Trading Spam...*sighs*

I guess I just don't understand the whole concept of "IF you don't like it turn off the channel!" I don't think we should have to turn off the ALL channel, because of it. I mean there are now 2 different TRADE areas, and one let's you spam all districts at the same time.

If you ask them to stop they get rude and nasty. I enjoy sitting in districts and answering questions but you can rarely see the questions anymore unless they spam them too (which is irratating too).

Sometimes I swear we should do a great big boycott of everyone that won't use the trade channels...LOL. But I guess until then off with the ALL chat it is.


Loved the Wintersday event!!! Hope everyone is enjoying it too.


Happy Hunting~Tempy

There really is no reason to spam trade in the local channel anymore (not that it was proper to do it in the first place). There's a perfectly fine way to trade things without spamming and yet people still do it. I'd like to see bans handed out but that will never happen.

It will never end, there will always be people spamming local, trade, and advertising in the SEARCH panel, because they want to get as many people's attention as possible.

The only true solution is to add an auction house or a centralized trade center apart from any of the actual campaigns and Pve story line, something like the great temple of balthazar, but designed for PvE trading.

There is a section in the Search panel for Trade.

And yet, as you said, people will STILL be spamming to maximize attention even if there were some auction house. The only way people will stop is with the threat of punishment....which will never happen.

Or with just that, a Trading/Auction House. That we all allways wanted since the spam started and trading got so hard and boring to even try!

I agree they do it because there is no reason not to. At least give me an unlimited ignore list so I can really boycott them. LOL.

There has to be something that can be done. With all the channels off I might as well not be playing an MMORPG.

I was thinking that too... (that something should be done.)

Two thing would really help in my opinion.

A real auction house so people have their items in the AH instead of in their inventory. (Wouldn't make sense to spam since buyers will be at the AH anyway.)

Also I was thinking that guild wars should take away the up arrow to go the previous message feature. That way people would have to type it in each time and would thus discourage the spam and encourage the current trade in the seach feature. (Yes you could still copy/paste but again it's still a little extra work to do over and over, and they'd have to get into the habbit of doing it differently so the majority would just stick it the search trade.)

from the flip side, spamming is still far more effective than posting on party trade window. or if you're selling alot of stuff, do both.

so it's not going away anytime soon, until there is an auction house thing.
another idea is to have a inscriptions/mods trader. that would get rid of alot of spams.

at the moment though, 99% of the trade spam is:
WTS CANDY CANE SHARDS! OMG I HAVE SO MANY!!!! ARGGH

I really don't think an auction house would help much at all. Can you picture it? A big giant shopping mall integrated into a game like guild wars, with an unlimited supply of garbage that nobody wants. Then there would still be those people that refuse to use the auction house, and continue to spam in the all channel anyway (because apparently they aren't getting through to anyone, and need their junk sold NOW!). Why does anyone need to continuously buy crap all the time in this game anyway? Collector items and crafter items are easily obtainable, but I guess they don't look cool enough. You get drops all the time just by killing monsters, some good, some not. If weapons/staves/offhands/wands/shields were super hard to come by in this game, then I might buy into it more. But I still think something like an auction house would hardly do anything really. Just my opinion though.

Well if I understand how auctions work in other games, you do not have physical possession of the item while its for auction. Essentially, you deposite the item into the auction house, and the winner can then pick up the item at the auction when he wins.

So why would people spam they are selling an item they currently are not in posession of? An auction house would definately dramatically cut back on spam, but there will still be people trying to sell directly instead of through the auction.

ok, and what about the words "and advertising in the SEARCH panel" lead you to believe I'm not aware of this?

True there is a lot of crap in this game as far as different requirements mods and so on and so forth... the more I think about it the less I think an Auction House would ever really happen.... Unless you clear off all mods of all weapons.. then maybe >.>;

That's something which concerns me... with the npc substitute players (heroes), empty outposts (which I realize demanded something like heroes be introduced), and incredible spam in local chat for no reason (especially with the party search trade feature) but with no punishment (never going to happen in GW I know), I fear GW may be turning into a MSOG... Massively Singleplayer Online Game.

It's terribly annoying, especially when the party search trade feature is used properly either.

One big reason is that the current trade system SUCKS.
So many times I wanted to buy something, and go "ohh, no one is selling it", only to look again and realized that I missed the seller with what I want in the mess of words. Not only is the seller frustrated cuz a lot of potential buyer will miss his post, but the buyer themselves often get annoyed themselves. The "P" trading system isn't even close to an improvement, in fact I find it worse than just typing in chat (trade chat mind you). Why?

1. You can only advertise ONE item at a time
2. Even advertising one item there isn't enough word space to type detail and pricing.
3. Still isn't automatic .

