Terms & Conditions of Play

TERMS & CONDITIONS
Age of the Throne is presented on an as-is basis. Usage of Age of the Throne indicates acceptance of this, and any risk that may imply.

Age of the Throne is Copyright © 1998-2004 AOTT Inc.

In the event of a service interruption, AOTT Inc is only obligated to make a reasonable attempt to return service as quickly as possible in so far as the interruption is related to the product itself.

Age of the Throne is a work in progress, constantly changing to meet the needs of its patrons. As such, AOTT Inc reserves the right to change any aspect of the game without prior warning and is not responsible for any losses to characters as a result of any such actions. AOTT Inc also reserves the right to remove or delete any character from the game at any time.

SYSTEM AVAILABILITY
AOTT Inc cannot be held liable for lack of system availability or any other malfunction or error. AOTT Inc charges for access to the game, and for certain supplementary services (see CHARGING below).

AOTT Inc will endeavour to provide a 24 * 7 service to Age of the Throne through the internet. Providing that Age of the Throne is running and accepting connections this obligation will be deemed to have been met as any other problems connecting to Age of the Throne are most likely to lie within the interconnections between you and Age of the Throne which are outside of our control.

If Age of the Throne is unavailable for more than 8 (eight) hours, due to system failure, maintenance or otherwise, where the server is not allowing 'normal' connections to the game, or is specifically disallowing connections to 'normal' users for maintenance, you will not be charged for that days play. This may be given in the form of either complimentary day credits, or a day of uncharged play for all. Our liability under this statement is for at the most one day credit per8 hours unavailablity within a single chargable period (see CHARGING below) for a definition).

ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOUR
Age of the Throne is designed for the enjoyment of everyone, and as a general rule, any behaviour which is specifically targetted to lessen that enjoyment for another player may be in violation of Age of the Throne policy. This section explains the types of situation which are considered to be abusive behaviour. At the discretion of Game Managers or AOTT Inc, offenders may be reprimanded, lose the ability to perform their abusive behaviour again, either temporarily or permanently, or be locked-out of the game until such time as a descision is reached on the futher involvement within Age of the Throne.

Roleplaying: Age of the Throne is known as a "Roleplaying Game", which means that it is asusmed that the player will present their character in a manner that is consistent with a 17th Century Parisian environment. This type of play is termed "in character" (IC), and means that the player is acting the part in a believable manner. The term "out of character" means that the player is behaving in a manner which would be inconsistent with his or her character's situation within the game.
Generally, it is up to the player to decide how much he or she wants to remain in character whilst playing Age of the Throne. However, there can exist situation where being blatantly out of character can be considered abusive behaviour: for example, a character who insists on remaining out-of-character, even when associating with a group of other players who are trying to remain in-character. When one individual is reducing the enjoyment of others by out-of-character behaviour (be it by speech, actions, shouting, or any other method of communicating within Age of the Throne), this may be considered as disruptive behaviour. Judgement of what is and is not is entirely at the discretion of AOTT Inc and its Game Managers.
Promotion of Competing products: Casual discussion is a part of the game. Age of the Throne must not be used, however, as a venue for the promotion of competing products or services. Individuals who actively promote other competing products or services within Age of the Throne may suffer the serverest of punishements.
Character Names: Please remember that Age of the Throne is a product designed to be enjoyed by people of all ages, and harsh or foul language is clearly inappropriate. This also applies to the names chosen for your character. Obscene names, or names inappropriate to the period (17th Century France), will not be tolerated and may result in a character being asked to choose another name.
Bug Abuse: Attempts to gain an unfair advantage as judged by AOTT Inc or those Game Managers with the ability to discern what is an unusual response are a violation of policy. Types of abuse range from sending special characters or signals to the software to obtain an unusual result, to using normal game mechanics in ways that they are clearly not intended.
Abusing bugs disrupts the balance of Age of the Throne and reduces its effectiveness to remain an entertaining product. Sometimes, there will be a great temptation to abuse a bug for personal gain because the negative effect is not readily apparent. However, it should be understood that the consequences of allowing bugs and loopholes to be exploited is detrimental to the product, and that AOTT Inc will exercise no tolerance whatsoever for anyone participating in this type of activity.
Bugs should always be reported by using the BUG command. If you observe someone else abusing a serious bug, or discussing a plan to abuse one, and fail to report it, you are subject to the same penalties as they are. Exceptionally serious bugs should be reported by email to aott-support@aott.com
Rewards obtained from bug abuse may be confiscated, or a penalty applied to the characters or statistics involved (eg a bug involving the gain of social points faster than normal may result in a penalty of the character losing several social levels). Failure to cooperate with AOTT Inc as to the extent or nature of a bug, or failure to be honest about the rewards obtained from bug abuse, is grounds for immediate lock-out from Age of the Throne.
Multi-playing: Unless you have explicit permission from a Game Manager or AOTT Inc, you may not have more than one character logged in at the same time from the same computer and, or, IP address. Characters logged in from the same IP address or be on the same account may not be able to interact with each other to the same extent as they may be able to interact with other players.
Second-Characters: Users may have more than one character that they wish to play or maintain; they may do so long as the characters interact with each other within an in-character situation (for example, if the second character performs quests and holds jobs to gain favours or money for the sole purpose of advancing the primary character, this is a violation of this rule). Under no circumstances should a second character be logged in when the primary character is.

