RMT Out of hand

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Originally Posted by Anesjka

My Blacklist after a month of playing...

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Just as a tip, you might want to avoid showing names there. The mod team might not care as much about RMTs but it's easy to run afoul of that "don't name and shame" rule.

RMTs have gone crazy and yeah, I know that SE has limited /tells somewhat. But I honestly think they should look into limiting /tells more, they're so obvious now! I mean, instead of using www. they use wvvw. etc etc

Yeah it really has been bad lately. It is unfortunate because it had died off to maybe 1 or 2 every few days, now it's several or more in a span of only a few hrs
Also i have found a few characters which i suspected are the ones selling gil and such. Some botanists in the same exact areas that are there like every day and all hours it seems. They are level 50 but still use level 20 gear, and no not spirit binding as the one person i have seen has had the same gear for over a week.
I reported them but alas they are still around

RMT really hasn't been a problem for me. My blacklist is still less than half full and the only friend requests I've received were during Christmas holidays.

Maybe I'm just lucky. Go figure.

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Originally Posted by SalMag

RMT really hasn't been a problem for me. My blacklist is still less than half full and the only friend requests I've received were during Christmas holidays.

Maybe I'm just lucky. Go figure.

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Oh I don't get them either so often but when I do, it kinda makes me mad how obvious /tells are and they haven't done something about it. RMTs seem to be more active on other servers than Ragnarok :P

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

*sigh*
The solution for this is for fewer people (I am being polite) to be part of the problem. If you're on a server with tons of RMT tells, it's because there are sufficient numbers of idiots (oops, not so polite now) willing to buy gil on your server to make it worth their while advertizing and producing gil.

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Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think less tells = that server has less business, or more tells = more business. If they have an account, they probably have at least 1 character on each server. So business shouldn't matter, they have a character on every server so they spam every server regardless of the business they get on each server. I think that makes sense. I just confused myself though.

If you aren't getting many tells, it could be that your server has character restrictions so they get banned (hopeful thinking there) but they can't remake their spammer because the character creation is off.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think less tells = that server has less business, or more tells = more business. If they have an account, they probably have at least 1 character on each server. So business shouldn't matter, they have a character on every server so they spam every server regardless of the business they get on each server. I think that makes sense. I just confused myself though.

If you aren't getting many tells, it could be that your server has character restrictions so they get banned (hopeful thinking there) but they can't remake their spammer because the character creation is off.

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That assumes only one RMT account per server.

The reason you'll see more RMT tells on a server where there are more buyers is simple, more gil buyers = a larger market. A larger market encourages multiple RMT efforts that compete with each other. They compete in terms of price and visibility to capture the attention of the gil buyers. Hence more tells.

Unfortunately, it works like real life, the larger a market, the more competition, the more advertizing...

As I said though the best solution is to stop people buying gil in the first place. The less likely gil sellers are to sell their product, the less viable it is for multiple efforts on any given server. So if players wake up and stop buying gil, the RMTs will thin out, and ultimately dwindle.

But, for that to happen, something has to stop people from buying gil. Asking them nicely doesn't work, as SE and anyone else paying attention should have realized by now. Therefore, more direct actions are required. I'm not suggesting naming and shaming, although I wish there was some way for a player's reputation to be quantified and inspected.... What I am suggesting is that SE can use their database of all transactions in the game to identify customers of gill sellers, and take action against those players for violating the terms of service for FFXIV. Temp bans might help, but ultimately some may see that as a price worth paying. So, I think it needs to go further into gil confiscation, or perhaps some kind of level penalty to force those punished to re-level their classes as a reminder of their offense.

Whatever happens, until buyers are deterred from buying gil, there will be people selling gil. A few really loud permanent bans that everyone hears about might help put the fear of the Twelve into these people, but I thinkk something more practical might be needed.

yes... yes, this does need a new thread daily. it has been well over a year and there hasn't been even the slightest drop in RMT activity. they did that chat log spam filter-thingy, but still... i am tired of constantly checking my whispers to only see RMT. i am tired of constantly being on /busy status and nobody can whisper me, or invite me to a party. seriously... it is getting old, and SE hasn't shown any sign of cracking down on it.

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

yes... yes, this does need a new thread daily. it has been well over a year and there hasn't been even the slightest drop in RMT activity. they did that chat log spam filter-thingy, but still... i am tired of constantly checking my whispers to only see RMT. i am tired of constantly being on /busy status and nobody can whisper me, or invite me to a party. seriously... it is getting old, and SE hasn't shown any sign of cracking down on it.

