Persistent "Unstoppable" RMT Spam-Bot

Hi,

Upon posting this, I understand to be extremely rule-abiding to avoid alluding to or linking to the RMT industry, and so I'll omit what cannot be posted.

RMT Spambots are the landlords of the / Tell chat on Adamantoise. The problem is so bad, that many users have to keep the busy flag turned on all the time.

There is one, vindictive spam-bot that has persisted since early January, and it remains active (Player Search, Level-1, there it is) despite dozens of courteous and properly submitted reports to the game-masters.

Experimentally removing him from the blist, results in an avalanche of spams, until re-blisted.

May I speculate that this spambot is code-injected to the client-side and invisible to the game-masters?

How can I more effectively attempt to persuade the game-masters to remove this bot?

Dear Moderator,
May I post the exact spam-bot name, and publicly available information about his criminal owner?

Thank you

In addition, I believe that implementing a change to the WHISPER function so that it is an initial quest. This should help slow down those that are submitting RMT and using the spam-bot. There are a series of these chains that utilize the same information. It should be easy to find them out. If it was a persons account that was hacked, then allow them to be able to contact and correct the situation in a formal and easy manner. I had someone in-game say that RMT is everywhere, but really there are measures that can be taken to minimize it. I had over 135 names I had to post to blacklist in 3-4 days, that is way too much and the black list only holds 200. As soon as I deleted, spam again. I've suggested before as well that a special "blacklist" be added that enables us to flag someone, just easy click like the blacklist, but allow us to be able to select the name over the spam message and it automatically be sent to an in-game GM that can act immediately on it with the message

I wonder if they could introduce were the player themselves could set a level requirement to receive tells if rmt's really want to send you /tell let them work for it at least over and over again.

Yup, all of us in my FC have to play with /busy too. It is getting way past ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Meier

Yup, all of us in my FC have to play with /busy too. It is getting way past ridiculous.

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If you want to see way past ridiculous, you should go check out the official server for Ragnarok Online. The instant you walk in to prontera. You won't even have time to read the gold spams. Its like a perma-slot machine.

TBH I think that SE still handles it well compared to other MMOs I played. I can't imagine how to fight bots well thought. Also if they changed whisper function it would probably more affect normal players than bots/ gil sellers. They will always find way to overcome it and the only difference after 1 month after implementing it would be that people would be annoyed and would use /tells less.

I have seen mmos implementing even captcha ingame to fight bots and it turned out like a hell for normal players.

Does the *busy* tag eliminate all communication, like blocking incoming shouts and such?

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

Does the *busy* tag eliminate all communication, like blocking incoming shouts and such?

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It prevents people from sending you tells, as far as I know it has no effect on shouts.

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Originally Posted by Changillo

In addition, I believe that implementing a change to the WHISPER function so that it is an initial quest. This should help slow down those that are submitting RMT and using the spam-bot.

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Any requirement they could add would be easier for spam-bots to deal with than regular players to deal with, and wouldn't slow them down in the slightest. For the spam-bot, it would just be an additional entry in their setup script, just like completing the initial quest for entering the world after the character is created. It's a script that would be written once and then used thousands of times, repeated for every character they create. It would take no more effort at all to kick off the updated script as opposed to their current script.

The OP, on the other hand, has a more valid point. The thing that can successfully get rid of them is a GM team that actually acts on the reports they get and bans them immediately. SE has all along settled for doing just a few bans from time to time rather than keeping it up on a regular basis. It's true that on the gil-gathering bots, it takes a bit of investigation to verify that that's what they are, but the spam bots are immediately identifiable, and there's no justification as to why their accounts aren't all banned within seconds of their first /tell.

The GM teams need to log in the game as actual players, just like we do. That way they would get the same multi RMT spam tells we do. They might also get out to those locations where the bots port in & out of duties... or see the plasmoid spirit binding bots.