked out, someone else gets a turn. You are not banned from the zone or the fight; you simply cannot loot it again yet.
- If a target sits up long enough that nobody eligible is killing it, the lockout stops applying and it is open to anyone. Content does not get to rot because the queue is inconvenient.
- If two eligible groups both want it, the first to engage takes it. The server decides that, not an argument afterwards.
The exact numbers are published separately and will be tuned in the open, because we will get them wrong at first. What will not change is the principle: your turn is decided by a timer you can see, not by a case you argue.
Names
Names should look like they belong in Norrath. No real people, no brands, no modern jokes, nothing offensive. We will rename rather than ban, and only bring it up once.
Arguing about the rules
Staff decisions in the moment are final in the moment. If you think one was wrong, take it up afterwards, once, in a petition — not in shouts, not by re-litigating it with the next GM, and not by explaining which clause you found.
Deliberately working the wording against its obvious meaning is itself a violation. We would rather admit a rule was badly written and fix it than pretend the letter beats the intent.
How we act
Almost always a conversation first. Then a warning, then a suspension, then a ban. The exceptions are real-money trading, exploiting and bigotry, which can skip straight to the end.
Everyone enforcing these rules is a volunteer who is also a player. They are held to them more strictly than you are, and staff status is not a defence — see About us for who they are.