Rule Interpretation

Our admins' decisions as to the interpretation of our rules are always final. We respect that your interpretation may differ and you are entitled to your opinion which you may state politely. However, we will not be drawn into arguments and to continue to disobey admins instructions to you, even if you disagree with their position, will result in you being banned from our servers.

Our admins will read what you type and consider it but do not usually have time to discuss. Continuing to complain about some behaviour or action or disciplinary action is disruptive to other players and admins and will be disciplined as appropriate. We pick and train our admins very carefully and they are possibly the most highly regarded in the gaming community. As a result, they do not abuse their powers and are often tested by other admins in disguise to ensure that our policies are properly enforced. Please also note that an admin has to witness a behaviour first hand so although it may appear that we are not paying attention to you being lamed, it might be that the admin is first speccing another player or waiting for the offender to repeat their offense.

Message of the Day

The number of lines in a message of the day (MOTD) house rules list that you see when you connect to one of our servers is limited. As a consequence, they are only meant as a guide and the full rules are stated here. Arguing with an admin that a rule is not present in a MOTD and therefore you can break it is not accepted if an admin has explained a rule to you or directed you to this page.

All of our rules (such as language or hacking rules) are consistent from server to server except for just our laming rules, which we relax on Siege and CTF servers and for clan matches or practices. In such instances, where our attacking unarmed/chatters rules are relaxed, the MOTD will always reflect that so please read it carefully.

Please also note that saying you don't know a rule when it's in the MOTD is not acceptable as an excuse. You will usually be treated as if you did know the rule and deliberately broke it. Everyone connecting to our servers gets to see the MOTD for five to seven seconds at the start of every map or when they join to play so there are no excuses! If you don't read it then that is your responsibility! If you'd like a reminder of the rules then at any time you can enter !rules in to your chat box to bring them up again. This will not affect other players.

Avoidance of Admin

If you have been slept, (we sleep newer players to get attention and be able to talk to them,) punished or silenced for an infraction of the rules and deliberately disconnect and reconnect to avoid the disciplinary action then you will be banned. Similarly if you have been kicked and immediately reconnect and continue to be kicked off the server several times so that it is obvious to you that the admin doesn't want you to come back today but you still persist in fighting the admin's decision then you will be banned.

Bans

If you share your IP address or PC with another player and that other player is banned then you will be too. We cannot and will not lift bans for a player who has let someone else use their PC when that someone else has misbehaved. First of all, we have no proof that this wasn't you and this is a common excuse. Secondly, if at an Internet cafe for example or a relation, we do not want that other player returning to our server. With members or potential members the situation is even more serious since non-members can use your tags and misrepresent NT members to the rest of the community or use our members passwords or authentication protocols. Therefore, please make sure if letting a friend play on your PC that you supervise them and make sure that they understand our rules when playing on our server.

If you are banned from an NT server then that ban is usually permanent. We ban as a last resort after (where appropriate) giving warnings, sleeping/silencing and kicking you off the server as the final ultimate warning. Note that serious infractions such as hacking or racist comments do result in instant bans without warning. Requests to have bans lifted are usually deleted without consideration or response since time and time again we have spent many hours (days in total) investigating logs only to be proven right over and over again.

If the player is a regular visitor who is known for their good behaviour by some NT and the ban sounds inconsistent, we may check that we haven't inadvertently banned the wrong player by mistake but such exceptions are extremely rare (only two or three cases per year.) Please note that if we do investigate a regular player at their insistence and the ban is proven to be justified, we will extend that ban to all of our servers and forum, not just the one the player was banned on, since investigations are very time consuming.

Occassionally we may also ban without warning for what may appear to be a more minor infraction. This will be because you are either part of a party or clan visiting us as a group in order to disrupt play or you were actually previously warning for similar behaviour by the same or another admin in the last week or so. Our founders also reserve the right to instantly ban anyone they perceive may be a possible risk to the servers security or stability.

If you've only been banned on one of our servers and can still play on others, exemplary behaviour for at least a month on another of our servers as a regular guest may result in the original ban being lifted by the admin imposing the ban but this is totally at that admins option. We never lift bans for serious infractions however such as hate language or hacking under any circumstances.

Please note that frequent pestering for a ban to be lifted will result in your removal from our forums.

