Aggressive marketing techniques (aka ingame spam)

It started yesterday while I was enjoying the event in Shing Jea. I got a PM from a gold seller bot advertising his site. At the time I wrote it off as as a one time thing as a result in hanging out in Shing Jea, and ignored it.

I logged on today and proceeded to head to my guild hall, where I went afk waiting for friends to log on and got another tell from him, but a different account. Since then I've been getting tells every hour or 2, from a different account each time, and it has gone beyond annoying because I cant block the tells in any way. I even sent a support ticket to NCsoft but got this:

"Response (GM Sharon) 08/13/2007 05:49 PM
Hello,

Thank you for contacting Guild Wars Support about this.

We encourage you to consider posting your suggestions on one of the many Guild Wars Fansite message boards. A compiled list can be found on the official Guild Wars web site at http://www.guildwars.com/community/fansites/. By posting on one of these message boards, other players can comment on your ideas, concerns, and suggestions, and Development Team members are able to catch up on what the community wants to see in Guild Wars. Fansite forums make it easy and efficient for us to learn from those playing the game.

Further, we have reviewed the game logs of this incident and taken the appropriate action based on the information from the logs. Due to our Privacy Policy (http://www.guildwars.com/support/leg...cy-policy.php), we will not be able to provide any additional information regarding this report. That is to say, we cannot reveal what action, if any, was taken, nor if the actual violation was confirmed. Also, we are unable to reimburse you for any items or gold that may have been lost as the result of a transaction with another player. However, please be assured that the Guild Wars team takes User Agreement and Rules of Conduct violations very seriously. We are dedicated to maintaining an enjoyable playing environment. Because the incident that you report has been handled by the Guild Wars team, we are now setting this incident to a "Closed" status.

Thank you for submitting your report.

Regards,
The Guild Wars Support Team
Customer (RL name) 08/13/2007 05:06 PM
I started getting these tells yesterday while I was in Shing Jea yesterday enjoying the festival and ignored it at the time thinking it was a one time thing. I logged on today and started idling in my guild hall and was horrified that I was still getting tells from them even though I wasn't in a town.

This is not acceptable because the name is different every few hours and the ignore list is useless. Please add a filter to the chat that blocks any user that types out the website address to known gold seller sites and prevents the messages from being seen by all players. This is severely cutting down on my enjoyment of the game. Screenshot attached.

The time the screenshot was taken is roughly 3 PM Arizona time. I was in the xxxx (guild name) guild hall."


Screenshot taken later, got permission for the name displayed:
http://members.cox.net/mishima-photo...813-201114.png

Anyway, discuss.

Not a new method, although picking on you randomly (rather than because you bought gold from a site) would be somewhat odd.

Friend of mine in-game had a very funny sequence nearly two years ago where he bought a bunch of gold items (using a Celestial Sigil) from a seller in Tomb of the Primeval Kings ID1 (back when that was the equivalent of HA). He then proceeded to get constantly hammered by PMs from would-be sellers for days and days and days and days; the bot network had discovered that he had money and was willing to spend it.

About all I can tell you is that the harassment is likely to abate eventually; I don't know how much Support can do to help you with this particular situation.

I assume it happens in every game. You did the right thing by taking a screenshot and emailing Anet, and hopefully it will get cleared away.

On the bright side, perhaps not as many people are purchasing gold these days so the gold sellers have to pursue more aggressive techniques?

Yeah my guild leader and I were both in the same Shing Jea district at the time when it started, and now we're are both getting tells all the time. It's really frustrating because I hate gold sellers with a vengeance and now I'm on their spam list just because I was in the wrong place.

ive been getting the same thing lately. Even more weird than that the first time it happened i had been in GH for about 10 minutes after logging on and in GH the whole time and i was getting them so i dont know where they got my name from

You could set your status to do not disturb for an hour or so. That might help.

I too was PMed while in Shing Jea during the event. The website being advertised is the same as in the picture seen above, only the phrase started with: G'day!

Promptly put the name on ignore, sent in support ticket with screenshot attached, and haven't heard a peep out of them since.

My mule character for golds I'm trying to sell often gets these messages (its a second account so doesn't directly affect me). Why? Because he's often left afk in Great Temple of Balth int 1 while I'm off elsewhere waiting for buyers to become available. Most annoying considering that I've recently made another perma-pre on the account. I've sent a few reports about gold sellers in over time but recently I've started putting them on ignore. Not the solution to the problem but at least a short term fix while I'm burning Charr

I know of tons of people that are getting PMs in game like this now. You just run through a major area and then end up with some kind of gold spam. It is getting very old fast.