Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[xXRaineXx]

you just need 1 single GM to log in and start banning those shouts/tells. Wow So hard to do. mindblowing huh?
now ask urself why they dont do that.

1 GM? How many servers do we have? Can 1 GM really monitor tells 24/7 and get every single tell to ban em? In ALL the servers?
I'm on Gilgamesh, one of most populated servers in NA and I only get 1 or 2 tells per hour. Now I won't say that's the norm as some others may get more. That means tells are inconsistent depending on the player, probably based on a map script or something to locate players. Or simply they just tell whoever they see.
If that was the case that means you gotta have GM's in every map, banning every single tell staring at their monitor 24/7. To do something like that manually by hand using HR, ain't easy.

So yeah, it's 'wow hard' to do. Before you say even 1 GM will make a difference. No. It won't. Eventually people are gonna start coming back to cry more. ONLY 1GM!?

Now let that sink in for a moment...

People forget the core issue of RMT. The problem isn't the gil spammers, it's the players who buy them and continue to buy them. The problem is 2-way, the players themselves and the RMT business.

[Niwashi]

1 GM? How many servers do we have? Can 1 GM really monitor tells 24/7 and get every single tell to ban em? In ALL the servers?

As the software stands now, it would take more than that, though I think you're underestimating how much one GM could do. They have access to more than we do as players. In particular, they have access to the chat server, so can see tells that are being sent to anyone and don't have to wait for a tell to be sent directly to them. Or even if they did just log in like a player does, monitor for an hour or two per shift, gathering the text of all the spam they get, and then update spam filters to block messages with that text from going to anybody, we'd see a big drop in the rate of spam that gets through.

If they'd add the reporting feature we've been asking for since the game came out, having just one person on 24/7 to handle those reports would probably be enough to handle the ongoing load, and that would get all of it. (They'd need extra help temporarily when the feature is first released, though. At that point they'd have a huge surge of reports getting rid of the current crop of spam bots. But that would slow to a trickle as soon as the RMT companies find their bots are being banned before they have time to become profitable.)

People forget the core issue of RMT. The problem isn't the gil spammers, it's the players who buy them and continue to buy them. The problem is 2-way, the players themselves and the RMT business.

Both are issues, but I disagree as to which is the core issue. The spam is the part that's driving people away from the game, and making the game less social for those of us who stay in spite of it. Those are the biggest issues with RMT. There are effects on the in-game economy as well, but they're secondary.

On top of that, eliminating the spam would go a long way towards eliminating the RMT itself. (Not entirely, of course, but it would reduce it dramatically.) The whole reason RMT companies (or legitimate companies for that matter) advertise is because it brings them more customers. That means that without the RMT ads, there would be fewer customers buying their gil and less economic effect of RMT. Stopping the spam is probably the most effective way SE has available to limit the number of gil buyers. It would certainly be a lot more effective than trying to identify and track them down individually like they're doing now.

[Iagainsti]

Personally I loathe the RMT messages, but ar they not a necessary evil? Personally I believe we kinda need them like the US needs illegal immigrant workers; they farm the mats we're too busy/lazy to farm. I like being able to look on the MB and buy a stack of Carbonized Matter super cheap among other things that would be super expensive if the only bids on the MB were actual players taking the time to farm this stuff to sell. I say monitor it on the other end; nail the ppl buying the gil. The RMT will keep trying to farm/sell their wares, and hopefully enough gil buyers get nailed so the RMT are unable to sell the gil, but they'll still try and we still get cheap mats we really don't want to farm/pay exuberant prices for.

[Malzian]

Personally I loathe the RMT messages, but ar they not a necessary evil? Personally I believe we kinda need them like the US needs illegal immigrant workers; they farm the mats we're too busy/lazy to farm. I like being able to look on the MB and buy a stack of Carbonized Matter super cheap among other things that would be super expensive if the only bids on the MB were actual players taking the time to farm this stuff to sell. I say monitor it on the other end; nail the ppl buying the gil. The RMT will keep trying to farm/sell their wares, and hopefully enough gil buyers get nailed so the RMT are unable to sell the gil, but they'll still try and we still get cheap mats we really don't want to farm/pay exuberant prices for.