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That's your personal experience, in mine, Behemoth was down to less than one RMT per week at one point, now it's a dozen a day. So, yes things can and do change, and SE clearly does do something, otherwise they would not be permanently banning several thousand accounts a month from FFXIV.

So I see no reason why anyone would bother with your "does this need a thread" sentiment. If anything, more discussion on the forum would help the community monitors to flag this as a major issue.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Edited because of character limit raisins.

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Early on, they did do something along the lines that you suggested: confiscation of ill-gotten gil and banning-without-warning of RMT-affected accounts. People flipped their shit and the forums were filled with threads complaints about losing gil or being outright banned. Sure, there were (and are) plenty of innocent victims of RMT-related activities, but in those threads you couldn't discern who was legitimately a victim and who bought/sold gil and claimed to have been a victim of account reprimand.

I'm sure every one of us has ill-gotten gil from RMT activities and not even know it. And if they were to resort to the mass RMT gil confiscation that they did early on I would initially be shocked and disappointed but, ultimately, understanding. I'd rather have RMT gil* taken from me than have my account banned.

*RMT gil - my definition is gil that have been acquired via someone whom had purchased gil via RMT and used said gil to purchase services (such as Primal/Coil clears/crafting/melding) and goods off of the market boards.

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Originally Posted by Noshpan

**snip**I'm sure every one of us has ill-gotten gil from RMT activities and not even know it. And if they were to resort to the mass RMT gil confiscation that they did early on I would initially be shocked and disappointed but, ultimately, understanding. I'd rather have RMT gil* taken from me than have my account banned.

*RMT gil - my definition is gil that have been acquired via someone whom had purchased gil via RMT and used said gil to purchase services (such as Primal/Coil clears/crafting/melding) and goods off of the market boards.

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Like in real life, I am sure that there is gil in circulation that someone originally bought from a gil seller and then spent. I don't think there is any merit in trying to somehow trace that gil and pull it back from every account it has somehow tainted. To me, it is the player who buys the gil who is the problem, not the player/ crafters who through selling something on the market board have received some of that ill-gotten gil. I'm talking about taking action against gil buyers, not people who receive some gil in payment for a legitimately sold item on the MB. once the gil leaves the hands of the buyer, I would consider it 'clean' since to do otherwise negatively affects innocent players.

I'll say it again, not to be a pain, and not in reply to you, but just as a general point in this topic... I don't think this can be stressed enough. Without buyers, gil sellers would have no reason to spam anyone. Therefore the most effective way to combat gil sellers is to stop people buying gil.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

I'll say it again, not to be a pain, and not in reply to you, but just as a general point in this topic... I don't think this can be stressed enough. Without buyers, gil sellers would have no reason to spam anyone. Therefore the most effective way to combat gil sellers is to stop people buying gil.

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Oh, I quite agree. If there were not enough people buying gil to make it profitable for these RMT service providers, there would be far less RMT spam. And I find gil buyers to be just as bad as the RMT service providers, if not worse. I also dislike those people who, while they may not purchase gil, don't care if people do it and use the excuse of "It's not hurting anybody".

Greetings, Wobble,

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Originally Posted by Wobble

SE already knows it's any issue and just because a moderator or DEV doesn't answer doesn't mean they have not seen the millions already posted....

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Ok, i'll quote myself

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take the issue to the Square Enix Holdings board of directors.

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Wobble, are these distinguished supervisory board members aware
of the RMT threat and the RMT affect on paying gamers?
Mr. Yosuke Matsuda, Mr. Philip Rogers, Mr. Keiji Honda, Mr. Yukinobu Chida, Mr. Yukihiro Yamamura, Mr. Yuji Nishiura

Are gamemasters or moderators informing them?

Meanwhile,

The spamming situation on Adamantoise is becoming progressively worse
daily. More players have written off the benefits of the /tell chat and
gaming with /busy.

One of the notorious sicko spam software developers,
[found this while lurking on a bad-guy website] brags
about spam software that will send over 2000 spams/second.

Using server side code injection, they're hitting players before their
characters even appear upon login. A friend got hit by 5 different
spammers immediately when character appeared.

