Curse

Fril Estelin · Jan 05, 2009, 10:36 PM // 22:36

Read this today on Gaile's wiki discussion page:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Hey, I appreciate the question about how RMTs keep getting accounts, because it gives me a chance to get on my soap box. The truth is, most accounts used to spam districts with RMT-style advertising are stolen from players.

Say the RMTer talks to 10 or 20 people in a day, and waves 100K gold or XX Ectos or a rare miniature in front of them. Some of those people "take the bait," and then the RMTer tells the player some song and dance about how, to prevent them getting caught for the transaction, the company will "place the gold directly on the player's account." Most people reading this will say, "Yeah, sure they will!" and laugh, but surprisingly enough, some players believe it, and they turn over their account credentials.

Naturally, being unethical, the RMTer steals both the main account and whatever secondary account or buddy key the player was selling. THe RMTer then uses that buddy key or that secondary account to steal more accounts. It's a vicious cycle, but we're closing more than a thousand accounts a week and we are committed to continued vigilance against scammers and thieves. (And yes, if you spot a potential thief, please do submit a ticket -- it really helps!)

So if you want to make a nice action, increase your karma, or make the GW community safer, spread the word around you. Individually it's ridiculous to spend your time helping newbies or naive people (kids generally are). But collectively it can make a huge difference, and if you carefully think about it, it'll benefit you indirectly (less RMT, less bot, less scam, less complaints).

RMT is a parasite of MMOs and people get into the trap, the way people grab the spam stick. And it seems it's happening quite a lot in GW, with 1000 account closure a week (the "GW is dying" sentence people like to say takes a new meaning here). Help people realise they are cons, spread the word about RMT and scammers.

Oh and apparently /report is not as useful as a ticket!

The Red Messenger · Jan 05, 2009, 11:19 PM // 23:19

thanks for the info. its too bad that all players cant just read and follow the log-in screen notes and not get their account stolen. hard password and common sense has worked for me so far.

holy crap 1000 accounts a week?!?!! i didnt know that many people played still to maintain such high numbers. well i guess by the time guild wars is sucked dry they can always move on to the next generation of games

*Darcy* · Jan 05, 2009, 11:33 PM // 23:33

The scammers are getting more sophisticated and, lately, are posting only a single message in district chat before moving on. Thus, an attempt to /report [name] results in the message about the player needing to be in the same district as yourself.

At that point most people shrug and move on. The screenshot-based report is time consuming and most players won't bother or, as I did, run into problems filling out the Support form (which in my case, refused to recognize my verified email address).

If ArenaNet wants more help from the legitimate player base, they need to create a different ingame report system for this type of scammer, that does not require being in the same district.

Nessar · Jan 05, 2009, 11:35 PM // 23:35

Thanks for the info. 1k accounts a week..thats insane, seriously o.o I'd never think it would be *that* much. Oh well...if I see some these guys around I'll be sure to report. Alothough I've been safe lately..yay common sense?

shoyon456 · Jan 05, 2009, 11:40 PM // 23:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Oh and apparently /report is not as useful as a ticket!

Have known this for some time. This kind of thing just goes along with the "don't get too greedy" theme that I've been reminded of many times.

Robbert Monga · Jan 05, 2009, 11:42 PM // 23:42

what exactly RMT stands for?

HawkofStorms · Jan 05, 2009, 11:44 PM // 23:44

Realworld Money Traders

dilan155 · Jan 05, 2009, 11:44 PM // 23:44

what is the point of the whole same dist and/or has to be logged on thing? it makes reporting people impossible unless they are actually stupid enough to stay in one district. many scammers already know their gonna scam so they are ready with log out before they do theses kinda things. i agree with darcy if you want more people reporting theses scammers you might wanna improve your reporting functions better.

fusa · Jan 05, 2009, 11:45 PM // 23:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Oh and apparently /report is not as useful as a ticket!

I use to send support tickets with screenshots of the account sellers since it is next to impossible to /report them since they switch districts a seconds after spamming their messages. After a couple of tickets they told me to not use this and use report. I responded that /reporting someone who is using bots to switch districts quickly is impossible. They responded with a repeat of their message to use /report and closed the ticket.
If the RMT companies are stealing accounts from gold buyers, I couldn't care less. They will just kill their own customer base, and run off the idiots who pay money for something that gives them no advantage over free items.

Reverend Dr · Jan 06, 2009, 12:23 AM // 00:23

I have lost all faith in humanity, yet 1K accounts a week stolen in this method seems far too high. Especially when guild wars populations counts are estimated in the 300,000's at peak. Double especially when two seconds in google gives me a site where one email = one trial key.

I am really sick of Anet's attitude towards the playerbase on RMT, where they exaggerate what is happening, talk down to us with lies, and expect us to believe it. Sorry Gaile, but most RMT's make their money by repeat customers. Most scammers are individuals trying to get something for nothing. If it was as you say, then by the projected time of GW2 all of us will have had our accounts stolen. Scammers and RMT are bad for their own reasons, please don't talk down to us and tell us they are one and the same.

Truegen · Jan 06, 2009, 01:18 AM // 01:18

Thanks for the heads up

The Meth · Jan 06, 2009, 01:30 AM // 01:30

tl dr;
people are stupid

Bob Slydell · Jan 06, 2009, 01:30 AM // 01:30

Wow! Thanks for the info!

