Cheating the poll?

[Syn]

Ok, you have got to be kidding me. How is it that Horizons kills all the other games in ONE night? This has happened with polls on other sites, its just one night that they magically pull in 500 votes out of nowhere. Then once they are ahead it goes back to normal votes per day. Am I bitter about cheating? Yes, I am, don't try to prove something your not. It's not just me either, several people Ive talked to that looked at the poll think something is up. Do I smell the misuse of a proxy? If your going to respond with "horizons is just the best game ever they aren't cheating" please don't bother posting.

I am not going to say there is absolutely no way that someone could be cheating, but the fact is it would be difficult to, at least the way the poll works now. TheDeacon has scripted it to log all IP addresses, as well as other multi-vote countermeasures.

Looking at my server stats, there are *hundreds* of clickthroughs from Horizons sites, especially the Horizons Vault (horizonsvault.ign.com). Each clickthrough pretty much represents a unique individual, thus a unique vote. Considering that this poll has been posted on a slew of fan sites, from Neocron to Atriarch to Horizons, and has a total of ~1300 votes (at this time), I'd wager that the poll is accurate and cheating is virtually nonexistant. Hell, news of the poll was even posted on Reakktor's site (the creators of Neocron).

However, a majority of the votes have come from people who are awaiting Horizons, thus the poll is in their favor. If news of the poll hit the Shadowbane or Anarchy Online fan sites, I'd bet you'd see the tides change a bit.

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Buck Satan
GameBanshee
Make Your Gaming Scream!