Another went afk for a few minutes and couldn't even count the
spams waiting for him in his chat box.

Spam software developers are advancing their capabilities. Square Enix
security staff (if there is one) shows no indication of mitigating
the problem.

FYI I would be careful about complaining about RMT. I got banned for 9 days complaining about RMT!

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Originally Posted by Blissa

FYI I would be careful about complaining about RMT. I got banned for 9 days complaining about RMT!

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Or did you post their names publicly that probably lead to a ban?

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Originally Posted by Blissa

FYI I would be careful about complaining about RMT. I got banned for 9 days complaining about RMT!

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If you got banned it was probably due to one of the following:
1) Posting the name, either in screenshot or text, of an RMT spammer/bot/buyer.
2) Posting the website, either in screenshot or text of an RMT company
3) Offensive behavior towards others in the thread

You don't get banned for making valid complaints. You do get banned if you break the forum rules in the process of said complaints.

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Originally Posted by SCUBA_Instr

Greetings, Wobble,

Ok, i'll quote myself

Wobble, are these distinguished supervisory board members aware
of the RMT threat and the RMT affect on paying gamers?
Mr. Yosuke Matsuda, Mr. Philip Rogers, Mr. Keiji Honda, Mr. Yukinobu Chida, Mr. Yukihiro Yamamura, Mr. Yuji Nishiura

Are gamemasters or moderators informing them?

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If you think that the board of directors of a gaming company aren't acutely aware of the existence of RMT, I'm not sure what to tell you. RMT is prevalent in pretty much every MMO out there. If it's got a currency, it can be farmed by bots and sold for real world cash. RMT is nothing new - it's been around for decades now. The board of directors would have to be terribly ignorant about the world of MMO gaming in general to not know about its existence and know that their game would be infested with it just like every game out there.

The thing I dislike the most about these threads is that they imply that SE does nothing about it. They do mass bannings of characters associated with RMT every few weeks. Even making it easier to report (i.e.the "click to report" button) wouldn't make the tells go away. Most of them use a character to send a bunch of tellbombs, delete it, then make another one. That's why they have the trash names that look like keyboard mashing. By the time a GM got to your report, the character would be gone anyway. The accounts themselves are left active so that they can track the gil from the bots to the "bank characters" where it's collected for distribution.

In the end, the best way to discourage RMT is for people to stop frickin' buying gil.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

The thing I dislike the most about these threads is that they imply that SE does nothing about it. They do mass bannings of characters associated with RMT every few weeks. Even making it easier to report (i.e.the "click to report" button) wouldn't make the tells go away. Most of them use a character to send a bunch of tellbombs, delete it, then make another one. That's why they have the trash names that look like keyboard mashing. By the time a GM got to your report, the character would be gone anyway. The accounts themselves are left active so that they can track the gil from the bots to the "bank characters" where it's collected for distribution.

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The mass bannings have done nothing to stop the frequency of spamming. It's only gotten worse as time goes on. An account wide blacklist where you blacklist an entire account when you blacklist somebody would go miles to make this more tolerable. Nobody implies that SE is doing nothing. People imply that what SE is doing is doing nothing. There's a pretty obvious difference there.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

In the end, the best way to discourage RMT is for people to stop frickin' buying gil.

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This kind of shit response is infuriating. You think people don't know this? You're telling people who don't buy gil that they shouldn't be buying gil to stop the tells. As if they have any control over the people that buy gil. How about at least trying to be constructive.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

The thing I dislike the most about these threads is that they imply that SE does nothing about it. They do mass bannings of characters associated with RMT every few weeks.
**snip**
The accounts themselves are left active so that they can track the gil from the bots to the "bank characters" where it's collected for distribution.

In the end, the best way to discourage RMT is for people to stop frickin' buying gil.

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Indeed, so, since they leave the accounts active to allow tracing the gil and the "bank characters", I have to wonder why there are not harsh penalties for characters who are on the receiving end of gil for cash transactions from the "bank characters". Action against players who actually buy gil would send a message to others considering buying gil.

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Originally Posted by Amenian

This kind of shit response is infuriating. You think people don't know this? You're telling people who don't buy gil that they shouldn't be buying gil to stop the tells. As if they have any control over the people that buy gil. How about at least trying to be constructive.

