This has been discussed ad nauseam. There are threads for it, and there are discussions of it buried in other threads.
Some of the problems I've noticed:
Any centralized system means someone is at the center. That person can potentially ban at will from all servers(depending), or quietly remove bans, or finagle accounts, change accounts, disable accounts, etc. How about a server operator pisses off the master server operator and then has their account vanish? Is there any recourse? Now you need a whole jury type structure to handle such disputes. Wait, I'll run it. Crown me the king of tremulous!
First off I'd like to say that yes this discussion has popped up a few times but usually they're all slightly different from each other and as such have their own faults. Hopefully we can iron out any possible faults in this version of the idea though
I see what you're saying but couldn't someone modify the current master list server to prevent a server from showing up? Also I think the bans should remain on the game server. The master server would only provide identification details (these could include statistics, sign up name, clan, prior bans, etc) to the game server.
Different master servers for different versions? Buh Bye tremulous.
Ehhh... not quite sure what you mean here.
All servers are donations, essentially. If I run a server, why should I relinquish control of it to others from other servers (who will also be banning people)? Why should you trust me to not ban your friends from my server? (and ultimately from your server) Why should I trust that some centralized system is fairly handing out accounts and cannot be abused?
You're right and I don't think the idea of shared banning across all servers could work properly. People could just create one time servers and trick players into entering it and then banning them.
You can't stop me from setting up new accounts. Its open source software, you cannot run anything on my machine that I can't manipulate, much less manipulate the source code of, so thats out.
You cannot set up a system with enough integrity that doesn't also abuse my right to privacy. Want to see a bill to verify my address? Noone would do that, suggesting it is silly 
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It's mainly the inconvience factor. Currently it can take less then a minute (if you're good) to evade a ban. If you have to additionally sign up for another account and create a new email address then the time factor increases pretty rapidly. You'd have to remove some email hosts like mailinator and a few others which are similiar but I doubt you'd have to remove all free email addresses.
Restrict email addresses to something? Think of any combination of letters you can imagine and multiply it by the number of root domains. Now, make a list of which ones are allowed/disallowed. Make an exception for gmail or yahoo mail? Now its even more worthless but it still takes 47.8 hours to parse your domain list.
I'd only remove the popular mail hosts which are specifically designed to allow you to sign up to a site with no email address.
Ultimately, you can't make a system that doesn't centralize power away from the server operators in a way that is acceptable to the server operators. The closest thing I've seen is a web of trust idea, where servers can choose to share a system (or not). But telling all server operators that someone else will be deciding who can/cannot play on their server is just silly and would never work. A web of trust at lease allows friendly server operators to share bans/admins/whatever, but wouldn't require it.
I think you're right here. I'm not sure how you could share your bans among friendly server operators without using the master server (unless the servers connect directly to each other...). However if there was an option to upload bans to the master server it may work. This would allow other servers to select that they would accept all bans from server 111.111.111.111:9999 for example. However such an idea could easily spin out of control in regards to complexity.
What it really comes down to is: If banning me from one server doesn't ban me from all servers, and I can make a new account, what is all this work for?
It might be different in America but in Australia it's basically one server is full at one time. If you're banned from that server you don't have anywhere else to go. Again the main reason would be the convience factor. It's a lot more work to create a new email account and create a new account then it is to ban evade currently.
My last question, who's paying for all of this? You'd need strong keys so admins/master server operator couldn't take over accounts, centralized authentication, etc. How fucking big of a server/pipe do you expect someone else to donate so that you don't have to admin your own server? Sure, looking at keys is easy. How about looking at 1000 of them? Strong keys would be larger, more bandwidth. This game isn't exactly kept alive with donations to the site you know.
First off I'll admit I don't know much about cryptography. However why does it have to be anymore complicated then the current database for the forums. The passwords of the users are encrypted and they can't be decrypted by the site owners. Remember I'm not advocating that the password be sent to the game server just a temporary ID.
Alright, so this is pretty disjointed and not very eloquent. I jump around varying concepts of what such a master server would be without actually pointing out that every argument may be the result of a different concept of such a server. I may search for more later, when I'm awake and have more time. Just think of some of these as questions to ask yourself no matter what kind of master server you envision.
The main problem with such a master server idea is not technical ones. It is instead developer effort. It's a fairly large task and if nobody wants to code it then it won't get created. However this doesn't stop us from discussing the idea in case by chance a developer drops from the sky and notices this thread on his way down
On my TODO list for Tremfusion I am planning on adding individual player tracking to the master server, but it is completely optional. You will create an account on the website or ingame (haven't decided yet), and it will give you a private key that will allow you to authenticate to servers (kinda a replacement for GUIDs). Also I will add clan management directly into the game, so you can manage your clans on the website, and only the clan leader can allow people into clans, and the clan tag is protected from misuse.
Sounds like a good idea (similiar to what is being advocated in the thread as well). How do you plan on protecting the clan tag though? Would the server kick/rename players who are not in the 'database' of allowed clan members? If so then how do you deal with people who do not use the private key? Would they be banned from wearing the tag even though they are actually in the clan?
