Make "IGNORE" function Account Wide

No it wouldn't.

I don't have nearly as strong an opinion on whether it should be implemented as it probably sounds. I'd use it if it went in.

But let's be perfectly clear, the above statement is dead wrong. You may not be able to imagine how one could use an server side account wide ignore function [actively or passively] to trivially build a list of someones alts. But remember that other peoples actions are not bound by the limits of your imagination.

The simple and most rational choice is to just leave the ignore function the way it is and let this silly thread die.

And you are not thinking about how many years it would take to compile enough date to deduce which characters might be alts of someone you are stalking. There is noting trivial about building a list of alts out of a million characters that occasionally log into the game.

And yet your comment raises a very simple question .... Do you show the same indifference to the needs of your follow gamers in game? The entire point of this is to give players an added tool to buffer them from players who ...like yourself just don't care about the issues of other players.

The ignore feature works on an account level in Cryptic games. Every gamer is known by an account handle (like our forum handles here they don't need to be real). If someone doesn't like you then they can ignore your account handle. They don't ignore your character, they ignore your account handle.

The account handle of every gamer in those games is easily found by selecting a character and choosing to look at the account handle. By the way, I'm @torskaldr. You can add a person as friend or ignore them by that account handle.

This is the type of system I hope that SoE will someday adopt. I understand some people like playing the alt game where you have special hidden characters and you can troll or "hide from" or otherwise mess with the other people on the server, but that is something that wouldn't work under a newer system. I don't have an argument against those who like to play that alt game because it's a subjective preference. I can just say that I don't think it's a design feature worthy of consideration for the future and it's one I hope Sony drops for a more integrated social experience across all their games.

I just love all the assumptions that people want to hide their alts just so they can troll. *sigh*

And all the assumptions that a account wide ignore would somehow cause a flood of stalkers and hackers building alt lists to hunt people down that are hiding from their guilds or whatever.

If done correctly.....like many other games have........account wide ignore would be great.

Or "play hide from" or otherwise mess with people on your server pretending to be another person other than the player of your mains. Amirite?

NO ONE HAS SAID THAT! I don't know how many times we have to repeat ourselves before you understand that. We don't say it will CAUSE a flood of stalkers, we said it just gives them a tool. Period.

Aaaaannnnd...impasse. I'm not sure there's anything else that can't be said here that doesn't involve a lot of sniping at each other.

*can, rather

(Won't let me edit further.)

This idea would work better than account wide ignore.

I don't care who is roleplaying an idiot and if it's only one alt, fine. What I do care about is having to log in every toon I have to put that toon on ignore

That is a very valid concern, and I don't really have a problem with a tool that allows a person to save their friends and ignore lists to their own computer (from a given character that they play), and then load that saved list on another character. That would allow someone to, essentially, maintain a list on their main character, then when they feel like playing an alt, they could save the main's list, then load it upon that alt. If the alt ends up ignoring someone else, then the play can either save the list at the end of the play session (to be loaded on the next character they play), or send an ingame mail to their own main (if they have a sufficient membership level to allow the use of mail, and if they want the list saved from the main account to reduce the number of saved lists - although there may be other justifications, as well) with the name of the ignored person.

However, that is a completely separate issue from a tool that allows one to ignore the alts of another person's character without physically having taken an action (whether that be by typing /ignore <characterName> or clicking on the character's name and selecting Toggle on ignore list) on at least one of their own character's with respect to that specific alt. As I've said before, my primary reason for opposing this is because it shortcuts the thought process required when one places another upon ignore. Granted, there are those that deserve having every one of their alts /ignored. It does not then follow, however, that there should be a tool that allows someone to ignore all of somebody's alts, especially if they can do so after a temporary fit of pique*.

Perhaps there is a middle ground on that issue that can be reached. Maybe the ignore list could only show the list of those that you have actively ignored, but once you reach a certain, undisclosed, "critical mass" of ignoring characters from a given account, it adds the rest in a hidden list - but not immediately. To keep people from toggling people on and off of ignore to figure out who might be on that hidden list, perhaps there could be a built in random delay (in terms of days) between removal of a name from the active ignore list and subsequent removal of associated characters from the hidden list. While this wouldn't completely eliminate the possibility of comparisons, it would probably raise the difficulty by a few orders of magnitude (since the comparisons would be taking place over a broader span of time, thus increasing the likelihood of irrelevant data being included). I understand that this would definitely be non-trivial* to code.

* I am not implying, nor should it be interpreted, that everyone that would use the tool is necessarily prone to fits of pique. Merely that this is one of the ways in which the "easy" tool could have an effect beyond its intent.
** Note: This is, most likely, a colossal understatement.

No indifference noted. The ability to ignore whomever you like, is already in game. Sure, it might take longer than one press of a button that automagically ignores a whole account, but what's to say the person doesn't have 2 accounts, or even 10. Would the next request be to auto ignore those as well?

Such an unnecessary change, even though it would be handy.

Other than the stalking issue, some people share accounts with their friends/siblings/relatives. Adding an account wide feature would be detrimental for those people. It is more common than you think.

[Son] logs on and plays his Beserker and starts mouthing off on general chat. [Mother] logs on later to find she cannot find any groups on her Warden

Also the other issue I outlined earlier
[AwesomeHealer] plays his under-geared [Badtank] alt that he is still learning that does a bad job in the zone....ignorelist. You probably didn't know that [badtank] is actually [AwesomeHealer] so you miss out on grouping with them on their main.

Account wide ignore....hmmm... [Bigjerk] is ignored....his account is ignored...he later transfers [BigJerkAlt] to his other account...is it still ignored?

Sharing accounts while done quite often, is not allowed and the owner is responsible for anything done on that account, does not enter in to this as an argument for this discussion.

Awesome healer is a jerk and deserves no groups if he acts badly on an alt.
I link all my alts so you can ignore them all if you want to look them all up lol.
If anyone is a good reason for global ignore it's me lol Just do it already.

Cloudrat, I believe that you may want to read what Alarra wrote again. Because the part I quoted from your post isn't what Alarra was saying.

Think of it this way. Imagine that you have been playing nothing but healers for a while, but eventually you get all 9 healer classes (I'm including Channeler) to 95 / 340. You then decide to play a tank class, and you start soloing that character up to max level, and because you've got a bunch of gear from your healer alts, you are able to gear the tank with decent tanking gear. Because you've concentrated upon healing so much up to that point, tanking seems like a severe paradigm shift, and the tanking that you've done while soloing or moloing hasn't really prepared you for being the main tank for a group. Due to this, you get a reputation for being a bad tank, and people use the proposed alt-encompassing ignore function. Now, not only does your tank have trouble getting groups, your healers do as well.

I'm about 99.9999% sure that is the type of situation that Alarra was attempting to describe*, not that the player was attempting to troll anybody or act particularly badly. The player was merely less prepared for the situation than the player believed. That really isn't a good reason to consign the player's entire alt roster to soloing.

The Bigjerk player shouldn't be confused with the Badtank player. The point that I believe was being made with the Bigjerk comment was that there is very little preventing someone that has adequate monetary resources and is vindictive enough from spending $5 per account to keep harassing if they choose to do so. And in that case, an account-wide ignore wouldn't really be any more effective than what currently exists.

* If I interpreted the situation described incorrectly, Alarra is more than welcome to correct my interpretation.

Yes, you would have to have only one person on ignore and then sit around and ask who is talking that you arent seeing in chat. About this time the crazy would start to show and people might throw you on ignore for good measure. Sounds like another benefit to me.