I am curious if there has been a change in the policy against using fake players to achieve higher gametracker rankings?

Last I checked this was not allowed. However, merlin aka guardian (and other aliases) has been using large numbers of fake players on his server (Merlins world of camelot, a MOHAA server) for quite some time. This has been done in an automated fashion, randomly selecting names from a list and loading up the slots at odd times in order to increase gametracker rank. Some of the names are random, but most often those names are valid player names - who at the time are actively playing on other servers or not actually present at all. I (and others) have verified this by talking to many of the players in question. After a random number of hours, the fake players are scaled back to just a handfull (usually 4 to 6), but then all of a sudden a few hours later it goes to 10 or 15 fakes.

Not only have I reported this (more than once) over a year, but at least a half dozen other people have noticed it and reported it as well (using the established 'report abuse' button procedure).

This has been going on for a year or more and I have said nothing publicly. But at this point I'm posting publicly in hopes that perhaps there is something wrong with the report abuse button, or that the email address it is going to is unmonitored or some similar problem.

While I honestly don't particularly care about merlin's abuse specifically, I'm more concerned that given the number of people publicly talking about merlins abuse (on other forums, including x-null.net) that the gametracker ranking system will soon be no longer effective or useful. If abuse of this magnitude gets by, I think the community is justified in raising concern. Thoughts?

We have not changed the deranking guidelines at all in the past few years. Pretty much every abuse report is reviewed within 24 hours, including yours. If a server does not have more than 3 fake players or meets some other condition, then we have no justifiable reason to do any action.

I've reconfirmed nothing will be done about your report since it doesn't meet the publicly stated guidelines to do anything. If that changes, feel free to re-report it. Thank you!