Obviously local spamming works for people, I suspect quite a lot of buyers deliberately look in the less cluttered color channel so that they won't get a headache reading.

I don't think A.Net really cares about spam. Just an educated guess based on their lack of action or any real effort to eliminate it

Auction house is definitely the way to go. The traders will stop spamming if they realise that buyers are going to the auction house first to look for things.

I also think anet should ban some spammers. The EULA specifically says that spam is not permitted and that anet can ban them, but i've never even heard of a warning being given.

They should make an auction house.
When someone says WTS in local chat it gets changed to trade chat, so if we had an auction house maybe people saying WTS or Selling or WTB would get a message saying go to the Auction house or something and the chat wouldn't be posted.

Auction houses would not help much more than the party search has (which it has helped a goodly bit).

You would see a whole load of "SELLING XXY IN TEH AUCTION HOUSE!1!1! C/O 8k!!!!"


LOTS of it.

Like I said...the party search does nothing to help people sell better, so....not many people use it.

They do care, that's why less than 6 months ago they added alot of filters to bounce WTS to the trade channel, but people don't take the hint and have to figure out ways around it.

Still think everyone should just start boycotting everyone that won't use the trade channel.

Sorry to say, but you're wrong. You would still see it, yeah...but in WAY less quantities than you currently are.

For a very simple reason. Very very very few people really WANT to sit around town and try to sell crap rather than play the game to get more items.

Look at WoW. Their Auction House has been implemented since day 1. Yes, you'll still see some people trying to sell things now and then, but compared to the amount of people that have items in the AH, it's very few.

If there was an Auction House in this game, it would completely destroy the need for district spam-hopping (nothing like being in 1 district and switching to another to see the same people spamming).


If they gave us an auction house, the game would be much better. plain and simple.

It's not just trade spam... there's spam for any and every reason. All of it is really annoying. The new party search I think helped a bit, and in time it will help a bit more (as more and more people realize how good of a tool it is), but really something has to be done.

Maybe they could introduce some kind of filter that will suppress a repeated message. If it recognizes that the same exact characters are being used again as the previous message entered - within a 3-5 second span, the filter kicks in and disallows any further messages for 10 seconds. This would cut down all the "enter, up-arrow, enter" spam.

There is a perfectly good reason to trade spam.

The more venues of advertisement the more people will see it. Not everyone is going to have the party window up all the time while they are in town.

But while you are walking through town you might see something you want scroll through the chat.

This kind of like, "Why advertise on radio when you can advertise on tv?" Why not advertise on both?

Incorrect. I found a seller for a weapon mod quite quickly (several, in fact) by spaming in Trade and having a Trade Party invite stating what I wanted. Fastest I have EVER found what I was looking for. I'll be using that method from now on.

As I said before, an auction house will not cut down on spam. Why? Because people have idiotic excuses. Whenever you ask why the spammers spam in the local chat, they always reply that no one reads the trade channel. Guess what? The ones that don't read the trade channel ARENT looking for trades, so what makes them think they want to see it in the local chats?

And people wonder why there is no community in this game. It's drowned out in a sea of trade spam. But then again, even if it isnt trade spam, it's idiotic garbage being spouted. There is no solution for spam or garbage other than a GM moderating the chatter. And we all know that will never happen.

An auction house is the obvious solution.
Weapon Type:
Skin Type:
Mod Type:
Min/Max Req:
Material:
Rune:
etc etc, like a search engine. They implement something vaguely similar in FFXI

I think Anet should do a permanent account wipe on anyone who still spams (after the new trade improvement) has been implemented as a warning of what's to come.

Why account wipe instead of outright ban? Well it certainly hurts a lot more.

They did that some time ago, and spammers quickly learned to add extra space/characters onto the end (so the messages weren't identical) so that they could continue to spam.

A lot of people don't look in trade channel because of its butt-ugly hard to see color and that its more of a mess there. I always look in local first to see if there's any stuff I want before I turn to the trade channel and squint my eye reading all the text.

Anet will only add an auction house with a new chapter. What a selling point that would be. Everyone in Guild wars would buy the chapter and Guild wars would still be hanging on for another year. This game is deteriorating.

My biggest example of this is that today I went through my friends list. I had about 50 ppl who i have met over the last year who don't play anymore. FIFTY PPL! that means that there are literally thousands of accounts that are inactive. Everytime our guild gets new ppl they go afk and don't come back for a month or not at all.

Its all about community. Guild wars does nothing to promote long term gaming friendships.

An easy way to fix this is to have certain high level farming areas that are only available to guild only parties. Then just like GvG, you will have to organize farming groups. This would encourage ppl to be in a guild and promote friendships. Also, The guild halls should have game NPCs that you can buy.

