suggestion: remove in game advertising

chipsr01#2846

In game advertisements, we all get them when we walk near the famous bots. The places from these bots are already send to customer support but the answer we get back is just to use blacklist. Wrong! Blacklisting will not help against in game messages and once discovered by a bot we will get messages like... forever... Quoting one:

We invite you to buy cheap gold coins from 8 cents per 1mil on [bad website]. No any scam, no need to enter your account information. Pay easy via PayPal. Buy now and save money!

The problem is that PWE also knows the abusing, which happens in all the games and all servers from PWE. In other words: we've got a verified seller. Now a suggestion: since blocking isn't impossible the procedure to send in-game mail need to change: (in all games published by PWE): players should be able to send in game mail ONLY to other players via the friend list. In addition: the mail would only arrive if the sender is in the friend list of the receiver, PWE could also take legal actions to the abusers but that costs more time than a little change in the sourcecode.

obielle

Had to edit the site name out just in case (even though we all get mails about it regularly).

I haven't played a whole lot of other games but the ones I have played have had issues similar to this. I think even if you restricted the mailing method, they'd find another one. For a while they used to PM you if you were nearby if I'm remembering correctly, and that would be pretty hard to restrict even if the bad word filter was updated.

The spam bots in the game I played would specifically spam up normal chat, and then I think the game made restrictions on newer players. Those spam bots ended up just botting their way up to whatever level they needed to be before beginning their spamming process.

I'm not really sure how other games deal with this unfortunately. My guess would be that they actually have people monitoring this stuff more regularly.
(Note: if someone does reply, please refrain from mentioning the name of other games, forum rules and stuff)

sjampie

players should be able to send in game mail ONLY to other players via the friend list

In that case people can't have free items like we had when we stayed online for one hour. Better just to skip Archosaur and any quest that brings you in that city. After a few months you won't get messages. Only problem is visiting the catshops but most are too expensive anyway. If you want to buy something just make another character and use it only for buying/selling. Don't ever use the friend list. Any mail you get is from our verified seller but the best thing of all: you don't need to check your mailbox! Once it's full of spam you won't receive mail ever again! Also: first check the site of another bot (find it via a search engine on the internet by searching for 'pwi catshops') and make a shortcut to that site. By checking that site you don't need much time to visit a catshop just to buy or sell something.

per 1mil on [bad website]

The site isn't bad but if you look at it you will see that there isn't any real development on that site. Let's face it: do you like to see text from a fake person who used the site to get coins in 2018. No entries since 2018 means people are getting smart NOT to use that site. That's unless they are smarter by just going for F2P

Those spam bots ended up just botting their way up to whatever level they needed to be before beginning their spamming process. I'm not really sure how other games deal with this unfortunately. My guess would be that they actually have people monitoring this stuff more regularly.

I think the monitoring will return in the future as written in the published text we could read earlier this year; the policy changes. But yes, there is a need of more activity by real people. Like the policy said 'screenshots can be taken; however if I develop software and give it a name and icon from another application like WordPad the screenshot can't do anything. Monitoring inside the game is the only real and legal solution. That's including the usage of ******** (← codes) to move, block or remove characters.