Here's another stinkin bug for ya And possibly a Feature Request if you want to move it over...
When my server is locked=true, it is still showing up Green [bug] on the server list (TessEQ2Dev - new dev server). Creating my new Snark, I had selected my own server to join, but due to the fact I am a new char, my status is 0, so I could not bypass the lock. However, the char was inserted into my DB anyway. <-- [bug], or feature?
I had to go to his character record and edit the admin_status of that character to allow him to bypass the lock. I strongly feel this type of security needs to be managed easier, on an Account level - not character. I understand how the EQ2 client works in relation to the LoginServer, but we should be able to do something where I can have a local "account" table with an accountID, accountName, and adminStatus fields which - once I set them locally - get read by the LoginServer when a player is attempting to authenticate.
This would allow a few nice options;
- admins could have a web interface that injects Account info directly into their local account table, with a pre-defined admin_status.
- without intervention, that 'account' can then create as many characters as they like, without needing to be spoon-fed an admin_status individually between each account creation - which is a BIG SNORE.
Mind you, this is all about LOCKED servers - not open ones, though both could benefit I suppose.
On the good side, the server did show up as <LOCKED> once I set the character status, then relaunched the client. But that just seems like an awful lot of work. Can we plan to revisit this concept down the road? I know we have a ways go to before we're "playable", but I am a cart-before-the-horse kinda guy, and if I start bitching about this now, maybe in 6 mos we'll have something worked out. =)
I'd offer to help, but I do not have access to make changes to the LoginServer to receive account/char update data from individual servers periodically.

Well the reason why a character is created even when locked is to allow you to flag it. Otherwise, you would have to unlock your server every time you created a character, flag it and then re-lock it. If you create a schema for local accounts I can change the emu to change the default status for any accounts in the table when they are created.

Will do. I can keep it simple for now, just id, name, status. We can always add more if we find more "global" needs.
Thanks man, you know how much I love to whine.

You will need to use account_id instead of name though. World doesn't use the account name by design, it makes accounts much harder to hack. If names were sent instead of ids, malicious server admins would know one half of the user/password combination for anyone that created an account on their server. Eventually when I get around to it, I will add a webpage that will let people edit their account information and it will display the id there. Until then they will have to create a character on their server to get their id.
Btw, one additional thing I can do with login is make the server red on character creation if the server is locked. That should prevent most casual users from creating accounts there.

Moving this to Feature Requests, to remind myself to create a local accounts table for LE, and to revisit this option after beta for better control of accounts and statuses at the server-side.