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Actually, yes, you can do something. My FC has a rule that says that anyone found to participate in RMT will be removed and permanently banned from our FC - they'll also be reported to SE. I view buying gil as cheating, and my FC will not harbor cheats. The community itself can do something, each individual player can do something, simply by deciding that gil buying is unacceptable. For example, if one of my friends was found to have purchased gil, they'd be off my friend's list, kicked from my FC if they were a member and no longer in any LS I manage. How would you handle it if a friend was buying Gil?

If the majority of the community actively shunned players who buy gil, it would increase the negative consequences of gil buying, and deter others by making gil buying something that is obviously socially unacceptable in our community.

I'm not talking about harassing players, or insulting them, or doing anything in any way actionable, there is no place for any behavior of that sort either. I'm just saying that if someone who is found to have purchased gil was suddenly confronted with a very empty friends list and no FC or LS to work with, because no one will associate with a cheat, it will have an impact that goes beyond that individual player. For that matter, if a friend of mine was seen to be harassing other players, they would not remain on my friends list or in my FC either. In actual fact I have removed players for their disrespectful behavior towards others in Eorzea. In a previous game I have also had to remove players - including friends - from my guild(Free Company in Eorzea) because they were found to be cheating.

In as much as SE will leave many issues of player behavior to players themselves, such as when someone abuses access to the Free Company chest and 'steals' all the rare/high end items before leaving the FC, SE will not act against the theft because it is a player issue, that players need to deal with. So, in a sense, this is a situation where the community needs to start policing itself.

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Originally Posted by Amenian

The mass bannings have done nothing to stop the frequency of spamming. It's only gotten worse as time goes on. An account wide blacklist where you blacklist an entire account when you blacklist somebody would go miles to make this more tolerable. Nobody implies that SE is doing nothing. People imply that what SE is doing is doing nothing. There's a pretty obvious difference there.

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I've seen plenty of people say flat-out that SE is doing nothing about it, which isn't true.

An account wide blacklist would definitely be nice, and might actually help some.

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This kind of shit response is infuriating. You think people don't know this? You're telling people who don't buy gil that they shouldn't be buying gil to stop the tells. As if they have any control over the people that buy gil. How about at least trying to be constructive.

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The fact is no matter what SE does, RMT will stay in the game as long as it's profitable to do so. As long as people are buying gil, it's profitable. I'm not saying the people complaining about the spamming should be doing anything about this at all. It's an observation, nothing more. There's obviously nothing they can do about it.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Indeed, so, since they leave the accounts active to allow tracing the gil and the "bank characters", I have to wonder why there are not harsh penalties for characters who are on the receiving end of gil for cash transactions from the "bank characters". Action against players who actually buy gil would send a message to others considering buying gil.

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When they say action was taken against accounts involved in RMT, it's pretty safe to assume that that means buying as well as selling. They can't tell us details because of privacy reasons, though. If it's anything like other games I've been on, typically the first penalty is a temp ban and the loss of the gil. They don't want to lose accounts to permanent bans if they don't have to, but obviously some punishment has to be meted out. I'm sure with repeated offenses, accounts do end up permanently banned; the thing is, even if 20 people are temp banned and then never buy again, that's all profit to the gil sellers. They don't care if you get banned or not; there's always new suckers that are perfectly willing to try to pay to get ahead.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

When they say action was taken against accounts involved in RMT, it's pretty safe to assume that that means buying as well as selling. They can't tell us details because of privacy reasons, though. If it's anything like other games I've been on, typically the first penalty is a temp ban and the loss of the gil. They don't want to lose accounts to permanent bans if they don't have to, but obviously some punishment has to be meted out. I'm sure with repeated offenses, accounts do end up permanently banned; the thing is, even if 20 people are temp banned and then never buy again, that's all profit to the gil sellers. They don't care if you get banned or not; there's always new suckers that are perfectly willing to try to pay to get ahead.

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That's the problem though, it's not spelled out how many actual players have been temp or permanently banned for participating in RMT transactions. You can't deter people from a course of action without there being a clear indication of the consequences of being caught. I'd like them to find a way to spell out those consequences, without listing names or servers of course, no naming and shaming, but something that makes it crystal clear that players do get banned for this.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

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Are you honestly insinuating that buying gil isn't considered socially unacceptable? I'm not sure what type of people you hang out with, but in the 10 years or so that I've been playing MMOs I've met all of one person who didn't want to hang gil buyers from the rafters by their toenails. And it turned out that one person who didn't was a gil buyer and as soon as it came out that he was he was universally shunned.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

I've seen plenty of people say flat-out that SE is doing nothing about it, which isn't true.

