Requiem For an Alias

(Re-posted from the old blog)

In case you haven't read high voltage's post about this you should click on the link to the Premier league main website above and read the news topic titled Aliasing...

So within the week there will be a public alias bot up and running and a long and great tradition in Subspace will be no more. RIP Picklemen, farewell Midgets, MMA taken from us suddenly, the Nintendo Power turret powered down, The Nine become The Named and goodbye to the Newbies 000 to 999.

Now you may say I'm overreacting, and OK it may be a minor thing which brings many advantages in policing the arenas and stopping doublesquadders, but we lose something more important:

Fun.

Aliases are a good thing. They bring a bit of interest to league. They get people talking about players and squads. This season in AML the squad in the spotlight is DAMN_Yankees who have several aliased players on their roster. I've been trying to break down who these people might be. Going on the links between DY, Unforeseen and Blackdragon and with bd not in league this season I guessed that maybe DY were Unf mark II, especially with several bd big names not on rosters. Now I'm thinking the aliased guys may come from Warzone. With nme now signed up to play for Dissent I'm probably on the right track. Now of course I'll just ask the bot and I'll know in 5 seconds. Where's the fun in that?

I'm going to let you all into a little secret, something only a few people know about and probably the funniest thing I've done in Subspace that didn't get me a 6 month ban. A couple of seasons ago Entertainment started a thread on the old (ie, better) forums about aliases in AML. Yes, Ent complaining about aliases, sometimes irony can be so ironic. Anyway, stool was playing for BlackNike so I got a go-between, who will remain nameless, to tell Entertainment that stool was Leaky the Leviathan. Even better I found out that the nick Leaky was free so I made it and started leaving ?messages to Ent saying that yes it was true, but no-one would believe him and of course he fell for it, posted it all on the forums and made a total idiot out of himself. Now Ent can spend 20 minutes with the friendly AliasBot and have an alias list of every name in AML and write his smug little thread about aliased ringers destroying AML.

And that's another thing. Aliases and ringers are two separate things. When bhang played AML for Happy Mob he played as bhang. An AliasBot Wouldn't of made any difference to that, or ZDX playing for FnD this season. Look at Unforeseen. In their AML championship winning season a large chunk of the roster was aliased. The players with pro experience (Nelson and pry) weren't. All the Newbies were AML'ers. Are you telling me that it would of made league more fun if everyone knew who they were the second they started playing? That's rhetorical btw.

There's little fun left in league now and this just makes it that little less enjoyable. So a final plea to the staff, please don't do this. The league is going to lose so much more than it will gain by an AliasBot. But of course it’s going to happen. So in closing a few personal RIP's:

Bad Influence, Christian, D N A, Frowzy, Gone, Guess?, Jim Morrison, Kasian, wups, Spring League =(, the L.A man rapist, Therm0z, Freighter, Vyechnost Navyeki, dry, hypocrite, blackadder, slab, Gist, Jekyll, Arboraculture, Iota, Mikhal, Racks, Hover, MrPibb, Frezy, Elvis, S, Snail, Variance, screamadelica, bendy, Mecha Striesand, Hardcore Lemon, El Bastardo, Fun loving Criminal, wye, dihydrocodeine, hula, lumpy and El Robbo