Quote Originally Posted by Penthea View Post
A pretty easy way to hinder shell fcs is to have a minimum member requirement.
Sorry, but I don't really see how that could work. Right now you need a minimum of 4 people to start a free company, although you can easily do that with just two accounts (one main person, one person on a separate account and 2 of their alts).

If the membership count ducks below 4 right now nothing happens, but then what could happen? People can leave FCs at anytime they want for any reason and a small FC would be very penalised if they get up to rank 6, get a house and... someone leaves so the FC goes up in smoke? No they're not going to do that... likewise I can't see they putting in a temporary timer where you have to get member count back up to X within so many days either. Can you imagine the FC shout spam we'd get?! (or people would just create alts/defeating point of it).

Talking of alts, as you're probably aware a standard account can have a total of 8 characters on the same server and with the temporary help of one other person and about 5 minutes of their time, you could add all alts to the same FC and have 8 people on the same account just like that.

Or it they made it so alts didn't count (making it more complicated for them so they probably won't) people would just "trade" alts with each other.

And if you raised the minimum above about 4 to get started you're just penalising actual small FCs, not the people you're trying to stop.