Online GOLD dealer SPAM - It's getting ridiculous!!!!!

Not only I am (we are) seeing spam in the major cities from online gold sellers. I'm getting personal tells from them at any point in time. This may be during during a mission, pvp, at anytime of day.

This is not only from one source, so far I receive these unwanted messages from THREE different online gold sellers.

Note that putting them on your ignore list doesn't do anything, as they are obviously switching to new accounts because I assume they are being banned due to reports from players. (they have random names like psqd efogy, N R M T, ect... )

I'm fairly certain these gold sellers are capturing names from players who chat/sell while in town, then possibly using a bot to spam players with personal messages.

Does aNet have plans to stop this from happening?

Maybe aNet should become draconian and limit chat from free/trial accounts? I'm pretty sure aNet is banning accounts as they are reported, but you have to go further since these sellers are changing to new accounts, ban the IP address of accounts who engage in this activity.

-Subo

It really doesn't seem like to big of a deal, just report them I guess. If this is a big problem for you just set your status to "Do not disturb" after you get done selling so the gold spam bots can't message you. I would set it on "Do not disturb" rather than offline because they would probably just try and spam you once you set your status back to online.

1 up and 2 down, so your basically saying to put up with them. That's a joke, and the issue is that it detracts from the game. No way i'm going to put myself DND, which would also inhibit messages from other players/friends.

Also let me clarify that the messages are not constant, they are periodic, nevertheless annoying. This should not be happening, and i'm hoping that aNet has plans to combat this.

-Subo

I've been noticing a lot more of them recently, too. They must be getting desperate, lol. xD

I'm starting to get more random whispers from them now, as well. I just report 'em as I see 'em...not much more that can be done really, as I don't wanna set to DnD or offline, either.

I've just noticed this myself, actually. The public spam of gold sites is more prevalent, and the last 2 times I've been logged on I've been PMed gold farming sites (not repeatedly... just out of the blue). I'm still downloading the recent update, so it remains to be seen if I'll get messaged again today...

But I can see it getting annoying if this activity increases further. I can turn the local chat off, no problem. But changing my online status to prevent messaging? Not going to happen while there are people in GW I actually *want* to get messages from. :/

Not saying anything can be done about this problem... just emphasising that the problem exists, I guess.

its a prime time for gold sellers to be promoting their "goods" - loot scaling has made everyone but bots (and dupers!) broke, and a new expansion is on the horizon.

i got my first pm from a gold seller the other day, and i was a bit surprised. didn't really bother me though - i just glanced at the message and chose to ignore it. nothing to get really upset about.

I ment put yourself on DND around the usual times they pm you. You said yourself that they are constantly changing their accounts so really what would be the point in reporting them?

Also the only way to stop them is to completely stop people from buying gold online which will probably never happen.

And within 20 minutes of logging in... a gold farming PM.

I got a pm while I was in Isles.... odd.

There should be an in-game report system when I was playing there were many players,scammers that does something worth reporting but I am SURE NOTHING ıs done. Any, ANy report is ignored. Once I was like reporting everything ı was came across and what you expect ALL OF THEM SAME PREMADE MSG

(Mortal Kombat voice)
It has begun!

Oh my. When I left EQ2 the gold selling PMs were bad.
You would start a new character and 'ping! you got mail'. Yeah, it was gold sellers too.
I do not know how they knew to send a mail whenever a new character was made.
I thought I had escaped them when I came to GW. I'm very sad now.

There should be an in-game report system when I was playing there were many players,scammers that does something worth reporting but I am SURE NOTHING ıs done. Any, ANy report is ignored. Once I was like reporting everything ı was came across and what you expect ALL OF THEM SAME PREMADE MSG

There is only so much one can do.

Ban the IP address? Many, if not most, people that play have dynamic IP addresses so that will not work. There will be TONS of people who can not play because of this. Not to mention the technical workarounds are far easier than running an effective gold farming bot league.

Disallow chat for free accounts? Somewhat, but then those keys are mostly worthless as you can not really play the game. To stop what you are describing would require *all* chat to be stopped so the only way to play would be with hench - that isn't really acceptable. Not to mention that many of the bots are from "hacked" accounts anyway (as much as keyloggers are hacks).

A large group of GM's? Well, we are back to that "cost" thing. Currently Anet reports about 4000 accounts banned a month, given that I can't see how they could afford to hire enough GM's. Give players the ability? Yea, great, I can't say how many "detectives" have accused me of being a bot because I run to a sign and ignore their idiot PM's - yea I would *love* to have to have conversations with them to prove I'm not. I'm sure that would go over much better than now, we already see a decent amount of false bans that have to be handled by support.

In short, there is little more they could that does not require man power. Anything done *has* to be done in the form of Loot Scaling - that is automated and affects everyone. They could drive the price of gold so high almost no one would purchase it, however that generally means that gold is hard to come by.

