Reporting Botting Gold Sellers - Gaile plz read :)

No, but they can ad-spam.

when you get to pre, they whisper you as soon as you get in!

I didn't really mind the bot sellers in Balth ID1...barely anyone goes there except for international trades. But what angers me the most is bot sellers in Ascalon City American and PMing me directly (a freaking lvl 20 Derv) to buy gold on their site. This is the worst possible place to advertise because it is right at the heart of the noob population of GW, which will have less of a problem buying gold than seasoned players. Along with being able to report botters, we should be able to report gold-site advertisers, especially in places like Ascalon.

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

/agree, I find this very annoying as well. I sell Z keys in balth AD1 and sometimes ID1 if no ones buying in AD, about half the time I go there I get a PM from some gold-seller bot immediatly after I zone in. I have /reported dozens and my ignore list is full.

Ok to add to this, I tested something.

Ask yourself: Haven't you noticed an increase in gold site spammers since the update to get player access to all districts (thus far Americans/Europeans can go to Korean districts). Coincidence? I think not.

You know this is bad when you get large scale spamming in pre searing. I have a new Tyrian Mesmer, and EVERYTIME you load into Ascalon, you'll get a pm for a gold ad. So they seem to target people loading in. If you do not ignore them, they continue to spam ads at you.



Only 10 IGNORE SLOTS. Come the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO on.

here's an idea.
revoke all trial account codes. they don't do anything beneficial for guild wars anyway. at least that will mean spammers/bots need to use real accounts that risk getting flagged and banned that cost them real money to replace.

well i hate to be the one to tell you all this but it aint gunna happen no matter how much u beg

they use trial accounts cant ban those...

not only that but the sellers arent the actual bots theyd just grab another account and keep selling

and even if you did ban the sellers in game ther is still the sites they use to sell people would still buy

bummmmmmmer

did i say ban? i said DELETE THEM ALL.

yes, but this time the full-accounts mean real losses to them if they get repeatedly banned

i don't care if you buy from these sites, really. its the spam that pisses me off. every time i see one of those random mishmash names spam gold selling/account buying i mentally tell them to GTFO and pray their family dies in a fire (guess thats laying it a bit thick though, but thats not too far from the truth).

well i can care less about spam its all the people GORED up the economy that pisses me off and welcome to gw we all spam in the trade chat everyday

pming is annoying though i agree

and lazuli i posted at the same time as u wasnt arguing w u but if u wanna flame me thas cool :{

I've been to Temple of Balthy [AD 1-2] four times in the past two days and was pm'ed by a bot twice. I reported them both...

I got that exact pm yesterday...

I hate the ones that are programmed to PM you. Those piss me off. The others I just ignore.

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!"

Are you saying you would like someone to sit down in all the bot areas to monitor them and send a list of bots? Since many here on guru feel that bots are the Satan of GW (since microsoft takes first irl, of course), we should have no trouble organizing something along those lines-
A group of people who will go and look for bots for a week or so, reporting every single one they find.

Yes im fed up of itemcoo telling me to pay attention to KINGS ROAD! too.

What the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing hell?

Oh my word.

Some friends and I were going to make new pre-sear characters and go through the Prophecies campaign playing less-familiar classes. But reading this I don't want to turn up into Ascalon City with a Level 1 character or I'll have any number of machines locking onto my two year old account and bugging me endlessly until my ignore list is full. It's like that one email or website that gets your email account on the spam list, which is then shared with all the other spam lists, and before you know it you're getting 400 emails a day offering you something called s0ft C!AL1$ whatever that is.

What a horrifying thought.

This may sound like an overreaction but I think I am going to postpone this plan, visiting Ascalon, indefinitely until the problem is clearly fixed.

What a rubbish impression this gives to new players that have bought the game and don't understand what is going on or how to ignore it. They arrive and are trying to work out their keys, controls etc and their 'whisper' is filling up with gold spam - and they have no idea why it's there or how to make it go away.

These trial accounts seem to offer a risk-free means for spammers to ruin the game for everyone else, particularly new players. Obvious solution would be to disable /whisper on trial accounts.

Gaile pls update us if such measures are taken.

Okay here's a new one...

I was running Sepulchre of Dragimmar last night with a couple friends. During the battle with the boss, I got a whisper from a gibberish-named gold seller. Sps Sfsssfs or something was his name...

I hadn't been in a zone in 45 minutes, and before that I was only in Olafstead and Sifhalla where I've never observed botting or spamming.

I was very suprised and unsure at first how it could happen. My current hypothesis is that the gold seller saw me active on this forum (in a thread that was relevant to his activity) and used my character name to whisper to me. I received only a single whisper from this guy, not spam. I suspect that a bot would have sent multiple messages, therefore this may be a live person. Maybe.

I've been whispered by one of these guys before while in a zone, but it was always shortly after leaving a busy area. I had assumed they got my name when they saw me in a town.

Gibberish-named bots like this one are almost certainly trial accounts. My recommendations:

1) Disable /whisper on trial accounts.
2) Add a /report feature for gold sellers.
3) 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.

Yesterday I was in a map, and had been for almost 35min, when I was hit with a Whisper for gold selling web site!

Only thing I can think of was that he grabbed my name in town and added it to a list, taking amost 35min to reach my name on that long long list.

The player name was some made up crap like Sdfds Sdfdd.

I got hit up in Kaineng the minute I logged on. I think they pool names from guru and other places. I notice that when I am logged on with any other character outside of Awakened Lotus I don't get bothered.