Suggestion for Dealing with RMT Spam

[Endy]

My suggestion is simple. Deny the use of /shout, /yell, and /tell for characters younger than a certain age, and make the free trial for new accounts last exactly that long, so that free trials can't be used for spamming.

For example: You would need to be more than three days in on your character to use /shout, /yell, or /tell, but your trial runs out after three days. This puts a pay gate on their account that, if they paid, it would be unlikely they would get a return before they were banned for RMT spam.

This also wouldn't inconvenience new players, since most content in the first few days is solo and tutorial.

I feel this would greatly reduce the amount of RMT spam we get outside of compromised accounts.

[maximumpanda]

while sound at heart, bad idea. nothing pisses off people more then the ability not to communicated with others. you are now stripping powers away from future customers to combat a minority. there are far better covert alternatives that do not effect everyone.

possibilities:
spam detection
new login location detection (lock the account from /tell /shout /trade /mail until they verify their new address through email.
keyword block: whenever someone attempt to link a blacklisted website, stop the message from being delivered

all of these are usual combined in other MMO's to stop this kind of behavior and it works pretty well in most of them

[Endy]

while sound at heart, bad idea. nothing pisses off people more then the ability not to communicated with others. you are now stripping powers away from future customers to combat a minority. there are far better covert alternatives that do not effect everyone.

possibilities:
spam detection
new login location detection (lock the account from /tell /shout /trade /mail until they verify their new address through email.
keyword block: whenever someone attempt to link a blacklisted website, stop the message from being delivered

all of these are usual combined in other MMO's to stop this kind of behavior and it works pretty well in most of them

All have been defeated countless times, and every online game I've ever played still has regular gold selling spam. Also, my method does not remove communication; there is still mail and direct contact, and there are plenty of ways to communicate through outside programs such as Skype, Mumble, Teamspeak, etc. Spam detection only works if it is updated constantly, which means paying staff specifically to do nothing but that, and is therefore a monetary sinkhole. Login location can be easily defeated via proxy, and would have the same (though lesser in time) restrictive effect. In addition, it would not stop the free trial spammers. Keyword block: you've seen the spam, haven't you? All it takes is changing around and replacing characters to get around that. None of your possibilities come close to solving the problem even layered.

It is far better for new trial players who have not even invested in the game yet to take a VERY temporary restriction than to allow this behavior.