Hacking or Cheating

Guests using multi-move binds assigned to a single key such as that used to do an entire DFA or rotate 180 degrees at high speed will be asked to desist and will be banned if refusing to do so. Members doing so will of course be instantly be banned.

Guests bug abusing in battle (such as emoting to avoid damage or gripping while sitting) will be asked to desist and will be kicked then banned if refusing to do so. Members doing so will of course be instantly be banned.

Players attempting to hack to gain admin rights or passwords et cetera will instantly be banned and reported to their ISPs and the appropriate law enforcement authorities. Anyone using such hacks to disrupt service or play of any individual on our servers may result in an additional civil suit being filed by us or our hosting provider. Hacks include but are not limited to attempted use of exploits and social engineering through such means as impersonation. As such anyone attempting to impersonate an admin or NT member or use NT tags without them being granted by the clan will be banned from our servers.

NT has taken the lead in developing anti exploit/hacking tools for the JK community such as Temple Guardian and we allow limited testing of exploits by hand-picked individuals helping us prove our tools. This only occurs on a closed, passworded development server and not on our public servers.

Recruiting or Advertising

Active recruiting or advertising is not allowed on our servers by other clans. This includes advertising servers, URLs, email addresses, chat ids or fact that you are recruiting in public chat or approaching individuals in private chat in a similar manner. If you wish to recruit or advertise, please pay for your own server and do it there instead of leaching off of servers that we are paying for. We'll be happy to help you set up your own server or advise you on it's configuration.

If a player approaches you without being prompted on our servers and asks to join your clan then you may respond to that player in private chat and give them your URL/email privately but this is the only exception we make.

Disruptive Chat Behaviour

Constantly annoying players by asking for admin rights, who is admin, (our policy is not to say so we can more easily monitor for hackers or lamers,) or to be sponsored for membership, et cetera is not tolerated.

We also don't allow trackers such as kill trackers or MP3 players that place junk messages in open chat as that is similarly annoying to our guests. If you have one of these, learn how to turn it off. Often a !ktoff command works. There are also alternatives that don't echo to general chat.

Likewise flooding the same or similar messages repeatedly is unnacceptable behaviour as is constantly suiciding.

You will usually be asked to stop then silenced but repetative behaviour of this kind after warnings may result in kicks and eventually a ban.

Disruptive Competetive Behaviour

Deliberately suiciding to lower your team's score in TFFA (unless because you are falling to your death and you want to get back in the game faster) will result in an immediate ban for deliberately spoiling everyone else's competition.

Deliberately opening doors in Siege for the opposition or deliberating keeping a Siege component or flag from your own team will likewise result in an immediate ban for deliberately spoiling everyone else's competition.

Deliberately knocking a team-mate to their death (such as off a defending wall in Siege using heavy weapons.) This will result in a ban or warning at the admins discretion.

In FFA or Duel mode, deliberately suiciding to deny an opponent a kill will result in disciplinary action by the admin that may include a ban for repetative behaviour, unless you are suiciding as someone is laming you per our definition on this page.

Interfering with duels on a FFA server with dueling enabled where the parties dueling have used the built-in accept a challenge feature of JK2/JA. You can spot duelists as they have a glow about them and we do not allow empowerment on our servers. Interference includes but is not limited to deliberately getting in the way of a match (unless the duelists chose to fight in the middle of an existing melee area) or suiciding in front of them frequently. Admins will usually sleep you for a first infraction and explain unless you are an experienced player in which case you may be kicked or punished then eventually banned for repetetive offenses.

We view Siege shield and elevator spamming and tech suiciding as a valid tactic since it is purposely built in to the Siege game type and is not a bug or oversight by Raven. We therefore allow this on our public servers although we often negotiate with other clans on not doing this if they prefer to play without these features in competitions. Please do not insult people using these tactics by calling them lamers since they are not laming and that is insulting per our rules on language.

Lightning or grip "whoring" is always a valid tactic and to nerf this removes a lot of balance from team play. Please do not insult people using these tactics by calling them lamers since they are not laming and that is insulting per our rules on language. If you think someone is using push/pull/grip/lightning too much then try to learn the light side absorb power instead of complaining. If someone is always spamming one move in competition with you and it is working, it's time for you to learn how to best counter it instead of complaining. You have plenty of tools at your disposal and any NT present can suggest good counters if asked.

Language

No swearing, insulting or offensive language is allowed on our servers. Extreme language such as racist or sexual orientation hate language (nigger, fag, etc.) will result in an instant ban without warning.