No, they are not a 'necessary' evil. I can see what you're trying to do in comparing it against illegal workers, but that doesn't quite work when you're dealing with virtual items and currency of near infinite reproducibility. You may like the 'nice, cheap' MB items but by flooding the market with tons of those really, really cheap mats (usually obtained through botting so no actual 'work' went into getting them) it devalues those materials and the markets for them, also taking money away from the people who are gathering them legitimately. This means that actual players end up with less of a percentage of the total currency in the market, but since the market has so much that currency is super inflated making it worth even less.

On top of that, when people turn around and buy the gil these RMTs have generated and then sink them back into the economy (the irony being they're probably buying the same items off the MB that produce the gil they will buy back later) it devalues the currency even further. In the end this is a vicious cycle that will break an economy. Illegal workers in the US are bad, but they can't access an infinite amount of items that they then can turn to exchange for a virtual currency then turn and resell that virtual currency back to people for... Oh wait, Bitcoin... Right then, we're screwed. >.>

[Negafox]

Personally I loathe the RMT messages, but ar they not a necessary evil? Personally I believe we kinda need them like the US needs illegal immigrant workers; they farm the mats we're too busy/lazy to farm. [SNIP] The RMT will keep trying to farm/sell their wares, and hopefully enough gil buyers get nailed so the RMT are unable to sell the gil, but they'll still try and we still get cheap mats we really don't want to farm/pay exuberant prices for.

No -- they are NOT a necessary evil. I should not be constantly bombarded with unwanted private messages. I should not see /say spam when standing near a marketboard. The gil spammers use bots for farming mats and artificially manipulating marketboard prices -- flooding the economy with gil to those with cash and making players staying within the rules poor. It makes it difficult to legitimately farm mats to earn gil because they use bots to farm and sell insanely cheap (little to no manpower required).

[Laraul]

No -- they are NOT a necessary evil. I should not be constantly bombarded with unwanted private messages.

I think they meant RMT, not the the /tells. RMT itself isn't bad unless done in excess.

The gil spammers use bots for farming mats and artificially manipulating marketboard prices -- flooding the economy with gil to those with cash and making players staying within the rules poor.

This is just stupid. RMT don't have the power to manipulate prices. Even if they we're able to, it would be counterproductive to drive the prices down on materials. They want prices to be HIGH, making it more likely players will turn to them for gil. People I suspect whom are most likely to buy gil are the ones who don't want to spend the time doing mat farming to begin w/.

And I doubt RMT use bots to earn gil. Most likely they get it from buying gil from players willing to sell it them for real money in return. A google search will show that there are plenty of places willing to exchange your gil for cash! It's these type of players who probably are the ones who use bots.

[Risvertasashi]

One way to help speed things up would be an auto fill, I.E. the time, the world your in, your name etc, and before people say that wouldn't work because you're not always where the incident happened I say this, you have to edit it anyway so you may as well start with all the fields that can be filled in filled in and edit the rest.

Even when you do all that, it can still take days for a spammer to be banned. Not even a suspected bot, actual several-tell-a-minute spammers... which I would think would be pretty open and shut.

I think they meant RMT, not the the /tells. RMT itself isn't bad unless done in excess.



This is just stupid. RMT don't have the power to manipulate prices. Even if they we're able to, it would be counterproductive to drive the prices down on materials. They want prices to be HIGH, making it more likely players will turn to them for gil. People I suspect whom are most likely to buy gil are the ones who don't want to spend the time doing mat farming to begin w/.

And I doubt RMT use bots to earn gil. Most likely they get it from buying gil from players willing to sell it them for real money in return. A google search will show that there are plenty of places willing to exchange your gil for cash! It's these type of players who probably are the ones who use bots.

As you seem to have noticed, RMT tend to be the bogeymen for all a game's ills, especially economic ills.

That doesn't mean they have no effect, however. Also, their sources are varied. Lowly paid chinese workers is common (but the pay is good for them). In some worst cases, prisoners have been made to do it. Some also do run bot farms. The taboo and witch hunt-inciting nature of the subject makes it difficult to do any kind of meaningful breakdown and analysis, however.

[AeraLure]

I could see on a free MMO, but on one with a paid subscription I think there is no excuse to have let it continue.

[MihaelB]

I could see on a free MMO, but on one with a paid subscription I think there is no excuse to have let it continue.

Especially after at least two years with no real productivity despite filling up servers with people to prevent more account production which isn't a solution.

[RosaBlanche]

where do we sign this petition? I asked SE 6 times to give me a "block /tells from free trialers" option but it's like they dont care.