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... .

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.