EVERYBODY LOVES SMURF SPECULATION! It's the juicy gossip that's right in front of you, but it's still an unknown, so let your imaginations run wild!Sorry, but IMHO its not nearly as interesting as we might imagine.Personally i have a couple of smurf names for when i'm (or someone else is) feeling anti-social. I also make up novelty/statement names occasionally for lols, but for 95%+ of the time I just stick to the one name.
I think it's natural to wonder if the person who's calling you a noob is the same guy who called you a noob yesterday with a differen't name. It's a more attractive thought than than considering that your noobishness is
that obvious lol.
Here's some general info you may find interesting:A while ago this possibility was making me curious (without really believing it to be at either extreme), so I did a bit of a test. I was actually AMAZED to find that there really is hardly anybody out there regularly using multiple (well-known) names.
Although I'm sure almost everyone has a bit of a smurf from time-to-time. I really didn't see very many cases where 2 names I recognised as at least semi-regulars belonged to the same person.
Of course there's always going to be those few "special" people who are genuinely a bit socially retarded and hate themselves for it - so they cycle through a few names, switching every time they embarass themselves.... and
perhaps there
could be one or two super organised people with OCD who keep records with a list of smurf names cross-referenced against a list of proxies, then always connect the account A with the proxy 6 or whatever.... good luck to 'em if they can be bothered, as long as they're not pulling dellam shit I really don't care that hard.
But like I say. I was surprised to find that for the most part, most of the regular "main-names" actually appear to be individual people. Although I wasn't expecting some fully-fledged illuminanti cospiracy or anything lol, I
was expecting a BIT more mainstream smurfing than I actually found.
I guess perhaps, I was assuming that I was one of the minority of people who were actually trying to keep it pretty real....... but now I kinda think that the majority of people actually believe themselves to be in this "minority".
(for the record I was only cheking players in games I was in, so not a massive amount of gow like some play - but a fair bit over time)
... and before anybody has a pink fit,
2 things:
(1) no I was
not doing any remote hacking of anyone's
anything, just cross-referencing the same name/connection details that the game clients circulate to each other in the normal course of a game.
and
(2) no I won't be publishing a list / publicising / gossiping about anything I became aware of unless there is a good reason.
I probably wouldn't have even bothered mentioning it, except for the fact that, like I say, I really was amazed by how LITTLE of it there was... it was actually a pretty cool thing to discover 
THAT is the point.... and that there are actually a lot more people using this server than I thought there was It's kinda icky to even have to say it - but I will just in case:
Of Course - No. This is not accessing anyone's RL name/ address/ facebook/ gay porn or
anything at all other than normal in-game names, and numbers related to internet connections.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------OK... as for the topic at hand, requiring a unique email for validation: to me it's neither here nor there... email accounts aren't hard to come by.
IMHO The only real reason for this would be if the server name database is blowing out to ridiculous proportions and it's becoming a technical or hosting issue, i.e. email verification might slow down the creation of "novelty" names etc.
I don't mind the admins knowing my email (i think half of them do already anyway), but as far as stopping someone from dodging a ban or something like that: signing up for your 87th free gmail account really isn't that hard... it's just a 5 minute job to get back on the server... I really can't see that stopping anything.
As for regular players who have been given a "slap on the wrist", I'm not even sure we really want to stop them from continuing to play under a smurf account, I think "naming and shaming" is the only really effective deterrant for recalcitrant behavior.
If the server welcome message included things like, "2016-12-30 Player Lambchops has been given a 1 week suspension for writing long boring forum posts, and we're all sick of his shit".... Then if I logged in as a smurf, I'd probably keep pretty quiet out of sheer embarassment, and try to avoid it happening again.
Pretty much the ONLY category of person I think we would really want to ban is someone who continually repeats seriously damaging miscreant behavior - i.e. hacking - game sabotage -
extreme anti-social stuff at kids etc.
then just continues to make one account after the other and repeat the behavior, without remorse. THERE ARE SOME REALLY LEGITIMATE REASONS TO SMURF SOMETIMES: For many of us, wc2 is in some ways theraputic, like say knitting can be for some people. The social aspect of wc2 is great, but as far as the game itself goes: sure, mostly I play to win and enjoy it for the mental combat sport that it is. But then there are times like when it's the middle of the night and I can't sleep, but I'm not properly awake either and I just wan't to have a game or 2 to distract myself. I imagine this sort of thing is even worse for the really good players when they just want to have a casual game while they watch TV and wind down after work or whatever, but they have to worry about big mouth wannabes telling everyone how they beat so-and-so 1v1 and what a hero they are - time to smurf, fair enough - other people's RLs actually exist tooAs for saying "smurfs shouldn't be allowed....(whenever)" there's still ALWAYS the question of HOW DO YOU DEFINE A SMURF ACCOUNT? A minimum number of games? Any long term player will have an old account with X number of games on it. ONLY 1 EACH - You have to declare it.... how do we know? Even if there wasn't proxies etc. available - how about, "me and my little sister both have accounts and we take turns using Dad's computer"? How do you know?
When I first bought bne, I think it cost me about $80 (a bloody king's ransom back then), some years later I bought another 4 copies for $10 each from the discount bin at a software store, and literally borowed a pair of scissors from the guy in the shop, cut out the CD-Keys and threw the rest in the trash. Point is that even if the server was charging $10 or $20 each for accounts, people would still have a couple.... (but we wouldn't get new players! So don't!)... but signing up for a gmail account? Like I say, that will probably cut down on spur-of-the-moment novelty names, nothing more.
... and BTW if the powers that be want to get REALLY serious about banning individual assholes,... well NOTHING on a computer is unhackable,
but, there ARE ways to do it that are a lot more effective than either IP or Email addresses. (Talk to me privately about this if you want)
The take away here is that really, most people are pretty much just like YOU. Most of the time they use the one name, because they have friends and want an identity, and sometimes they smurf for the same reasons you probably do occasionally. They all have bad days sometimes, just like you (yeah YOU ya grumpy shithead 
). I suspect that the people behind the "best of the best" names, also have day-to-day names and I don't hold that against them, nobody needs that kind of pressure all the time.( ...and yes there's a couple of complete fucktards who are probably responsible for 99% of the stupid crap that I used to think "lots of people" did. )