We appreciate that a lot of other servers sadly don't have language rules or they are not enforced properly so we often cut a little slack when someone comes to our servers and uses innapropriate language at first by warning them or silencing them or kicking them (providing the language isn't extreme as in the above examples.) Only if the person ignores these warnings and deliberately continues do we eventually ban them.

Please note that acronyms such as WTF are acronyms that contain swearing and are treated as such. Even if you intended something else by the acronym, if the common interpretation includes swearing (such as FU) then we will always treat it as such.

Insulting includes calling someone a noob or saying they are stupid. It might be your opinion but there are nicer ways of expressing yourself and there is really no need to insult. You can say you politely disagree with their viewpoint rather than saying "you're stupid".

If you think someone is cheating then don't call them a cheat as you may unjustifiably be insulting them when in fact they are using a valid move that you don't know. (Did you know there is a super kick move in JK2 that looks like a single full frontal kick that does 100 health damage if perfectly timed?) Instead, use \amsay to report to an admin or page an admin with full details.

Offensive language may include comments like OMG, which can be offensive to a large portion of the world's population of a particular religeon (taking gods name in vain.) Remember that it isn't just swearing that is offensive. Please keep other cultures, religeons and backgrounds in mind when playing on our servers since we have literally a world-wide community of regulars. NT neither encourages or discourages various religeons or viewpoints. We are merely looking to provide an innoffensive experience to all.

Remember that unlike spoken language, typed language never "just slips out" but is deliberate so we never accept "it just slipped out" as an excuse. When you use innapropriate language on our servers, you always make a conscious decision to do so. Everyone can behave nicely in a church or at a job interview. Our purpose is not to take away the fun. Polite smack talk and gossip is enjoyable and can be very humourous. We are just insisting on an environment suitable for all ages and backgrounds and a friendly, helpful atmosphere on our servers.

Many players come to our servers because they know we enforce these rules on language, attitude and behaviour and they enjoy being here. If you want to use innapropriate language, there are many other servers out there where anything goes.

Laming

Our laming rules are designed to protect people wanting to chat and socialise (being close so one can easily privately chat) or wait their turn to duel someone and to protect people from advancing their score unfairly. We are not "role players" and if any of our members are interested in that, they can go and play Star Wars Galaxies or a RPG.

If you don't agree with the idea of having an anti-laming policy then please play elsewhere. There are plenty of other servers to chose from that allow laming. These are our servers, our property and we only allow guests to visit/stay if they follow our policy on laming. Having an anti-lamer policy does not imply a lack of skill. Try dueling some of our regulars and members and you will easily see that skill is involved. It is merely a way to allow for more social interaction. This is something unique to the JK series and if you feel that an anti-lamer code spoils your game, do go play elsewhere as you are not entitled to do what you want on someone else's servers. Go pay for your own! :p Lamers who don't head this warning will be perceived as anti-social and inconsiderate low-lifes (although we'll be too polite to tell them that) and we'll be most happy to ban them from our servers.

Generally we sleep and explain for a first laming infraction then kick for the second as a final warning before banning for any addition lames (or other major infractions if the player is deemed a trouble maker.)

NT's definition of the term "lamer" is as follows:

"Someone who deliberately attacks a player without a lit saber or other weapon in their hands (either the attacker's or defender's hands) or attacks someone with a chat box/console above their heads unless the MOTD (Message of the Day) states otherwise.

Attack is defined as use of a weapon, feet or any force whatsoever on another player, including drain and team heal. Team healers must have their sabers lit before affecting another player.

Suddenly switching one's saber on a split second before attacking another player is also considered lame. Please allow several seconds before engaging."

The only exceptions to our view on laming are:

