Gold Sellers

[Midori_Dragon]

Well in over a year they seem to have done nothing to solve the problem. There are so many simple ways this could be dealt with...how about this...if a character starts sending tells en mass (easy to track the number of spams per minute, and if 4 out of the 5 end up with that person being on peoples blacklist...stop their ability to tell, put all their tells in a report to be reviewed, and if they are spam remove the character, account, and game key associated with the game it is being played with. Then let the spammer come back and waste their time money and resources to fight it.

It would be even easier to with a report as spam since it would make it easy to find the spammers by the fast frequency of the report for a character. Then only a few people would have to deal with each one, and maybe if you make it cost the spammers more to spam us than it is worth, then they will eventually stop.

Also how about user defined filters to say which tells we want never to see...so a simple 'Selling the cheapest gil' as a block filter could stop every one of the canned spams that they send of that flavor...and not even tell the spammer their messages are not being seen. Make it where the players can enjoy the game, because the one after another after another messages from spammers makes me not want to play, since when I'm not playing they can't spam me, and if I'm not going to play, why would I pay...not a good business model when you can expend so many resources for people to get married and not a one to let the rest of us play the game in piece!

[Walnootje]

Well in over a year they seem to have done nothing to solve the problem. There are so many simple ways this could be dealt with...how about this...if a character starts sending tells en mass (easy to track the number of spams per minute, and if 4 out of the 5 end up with that person being on peoples blacklist...stop their ability to tell, put all their tells in a report to be reviewed, and if they are spam remove the character, account, and game key associated with the game it is being played with. Then let the spammer come back and waste their time money and resources to fight it.

It would be even easier to with a report as spam since it would make it easy to find the spammers by the fast frequency of the report for a character. Then only a few people would have to deal with each one, and maybe if you make it cost the spammers more to spam us than it is worth, then they will eventually stop.

Also how about user defined filters to say which tells we want never to see...so a simple 'Selling the cheapest gil' as a block filter could stop every one of the canned spams that they send of that flavor...and not even tell the spammer their messages are not being seen. Make it where the players can enjoy the game, because the one after another after another messages from spammers makes me not want to play, since when I'm not playing they can't spam me, and if I'm not going to play, why would I pay...not a good business model when you can expend so many resources for people to get married and not a one to let the rest of us play the game in piece!

How many mmorpg have you played?

Goldsellers will always be there in mmorpg it is not that easy to stop them as you think. And most gold sellers use stolen credit card info's and accounts like it will hurt them if they got banned. You ban 1 goldseller and 10 are ready to go.

WoW still has alot of Goldsellers, pretty much any mmorpg has goldsellers. The only way to stop them is for folks to stop buying gold from them. If goldsellers can't make any profits out of it they will stop seeing it is pointless to keep going when they can't make any money out of it.

Before you blame it on the company blame it on all the gold buyers instead.

[moudoka]

I refuse to buy from sellers. You can see their botted wares on the marketboards. Just look under the shards and crystals. How exactly does one manage to put up 25,000 shards every few days? Mass-selling of shards is what nets them big gil, at least on my server. It's not difficult to see the bots out in Gridania and elsewhere. We had mass reports of botters in Western Thanlan, no GMs ever showed up, none of the characters were banned for botting. A day or two later, they went from level 1 to 50 (always Black Mage, something about how the class is allows them to be botted en-masse.) I'll probably end up banned from the forums yet again for posting about SE's lack of effort to stop botters, cheaters, and shut down the sites that sell this stuff.

[Gatts1912]

How many mmorpg have you played?

Goldsellers will always be there in mmorpg it is not that easy to stop them as you think. And most gold sellers use stolen credit card info's and accounts like it will hurt them if they got banned. You ban 1 goldseller and 10 are ready to go.

WoW still has alot of Goldsellers, pretty much any mmorpg has goldsellers. The only way to stop them is for folks to stop buying gold from them. If goldsellers can't make any profits out of it they will stop seeing it is pointless to keep going when they can't make any money out of it.

Before you blame it on the company blame it on all the gold buyers instead.

False to some degree. Even WoW has systems in place to reduce spam that are not here that would help immensely, how about restricting /t, /shout/, & /yell on new characters. How about a smart blacklist that automatically deletes the (deleted) characters? I hate having to clean up the Blacklist one by one to make space for more all the time. The point is, they don't do enough. Not nearly enough. Saying 'Don't buy gold' is not going to do anything either. You think telling people not to do drugs is stopping anyone? Wishful thinking and is quite frankly lazy talk.

