Welcome back Taiwan!...Oh, and the whisper bots have returned

Then I'm going to have to further research this since I was unaware that Taiwan, and not independant gold farmers, was to blame.

1. Give on the evidence provided by the example we know that Joe MIGHT be responsible for the disappearance of the beer. Maybe you were sleepwalking and drinking all the beer in that state.
2. Secondly we don't even know if the whisper is considered a breach of conduct. We might think it is - but that's not our decision to make! So to pinpoint guilt to anyone is overstepping our boundaries by an insane deal. He isn't in the position to place the blame. So if he somehow comes to a conclusion that something isn't only a coincidence - he HAD to reach that conclusion by weighting arguments with a non-relevant scale! Which in this case means basing the decision on arguments that are NOT relevant! And the only argument he provided is his feeling that the botters are from the Taiwanese servers.
3. One does not point to a group of people and say that one of them did it and that they should all pay for it.
Either one figures out exactly who did it - or the whole group is innocent.
There is no mass guilt here.
4. And the most eye catching one (yet at the same time completely irrelevant because we are NOT the subject that is responsible to weight the evidence) - like you said, he is not providing evidence.
A person is innocent until proven guilty.
No evidence - not guilty.
End of discussion.


Like I have stated - in such cases we can only provide our observations.
But we simply can NOT make any kind of relevant conclusions out of those observations.
And there is no "they" or a connection with the Taiwanese server until the appropriate subject decides otherwise!
Or we can just replace "they" with "women", "Jewish people", "black people" and so on. It's the same thing.


Edit:
Completely forgot to mention that I fully admit my mistake of using a wrong term. I am a non native-English speaker and the "racism" was obviously not the best term I could have used. What I feel would be better would be something in the lines of "a group of people who we can define as "not being us" with the common point that is Taiwan". Once again - not the best term - but hopefully it was clear where I was going at.

Races have nothing to do with this. Is culture.
Taiwan law considers 'legal' to have people ruining others fun and games with extreme farming and bots. Why this country, and not others?
Culture.
Not that everyone from Taiwan is like that, of course, but unfortunately, there's always a lot of people that follow the stream and do what other do, and in some cases it is very bad.

Asia and Europe are the same continent. And it doens't matter, when I rule the world it will be all the same country, and it will be called "Snuggles".

Hm... snug...

Anyways, I havent seen a bot whisper yet, so I'm not affected for now and I can't tell if this is true.

Exactly. If their law cannot change then they will have to give up a few things. Maybe when the next election rolls around they should try to get a better government.

russia isnt asian its intercontinental

oh and why doesnt china just retake taiwan? we would finally see some decent laws and not shitty ones.

You're right, it's ANET's withe their Eula, which prohibits the buying or selling of ingame gold for real money, which is what these sites/bots are doing. They whisper you so you can't report them, because they are often in a different district.

Personally, i think ANET needs to find someway to allow the reporting of these bots, Whichever region they are in (i'm sure there are bots everywhere) even if they are not in the same district.

Personally when it first started I wrote down a few of the oh-so-easy-to-remember names and reported them on the website and not through the game

I have never ever gotten a whisper about gold selling or anything of that nature...

Go start Guild Wars and read the notice about purchasing gold. Taiwan returns and ANET has this on the starting page. Probably not related. It is nice to see all the players returning to hot springs.

There are only a few ways to fix the bot problem...

Remove GW trial ENTIRELY.

Remove GW trial chat feature.

When you ignore someone, you ignore everyone on that account.

Can't get a new key after getting one trial..

Since other people picked on the racism thing (it's not racism per se; it's parochialism, nationalism, generalization, scapegoating and above all nativism) I thought I'd pick on a different vein of idiocy. Some of you folks seem under the misconception that people talking to you on the internet and offering to trade their goods for yours should be illegal for the sole reason that you find it annoying and aren't interested in the product. Allow me to introduce you to actual law, which in free countries(1) doesn't (and oughtn't) protect you from being solicited or spoken to or annoyed anywhere let alone on the internet. The government has no business interfering with speech and trade in this arena, and subsequently your appeals to "government enforcement" are not only falling on deaf ears, they make you look authoritarian and silly. "I don't like something on the internet so the government should force people to stop doing it by threatening them with criminal prosecution and jail time!" Good grief.

