PLEASE change level requirement to whisper ....

[Theonekitten]

Or they could just allow us to opt out of the Player Search function which is how they find us to /tell us ... Without names, they can't /tell.

FFXI did this by allowing you to set your status to /Invisible. No one could find you and no one could whisper you. It would say something like 'player is not available' if you tried. This is one feature they should port over from there. /busy doesn't hide you, it just blocks tells.

[Niwashi]

To be fair those are their "farmers" they won't risk sending tells with those because they actually take time for them to replace, Unlike level 1 bots that are just erased/banned and replaced quickly after. it would certainly hurt them and i fully agree with this.

They wouldn't send advertising spam with their farming bots because those bots are accumulating the gil for them to sell. They don't want that gil lost when their spam bots are banned, so the two types are handled through separate accounts. I don't think Nadirah was suggesting they'd actually use the same bots, just that having farming bots proves they're quite capable of automating bots that will level up.

Currently RMT spam-bots are left at level 1 only because they have no particular reason for making them higher level, but if they did have a reason (like for instance the OP's suggestion being implemented) then the RMT companies would simply level all their spam-bots up to whatever level they need them to be. We'd still have just as much spam coming from just as many bots, the only difference being that those bots would be level 10 or 15 or whatever instead of level 1.

Then won't RMT just go back to spamming friend requests?

Friend requests aren't as effective as actual messages, since the only actual content passed with it is their character's name. They used that when it was possible to do so with free trial accounts, but it stopped when the Free Trial restrictions were updated to block friend requests. Now the only place Free Trial accounts can spam is the /say channel. Everything else needs a paid account, which they focus on their most effective spam method: /tell.

[Nadirah]

theres still RMT bots o...o i haven't seen a single one since heavenward started

I get very few of them myself on Excalibur, and you're on Balmung.

Servers that aren't locked to character creation constantly do get them. A lot.

made an alt on Diabolos a while back. 4 tells within 10s of getting out of the intro.

[Kalsoa]

Someone mentioned part of this earlier but I think any account that sends tells or friend requests to X (this number would never be publically revealed and could be changed by a small amount randomly to counter those trying to get right under that number) number of players in a certain period of time should automatically have their account flagged. I mean, really, who has a legitimate reason for mass friend requesting or sending tells to like 20 different players?

[KaiKatzchen]

The most simple fix to this WHOLE issue is changing the blacklist to a whitelist. Then letting us not only whitelist individuals by name but also organizational whitelisting. For example, whitelist my whole FC, WL my whole grand company, WL all Gridania citizens... so on and so forth. I know some of these group WL choices I posted make no sense what so ever, but its just to make the point. We should at lease be able to WL whole FC's by name, oh and WL whole LS's also....

WHITELIST SE WHITELIST! :-D

Nice idea

[_Pigzig]

i hear them constantly, that constant spam, that sound effect of receiving a tell
even when lie in bed
please let me sleep
i am only a man

[Wobble]

I have never even used whisper, they could honestly just remove it unless it serves some purpose?

[Nadirah]

I have never even used whisper, they could honestly just remove it unless it serves some purpose?

You must not like private conversations with people.

[Khalithar]

They need to allow addons in this game, specifically my favorite addon from WoW. Specifically my favorite addon which (among other things) allowed you to block things like whispers and friend invites from anyone below a certain level, something like that is desperately needed for this game.

[Wobble]

You must not like private conversations with people.

I use /tell