Banned 71 hours for spamming?!

Spamming All chat is pretty silly anyway with the party window now. If the spam people actually used that they'd have access to every district in the town they are in, not just a tiny bite of attention they get in AD3. Its no auction house, but its lets your fingers do something other than press enter up enter, enter up enter over and over for half an hour. BLECK!

I don't buy from people who spam in All chat because Anet thinks its wrong to spam there and I think its rude to take over two channels for one type of conversation (not simply use them; spammers take over!). And before anyone starts in on me, Anet OBVIOUSLY thinks spamming Sell and Buy info in All chat needs curbing and has for a long long time. Try to sell or buy something in All with "WTS" or "WTB" in the heading. It goes straight to Trade. They did that like, what, halfway through Factions?

Spammers didn’t get the hint though. Maybe its time Anet was a little less…sublte:?

I don't see how anyone could be surprised that they might end up getting banned for spamming the same sentence over and over in the wrong channel. I’ve played three MoRPGs that have active moderators patrolling zones and this is the one has been by far the most lax when it came to protecting its text channels so everyone could use them.

The only really surprising thing is that the All chat spammers in LA and towns like it haven't already gotten banned at least once for the practice.

I'm almost curious enough to start a poll here in guru; who thinks that Anet should exercise its right to temp ban people who spam Sell and Buy info in All chat? If you ask me, I think the majority is much in favor of a little police action in All chat at this point. I certainly wouldn’t mind if sell and buy spammers got temp banned for abusing All chat. Then again, like I said before, I follow the rules and don’t sell there

I for one think it’s a vocal minority that is spamming All chat Miss Grey. They are a VERY vocal group (they take over two chat channels all on their own!) so expect plenty of complaints about this if you decide to ban them for abusive texting but I think most players would be happy to get them out of All and into the party window and trade channels where they should be.

Whats your point? its sounds like the mods are actually doing their job to me. Kudos to Anet for noticing you spamming.

And dont say "I wasnt spamming that much", because to get an instant ban for several hours you must have been spamming like crazey!

You even state that were jumping from one outpost to the next, spamming the chat window. Sounds like your just miffed because you got caught.

If it was a mod who caught you out, I expect he banned other players too in the same location. Grow up and accept you did something wrong. Then learn from it, and DONT spam again.

Someone else probably posted this, and its old news, but:
If Anet took all those mods looking for spammers to ban, and put them to work on an auction house, wouldnt that be more productive?

I just wish they started this temp-ban policy 2 years ago.
Now all the kiddies are used to it, so, "It's my God-given right to annoy everyone by filling the 'all' screen with my useless crap for sale!"

NO. It's NOT your right. Now go away.

And those spam-defenders that are saying if you don't like spam stay out of LA and Kamadan D1 and you won't see any, well...obviously you haven't been anywhere else in the GW universe.
Almost every city and outpost I've ever been in has had spammers. It doesn't matter if there's only 5 other people there and it's totally silent, they'll pop in and just start machine-gunning like they're in Lion's Arch at rush hour. Sometimes a polite request to move on helps ( "Hey, doesn't this ***hole know there's nobody here??") , but if that fails I just drop an old name from my ignore list and add the new idiot.

Face it guys, they're not going to learn, lets just hope they get sick of been temp banned and just quit the game.

And about "keep out of LA and Kamadan", we do have to go there when switching from one land to another or when creating a new toon or helping somebody with a new toon.

People forget one thing about the "P" window... when you post something there for trade, it's seen my every district, not just the one you're in. Knowing that, it's flat out stupid not to take advantage of it. Between "P" and the trade channel, if you can't sell it it either sucks or is overpriced.

Go type in:

"WTS Sundering Chaos Axe of Fortitude" and tell us what happens.

Thats why no one uses Party Search for trading.

Any insult to an individual or the community as a whole will be deleted. Please keep your posts on topic and contributing.

You don't need to post the mods... mods are irrelevant. The only thing you need to post to get someone's interest is the parts of the weapon they cannot change. So if I post:

S: r9 Chaos Axe, 15^

That should be enough to tell people that I have a requirement 9 chaos axe, 15 over 50%. With all the golds dropping in hard mode, there are plenty of perfect mods to be had just from simple salvaging to create what you want.

The current system, albeit flawed, is indeed adequate enough to get what you want out there and sold without the need for spam attacks on the local channel.

We should actually consider additional abbreviations to help things out for now. For example, instead of "100K + 10 ectos", we could type "C+10" (with "C" being the Roman numeral for 100).

Pfft. Read the chat or the posts on this forum. Half the folks can't get their heads around basic English, let alone Roman Numerals.

Mod =\= Dev. Just because they get someone to mod a chat, doesn't mean that person can write code for a game. I know how to mod forums, but I sure as hell couldn't build one from scratch.

Some poorly arranged thoughts:

I turn local/all-channel off all the time. It's never on. All that's in there is trade spam. If i want to buy something, i'll turn the trade channel on. If i want to sell something, i go find a merchant because the trade system in GW is utterly inadequate. There's only so many instances of "WTS GOOD SWORD" i can see pushing proper trade off the page before my brain explodes and my mouse batteries die from all the scrolling and i go to the merchant instead.



Banning people who spam local/all-chat from local/all chat itself would be much more effective than banning them from the game for however long.

Genuine spammers would be just as banned as they are right now from spamming in local/all chat. (I assume the reasoning behind a ban is to prevent spamming for the rest of us, and not to act as a punishment for the spammers themselves... i could be wrong.) False positives who are caught by an overzealous mod would, um, suffer virtually no ill effects.

And people who wanted to sell stuff by spamming in all chat would still have the option of selling stuff in trade channel. Notice how selling stuff in the trade channel is not posting about how they were banned on some forum.




Why is the Party Search window still limited to 30-something characters? I really don't understand why you would do this:

1) implement a trade alternative
2) see it not being used
3) witness a few hundred people calling for an expansion of the text box
4) alter the loot dropping to make people even more reliant on inter-player trade
5) start banning people for trade spamming
6) still not (a) expand that box, or (b) tell people that you are considering/working on expanding it.

I really don't get it. Regardless of however much you might think that the Party Search can be used if you start describing items in code ('MsaatHBosr91550s2020h30p25') that all non-forum users wouldn't understand, there's still no reason i can fathom not to expand that box.

If the Party Search text were much bigger - 200-500 characters or so (yes, i know it's a lot), and it were global (we do have a global friends server, remember), i'd actually consider trying to sell stuff again. Or perhaps if there were clickable weapon codes similar to skill templates that could be bunged in that box?

If this spam is a big enough problem to warrant bans, it's a big enough problem to warrant attention and a solution.



Really, we need a trade system that offers: location insensitive passive trading which can describe multiple items. At least a directory viewable by remote. If you could buy/sell remotely, it would end most of the trade issues in GW instantly. You'd still need to be online to sell stuff, but you could be off missioning or farming or whatever.

The rest isn't as important as the 'describe multiple items' part though, because that's what GW trading is. Until there's a system which allows individual players to reasonably see a directory of every other player's wares, the issue isn't going to go away.



Also: Circular logic ftl. "Your argument that you were banned unjustly is null and void. This is because Anet only ban people who are bad. Therefore if you were banned you must be bad. Because of this, you must actually have been spamming all day in local/all chat, and are lying. QQ moar luser and can i haev ure stuff b4 u quit." ...this kind of nonsense is content-deficient spam, and i wish this too would result in people being banned from posting for 72 hours.

I'm not a moderator or admin though, so it's not my place to set the rules or moderate other posters. Just sayin': you'd think more people would see the irony.

I was just about to say the same thing. Great post.
Exactly what I was trying to get at in my earlier post.

Who are you to, arrogantly, tell others how they should play their game?

Contrary to everyone, you are showing hate for even those that use the Trade Channel, am I right?

Lol @ Mr. Elite Guru


These guys don't sell stuff. Maybe they buy gold? Who knows.

aNet did acknowledge the trading problem and confirm that they are working at finding a solution. They only said that an Auction House wasn't a viable one for the current GW model and now everyone is going ballistic.


I agree. With most of the things that you say also. I still maintain that players should abide by the rules and stop spamming and that aNet should make their bans (or whatever consequence they choose) consistent.

While I'm not opposing better trade at all because I admit that our current system is flawed, I stress that Party Search and Trade Channel are sufficient enough means when applied properly. In fact, the more people use Party Search instead of complaining about it, the more successful it will become (since it is use-based).

Also, aNet has every right to demand we abide by the rules (stop spamming [period]) that were established prior to our buying the game before they ever offer us any better Trade solution.


aNet listens to its player-community and this is great! But trade-spam whiners need to recognize that they are taking advantage of that and be more respectful.

They acknowledged that spamming was an issue, that an auction house wasn't a high priority. They also agreed that we could rightfully feel like we need one. And then stated that they want to make a fair environment for trading and chatting... without stating any potential solution, or plans to find one, or much else.

They didn't (that i know of) state that they were thinking of / working on increasing the size of the Party Search text box. If they aren't thinking about doing that: Why on earth not? Is there a good reason? If there is, why not say so?

If their plan is to increase it, when on earth not tell us?

It looks like they've acknowledged that there's a problem with banning people for trade spam when there is no real trade system... and then walked away from the problem without any mention of solutions or amendments made to the bannings. The only amendment to their policy i see mentioned is "to see if we feel there is a need for GM action of some kind."

Aside from that, there's the suggestion that they're going to formalise changes in policy and tell us about them.

I really don't get it.
I don't understand why you would do something, acknowledge that something has put pressure on an aspect of the game, and then not alleviate that pressure from one side or the other... or tell anyone that you were planning to do so if you are.

See, here's the problem. You have two sides at each others throats:

Side 1) I should be able to trade spam.
Side 2) No you shouldn't, the trade system is acceptable!

And in the confusion, Anet see the fighting and scuttle back to work (nerfing more Mesmer skills or whatever). They don't see 'this is how this problem could be solved, can you do this please? if not, why not?'.

If both sides were to actually say what's important ('A better trade method is really needed in guild wars, and things are only going to get worse until one is implemented'), then maybe we'd actually get one, and the trade spam would go away by virtue of extinction.

Also, i would argue that the current trade system isn't an adequate trade system at all. It's not a trade system. It's not even a frakking IRC channel. It's a bunch of people shouting at each other with red-coloured text.

How many hours do you need to spend with it before it actually results in a sale? If someone who only has the occasional hour or two to play needs to trade, can they use the current system?

What kind of trade system offers you a few seconds of exposure every five minutes (any more would be spam, right?) over a period of hours, to people who may or may not be in a position to hear?


Anet are the ones with the admin controls. As such, they're in a position to demand anything they want from us. We either give them it, or we go elsewhere to some other game. It's a shame that the only way to co-operate is by refusing to take our ball home with us, but it seems to be how things are.

I'd also be hesitant to link the need for an improved trade system with Anet's 'promise' of one - or lack thereof. We need a better trade system. That much is fact, regardless of whether anyone has promised it or not.

Given that, and given that it would alleviate trade spam, would it not be more constructive to politely explain that, yes, we do realise that an auction house is a lot of work, but that trade improvements don't need to be an auction house, and that we believe the Party Search could be altered in these ways to make it a viable option*?


*Yes, i could shorten item descriptions. And yes, this would work... if you could rely on all of Guild Wars to read up the shorthand and understand it. It's not going to happen unless Anet actually print a key on the Party Search Window. Increasing the text box is such an obvious simple idea that will make trading so much easier. Why on earth can't that happen?

I a new player to Guildwars, this last week and i am finding to be a great game. I can post this without knowing or caring about any ingame politics etc, its simply an honest appraisal after 1 weeks play.

The only thing that is spoiling that enjoyment is the idiotic, selfish spamming that some people seem to insist on doing. It reminds me of those nasty little children that winge and stamp their feet in public until they get their way.

Begone worms. Use the trade channel. What really gets my goat is when i ask someone to stop spamming or use the trade channel or party search.. i get.. "stop whinging and turn off chat" .... WTF?! So because you want to be obnoxious and spam, i have to turn off chat... something screwed there.

Additionally...i was 'ignoring' anyone who spammed...but i quickly found out that i am limited to 10 ignore slots... :O If nothing on a large scale is done to address the spamming, then i think i will need about 200 or more slots for ignores :S

Spamming chat is pathetic and i applaud any ban for spamming.

I think it should be widely broadcast to let people know it is unacceptable. There shouldn't be half measures.

Encourage players to submit times and locations of spam which Mods can verify from server logs, then ban the offenders.

Mod the code of all chat to blank out any sentences with "WTS" or similar in them and return a message to the person who wrote it informing them spamming = ban etc. I am sure there are plenty of ways to combat this problem.

If it becomes clear that spamming = ban, and that the community can act on it, not just if a Mod happens to catch someone; then the spamming will reduce to a near stop.

Cheers to the Mods and anyone who stands up to speak out against the spam. I hope you can do something effective for the sake of all of us who dont spam and dont enjoy the spam.

He wasn't telling anyone how to do anything. He was making suggestions to Tarun who whinned, " There is no Auction House, no player merchant stands, nothing. All a player really can do is spam in Local and Trade to try for a sale, and that can take hours on end. That means less hours spent actually playing the game and instead being forced to sit around in a major city trying to sell something."

That's Ms Elite Guru to you.

I don't have to buy gold, I've been very successful selling things here on guru, on the trade channel and in the party search window in game, all without spamming.

I don't care what you do in trade channel, as long as that is where the spam is... Cause then its POSSIBLE to play the game normally when you come into a town and want to find people to PLAY with... How you play the game is your issue. if you stay within the RoC anet will not care, community will nto care, and no one else will care WHAT you do. but when you go outside of that .. well... thats where you will expect to see Staff and community stepping up to prevent the exploitation of the community, and the game itself in order to preserve what we we all play in.

Put it this way. we all like to go swimming, but if someone takes a dump in the community pool, the people in it will likely want to do something bad to the person responsible for the floater... The people swimming in it probably more then the owners that have to clean it up... Cause THEY ARE IN IT! But trust me the Owners are going to be pissed too cause well hell its their pool and they got to clean it up...

Now I know some of you guys are like There goes Ingy again with one of his waco analogies. But I think this one pretty much sums it up when it comes to spam and inflation / temp bans for RoC violations... Anet finally got sick of all the stuff floating in the pool and started using a net to clean things up... Because hey, who wants to go swimming with a floater?

ofcourse the spamming of trade chat/local chat bothers me. I mean when I sell something before reposting my sale I wait until my latest text dissapears from the screen. Though in high-districts this happens about every 5 seconds which to me is spamming but I've never been banned for it so go figure. Though people posting in rapid-succesion should get the heaviest ban-bat known to man.

What I don't get is this. Sometimes I'll respond to someones question in Local Chat and then accidently post my offer in Local Chat but it never pops up there. It automatically goes to Trade Chat. So when I see people spamming WTS/WTB in Local Chat I really have a case of WTF?

You're analogy summed it up quite nicely.


Because they change how they type it. The way they get away with it is to type, W T S or W TB or any other variation.

how about including an AH or some sort of *vastly* improved trade system in one of those other seemingly more important "things" they're working on? honestly, trade improvements have been cried for since day 1...3 chapters later, thousands of new items included in the game, and still no trade improvement? its high time trade improvements be prioritized. enough with the stupid minipets already, add something useful to the game. adding an AH to EoTN would be a major selling point, imo.

And players are also constantly crying that Anet hasnt released another game in 6 months...

...so what is Anet working its ass off doing?

Making a 4th expansion, and creating GW2. Now you either want them to focus on the 4th expansion and GW2 or you want them to focus on the AH.

Which one is it? the fact is, if they focused on the AH and delayed releasing the 4th expansion, people would winge and cry about that.

For god sake, do you not realise its ALOT of hard work doing all that stuff?

They cant just casually think.....

"oh while we're at it, we'll just toss in the AH too. It wont add too much work, and the community wont mind if it delays the release date by about 2 or 3 months."

....get realistic. You have to put priorities on things. If players were truly bothered about improving trading ingame, they would get off their arses and stop spamming local chat, take advantage of the party search and stasrt acting with some maturity.

But instead, its alot easier to just winge and complain, instead of getting pro-active and improving what we already have.

The trading system is fine, it does the job. Its not a desperately needing improving. Unlike bug fixes and new campaigns and entire new games which are in development, which are important.

They've already had over two years to create an Auction House and vastly improve the trade system. What do they have to show for it? That useless Trade in Party Search.

The "Trading System" is horrifically broken if people have to spam to sell their things to players for any time over five minutes.

How exactly are the existing trade methods broken and useless?

We have a trade channel dedicated to posting sales notices, and we now have a party search option which allows you to also post sales notices.

None of those features are broken. The term you looking for is, "they dont get used" and "they get abused". The current system isnt bad because it doesnt work. The current system is bad because the users abuse it or dont use it correctly, if at all.

You cant blame the software, or the programmers if they users are going to miss-use or refuse to use the software properly.

There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from using the party search to post small sales messages. Its purely because arrogant, stubborn morons refuse to use it. Its not "good enough" for them to advertise.

It doesnt matter whether we added an auction house, you would still have people constantly spamming because their inpatient and the AH wouldnt be good enough for their sales techniques!!!

If players are going to abuse the existing system, then dont blame Anet.

Why should Anet spend time and effort putting in an AH for a community, that is quite honestly selfish! Your all quick to point out the things you dont like, but you nevr mention the good stuff. Until people learn to grow up and use the existing system correctly, then I dont see why Anet should even bother with an AH.

It would quite obviously get abused too, and then people would start complaining it isnt good enough.

Wait a minute, you're talking about people who routinely type shorthand like ur, u, b4, cu and on and on? This is the age of texting and shorthand, so that arguement just doesn't work.

*sigh*

Yet another Internet fight developing. Sometimes, I have to admit, people irk me - a lot. Other times, somehow, they don't.

Nevertheless. I have a solution to the chat spamming problem.

Permaban, no appeal.

That's right. Read it again.

Permaban. No appeal.

Now, I understand why this would be unpopular. ANet would risk some future profits from the permanent alienation of some people. Some of you will say they've done that already with other issues, but I digress. Players would dreadfully fear being banned by mistake.

I call BS. "A Mistake"? Please. There is simply NO WAY you can "accidentally" press Enter to activate the chat window, the UP arrow to select the last message, and Enter again to send it. We're talking statistical improbability bordering on the monekys + typewriters + 1M years = Hamlet level. "Accidental spamming" is right up there with "accidental shooting" in my book. If your message pops up three, four, five times in a row within the space of three seconds or so, you're spamming. I don't see how this can be confusing.

No, I propose a clear set of rules: No repetition of the same chat massage within thirty seconds of the first transmission of that message while in towns or outposts. (Explorable areas are not affected by this rule.) First offense: Warning, in game, right there on the spot. Instead of "Supressed for excessive message" you get "do that again and we'll miss you" or sommat to that effect. Second offense: Adios, muchachos.

Harsh? Yeah. It's really harsh. So is trying to talk to someone in LA D1 while trying to sort past the incessant blathering about people selling worthless junk.

"Go to a different district" you say. To that, I call BS, again. I paid for this game the same as anyone else did. So *I* have to be inconvenienced, simply because of the people who are breaking the rules?

Sorry, but I'm seeing way too many "allowances" being made by people to accomodate the people who are breaking the rules for their own profit. A permanent ban for chat spamming will start to enforce rules that have gone relatively unenforced for awhile.

"Oh, great, so now the districts will be deserted and I'll never have a chance to sell my Item X." Good attitude, right off. You're right, if that's the way you want to look at it.

Why don't sellers ever try something clever instead of something spammable?

Think about it. If you could only send your trade message twice a minute, how would you phrase it to garner the most attention? Instead, sellers just spam "WT S Super Awesome Sword of Divine Self Worship etc etc" with variable, but adundant exclamation points at the end to dodge the spam filter - which is avoiding a filter and should be a bannable offense, anyway.

Make the quality of your message go up, and the quantity go down, and the whole market will thrive. Instead, we have market stagnation because everybody's parroting the same thing on screens that go by so fast no one can read them.

A U C T I O N - H O U S E - S Y S T E M

D O E S N ' T - N E E D - T O - B E - L I K E - W o W

Faster the merchandise and money moves.... The better the economy.
Better economy = Less frustraion from your players. Especially with Starcraft 2 and Half-Life Mods gearing up. D3 in the works too... Just make a dang Auction System. Or More NPC's for more generic mods and Greens.... maybe even Tomes...

so what is spamming in your definition, and how where u using the chat channels? Your opinion on what is spamming or not may be influenced by the way you sell. If u hit up/enter each 10-20 lines you may still be considered a spammer (by Anet). Maybe you have to readjust your definition to what is spamming to ANets vision and not convince others of your opinion, after all they set the rules. And if they deemed themselves incorrect (after u filed a complaint) they would have unbanned your account too.

It is ofcourse not impossible that Anet banned you by mistake, after all, the organisation is made up by humans. But you can't really speak for others, as you don't know how they behaved.

I would like to know how they decide when you have been spamming

Last night I got the "message blocked for excessive messaging"

Yet I was advertising only in trade and waiting till my previous message had completely scrolled out of the window. Meanwhile, several people were spamming 5 or six messages at once in local.

What kind of weird programming do they have that decides excessive messaging?"

That means you were trying to send too many messages in too short a time.

There is no auction house...this is a fact so accept it and move on. Complaining that there should be one or that one is needed or that A-Net owes you one does not negate this simple fact... It is also counterproductive, by whining and complaining about a lack of one people are not working toward a solution or telling us anything we don’t already know.

That being said, there are acceptable provisions for people to sell within the game and outside of the game as well. That the resources are not being used or that they are being abused does not change the fact that you do have a good system in place. Nothing will work including an auction house if it is not used properly and rules and guidelines are not practiced and enforced.

People stating that "everyone knows D1 in LA or Kamadan or Kaineng is for trade" is a poor excuse for breaking rules we all agreed to when we started the game. Also, if they actually believe it is limited to just district 1 of any town they are just not paying attention. Spamming has become a plague in the game and a heavy dose of disinfectant is called for.

I am all for banning! Make it a day or a week…I have no problem with people being banned for spam. If the punishment is harsh enough the message will finally sink in. I don’t see a big difference in the WTS spam from the 20 messages in a row LFG or join my stinking guild. Some will disagree with me; some will say that looking for a group is different or that people are forced to spam because of the trade spam. I watched someone spam for a group just last night, fill the conversation box, wait a few seconds and do it again…no one else was chatting so the only thing you saw was the one spammer. You could not have paid me enough to allow the jerk into my group…if he is that obnoxious just trying to party up I can only imagine the headache he would be in a quest or mission. It is still spam….The party search box has a place for these things as well.

The party search box does not have adequate room to put in a full message, this is to me the most simple and efficient fix A-net could do. Just the ability to put in 2 lines would be more than enough for people to sell, advertise recruiting for their guild or find a group for whatever they wanted to do in the game. The excuse that no one uses it is a poor one. If that is the tool that people are given and the spam is removed as an option, then they will use the party search box. It is just that simple…

1. Should spammers be banned? – absolutely without question…a great big YES
2. A-Net, please enhance and expand the party search box so that it is a desirable and viable option for sellers, buyers, party formations and guild recruitments.

"A-Net, please enhance and expand the party search box so that it is a desirable and viable option for sellers, buyers, party formations and guild recruitments"

With GW:EN and GW 2 in development, I don't know if A-Net will have the time nor resources to implement that kind of request?

Please show us how you would advertise the following sale item in 31 characters:
dead sword
max damage
req 9
health +30
fiery hilt
+15^50

Now try advertising more than 1 thing at a time.

Yes, I know, there's trade chat. But have you tried lately keeping up with chat in a busy district?

I agree completely with banning people for spam, because I hate that I'm unable to have conversations in any of the bigger districts, but it's not going to stop until there's something better.

I'm not advocating an auction house. Just a tab on the party search window dedicated to trading, with the ability to list multiple items.

Once that's in place, ANet can start banning spammers left and right and I will cheer them on. Until then, while I don't condone spamming, I can't really blame anyone for it.

I blame em still for me being less able to sell stuff. With their spam messages they drive normal EULA abiding GW players from the chat. I can blame them for me selling less as they do not abide by the laws that make competitive trade possible. THEY JUST SPAM.