The only authority here is Anet/NCsoft, as GW is their private property - an assertion you agree to every time you log into the game. They can boot anyone they wish at any time for any reason, including violations of their rules, their EULA/TOS, which would cover botting programs which access the game and the sale of ingame money, which they consider their property, not yours. Regardless of my thoughts on either of those things, rest assured, neither is illegal in the federal sense being kicked around this thread, and your suggestions that the Taiwanese should elect a better government display both ignorance about Taiwan in particular and about the difference between civil and criminal offenses in general.

Besides, complaining that the governments of Taiwan and the US aren't fascist enough really gives Anet a free pass on failing to monitor and regulate their game and their property effectively and within their contract with their customers, which is the real problem here, regardless of our individual opinions on the expanding nature of internet property and who really owns it.

Selling gold in Guild Wars is both not allowed by ArenaNet's rules and is damaging to the game economy. Therefore, you can RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO right off until you learn that, because it is the exact reason to ban them.

what about stolen accounts?

Very true...i go into Temple of balth everyday pretty much now...to get zaishen keys...i still dont get the whispers tho

Stupidity deserves no insurance.


On the other hand, when it comes to botting, re-segragating the Taiwan district may be a means to an end, but I'd like to see more measures taken against botting directly and not their origin or favorite play server.


My main suggestion is to strip trial accounts of their chat functions altogether.

I feel that this may be the one necessary evil that gets taken. But I can't just be left like that: they should at least be able to talk out of outposts. Maybe with people in your party, but that would probably just send out a storm of party invites from names like Uiiefjgm Msijg.

Never once received one of these PM's. Am I just lucky?

I once made a team of bot reporters in Shing Jea international dis 1 some time ago.
They were so obvious that they were bots because you would see an endless line going outside the portal and all around. Also if you looked on the mini-rader it was full of bots. Well back to our team we reported as much bots as we could and 15 minutes later All the bots dissapeared. It was amazing how much bots dissapeared it was a ghost town after.

Yes. I used to get them constantly several months ago. Mainly in the Main towns like Lions Arch, Kamadan, Shing Jea, and The Temple of Bathazar. Lots of people play GW so im sure there are people that are lucky enough not to get one.

I personally have not got a PM since the return of Taiwan. But I have noticed an increase in WTB GW Accounts Spam.

Gold sellers can find ways to sell their crappy money, regardless of territory.

Do we have whispers again because of Taiwan's reopening (migration to US servers) or because sellers eventually got used to the new enforcement system? Is the problem the same as before or is it happening with less frequency?

Asking for a single territory to be blocked is a knee jerk reaction that fails to see the whole picture.

It's up to the developer to get better defense strategies and the players NOT to buy the damn gold. It's also up to us to report these problems.

They are running on 10 hour free trials...

I never go to those places unless I'm buying/selling.

Amon, weren't you one of the people who got screwed over recently because of the RTM policies or some such? I remember you saying you couldn't play anymore.

I'm curious because you're the type of people I *wouldn't* want to screw over.

(a) So freaking what? And, (b) Anet can ban by IP now.

w t s7=5k yay i finaly get title

Except, as a player I'd rather just pay some extra monthly fee to have access to a server that blocks Asian IPs. I'm playing a video game here, not fighting the Combine for the freedom of humanity. If people start getting executed for RMT, let me know and I'll get all up in arms... until then... if entire regions are causing significant annoyance, my attitude is easily summed up with "F**k 'em".

Like it or lump it, Asian-sourced IPs are the vast majority of troublemakers because social, economic, and legal conditions allow for RMT-shops to set up and operate easily in those regions. I'd rather they were just banned entirely. If legitimate players in those regions want to play with everyone else, they should lean on their fellow players to lighten up on the insane level of MMO gaming and on their governments (at least where that can be safely done... South Korea I'm looking in your direction) to cooperate more with outside companies to prosecute and isolate offenders.

Ban them all. I don't care. I don't have a problem playing with Asian people, but I do have a problem with the region as a whole since it's constantly causing so many problems in so many different games.

wilthe sites would be able to get money from gw even with taiwan banned

Yup. Let me get a background here. I'm from Europe and I happen to be working in mainland China. After playing for more than 2 years like that, last March I was suddenly unable to access GW. Support services at the time told me it was because of a Chinese government block. That indication was bogus and they later took back that statement when it became apparent it had been because of RMT policy trials.