As for making it hard to bot - anything and everything a human farms can be botted, it is just harder to code the bot. I've written some fairly sophisticated testing harnesses for GUI's in the past, much of that can be fairly easily translated to bots. Yea, I'm probably not your average bot coder, but for the amount of money in question they could afford to hire those of us with sufficient education (especially in the countries where botting is rampant - they may have trouble hiring American Computer Scientist at a cheap rate, but the Chinese ones are 100% just as good - if not better - and MUCH cheaper if they live in their home country).

All of this has to be balanced and it would be hard to move. One main thing I do not really know the outcome of is things like the buddy keys - Anet says many of their bots come from those yet I wonder how many actual sales they get from them. My general feeling is that they are better off without them, or at the least very restrictive/limited ones. For instance, if they are the main problem then banning trade and storage from those accounts makes sense - after all they *are* temporary and those are only useful to full accounts. That would do WAY more to stop the botters if they couldn't trade you the gold for real world currency.

However, if "hacked" accounts are the main issue then not really much you can do. Like speeders, people running stop signs, and bad fast food joints that just becomes part of life and can not be "solved" without the word "draconian" having a real meaning.

Actually, I do have an idea.

Have an option in your 'Friends' list that can let you 'disallow' anyone not acknowledged as a friend from PMing you. You can switch it on or off as you please. It doesn't get rid of the problem, of course, and it disallows perfectly friendly strangers from dropping you a line, but it might be an improvement.

I'm in Ascalon ID1 a lot these days, and today I logged on, and had received a gold selling PM before I even loaded into my Guild Hall....I guess they took note of my igns?

I like the system WoW has.

Get spam? - right click the name in the chat window hit " report spam". Job done.

It places any character from the account in question onto ignore for you and forwards the complaint to support.

Of course, it doesn't solve the issue that these people just keep creating new accounts, but it's a hell of a lot less hassle than using NCSoft's support site, which has an annoying tendency to give up on screenshot attachments even when they're within the required size limit.

I haven't had any gold selling whispers in GW yet... .

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/rediculous.html

I havent had a huge problem with the gold PMs yet, but I did get PMs twice durring the DF redux, both from the same user.

I think they add random IGN's to friendlist to spam them at a later date. I haven't had a message for a while now, but i haven't bought any unids for a while from Ascalon int1. I usually got a few sometime after going there, seems if you trade with a bot, ever, you get added to be spammed later i guess it stops when they find newer people or the account gets banned.

I honestly think the report button in the char screen during gameplay is rediculous Heres the sitiation
You have some 1 that doesn tlike you right
You have some 1 that think you scammed him right
you have some 1 thast jelaous right
You have some idiot thast hates all people for no reason

Hmm ABUSE<ABUSE ABUSE ABUSE ABUSE ABUSE ABUSE

Do you know how many pople will be 'REPORTED' for reasons of personal distaste or dislike of the person
So count up how many poeple might be accused and be innocent just becouse couple of people are incapable of ignoring comments on thier Pm

Who are you kiodding here lol i agrre somehting must be done but putting POWER IN GAMERS HAND THAT IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED TO ALL GAMERS will be ridiculous unvise oh and timeconusming.

Well if Blizz are prepared to employ people to check chat logs from reports that's up to them. You can abuse it all you want, but if that person has done nothing wrong then they have nothing to worry about. Hardly ridiculous.

Edit: Btw, you can only use this function 5 times in any 24 hour period IIRC, which should be sufficient if you're not hanging around in Orgrimmar for the rest of your natural life.

It's easy to ignore whispers I find, but trying to sift through a constantly spamming gold seller in town while keeping an eye on general chat is a lot harder.

i never get spammed.

._.

nobody likes me.

T_T

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Arena net needs to stop this now before it gets seriously out of hand. There are too many MMO games out there now that are unplayable because of all the spam.

Personally, I have not had any spam whispers yet, but I sympathize with those that have. The current method of reporting is too unwieldy to be of any use. I tried to report someone once, and all I got was a return mail from support saying I sent the report to the wrong e-mail. I sent the report to the e-mail address recommended on the support screen.

Here are a few ideas that may work and be within budget for A-net.

- Like Saraphim suggested, add a clickable "report this user" button ingame.

- Report button should come with a "report category" that you click. (gold seller, spammer, hate speech, scamming)

- In order to stem abusive reporters, make it crystal clear that anyone who abuses the report system will be penalized.
For example: if you send in 10 reports within a certain time period that supports deems inappropiate, your account is flagged and a warning e-mail sent to the reporter that they are abusing the system. The e-mail should include a link to an official page detailing what is reportable and what isn't. If you send 25 inappropiate reports, you are banned for 6 hours. 50 reports, banned for 1 day. 100 reports banned for a week, etc, etc.

- Reports are prioritized in the support queue in order to catch gold sellers specifically quicker. All gold seller reports are sent to the top of the support queue. Users receiving more than 1 report are given more priority. Any user reported by more than 10 players is red flagged to be worked ASAP. (Unless the reporter has been flagged as a possible abuser)

- The report button is linked to the chat window. You can only report folks by clicking on their name in the chat window. You can't pick a name out of the blue and report them.

