Policing of Local Channel...very Orwellian

Well it seems that 1984 has come to GW. Big Brother has determined that we are unable as a community to use the chat feature as we feel is necessary or effective.

Players will now be "account marked" for trade in local chat and I, for one, beleive this is a mistake on ANets part. A gaming community should be molded and built by its players, not governed by arbitrary regulations enforced because some people dont like something.

Whats next?

Players should no longer look for groups in local, as we have a Party Searcch option.

Players will no longer recruit for their guilds in local, again theres a tab in the party search box.

etc.

Lets face it folks, the MOST COMMON conversations seen in ANY local chat in towns that arent considered "market" towns are all arguing, flaming and often quite immature and offensive. Rarely is there ever any real conversation between friends or associates as this tends to occur in PM's or team chat once people find each other.

Please feel free to "light me up" if you dont agree but I have heard from my relatively large guild and alliance that this change has just gone too far in policing our community. I dont feel that those of us that use local channel in large commerce centers for trade need to be "spanked" for doing what evolved as a common practice in the community WE developed.

Come on ANet, this isnt the war on terror, let US determine how we want to use the game resources that are available to us. We dont need a GW Patriot act to make us behave to the standard of the players that want free run of all local channels to spam their guild messages and call each other "noobs"

Regards
SANG

Uhm, we did determine how we want those channels used. ANet wouldn't have taken the time to put code in place to monitor those chat channels for spamming if there wasn't overwhelming support to get spammers out of them.

How extremely melodramatic.

Spoken like a true trade spammer.

I can't say enough bad things about your logic, so, remembering what my momma always said, I'll say nothing at all.

Well, nothing other than, THREE CHEERS FOR THE NEW ANTI-SPAM POLICY!

I will say this : Spammers get out!

And don't make this look political, because its just funny, spammer.

Why can't people accept that this was the way they designed this game to be? There is a trade channel for a reason. That's where your trade messages go. It got to the point where you couldn't use the local channel for it's designed purpose because it was essentially hijacked by trade spammers. Anet put their foot down and said enough is enough, use it as it was intended and stop disrupting those who wish to converse in local, which is why it's there. I'm getting more than tired of all this hogwash from trade spammers with this convoluted logic. This isn't a case where you don't know right from wrong, you just want to pretend you don't because otherwise your argument is exposed for the baseless bellyaching that it is. Enough of the orwellian comparisons, the conspiracy theories, and everything else.

And for the record, if people want to use that channel for arguing, as long as they're not violating the ToS, then SO BE IT. That's their right to do. Trade spamming local is NOT anyone's right to do. Want proof? People are now facing consequences for it. There's your proof. You can always put 2 or 3 people arguing on your ignore list. You can't put 50 million trade spammers on ignore.

Um...I have never spammed ever and I think the rule is retarded. The trade system is crap, so might as well punish players instead of making a better system?

Well WE as a community did repeatedly say we wanted something done about the spamming (not just the trade) in the local chat. Obviously the local chat is for finding groups, asking questions, etc... But you can't if after you hit enter your message is 20 screens back so no one see's it let alone you see their response.
I think there could be a middle ground in this. Just not allow repeating a certain % of the past sentences for a while (30 secs, 3 mins, whatever). That would have gone a long way in stopping the scrolling IMO and still allowed for the trade and other things in all chat.
Most don't really take notice that there is or use the trade tab, so trading in the all chat is the only way to sell something. There are those that say they don't buy if someone puts it in all chat, but that is a VAST minority of the overall users.
I'm kinda in the middle here, I love that you can carry on a conversation in LA d1 now, even though some haven't gotten the message and try and spam until they are removed. But I think that there could have been a better way of controlling the spam by limiting the ability to repeat text, since there is no valid need for it.

just disable copy/paste/up arrow in local chat = problem solved.

The best kinda spam is spam in a can and thats even icky at best. Trade channel is for trade the local channel is for some convo, it isn that difficult.