• Bots. If the player has a zero ping then he/she is a bot and may be killed any way you wish! It is your responsibility to check the ping. Excuses are not acceptable.
• If the opponents saber has been dropped while they are engaged in battle. You can spot this from the single outheld arm.
• For unavoidable accidents (say someone walks unarmed into a free-for-all melee or a mine placed before they draw near.) If the mode is FFA or TFFA and guns are enabled, note that you should not shoot at a distance unless you know the other player is properly armed and without a chat box. If you don't know, don't shoot.
• If someone engages you while they are unarmed or switches saber off to run away after engaging you. As long as you are still engaged (not when you next encounter them) then you may persue to finish the battle since the other player is trying to abuse the laming rules to avoid retribution. However, you yourself must be using a lit saber or weapon.
• In a clan vs. clan match or team practice (the MOTD should reflect this so pay attention.)
• In a game where points/wins are earnt not through kills but via achieving objectives, currently only CTF and Siege. As someone can off-saber to run up to a flag or wait at an objective, with a chat box up, it is impractical to apply our laming rules to these game types. The MOTD will reflect this so please pay attention.
• If an NT member has labelled themselves "practice target". Only the player(s) invited to practice may do so. Other players should not interfere.
• If an NT member has achieved their mastership ranking then we have a fun tradition where anyone is allowed to lame the newly made master for the first 24 hours of their mastership. We usually try to be creative with this such as asking a question and while the answer is being typed, sabering the new master. It's kind of an initiation rite and meant in good humour.
• If through a game bug you are joined at the hip to another player (usually when you stand on someone emoting) and can't escape then you may kick-fight each other unarmed for fun. If someone asks you to stop joining yourself to them in future then you must honour their wishes however as not everyone enjoys joined-at-the hip kickfights.
• If the server is in duel mode with others waiting their turn and your oponent is noticeably absent for more than 30 seconds, you may give them a 5-4-3-2-1 count down before killing them.

As a general rule of thumb when playing FFA or TFFA, if you don't wish to fight but are present to chat/socialise, (which is why we have a laming code in the first place,) then be in saber mode with your saber off and try to not stand in areas where melees tend to occur. Please note that your team needs you for TFFA so you may be asked by players or an admin to resume play to assist them (not the case for FFA). Failure to rejoin the game after being asked and being out of play to chat for more than five minutes can lead to you being kicked temporarily from the server or pushed to spectate to help the teams stay even.

If lamed by a person more than once, you can use \amsay to privately tell any admin present who is laming you (so the culprit isn't made aware that they are being investigated.) If the lamer is severely interfering in your or other players ability to have fun and no admin appears to be present (allow a few minutes for your amsay to be checked in to), you can try our page an admin feature on our web site.

The best course of action when being lamed is just to ignore the lamer so they get bored with laming you. If you respond verbally or fight back then you are inciting them to lame even more by proving that if they lame, they can force people to play their way in order to entertain them.

Persistent lamers please note that we do permamently ban on our servers and share our ban lists with other clans (although we don't use third party ban lists ourselves except for hackers from trusted sources.) We also keep notes and share with other admins so if you come on a few days after being warned for an infraction and start again, you may be instantly banned since you were already warned recently and are persisting in your behaviour. We do not lift bans for laming since our policy is consistent with the community's view in general.

Ground Kills

We always allow kick-down ground kills in melees. If you don't like being kicked down, you can learn how to avoid or counter it or can practice to be a better kicker than your opponents.

In duels unless one of the party has first asked for no ground kills before engaging then it is acceptable to do kick down ground kills. If at least one duelist doesn't want ground kills and stipulates this before any fighting occurs then the other must honour this request. Likewise, if a clan in a dueling competition with us makes this request as part of the rules set up for the competition then we will honour it.

Do not call people who kick down lamers or dishonourable since you are insulting them unfairly. Often they are performing a set move or kata such as a kick-down DFA and this involves some skill plus you can exercise skill avoiding the killing blow. Insulting kick-down players is unnacceptable per our language rules. Remember you could always ask them not to before dueling.

Saber Locks

We have saber locking switched off on our servers and therefore do not need any rules to deal with it. As a guide to guests going to other anti-laming servers, generally if someone is knocked down by losing a saber lock, since no skill is involved, one waits for the other player to recover before resuming battle. If the other player has not let you rise unhindered when you have lost a saber lock then you are free to attack them when they are on the receiving end next time. Additionally it is acceptable to use emotes (where possible) to quickly break a lock providing one does no damage to the other player.

Dueling Etiquette

Dueling Etiquette are not rules we enforce as admins on our servers but ones that you can apply yourself as a player by refusing to duel with the offending party again or breaking the duel as necessary unless they follow the universally accepted code of conduct. Feel free to politely educate a newer player. Our general rules still apply such as not attacking the unarmed so if a duelist switches off their saber or hits the chat box then intentional attacks at that point is considered laming and treated as such. The universally accepted code of conduct for a duel is as follows: