Spam gold diggers

megnatar

I'm all way's irritated by those script kiddy's that try to rob someone's account by promising cheap coins. While they really try to trick someone in revealing there account password. First of all they spoil the chat for fair users and second of all they abuse the server and they can even cause lag because they bomb the server with meaningless tcp/ip packets.

I see ppl asking question on chat in game, about how to stop this. I will explain shortly why it is hard to ban them for regular users.

Here is why:
They use a script that generates a new account for the game server in question. They probably also run a fake mail and domain server so they receive the confirmation e-mail and can replay to it. Though I believe NW does not need the confirmation, if that's so, that's a security hole.

I'm also irritated by lazy system administrators who doe not do anything about it or don't know how to stop these parasites. While the solution is dead simple. All they need to do is monitor ip addresses with exceptional high account creation and voila there you have that chat bot numbskulls. I don't think these bot's run on rogue machines, but if that's the case it would be a little harder.

Now, in the meantime. I wrote my answer to chatbots and made a "ban chatbots bot" in c#. It monitors the in game chat looking for irregular chat patterns and add the spamming account to you're ignore list. I also wrote e-mail to PW and asked them if I may post it on there forum(probably not). As soon as I get there replay I will let you know where to d/l it and I will include the source code with it so folk can check what it does.

BUT WE END USERS SHOULD NOT BE CONCERNED WITH THESE THINGS. THAT YOU'RE JOB SYSADMIN!!!!!!!!

zaodonn

They could modify the game client to send MAC Address to the server in every packet. Then, when an account gets banned, that MAC Address is also banned. No further connections from that MAC Address would be allowed.

Let them buy a new PC every 10 seconds, see how that works out.

darinder

Except there are plenty of cards out there that let you encode a chosen MAC address.

kap273

It's not quite that easy to just monitor the ip or mac address for anyone logging into the game. Your idea of a bot to combat the "bots" also isn't good, because if you post the code of course the spammers will be using it as well.
The only way to get rid of gold sellers is to change people's attitudes about buying gold. Which of course is much, much easier said than done as evidenced by the fact that there are sellers in almost every single MMO out there. A lot of people don't like to play the games, they just want the rewards. That's the whole reason cheat codes are so prevalent.
I imagine that Perfect World would very much like to rid their games of gold sellers because they are in direct competition, and I'm sure they're doing their best to get rid of them. In a f2p game, however, it's got to be incredibly difficult because there is little to no barrier to entry when creating a new account.

kvet

You can spoof your MAC address even easier than you can spoof your IP. While not a bad suggestion, it wouldn't make any difference.

ceryndrion

From a personal standpoint, I do not understand why anybody would want to go to a 3rd party 'gold seller', when it is perfectly easy to purchase zen and convert it to astral diamonds through official methods. I know what some people will say, that gold sellers are offering astral diamonds at half the cost, but that again leads me to a simple fact of life.. If something looks too good to be true.. it probably is.. And if you think that gold sellers are a legitimate business model.. then I also have some beachfront property in Arizona to sell you.

As for combatting the problem, Cryptic/PWE are working on it, and have been since day one, and there are many different ways that this is done. None of which will be revealed to the playerbase, as methods are only useful, while they are unknown.

I am pretty certain that Megnatar's program, will not be allowed to be posted, not least because of the security implications that it would have, and liability for any damage that it may and/or may not cause.