I think the major issue addressed in the original post is not an issue of the trade spamming coming to an end but a question of whats next. I think we can all agree that no trade in local is fine, but what happens when ANET decides that we can no longer search for a party in local because there is a party search feature. Are we then going to be punished for spamming in local for party members?

WTS GOLD AXE
WTS GOLD AXE
WTS GOLD AXE
WTS GOLD AXE
WTS GOLD AXE

etc, etc. That's all you would ever see in the LOCAL chat, which is meant for chatting to other players. The trade window is for trading. It's now being "policed" because of how badly the spamming had become. They're not trying to control us, they're just fixing problems with the game. It's now possible to go to some of the crowded cities and hold conversations with people, without your messages being flooded away by spam. The only reason you didn't see people chatting like that before, was because it was impossible to do.

I honestly don't see why anyone could think that's a bad thing, unless you're one of the people who kept spamming. Those of us who don't want to see trading requests, now don't have to. Great job Anet.

Thans for pointing out a place i was remiss. I dont consider myself to be a "trade spammer", however I did adapt to what I was met with when i started playing. In larger towns that are well known to be commerce centers I have accepted and conducted myself to what I saw as the existing standard. What I would really LOVE is to see the "noob fights" eliminated (flaming, name calling, et al.). What Im really worried about is whats next. Recruiting? Runners? etc...

We wanted the spam to stop and A.Net listened to us and I'm grateful for that. Today I had a small chat in lions arch, a chat where I actually saw what the others were saying instead of the usual WTB/WTS Stuff, these spammers got what they deserved imo!

- Ganni

It's really more like A Clockwork Orange than 1984, and just like in the book, all those lawless miscreants deserve what's coming to them.

spammers don't belong in a liberal society as they can't coop with responsability to live up to the rules. Has nothing to do with orwellian situations

Well, since we're talking about ALL spam, not just trading, I think any spam should be stopped, but I think disabling the ability to spam is better than punishing those that do it. Saying LFG every little bit isn't spamming, neither is announcing that you're running somewhere every once in a while. But people repeat the same sentence 5 times in 2 or 3 seconds and then rinse repeat. With dozens of people doing that same thing, that is why this all is being done. But again, limiting the ability to repeat like that would have solved it a lot better.

The thought police are gonna get ya - Who is Big Brother? Gaile possibly? - although she isnt male...

Well we can create the Big Sister then

If you, and the people would just simply use the chat responsibly, we would not be in this situation. They gave us a chance to show them that we won't spam the local chat with trade announcments, and we spat in their face. (meteaphorically speaking.) In a way, it's our fault, now, that the local and trade channels are being policed.

No, instaed, you got the bright idea to use local chat to sell your item because the trade chat has a 100 sellers all posting messages in it. This further shows us that if we, maybe, not use LA Dist 1 as the primary selling point. What's wrong with Dist 2, or 5? OH! Ddi you know, the "find player" window' trade system shows district where the seller is? Pretty handy if you ask me. Now, if only they'd add the ability to post longer messages in the player window.

Peronally, I don't buy from poeple who post trades in the local chat. Ever. And neither should you.

I don't know if I'd try to paint Lion's Arch as the dystopia displayed in Orwell's 1984 quite yet. But, I can understand how you'd get the vibe that Big Brother is watching. At any rate, the analogy might be lost on the vast majority of today's Guild Wars crowd.

I know that the spam was annoying. I just think this was far from the best option. It doesn't do anything to correct the problem why people were spamming in the first place. Selling things always has been, and is still one of the worst aspects of this game. I loose quite a bit of respect for Anet when start marking accounts while at the same time Gaile has essentially said an auction house is not going to happen. They're the ones that came up with the brilliant idea to make the entire player economy dependant on a chat window. I mean, free games like Silkroad have better trade systems. This shouldn't be something that Anet takes pride in.