I have always had the common sense to never tell someone my password... I don't understand why people still think they can give their User/Pass out and not get hit with consequences. I don't feel bad for the people who take the bait, I really don't i know it sounds a bit mean but i don't. Its been posted on the login screen over the 4 years the game has been online. Something in any way/shape/form saying don't tell ANYONE user/pass or beware of 3rd party programs/scam-sites etc etc.

Other then that I hope this info may protect newer players, who aren't quite as knowledgeable of the game yet.

Issac · Jan 06, 2009, 01:40 AM // 01:40

Dang good info, man 1000 accounts a week, that's pretty up their. Maybe that's why the games dieing?

Jae Onasi · Jan 06, 2009, 02:41 AM // 02:41

I would like the reporting system to be a little easier in this regard as well. If I have the time, I do report them via NCsoft, but it is a lot more time consuming to do it that way.

fusa getting the ticket closed because someone in Anet didn't want to deal with it that way when /report doesn't work effectively tells me someone didn't feel like doing their job that day, to be honest.

TheRaven · Jan 06, 2009, 03:33 AM // 03:33

Never underestimate the stupidity of people. The gold sellers and scammers know this unfortunately.

I know of about 10 people in my alliance that have had their accounts wiped by "hackers". It's always the same story. The "hacker" befriended their victims. The victim usually meets this really nice guy while pugging and the nice guy is really great. He's helping out with some difficult missions and teaching the victim some decent skillbars and even giving him some free weapons. It's no problem, the nice guy is an old pro at this game and like many of us he doesn't need these weapons so his new "buddy" might as well have them.

This goes on for a week or a month until one day the nice guy asks for a favor. The stories are different. Sometimes he wants to trade a really nice expensive weapon to his buddy, but well his account is glitched again and the trade window won't work. Maybe he just wants to log into his buddy's account to check on a screenshot. Maybe he is offering to help with a difficult quest, but he just doesn't have any characters there yet and "Hey I got an idea! I'll just log into your account and do the quest for you."

One way or another he gets his buddy's password and a day or 2 later the account has been "hacked" and wiped clean.

So far no one in my alliance has lost their accounts, but they have lost all their gold and items. We constantly warn about this scheme but still people don't listen. A lot of times it's young kids that are the victims, but several adults as well.

Each time we ask them, "Didn't you read all the warnings???? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING????", and the answer is always the same, "yeah yeah I know. I was stupid, but he was just really nice and he was my pal. He wasn't a scammer. He wasn't like that." Well he wasn't until he got your password.

Alleji · Jan 06, 2009, 03:46 AM // 03:46

I always report spammers in WoW because it's as easy as right-clicking their name in chat and clicking "report spam".

If anet wanted their system to be effective, they would've made it easy for players to help them. Taking a screenshot, logging out of the game, remembering my password for the playNC account, and submitting that screenshot after filling out a long form is NOT fast or easy. Maybe that's why I never bothered to report anything other than leeching in AB.

Like, I'm all for banning scammers, but if I'm on GW, I'm playing the game, not hunting scammers, and if reporting them interrupts me playing the game... /shrug.

pumpkin pie · Jan 06, 2009, 04:05 AM // 04:05

if Customer support were to do something about Sync i'll send them all my screenshots of people selling RMT :P~

that was a Joke.

anyway, I make it a habit to take screenshots whenever I see players spamming info to go to www.[insertsitehere].com for gold or anything suspicious, also players who wants to buy accounts. But, opening a ticket for that means I have to be sending in ticket everyday, Ms Gaile, which I don't see myself doing ... I think it would be easier if there's some kind of system where no tickets are needed, somewhere to uploaded screenshot with the violators name in the chat box. you can see who spam them and go investigate yourself, what say you?

I also suppose that all my screenshot would bee outdated, since i don't remember when i took them.

AKB48 · Jan 06, 2009, 04:39 AM // 04:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Red Messenger

thanks for the info. its too bad that all players cant just read and follow the log-in screen notes and not get their account stolen. hard password and common sense has worked for me so far.

holy crap 1000 accounts a week?!?!! i didnt know that many people played still to maintain such high numbers. well i guess by the time guild wars is sucked dry they can always move on to the next generation of games

People are greedy in the end, so whenever you wave couple hundred ectos in front of them, the first and (probably) the only thing they will think is "Holy Crap! how can I get these ectos for free? Can I get them for free? Lucky me!!". They need to know that in the end, everything is pixels, when GW2 comes out and GW dies off......all these ectos/plat/whatever you had in GW is gonna affect you little if you decide to carry onto GW2. These ectos/plat/whatever is gonna affect you even less if you decide to quit. (Imagine going to your boss and say "Boss....I'm sorry for my bad performance, can I make it up/get a raise for XXX amount of ectos?" ......I will just leave it here)

Mystica · Jan 06, 2009, 06:29 AM // 06:29

1000 accounts a week...sure. I don't even blame Gaile. She is still the best

Gaile: Hey, could I have some input on the RMT bans to tell the community?
Dev: Uhm yeah, tell them we ban a lot.
Gaile: How much is a lot?
Dev: Like..uhm...thousands?
Gaile: Thousands?
Dev: Tell them 1000...we ban 1000...a week. Bob? Any idea?
Bob: Don't care...eating pizza.

And yes, this must be the very first time Gaile gets some false info from the devs and support.

Considering the ultra-highspeed the support works with I'd be surprised if it were 50 accounts per week. (10 per day...they don't seem to work on saturday and sunday).