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I try to give these people the benefit of the doubt and assume this is hyperbole.

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Originally Posted by Amenian

Are you honestly insinuating that buying gil isn't considered socially unacceptable? I'm not sure what type of people you hang out with, but in the 10 years or so that I've been playing MMOs I've met all of one person who didn't want to hang gil buyers from the rafters by their toenails. And it turned out that one person who didn't was a gil buyer and as soon as it came out that he was he was universally shunned.

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If it's so socially unacceptable, then why are so many doing it that the RMT can justify all the time and effort they put into botting and spamming the living daylights out of us? I agree that if asked, the vast majority of people would say that it is of course socially unacceptable. But when push comes to shove, I think many, many of those same players are pretty apathetic when it comes to dealing with someone who bought a bit of gil. It's amazing how quickly people can rationalize things away.

I'd like to agree with you 100%, but sadly my faith in people has been shaken too many times because of their apparent apathy.

I just started playing within past 2-3 months & within my first few hours of playing this almost caused me to quit my free trial. When I started I was having a very difficult time navigating my way around Limsa & then to get spammed with RMT tells every few minutes nearly broke me. Had it not been for a friends intervention, I would not be playing right now. This needs to be resolved immediately for the long term health of the game. If SE needs to hire additional staff to resolve this, make it happen because I promise you hundreds if not thousands of potential players have been turned away by this.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

If it's so socially unacceptable, then why are so many doing it that the RMT can justify all the time and effort they put into botting and spamming the living daylights out of us? I agree that if asked, the vast majority of people would say that it is of course socially unacceptable. But when push comes to shove, I think many, many of those same players are pretty apathetic when it comes to dealing with someone who bought a bit of gil. It's amazing how quickly people can rationalize things away.

I'd like to agree with you 100%, but sadly my faith in people has been shaken too many times because of their apparent apathy.

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It's not like gil buyers are shouting in the streets that they're buying gil. I'd guess that they are probably very careful about who they tell. Most people might be suspicious, but won't do anything without proof, nor should they. That's how tumblr witch hunts happen.

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Originally Posted by Amenian

It's not like gil buyers are shouting in the streets that they're buying gil. I'd guess that they are probably very careful about who they tell. Most people might be suspicious, but won't do anything without proof, nor should they.

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Agreed, no action should be taken without proof. But rather like a civil court case, the standard of evidence needs to be carefully evaluated. There will likely be no direct proof or admission from someone, but, that does not mean there is no evidence.

In a previous game I had to kick people who had cheated by modifying their save file to give them infinite items. That allowed them to craft top level end game gear. They could have completely modded their gear, but the smart ones didn't, they simply gave themselves the resources to suddenly synthesize the absolute best gear, fully enhanced, even more sneaky were people who did not show their ill-gotten gear immediately, but phased it in over a couple of weeks. However, to anyone who had played the game for a long time, and knew the systems and drop rates, it was possible to see the statistical likelihood of someone having all the gear that some had was effectively zero. In other words, these players had "impossible gear". Literally in every case, the player later admitted privately that they had cheated (or were caught via screen shot with modified gear).

In Eorzea, since there is no way for people to modify their save data, buying gil would facilitate buying end-game crafting gear with full melds, or BiS crafted battle gear, again fully melded. So one week your friend who has just been scraping by has barely 100K gil, and the next has gil dripping from their richly appointed and well melded gear.

What then?

I've been reporting all RMT tells I've gotten for the past two weeks. On average, it is about 16 a day. This takes forever.

What would be nice: right click a tell, mark is at RMT

I know SE is doing their best but PLEASE set up a competent task force to fix this problem.

Limit the amount of "Tells" a level 1-5 char can send per hour is 1 good and fair fix. Second make a database of "Blacklisted" people in the server and if lets say 10 or more level 50 add you to that database automatically send that char to a prison where a DM can further investigate the situation. Improve the PS4 report feature . If ANY on this thread thinks the PS4 feature doesn't need fixing then they should just avoid this thread. LASTLY 200 people are not enough I took 1 month vacation and within 2 weeks i was already at 150 Blacklisted individuals.