LOST ITEMS/POINTS
Should it appear that yuor character is missing some points, or that something about your character or its inventory has changed unexpectedly, you may inform us by using the internal MSG system or contacting one of the Game Managers online. AOTT Inc will attempt to investigate the problem, and may, at its sole discretion, authorize adjustments to your score or inventory. Game Managers are empowered to make many on the spot decisions about replacements, but some situations will require approval from AOTT Inc management.

Some missing items are caused by normal means, such as a weapon which is broken in combat, livres lost to a pickpocket, or a mis-typed instruction to the game. For example, if you were to type PUT SWORD IN SACK this may normally place the sword into your own sack, but if there were to be a sack on the ground (perhaps left by another player) your sword might go into this sack, and when you reached for it later, you might think it had just 'disappeared'. In any case where an item is lost or damaged through this type of normal game mechanics, repair or replacement cannot be authorized.

YOUR CHARACTER
Characters are non transferable and you should not under any circumstances divulge your characters password to any other player. If someone other than the registered holder of a character is found to be playing it, all characters involved may either be suspended or deleted, at the option of AOTT Inc management.

GAME MANAGEMENT
AOTT Inc is under no obligation to provide a character within Age of the Throne to represent it. If you wish to contact AOTT Inc, you should use the relevant email address - see the contacts page for the relevant addresses.

Game Managers: AOTT Inc may utilise Game Managers within Age of the Throne to look after the environment for players. They may or may not identify themselves to users.
Royalty: Within Age of the Throne, some characters are known as Royalty; these may either be Game Managers or other characters that AOTT Inc has decided may administer the in-character environment; that is, they may have powers unavailable to other characters or be 'outside' of the normal gameplay environment. In any event, all Royalty will be able to contact a Game Manager should they need to.
Player Support: From time to time, certain players may be designated as 'for player support' - these are announced when one logs in (if they are online), shown through the STATUS command, as well as being in yellow if ANSI Colour is used. These characters will be able to give additional assistance to users and may be game managers. They are under no obligation to disclose information that players should not have access to however.

CHARGES
Age of the Throne is a pay-to-play game. New characters are granted a specific number of minutes (currently 10 hours) of free, no-obligation access to the game. If after, or during, this time you do not wish to continue playing, simply cease. Characters that are unsubscribed and within their free minute allocation may be subject to deletion after a few days of inactivity.