The creators are to blame, they haven't figured out or haven't really cared to try to fix the underlying issue. CCP did a great job in getting rid of Gold Sellers/Spammers in Eve Online. They haven't got rid of botting, but are extremely active on reports. The way Eve Online has done it may not sit well with most at first glance. CCP has opened up the pay to win scheme and lets players spend real money to convert to game money. They way it was handled so well is how they tied the in-game item that is purchased with real money and made it completely free market traded. Not only that, but the item (before converting to in-game currency) has a sink, where one could use the item to sub an account for 30 days. During my time there I'd spend tons of in-game gold for futures purchasing of the item for profit, though sometimes I lost.

The system is a complicated one, and requires thorough planning and balancing along the way until it works right given the game economy. Eve Online is a very different game that focuses on PvP and destruction; that being said the whole game is a gold sink, so the money you spend for in-game currency doesn't get you far and thus doesn't seem so much of a pay to win scenario.

[Zedd702]

True facts.

If they restricted /t, /shout, /yell to a level like say 20 (yes it sounds harsh, but it would reduce the spam immensely and give SE time to investigate and ban appropriately). It would make spammers work a little harder to send these tells/messages instead of filling up my blacklist list with a lvl 1 who sent me a gold spam message then recving the exact same format from a new level one just minutes after I black listed the first. City of heroes had this very same restriction in place. It was a lvl 10 requirement before a player could send tells/shouts/etc and even higher level for trial accounts, because this is where the flood gates pour in with Gil sellers, they don't have to pay to advertise so they create many trial accounts and spam away.

Recap:

SE should:

1. Place restrictions on trial accounts: ie friend requests, in-game email etc
2. Auto Spam blocker. Time a player out for spam after 2 back to back messages (more so for shouts/yells)
3. Level requirement to send tells to players and even higher lvl req on trial (non-paid) accounts.

Those three things would slow gil selling and spam tremendously...

[Midori_Dragon]

But you can get married....

Report as spam, simple option that only requires minimal code to implement in the front end. On the back end each one can be reviewed, and once a canned spam message is identified, any other message that matches that spam 90% of the way (keep them from just adding a couple random characters to the end) would result in an instant suspension of the account. Can they prevent every method? Probably not, but in the past year what have they done?

NOTHING!!!!

[alphamax112]

En-masse have their own way to handle bots. As far as I know, one of my friend was a very active gold seller in every game he played.
But in En-masse TERA, after selling some massive golds, he got banned. He tried everything he has, but he still can't get into the game anymore. His attempts included :
1. Register new account
2. Fresh Re-download the game
3. Windows Re-install
4. IP Change
5. ISP Provider Change
6. Proxy
7. MAC Address Change

8. PC Change

Only the 8th option can get him into the game. But after selling a few more golds, he got banned again. He won't buy a new PC again even if the gold selling profit exceed the price

[Melondra]

Start handing out Arrest Warrents for seeling SE software codeing and watch how fast the gill selling stops

[moudoka]

Ok, this is getting WAY out of hand. I logged in 01/08/2015 at 7:30 AM EST. By 9:01 AM EST, I had blacklisted 11 bots. ELEVEN BOTS.

This is idiotic at it's core, and there is obviously zero effort on SE's behalf to stop this. I didn't get this much gil spam on Diablo II, and that place was a e-site paradise. You report them, and nothing happens. I've reported the exact same miner botter for over a week straight, and it's STILL THERE. Exact same location, everything. Just look at the marketboards under the crystals to find the botters. Same retainer selling 10,000 wind shards, 10,000 ice shards, etc. Do they even have GMs that bother looking into any of this?

As of 9:27 AM EST, I am up to 18 spambots blacklisted. Can't seem to find the part of the ToS where it says my subscription will be spammed to no end by gil-sellers so I miss our on FC chat, friend chat, etc.

[Zebyxus]

Start handing out Arrest Warrents for seeling SE software codeing and watch how fast the gill selling stops

I would like to know just what law they could do that under.

Anywho, the seller spam is getting worse, and the sellers are getting smarter, they create, spam then logout within a matter of three or so minutes, so if you're AFK/AFC, you're returning to a chat log full of spam you can't blacklist the senders of because they've logged out. This needs a complete system to help us combat, not just some administrative 'tips' which we all could say are not working in the slightest.