Gold Website Spamming, why now?

Lets speculate about the reason for the increase in gold selling website spammers.

Lets face it, Trial Keys have existed as long as the game. Yet, in the past, we may have issues with seeing lots of bot farmers in certain outposts, and the odd person PMing us to sell stuff, the problem of the gold selling website spammer is a relatively recent one.

Is it a new gold selling organisation(s) that has a different modus operandi from the previous ones? We'll never know, unless someone knows if those same websites existed 3 years ago.

Could it be tied to the opening up of the American server to other servers? The gold sellers to plant a spotter in American district and for PMs from other districts can finally get through. Unless ISPs from these countries were banned from the American server all this while, I don't see this as the main reason.

I do not see /report as having an impact either, because before the introduction of /report, we did not have such a big problem with this.

However, the timing might be more than coincedental.

Is it that with the lower price of GW at retail, there is a big growth of new players and have renewed the interest of gold sellers to GW? (I often feel that the scale and the audacity of the gold sellers are directly proportionate to the popularity of the game.)

Or are the gold sellers desperate now? Their business is seriously threatened by the actions of Anet, or the loss of popularity of GW, that these PMs are the death-throes of these gold selling organisations desperate to recoop some money.

I don't think there's an increase in gold-selling bots. They just changed their tactics due to the new /report feature. Before, when you turned off local chat, you wouldn't see them there. Turn off trade chat, you wouldn't see them there. Now, with PM's, it's much harder to get away from them, and it's harder to ignore because now you get the *ping* to go along with the message.

This isn't a suggestion. Sardelac isn't the place for general discussion. I'm moving to Riverside.

eBay no longer allows gold-selling, you still see some WoW gold offers, and sometimes no single GW gold offer, but in general they are gone.

So they probably now try to lure people to their websites to sell stuff.

It's the trial keys.

Until recently, you could only obtain some trial keys from a retail box of any Guild Wars games, and maybe from some issues of some magazine. All in all the availability of the trial keys were very limited back then.

Right now, www.guildwars.com gives out trial keys freely and as many as you want. No doubt we have more spammers now.

There's a thread about this somewhere.

ANet need to provide free trial keys because it's a good way for them to get new players. It's just unfortunate that the situation is abused by those annoying gold sellers.
Gaile has said that they won't alter the trial keys accounts to block access to chat channels. This is understandable because the genuine new players will want access to that. The problem therefore shouldn't be solved at the trial account end.....if they aren't prepared to prevent trial key accounts from having access to chat channels, maybe they should give us the option to disable the receipt of PM's from trial account key characters...

Personally, I would be happy to play the game knowing that I had opted for not receiving PM's from trial key account characters.

Some key fact(oid)s:

1) The problem worsening correlates with the linking with the Asian server. Yes, the problem has always been there. But now it's MUCH worse. There was a thing on NPR radio about this, talking about how in-game gold/loot sells for real life cash (mainly referencing WoW but same basic thing). Interesting phenomenon. They referenced Chinese/Vietnamese gold "farms". Now I'm sure there could be a gold farm in Iowa or something where they pay people minimum wage and benefits to play the game, but the 10-cents per day/worker Vietnamese version sounds more profitable. I'm just sayin' linking the servers gave gold farms much better access to advertise in our market. Advertising in International dists wasn't going to be very effective.

2) Ebay no longer allows the selling of GW gold and loot. The gold sellers needed to adapt, so here we are...

3) Anet now gives easier than ever access to the trial accounts that gold sellers are botting/abusing.

Guess I'm just kind of summing up other posts....

The game needs GM's. I know that many of us would volunteer a little time to wave the almighty ban stick.

Ye, it gets really annoying. It happens in almost EVERY outpost.

No player should be able to GM. Especially the ones registered on GWG forums.

What is really annoying is, when you try and report them, they have changed districts already.

Sort of hit and run spam!

Business is slow due to high prices. Anet is having an effect on the sale of gold.

1 million = $180

I doubt there are many sweatshops, GW is a game that would be easily bot-able, since it's static, and you don't have to worry about the bot-hunters that other games have, since it's all instanced. At least it seems like an easily botable game in the surface.
I don't really know much about it though, But I doubt someone would pay someone to run a few accounts if he/she could do it for free.

Haven't had one PM me ........... yet.

Then again, I don't hang around in towns any longer then needed.

ok, I get spammed by a gold bot now and then.

Big Deal.

Are you guys kidding when you say one or two PMs really annoy you and wreck the game? Good grief, I'll bet you don't visit LA or Kamadan for all the spam there.

I'd rather have aNet get the marketplace up and running than chase a few gold ghosts.

I think the best way to handle it now is to put the bots name on the ignore list, and then take it off after 10 hours; I.E. the next day.

As far as this topic is concerned, I think the posters above me are correct. The reason why it has become more of an issue now is becuase of an amalgum of reasons.

First, they have easier access to trial keys. So it's easier then ever for them to get a hold of 'accounts' to access the game, farm, and send out PMs.

Second, the reporting system evolved from people actively having to take a screen shot and then e-mail it to Arenanet to simply typing a name and /reporting. It's a lot easier for gold sellers to get noticed and banned now, so they changed their operating procedure. Before, they'd just spam towns; anyone who was interested in their service knew where to go. That options out becuase of the above reasons. So now they have to actively search for buyers in the game. And if that means they have to take down names and PM people, it's pretty cheap to make a bot do that.

Whats funny is that the report feature as it is (limited to your specific district) has actually increased the amount of spam becuase you can't just avoid certain areas or turn of local. It affects you anywhere you go without having any recourse.

The solutions I can think of are to make;

-A toggle option to turn off PM's from trial accounts. You can turn it back on if a friend is trying the game

-Make the report feature go across the game, and just report the name instead of the time index of the specific district.

That is the most annoying part of it to me. I attempt to report them because my belief is that ANET will ban them, but they are no longer in the district.

dude u are SOOOOOOOOO lucky

i have had about 16 yet (came back from cooking dinner and i was in GToB, my box was filled )

bvut yes it has incresed (for me anyway) and it is annoying

The ugamegold guys have been annoying the heck out of me and my friends. It seems that whatever district we change to, we get a pm my them and they dont seem to stay in a district long enough for you to report them.

I've been able to report 3 of them so far. They must be stopped.

The spambots are more complex than I had imagined; there is some sort of repetitive agent that persists in whispering until you put them on the ignore list. I zoned into Kamadan and got one message, then went to my guild hall and continued to receive them from the same person for another ten minutes before I blocked him.