What if you could buy the nine rings game for 1million gold. That would be awesome.

Or they could make a guild garden.

Anything that brings guildies together..


Because honestly, gvgs just don't cut it. Officers have to scream and threaten to get ppl to come. The inexperienced guild goes into battle and loses. Then everyone ragequits the guild because they refuse to admit that the loss had anything to do with them and that it must have been the crappy guild.

People need a reason to stop guild hopping. And right now this game only promotes it.

Switch guilds beg off new guildies, rinse, and repeat.

Kurt, that's what forums are for.

And as much as I hate to say it, I think that The Ernada has the right idea on this one.

I am in no way against people attempting to sell their items. I don't even mind if they use every acceptable way of doing it - using the trade channel, the new party function, and district-hopping. What bothers me is when the way they do it is:

Player 1: wtb sundering mod for sword
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 3: Selling Book of Secrets
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 4: wts the deathbringer pst
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME

This idiotic, selfish and utterly childish habit of uncontrollable spamming that so many players find a need to do. It absolutely destroys the channels, causing the vast majority of players to toggle them off, and it's not just when people want to sell something - I constantly see someone spamming repeatedly that they're LFP MISSION BONUS and whatnot. Even in a half-empty outpost where noone else is using the channel, these people have the basic instinct that their needs come at the expense of everything else in the world, and their habit of selfish spamming is so big a part of them that they don't even realize that a single input is sufficient when there's noone else actively using that chat medium. I hate it with a fury, and I would ban these people if I had the ability.

An auction house would be excellent. I don't think it will eliminate spammers, people will always try to use every way possible to get what they want, but that doesn't make an AH less useful. Those of us who don't want to sit around for hours if we have something to sell, or don't want to converse with an 11 year old spamming idiot when we want to buy something, would benefit greatly from such a feature. I'm completely in favor of the introduction of an AH, not as a cure to the spam, but simply because it'd be darn convenient.

What we need (and I have no clue why it's not there) is a spam filter. It's laughably easy to code, even for a novice coder, and should take no time at all for a professional one to manage. I posted it in the suggestions forum a few days ago but there's no harm in repeating it here. This is how it'd work:

An on/off toggle that, when on, purges any message that has been repeated within the span of, say, 10 seconds. This means that if someone spams the same message 5 times in as many seconds, you'd only see the first message, and the rest would be caught by the filter. There's no disadvantage to it, it can't be abused in any way, it wouldn't interfere with any of the game's functions, it would be a tremendous help with the current spammer problems... and it could be coded in the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee. I'll do it myself if ANet asks me to. To prevent the attempts at circumventing this system which people will inevitably do, in their selfish crusades to make the world revolve around them, you could even implement it so that if a big enough portion of the previous message is repeated, it's also purged by the spam filter. Thus thwarting the idiots who will undoubtedly try to...

Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME1
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME2
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME3
Player 2: WTS CC SHARDS WISP ME4

Please do us this huge (and effortless) favor, ANet, or give me a valid reason why you haven't.

An auction house would be the best solution. Sure there would still be some people trying to sell by spamming but it would not be effective cause buyers will look at the auction house first. As it is now spamming works cause if i see a certain item i need in local chat i will buy it cause i have no other means of aquiring it (besides mindless farming) practically supporting and encouraging trade spam. With an auction house i would simply search there first never listening to the spammers and they probably give up soon since no one buys from them and risks to be scammed when they can securely buy from the AH.

The auction house is the way to go, because if u want to buy something u'll have to go into all the main places (LA, Kamadan, etc) to look for the specific item, and that's the main reason why people spam, because they want to obtain the attention of a person who just arrived at a specific location.

Anet has banned someone from the game for spamming(Temporary). He was using explicit language in the Random Arenas. A Game Moderator popped in using the "Frog" yellow unknown name text, and said he was being banned. A bunch of people started screaming "Frog!" and yet, the Moderator said this was not the frog.

Only thing we need is better ignore. Current one is so small that you cant keep anyone who does something like spam trades on local in it without it filling in 10 seconds and yet there is more who spam, so you cant have conversation in local. Personally I keep local and trade channel off most of time.

Better yet, make it impossible to trade items between players! They have to go through the Auction house where the offer and item are on display. Therefore there would be no point for people to spam normal chat.

Make the Auction house more of an Auction tab. Press some specific hotkey and a window opens up (Like Party Search), from there people can view what offers are on conveniently instead of having to fly to various towns in hope that some random dude is selling a rare item.

If ANET would ban the trade and sell bots, this all would lighten up within days.

Party search has a Trade channel yet people spam in ALL. It is not like spammers slipped and put it in ALL by accident, because it happens all the time (I know because I turn off TRADE).