Curse

cebalrai · Jan 24, 2008, 03:27 PM // 15:27

I just got a PM from a gold seller while I was in AB....

The Way Out · Jan 24, 2008, 03:31 PM // 15:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by cebalrai

I just got a PM from a gold seller while I was in AB....

I bet he was a Luxon sin. lol

scrinner · Jan 24, 2008, 03:37 PM // 15:37

Quote:

If /report [gold selling] is made against a trial account, it should result in immediate censorship. The trial account would lose the ability to communicate in local and trade until they buy the game, or perhaps if anet investigates. The potential for abuse here is low. Nobody is going to risk their own account standing to try to abuse trial account players.

I Would Suggest A One Month Ban As the lightest punishment for sending in a fake report. Otherwise that is a brilliant idea I suppose.

We could also have some sort of Tag added as a pre/suffix of a name so players understand their Trial Players or something... Then allow only Team chat and so on. However I dont think the game And the massive ammount of loading you have to do in between maps after a fresh download go hand in hand with trial accounts...

Dimitri_Stucoff · Jan 24, 2008, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Yea, these gold sellers are really annoying. But in all honesty if any online game truely wanted to rid themselves of them, (or for that matter any company wanted to prevent their product from being aquired through less than legal means) all they have to do is google their own product plus one or two choice words. For instance, google "guild wars gold". There are at least 30 pages of sites wanting to sell gold right there. I am sure that Anet can come up with some legal mumbo jumbo to sue the gold sellers and stop the bots right at the source. But then again they might be operating out of some third world country that is outside the realm of the law. These bots are getting out of hand. What we really need is a bot uprising.

cebalrai · Jan 24, 2008, 03:43 PM // 15:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrinner

I Would Suggest A One Month Ban As the lightest punishment for sending in a fake report. Otherwise that is a brilliant idea I suppose.

We could also have some sort of Tag added as a pre/suffix of a name so players understand their Trial Players or something... Then allow only Team chat and so on. However I dont think the game And the massive ammount of loading you have to do in between maps after a fresh download go hand in hand with trial accounts...

Getting a trial account deleted doesn't uninstall GW from Windows

No loading at all if you want to set up another trial account. None.

cebalrai · Jan 24, 2008, 03:45 PM // 15:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dimitri_Stucoff

Yea, these gold sellers are really annoying. But in all honesty if any online game truely wanted to rid themselves of them, (or for that matter any company wanted to prevent their product from being aquired through less than legal means) all they have to do is google their own product plus one or two choice words. For instance, google "guild wars gold". There are at least 30 pages of sites wanting to sell gold right there. I am sure that Anet can come up with some legal mumbo jumbo to sue the gold sellers and stop the bots right at the source. But then again they might be operating out of some third world country that is outside the realm of the law. These bots are getting out of hand. What we really need is a bot uprising.

It would require a whole lot of financial resources to start suing people over in-game gold. Doesn't sound feasible at all. And as you said, Anet would have to take people to to Vietnamese courts and crap like that.

Torqual · Jan 24, 2008, 04:19 PM // 16:19

Great so using Guru and posting your IGN here is now a spamtrap.

This is a great reason for not displaying it. I hid mine a while back just before a moron poster here disagreed with something I said, and threatened to hatespam me in game.

Printing IGN on Guru = invitation to be annoyed.

Shakti · Jan 24, 2008, 04:39 PM // 16:39

Getting PMs from sellers in ascelon constantly the second I zone in. I mean right after I load, is it a bot program? Humans can't react that fast EVERY time. Only complaint about /report is there isn't a selling option, I used Spam.

Kusandaa · Jan 24, 2008, 04:54 PM // 16:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Torqual

Great so using Guru and posting your IGN here is now a spamtrap.

This is a great reason for not displaying it. I hid mine a while back just before a moron poster here disagreed with something I said, and threatened to hatespam me in game.

Printing IGN on Guru = invitation to be annoyed.

I never had problems with people who PM from Guru - at most you'll get a cold/aggressive reply if I'm busy and you don't state where I know you. I've had hatespam from someone (the guy was offline too) but IIRC he's not on Guru... I tend to ignore the hatespam. I like mindgames and I get my amusement from the hatespammers to which I don't reply... and if I reply it's a "lol continue, doesn't bother me". They get tired. If I'm in a bad mood, I'll reply back and will put him into ignore...

But on-topic, I hate gold sellers who PM at the SECOND I load in GToB, especially when I reroll characters for PvP. Else gold sellers don't bother me much.

free_fall · Jan 24, 2008, 05:33 PM // 17:33

"Direct PMs from gold sellers seems to be becoming more frequent in my experience."

I had my first experience of this just last night when I mapped into KC. 5 or 6 PMs by the time I asked in genchat how to use /report and got an answer. Had to choose Spamming as no Gold Seller option.

