Is there any real way to limit how many accounts a person could have in an MMO? In my game you can only have 1 character per server (you can delete a character and make a new one, but can only ever have 1 at any given time), and that character gets x currency right away. I would want to stop/limit people from making multiple accounts just to give their starting money to 1 of their accounts and have an unfair advantage over others.

I'm sure I could limit by credit card and your normal person will only have a couple of those but then it might limit a household that has multiple players in it if they have fewer credit cards than people wanting to play, so that seems risky.

I would not try to avoid multiple accounts (more accounts = more money), it is risky and will most likely hinder gamers who want to play more than gamers who want to cheat.

Best to consider this approach in game design by either giving them start equipment which you can't sell or to give them just enough money to buy some really low starter equipment.

Yeah, I'm trying to do that, but the game itself is not an RPG. It's an economic, world building, resource gathering game that requires currency, with no NPC's. 100% player driven. It will work just fine, but it means that currency must just be in the game from the start and is a zero sum game, with rare injections from the "government".

For the sake of the integrity of the game I can't see another solution other than limiting one account per credit card. That won't completely stop this cheating but it should limit it enough where a cheater couldn't affect the game that much.

With my bank, I have the option to generate as many temporary credit cards as I wish, so your solution would not work.

I think you should think of some in-game solution, such as not allowing new players to trade for x amount of days, or limit how much they can trade.

With my bank, I have the option to generate as many temporary credit cards as I wish, so your solution would not work.

Wow really? Why would they allow that?

OK, back to the drawing board to figure out a way to do this in game.

With my bank, I have the option to generate as many temporary credit cards as I wish, so your solution would not work.

Wow really? Why would they allow that?

OK, back to the drawing board to figure out a way to do this in game.

For secure online purchases. A lot of people are reluctant to give their credit card number to certain websites, so they allow you to make a temporary credit card for each purchase basically.

Two ideas (apart from the obvious "don't give out free gold at all") come to mind:

• Money. If someone buys 5 accounts, he "kind of" deserves having 5x the start gold, too. Don't give out gold without receiving real money (that is, no gold on "free trial" accounts). Nobody will buy 2,000 accounts, so this is somewhat self-limiting (but even if people do that, you can be very happy!). Alternatively, do not let "free" accounts trade with "subscribers". If I remember correctly, that is what LOTRO had in its early days.
  
• Time. Set some time or level limit on "character maturity". Do not let characters trade money with others until they are "mature" (say, existed for 1 month, or have level 10).

But no, all in all, you can't stop people from doing such a thing.

Limiting 1 account to 1 user is the holy grail of PBBGs (persistant browser based games) developers. Unfortunately, a fully satisfactory way to do this was never found. Nowadays, developers try to design their games to work with multiple accounts.

In the old days, it is common for PBBGs to impose a "no multi" rule. They would try to catch "multis" - users with multiple accounts. This might be done through a "1 account per ip address" rule or painstakingly analyzing user behaviors. People are still able to get away with multi-ing despite these measures. In your case, you still cannot stop people from creating accounts from different computers. I can make one at home, one at my workplace...which happens to be an university, so I can make one in the library too. Or homes with multiple computers can use multiple IP addresses to multi.

One solution I can think of in your case is :

- Start players with $0.

- Make them do some work for their starting capital.

- This work is avaliable forever.

- The returns from doing this work is far below all other activities.

The last point ensures that once they obtain enough starting capital, their time is better spent doing other things. Under this system, whatever they can do with new multi accounts can be done on their main account anyway, but their main account have access to even more profitable ventures.

In the old days, it is common for PBBGs to impose a "no multi" rule. They would try to catch "multis" - users with multiple accounts. This might be done through a "1 account per ip address" rule or painstakingly analyzing user behaviors. People are still able to get away with multi-ing despite these measures.

Add to that the fact that people in many situations and/or locations (family members, dormitories at university, some entire towns in Asia, ...) will share the same externally observable IP due to NAT. Therefore, not only do you not catch people breaking the rules, you also have a high false positive rate on entirely legitimate and honest players.

With my bank, I have the option to generate as many temporary credit cards as I wish, so your solution would not work.

Wow really? Why would they allow that?

OK, back to the drawing board to figure out a way to do this in game.

For secure online purchases. A lot of people are reluctant to give their credit card number to certain websites, so they allow you to make a temporary credit card for each purchase basically.

Allthough wouldn't your name and address be tied to the cards anyway(Last time i checked my billing address is tied to all my physical and virtual creditcards), so it should still be possible to tie the purchases to the individual.