- Not sure if this one is do-able, but would be nice if it is. If you report someone from the guild or alliance chat the report goes directly to your guild leader instead of A-net support.

I started getting them during the dragon festival. The biggest problem I see is that its too easy for them to just get another trial code and then pm more people even if they were banned. Maybe trial codes shouldn't be allowed to pm or something.

Anet should ban anyone spamming anything with www.(something) in it in all chat.

even though wrongly accused people will suffer and thast why they shouldnt puut it into the hands of the players to decide who inncocent and whos guilty
As of proof scrennshot will dom goos but butting by itself will only couse suspicion and constatnt fear of being reported for no reason

That could actually work. The simplest ideas are usually the best, only trouble is they'd probably just circumvent it the way people circumvent WTS.

Ghost, I'd reply to your post but to be honest I have no idea what "dom goos but butting" means.

End of day, out of all the MMOs I've played (which isn't a huge amount really) GW has the least amount gold spam I've seen.

ive gotten 2 pms in the past month or so, is it really that big a deal? if i were constantly getting spamming with pms, maybe, but i doubt anyones gotten more then a handful in a period of a few weeks anyways.

I LIKE that idea! Make the setting so that you appear offline to anyone not on your friends list (maybe let guildies and alliance folks see your true status in addition to friends list, too.)

But it wouldn't fix this problem, since a lot of the people that enjoy the trading side of the game wouldn't be able to use it. They're the ones most likely to be targets of these gold seller whispers it seems. (And no, "just stop trading and play noob" isn't a solution either. Trading can be a lot of fun and like it or not, it's a legitimate way that some people enjoy the game.)

The report spam button seems like it would cause more harm than good due to dorks abusing it, yep.

I often use "www.guildwars.com", "www.guildwarsguru.com" and "www.guildwiki.com" in all chat when people are asking questions ... banning for putting ANY websites in local/trade/whispers seems a bad plan to me.

A friend of mine that does a lot of trading is getting the gold-seller whispers now, too. It happens when he's out playing, not just in towns. Different names, but always for the same site. I don't know if ANet can do scripts in real time, but how about auto-flagging any account that sends a message with a text string matching these gold sites? Maybe they already do that.

How about an account based text filter? If you're getting pestering whispers from gold sellers that always include a gold site you can add that string to your filter and block any incoming whispers that use it.

Is it just me, or are these mass whisper things just starting to get bad? I used to get the occasional gold seller whisper in Great Temple when waiting for someone, but they never kept at me after I left. I wonder what's happened that they suddenly have to hound people like this.

Key point right there. The best thing to do right now is to just keep yourself to offline when in town and hope that your friends don't message you right at that moment.

I have received 3 in the amount of time I have played the past 2 days. Considering I had only received 1 prior to this (2 years), it just seems like a bad sign.

I like the idea of being able to set yourself to a certain mode where only people on your friends list, guild list, or alliance chat can pm u. Anyone else that is foreign or you have never seen won't be able to pm u.

I suggested something like that a long time ago, though nobody liked it... but w/e.

I've never been PMed by a gold spammer, but I've seen them in the Great Temple of Balthazar a few times. If they ever pm me, I hope the iq rotting discussions will drown it out.

Never been spammed by gold sellers. Though I'm sure they'd make for better conversation then the people messaging me to join their guilds, give them money, or asking me to buy their crap. If there are people actually spamming you to buy gold, just screenshot it and send it to support. Should the problem persist, the wonderful ignore list comes in very handy.

Hmm I always thought that "BUY GOLD HERE 100k for 20 dollaz $$$ CHEAP$$$ www.xxxxxxx.com!~~$$$" was a great conversation starter. I really haven't had any pm's probably because I havent been any big cities because I have halted all my trading due to this Banning from anet.

Im sure if you get a screen shot of someone messaging that at you anet will do something about it. There is only so many accounts the company will buy before they are losing money.

OMG in kamadan....i got several times...auto traded, some one with a strange name, like mentioned Iffgh Jkkk or somethign many times offered trade, i looked it was like all gold armors and all they said over and over was "30k ok" "30k ok" its annoying, this happened to me twice with the first guy and once again with someone else, no doubt these are trade bots.

BTW it was long time ago... i dont have screens but il lget some if it happens again.

Actually in EQ2 some people in a guild I was in started having fun with the gold selling tells.
They'd actually feign interest and ask more and more stupid questions until the person started to figure out they were being messed with and ignored them.
I have a friend who does this with telemarketers. I was there when he asked them to hold while he confers with his wife for a time they could call back to discuss it further. I was trying so hard not to laugh when he just put the phone down on the table, pretended to go talk to his wife, but instead went back to playing Tetris.

actually it happened to me the other day, all of the sudden i'm outside kamadan checking my sword then "wwwBLAH BLAH BLAH GOLD 10.99 for 100k!"
stuff like that.

Ive gotten one,i was kinda like...??????? and moved on lol.

oh wait i remember lol, i got a pm and told them to shutup lol......THEN i moved on =D

They all know you're poor, like me

Lol, I haven't been spammed either.