Later, by the end of March, I got permanently banned - no indication on why that happened. They finally figured out I was legitimate, after further interaction with support. Then my wife, who is Chinese and plays the game a lot more than me, got a temp ban twice in two weeks. After more interactions with support, that was resolved as well. It's been 3 weeks and it's been quiet lately; I would hope it stays that way.

When that happened to me I got naturally upset, but then support services have been competent in handling the situation and I'm sympathetic with Anet's RMT enforcement policies.

Because I'm a gamer at heart <3 and I now and then try out a game I've never downloaded before, last night I decided to try Cabal. It's something I do a lot. Find a new game somewhere (new for me anyways :P) and give it a try.

I immediately uninstalled it after 5 minutes. Why? There were 18 spam bots, all at once, spamming the trade, world, and local channels. Yes, that's right - 18 at once. It could have been more, but my best count was 18.

While I'm all for ridding the world of RMT gold spammers and account buyers,when I run into a game like Cabal (and there are plenty more like this who have an infestation of spam), who do nothing to stop it at all, I'm reminded that we really do have it good here in Guild Wars. Yes, for me, even one whisper is too much, but I've realized long ago that even a few will slip by in even the best guarded games.

I will accept my random, maybe once or twice a month, whisper of spam in Guild Wars over the wretched states of other games I see any day of the week. At least in Guild Wars I see the results of action being taken by the PowersThatBe and I know my /report works.

mm Yeah i was suprised yesterday in kamadan for whisper cause havent got one for couple weeks. but i dont think its from taiwan.

Could someone please tell me why getting a random whisper once in a blue moon is so "terrible?"

Legitmate Taiwan players being able to play > QQing over occasional whispers in the trade hubs.

Save your rage for the /report feature. No one cares.

YAY RACISM!!! A "group", lets call them today, has been accused of harboring "bad", lets call them, GW community members. It's been connected with the return of Taiwan. Look at some facts:

1) Taiwan goes away, whispers go away
2) Taiwan comes back, whispers come back

Don't pull the racist card because it's juvenile. Don't overlook obvious observations because it is very stupid. Taiwan is doing what we all can see... I WANT THIS RTM SH!T IN EFFECT SO THAT THEY CHANGE THIS STUPID F---ING DROP RATE!!!! So that i can make some money for once in a while.

Yes, i noticed it.

Had no whispers since the IP ban parade, had my first recent whisper in kamadan, yesterday.

Hope this was a one time thing

Yup same thing is happening to me and I didn't get a single whisper until they let Taiwan back in. Please Anet make them just play on their own server in their own country why punish the rest of the world with this mess?

Lets get this through your thick head behind every bot is a person and in this case they are taiwanese, no racism just facts. There is no doubt where the whispers are coming from, but, not saying this is the only country, just the main one. Taiwanese!

Maybe it's just people can't let go of the cheap deals hm? Stares at Hot Spring Campers.

I think it's pretty sad that everytime you enter the game now you nearly always have to go into "do not disturb" mode or "offline". This is my status now until I am wanting to buy or trade something. I've given up on Anet fixing anything, they had a fix (Taiwan banned) and then reversed it.

What they need to do is quite simple. Make it where no one can whisper you unless they are in your friends list or you have the trade channel on/open or have a LFG tag out. Then we wouldn't even need an ignore list really, cept I guess for the griefers that would hang around in the trade channel spamming everyone.

^ That idea isn't so bad. As long as I can toggle it on and off.

agree that better chat filtering would help. I wish I could set myself as perma-offline (with the option of toggling it back to online) instead of having to constantly set it in the Friends list.

herd therz sum racism heer

Proof?
Beyond doubt?
And do you have the right to judge that?
So to come to a conclusion like that:
1. you'd need to know the procedure to figure that out
2. you'd need to know what evidence must be presented to to show that the abstract premise is proven
3. you'd need to prove some sort of intent
4. and then - which is kinda the point all normal users fail on - you'd need to be a subject that is allowed to make that decision
This kind of procedures overrules your logic.
Otherwise it's back to the wild wild west where everyone takes justice in their own hands.

Observation. Fine.
Making "logical" conclusions out of those observations. NOT fine.
Simply because it's not our place.