How long can vacation substitute last?

[.halka.]

Is there any time limit?

[dhrahman]

I am not aware of any time limit for vacations. It is not stated anywhere in the rules, and my own experience with running an account as a vacation substitute would indicate that if there is a limit, it is a very long one.

That's something that I would advocate changing, by setting a generous limit of, say, 3 or 4 months. A player who I substituted for simply never came back. After several months of running the account and hoping for his return, I finally gave up, ended the substitution, and let the castles go abandoned.

Running an account indefinitely, when it has become abundantly clear that the other player is never coming back, could be interpreted as a form of multi-accounting and get you banned. Although I haven't seen that happen yet, I wouldn't want to risk it. The abandoned castles also provide you some extra resources :-)

[robster4321]

I have personally seen 2 accounts disappear of which I was substituting, however I am not sure how long it took for them to disappear. It took a while, thats for sure, I just can't remember at what point they themselves went inactive... I don't even remember who they were, since the names disappeared on my vacation substitute page lol
But, they do disappear at some point :)

[.halka.]

...they do disappear at some point :)
if they indeed do, it must be veeeery long time! The point I am trying to make (thank you dhrahman for your answer confirming what I expected) is that I got an email from friend of mine, who is a member of big alliance and what he wrote is absolutely ridiculous! Big players of this alliance have multiple vacation substitute with the original owner being absent sometime for over 200 days!!!! 200 This is obscene! They also have multiple "regular" vac. subs accounts which would be difficult to prove, but it sounds like multi-accounting! One member has 17 vac. subs!!! It's got to be done something, otherwise it's not worthy to play it!

[dhrahman]

I suggest writing to support, if you have specific information, explaining the situation and stating your viewpoint that it constitutes an indirect form of multi-accounting.

For my part, I will make a suggestion to Big Point that they look into making it more restrictive, by setting a time limit (or shortening the length of time if there is one) and allowing a given player to only sub so many accounts.

[.halka.]

...
For my part, I will make a suggestion to Big Point that they look into making it more restrictive, by setting a time limit (or shortening the length of time if there is one) and allowing a given player to only sub so many accounts.
and also prevent such account to be "rotating subs" between players. One simple rule could be to set certain number of days for subs and then such account has to operate on it's own for let's say 30 days (that's enough time for account to became abandoned if nobody logs in)

I will write to support and send them screen shots. Will see what happens.

dhrahman thank you for your reply (and robster4321 too), you quite few times took time to answer my questions/concerns. I appreciate it!