Account Registration

[Autumnwolf17]

I have recently been looking at the account registration process on the main site, and there are a lot of problems and improvements that could be made to it.

WWCHNT1.png (88.46 KiB) Viewed 3841 times

As you can see, I'm just registering as TestUserWolf, which is a thus unreserved account name, at least on this site, as you can have multiple accounts with the same name as long as you put them on different sites (thus, as I am Autumnwolf17 on ArmorGames, up until yesterday, anyone at all could have signed up with my username on vortexwars.com or any other site that hosts the game). Not that it's a bug, but I think it would be really nice if you could find a way to reserve someone's username for them only across all sites.

The email part is the first problem; it goes ahead and makes itself completely pointless. Giving the site your email has no actual use, it doesn't allow you to recover your account should you forget the password and can't be used as a substitute for your username. More importantly, it doesn't have any sort of verification whatsoever. Essentially, I can use anybody's email at all, and it will naively assume that I am 100% that person. If the person who actually owns that email goes to register, their email will have already be taken.

However, having your email taken isn't really a problem, because you can actually enter anything, anything at all, as long as it looks like an email and hasn't been taken yet. To demonstrate, I decided to say I am "TestUserWolf@Vortexwars.net". Not only have I never, ever registered that email, but there isn't even a Vortexwars.net in the first place, so the email does not and probably will never exist. The verification just sees the "@" and ".com", ".org", ".net", or pretty much anything else that might come at the end of a normal website address.

WWCHNT2.png (88.71 KiB) Viewed 3841 times

As for the two password boxes, those are probably the worst. My complaint is with the "repeat password", which, like the email section, doesn't do anything close to what I imagine it's supposed to do. On pretty much every site I've been to, that's where you rewrite your password and the system tells you whether or not you've successfully put the same thing in both boxes, which is really convenient because as humans we sometimes miss a letter or something the first time around, and the confirmation serves to fix the problem. On Vortexwars, it's literally just a box where you can type whatever you like and it will appear as a series of asterisks which have no noticeable effect on the success of the registration at all.

In the screenshot, I have carefully typed a simple seven symbol password into the first box, and in the second box I have done my best to recreate it by rubbing my hand across the keyboard a few times with my eyes closed. Clearly, these are not the same password, and yet as soon as I hit the big submission button, it creates the new account anyway. And whatever I put in the password box is my new permanent password (I can't change it either, which would be a rather lovely feature too). It actually isn't even a required field, apparently, since I was also able to get through with it blank.

WWCHNT3.png (49.8 KiB) Viewed 3841 times

And there's my new account.

[Fangfallen]

I knew that you didn't need a real email, but I didn't realize how flawed the password making process was lol.

[Lopdo]

I did not know about repeat password problem, I thought there is a check.
The email is used when you forget your password, that should work as some people already successfully used it. I can't check if the email exists without sending email to that address and waiting for reply, nobody can do that, so all I do (what everybody does) is check if the format is ok

[Fangfallen]

From now on in order for people to successfully register they must send Lopdo a postcard with 20 USD

[calleharnemark]

I had no idea. But i noticed there had been a calleharnemark on the vortexwars site Lopdo removed who copied me... Sorry for that grammar.... I have also noticed the newsletter function never gave me any updates to my email when there was updates.
Another thing. You could link the game account and forum account somehow. These two unlinke other forums/games has nothing to do with each other...

[Quack]

I have recently been looking at the account registration process on the main site, and there are a lot of problems and improvements that could be made to it.

WWCHNT1.png

As you can see, I'm just registering as TestUserWolf, which is a thus unreserved account name, at least on this site, as you can have multiple accounts with the same name as long as you put them on different sites (thus, as I am Autumnwolf17 on ArmorGames, up until yesterday, anyone at all could have signed up with my username on vortexwars.com or any other site that hosts the game). Not that it's a bug, but I think it would be really nice if you could find a way to reserve someone's username for them only across all sites.

The email part is the first problem; it goes ahead and makes itself completely pointless. Giving the site your email has no actual use, it doesn't allow you to recover your account should you forget the password and can't be used as a substitute for your username. More importantly, it doesn't have any sort of verification whatsoever. Essentially, I can use anybody's email at all, and it will naively assume that I am 100% that person. If the person who actually owns that email goes to register, their email will have already be taken.

However, having your email taken isn't really a problem, because you can actually enter anything, anything at all, as long as it looks like an email and hasn't been taken yet. To demonstrate, I decided to say I am "TestUserWolf@Vortexwars.net". Not only have I never, ever registered that email, but there isn't even a Vortexwars.net in the first place, so the email does not and probably will never exist. The verification just sees the "@" and ".com", ".org", ".net", or pretty much anything else that might come at the end of a normal website address.

WWCHNT2.png

As for the two password boxes, those are probably the worst. My complaint is with the "repeat password", which, like the email section, doesn't do anything close to what I imagine it's supposed to do. On pretty much every site I've been to, that's where you rewrite your password and the system tells you whether or not you've successfully put the same thing in both boxes, which is really convenient because as humans we sometimes miss a letter or something the first time around, and the confirmation serves to fix the problem. On Vortexwars, it's literally just a box where you can type whatever you like and it will appear as a series of asterisks which have no noticeable effect on the success of the registration at all.

In the screenshot, I have carefully typed a simple seven symbol password into the first box, and in the second box I have done my best to recreate it by rubbing my hand across the keyboard a few times with my eyes closed. Clearly, these are not the same password, and yet as soon as I hit the big submission button, it creates the new account anyway. And whatever I put in the password box is my new permanent password (I can't change it either, which would be a rather lovely feature too). It actually isn't even a required field, apparently, since I was also able to get through with it blank.

WWCHNT3.png

And there's my new account.

You have far too much free time.

[>(FM)<]

Lol I made the "TestUser" account LOL
Hehe, i think it's funny