Users who wish to continue beyond their free trial may subscribe to Age of the Throne by sending money at rates shown by the CHARGES command within the game environment by cheque, money-order or PayPal payment.
Users may see the record of financial transactions on their accounts by typing STATEMENT.
During a period of free-play, commands relating to charged access or payment may be non-functional.
A purchase of day credits via verified PayPal transaction through the Age of the Throne website to access the game will instantly be credited within an hour to a characters accout. These will be decremented by 1 for every charging period that passes.
AOTT Inc will endeavour to process all other transactions within seven days of the charge levied on the account. From time to time, this may not be possible and they will be charged as, and when, they can be. In these circumstances, the sum of outstanding transactions on an account may be charged in one single amount.

Charging Period: Age of the Throne runs within the same timezone as London, United Kingdom. A charging period runs from 00:01 to 00:00 (24 hours). At midnight, UK time, all day credits are decremented by 1.
Free Play: At the discretion of AOTT Inc, a period of free-play may be declared. This may take the form of a limited amount of uncharged play, where characters with no credits or minute credits only can play with no charge. If the free-play period begins at midnight, or is in effect, the charging period will be extended by twenty four hours.
If a period of free-play is used to credit characters for loss of service, the freeplay will last from 23:59 to 00:01 unless otherwise specified, causing the charging period to be extended by 24 hours. Multiple free-plays may be declared in this day at the managements discretion.
Other Payment Methods: AOTT Inc may accept other methods of payment, such as cheques, for day credits to access the game. These will only be credited upon arrival. At its discretion, these payments may be used to pay for other, supplemental services that may otherwise be purchased through the SUBSCRIBE mechanism within the game. Unless stated however, this will not be the case.
Probationary Periods: Due to failure of a payment to be authorised, or a cheque being returned unpaid, a character may be placed upon a probationary period. Unless the payment problem with your account is resolved by the end of the period, you will automatically be locked out of the game. Probationary periods are decremented at midnight irrespective of a state of free-play. When the probationary period reaches 0 days left, you will be unable to play (though you can still login to the game - to enter new card details, or discuss the situation with a Game Manager)
Suspension: Serious problems with payment, such as fraudulent credit-card usage may result in the immediate suspension of an account, or all accounts used by the same user. The character will not be able to play again until the suspension is resolved in a method indicated by AOTT Inc's management
Supplementary Services: AOTT Inc may offer the opportunity to pay for additional, supplementary services within the game in order that you may advance your character. If they are available, they are not needed to advance normally, and in no way hinder normal progression through the game, they may, however, speed it up.
Payments for Others: From time to time, AOTT Inc may allow characters to subscribe for, or on behalf of, other characters through the SUBSCRIBE command. Users wishing to use the service understand that if the character they are paying for owes money to AOTT Inc, the balance of the account will be charged for them. (example: User B owes payment on 30 day credits. User A pays for User B's account. User A will be charged for 60 day credits (30 to clear the debt, 30 to purchase the subscription amount). If this is explicitly against the person paying for the accounts wishes, they need to contact AOTT Inc as soon as possible to rectify the situation. It may not be possible to fix, however.
Failure to Pay for Others: Should, for some reason, your payment for another character fail to go through, either or both of the characters may be suspended or placed on a probationary period until the matter is settled.
Alts: From time to time, AOTT Inc may allow a second character of one player to be declared an alt of another primary character. This character will be able to play so long as the primary character remains in day-credit and is otherwise able to play. Alts of this nature will not be able to play if their primary character is either suspended or under any form of probationary period.
Refunds: AOTT Inc is under no obligation to make a refund except in the case of an error occouring during the processing of transactions recorded within the system.

CHANGES TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS
AOTT Inc reserves the right to amend these terms and conditions at any time, without notice to players or users of the system with the following exception:
Any change in the availablity of the service, or a change in the 'standard' subscription rate will be announced with at least the current minimum subscription period as notice. Accounts paid in advance may request a refund of their balance if they do not intend to continue playing after the change takes effect. The number of day-credits on an account will NOT be altered due to a change in price (that is to say, if you have purchased 100 day credits and the price changes after 50 have been used, you will still have 50 on your account before the price change will affect you).