Had a real name, not gibberish. Someone in genchat asked if I was reporting so-and-so, too, as he just had himself.

cebalrai · Jan 24, 2008, 08:13 PM // 20:13

Just a quick thanks to Gaile for following this thread.

Also wanted to say that a quick survey of my guild is showing that about 30% of us get PMs from gold sellers every few days or more.

God Apprentice · Jan 24, 2008, 11:49 PM // 23:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Ok, some info:

The trial accounts can't trade, and I don't think they can whisper, but they can spam.

I brought this up at a recent meeting, and I hope that we'll take steps to fix that. However, I'm honestly not sure what to do about it, because it seems unfair to offer a trial where someone can't even talk to others to learn about the game, form a party, etc. This requires some contemplation.

I am hoping that we can add "gold selling" as an option of the /report system. Would be very nice to have that option. But in the meantime, since all the sellers spam anyway, just hit "spamming" and you're good.

Does it matter if you report? Absolutely! I sent off 100 reports the other night and the reports are reviewed daily and as one of our support leads said, "The team looooves banning bots! Keep the reports coming!"

Gaile I was wondering, do you all have active GMs watching in the game? I noticed like a year and a half ago someone say in Purple chat in Ascalon about keeping all trades in trade chat, which is why I wondered. For example when I played WoW for a short period of time, whenever a Gold bot would appear in a major city, within minutes I would notice them dissapearing.

If you don't I figure you all should have active GMs in "hot spots" such as Great Temple of Balthazar, that way gold spammers can be eliminated more quickly.

Fil Arun · Jan 24, 2008, 11:52 PM // 23:52

I'm not Gaile, but I seem to recall reading in an article posted a year ago (that I can't find now, if I'd been playing GW at the time I could probably remember better) that was talking about how one of the things that helped GW make money without monthly fees was not having nearly as much of a support staff, which would say to me that there are either few or no GMs on a regular basis.

Just remember, active GMs require active pay. Without a steady stream of income flowing in through subscription fees it's a bit harder to supply them with that money.

Jake_Steel · Jan 25, 2008, 12:11 AM // 00:11

I guess I should feel lucky, I've never been annoyed by this Gold Spankers....

Sergeant of Marines · Jan 25, 2008, 12:42 AM // 00:42

^ ^ you are one of the few I think...so feel very, very lucky.

cebalrai · Jan 27, 2008, 04:52 PM // 16:52

Okay this is getting ridiculous. I'm getting PM'd directly by gold sellers every 20 minutes or so. I ignore them, but new ones PM me. It's from multiple PMers and it's happening when I'm out in a zone fighting monsters, so I'm definitely on a friends list somewhere.

It seems I'm on the friends' list for a network of bots. They're from 2 different gold selling websites.

Gaile, is there any way the communication ability of these gibberish trial accounts can be limited?

erk · Jan 28, 2008, 01:45 AM // 01:45

The Itemcoo botting is a bad as ever all weekend almost ever minute in the id1 RA staging area, you think A.net could just block thier IP or block any use of the word itemcoo or something.

chowmein69 · Jan 28, 2008, 02:21 AM // 02:21

now the bots are all pm'ing me ingame and i put them all on ignore... got like 6 on my ignore list today

Albert Algorn · Jan 28, 2008, 04:06 PM // 16:06

I was really surprised at the time but this is happening to me as well. The pm's started last weekend. I looked for a way to report the name, which btw are strange, but couldn't find one. I answered the first one back with a comment but gave up after that. The thing is that it isn't just happening in The Temple of Balthazar international districts. It is happening everywhere? Did they scour of a list of character names from Anet servers or the web to for spamming or something?

Maybe I should put them all on ignore but I'm going to need a longer ignore list to do it!

pkodyssey · Jan 28, 2008, 05:13 PM // 17:13

I have a huge problem with the steady string of gold spamers, and obvious bots making gold to be sold by gold spammers.

What totally pisses me off is when a a couple of people I know personally, who are fanatical in reaching titles get banned for botting. I know they don't even have the knowledge to defrag their hard drive let alone create a bot, get perma-banned for "botting".

The so called research anet does to investigate bots is a joke. The obvious dodge the ban stick repeatedly, and the unfortunate or those that don't know any better and use the same route and method to exit a town for hours on end to gain a stupid title get the ban stick BEAT down on them. Anet has told them they are looking into it, but they are pretty much giving up. Between them they have 2 dozen slots and over 7000 hours of game play.

Makes me lose my interest in playing and frustrated that this crap keeps happening to a lot of people.

I think that you will see more long time members getting the ban stick, because there is nothing new to do except grind titles. People that may not have previously consider using macros or bots might be tempted because of the lack of new content. 2009 is a long way out, anet needs "worthy" content to keep players interested, and to reduce temptation.