As many others have said many times, please please please give us a right-click "report RMT" function!
The current system is far too cumbersome and time consuming for the amount of rmt tells that can be received, so it is much easier and quicker for people to just blacklist them which leaves the gil-selling spammer unreported. In a ways, the current system is sort of hurting the attempt to squash rmt in the game.

Outline for RMT auto-report function .
- Player sees a gil-seller spamming shout chat or is sent a tell by one.
- They right-click or equivalent function on console and choose the option "report RMT action".
- The spammer is then added to the blacklist and an auto-generated report gets made.
- The auto report grabs all the relevant information (reporter, server, person being reported, chat text that was being reported, time stamp, etc.) and then sends it to be investigated.
- If enough reports against a single player are made within a certain timeframe then a red flag is raised and a GM investigates quickly in game to verify the reports and if the person being reported is indeed a rmt bot, then they instaban them and begin an investigation as to whether the account was stolen or created to be an rmt bot.
- If the reports are false and someone is trying to grief actual players by reporting them as rmt, then that person will be dealt with accordingly for harassment.

Not new ideas, but were worth reiterating.

In fact a system like this would be excellent for reporting all forms of bots.

I get these /tells maybe once an hour and I either ignore it or just blacklist them.

I don't understand how people say it's inhibiting their gameplay or making the game "unplayable". It's a minor annoyance at best. Maybe it's just the server I'm on? (excalibur).

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Originally Posted by dayspring83

I get these /tells maybe once an hour and I either ignore it or just blacklist them.

I don't understand how people say it's inhibiting their gameplay or making the game "unplayable". It's a minor annoyance at best. Maybe it's just the server I'm on? (excalibur).

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Meh, it's actually probably closer to 2 an hour, maybe 3 on a bad day...

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Originally Posted by dayspring83

I get these /tells maybe once an hour and I either ignore it or just blacklist them.

I don't understand how people say it's inhibiting their gameplay or making the game "unplayable". It's a minor annoyance at best. Maybe it's just the server I'm on? (excalibur).

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Yes, it's the server you're on. Go on a lower pop server and see what it's like.

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Originally Posted by dayspring83

I get these /tells maybe once an hour and I either ignore it or just blacklist them.

I don't understand how people say it's inhibiting their gameplay or making the game "unplayable". It's a minor annoyance at best. Maybe it's just the server I'm on? (excalibur).

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The RMT makes the game less enjoyable for me because I have to run around with busy status all the time because they do so many friend requests. Busy also stops all the tells, and I might be missing out on hearing from nice strangers because of that.

I suggest make it so you cant send whispers untill lvl 20. You can still receive them, but not send them. This would not stop RMT by any means, but it would atleast reduce the volume of personal messages received by a decent amount.

Won't they just increase friend requests then?

I would like to see a seperate whisper/tell system that only works between friends, since they are the only ones sending me tells. That way I can turn off the /tell system.

Hi Ashkendor,

[QUOTE=Ashkendor;2831071]...An account wide blacklist.../QUOTE]

Thank you.

In other message threads, I've suggested an optional global blacklist,
first spam victim adds the spambot to a global blacklist
so that other [global blacklist subscribers] are spared the harassment
from the dirt-bag spambot owner. Such a high capacity global blacklist
should incorporate your suggestion of an account wide blacklist -
blacklist the spambot owners entire Square Enix accounts.

But..... ohhhhh noooooo!!! That suggestion got nowhere.

On another website I got flamed (by a spammer sympathizer) for
suggesting it.

Hi TouchandFeel

May I slightly amend two of your excellent suggestions?

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

- Player sees a gil-seller spamming shouting or is sent a tell by one.

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Change to read: Player is harassed in the chat box by a gil seller and sent a tell by one.
We rarely see the spammers, they teleport down
into the floor far enough that their name cannot be seen.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

The spammer is then added to the blacklist and an auto-generated report gets made.

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Change "blacklist" to "blacklist or high capacity global blacklist"
Details already posted.

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Originally Posted by Darlan_Ashwood

I suggest make it so you cant send whispers untill lvl 20. You can still receive them, but not send them. This would not stop RMT by any means, but it would atleast reduce the volume of personal messages received by a decent amount.

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This has historically done nothing but delay them, as they've proven their ability to grind bots to a given level (as evidenced by the magical teleporting black mages you sometimes see).
So all you do is slow them down a little bit, while the new player is wondering why he can't send his friend a tell to let him know where he is.