I ask this because it seems like the spammers are reproducing faster then you can kill them. Maybe we should have called THEM tribbles.
BTW incase you didn't know, just sit in SOL station or Sirius sector to get them, thats where they often are.
right click report auto ignores
A GM was just in and took care of some spammers but don't rely on them report and they can see the @ addresses and wipe accounts better then popping in game or other means
Be your neighborhood watch
Report and Ignore all in one quick button move
I fail to see why it should be our job to police the game. It seems to me that MMO's of today have forgotten what a GM's job *really* is. Today a GM is nothing more than a Tier 1 CSR with no real power. If Cryptic really wanted to get rid of them they could do so easily. A small team of 3-5 people could easily clean them off as they show up just by sitting in game and reading the chat as it flows by. After a couple weeks or so of insta-banning the farmers would probably give up. Or at least at any rate slow down enough that the player base could manage to play without constant harrasment.
Cryptic really needs to crack down on the spammers. The longer it goes on and they have put money and time into it, the harder it will be go get them out.
It's a fact of MMO life. WoW still has gold spammers. LOTRO still has gold spammers, EVE still has gold spammers. HELL, Unltima Online has gold spammers and that game isn't even officially run anymore
I fail to see why it should be our job to police the game. It seems to me that MMO's of today have forgotten what a GM's job *really* is. Today a GM is nothing more than a Tier 1 CSR with no real power. If Cryptic really wanted to get rid of them they could do so easily. A small team of 3-5 people could easily clean them off as they show up just by sitting in game and reading the chat as it flows by. After a couple weeks or so of insta-banning the farmers would probably give up. Or at least at any rate slow down enough that the player base could manage to play without constant harrasment.
Agreed. All it would take is ONE PERSON to look at the chat scrolling by every so often and give them the power of 'insta-ban'.
See one spam message? Ban. Poof! No more spammer.
Heck - give it to me and I'll do it for FREE (and yes, I'll still pay you your monthly fee). Of course, I might ban a few people who ask where Sulu is a few too many times too...
Yeah it's easy to click and report them but i'd really rather not see it in the first place. I'd support almost any measures they took to prevent this even if it meant having to level before chat become available or something along those lines.
Yeah it's easy to click and report them but i'd really rather not see it in the first place. I'd support almost any measures they took to prevent this even if it meant having to level before chat become available or something along those lines.
The problem with that, is, despite what people believe, these spammers are not any kind of automatic program, they are indeed real people (Most from China), who actually DO PLAY the game if only to make the money to send out. So as in other games where they have implemented the fix you suggest, the spammers simply change their tactic, either leveling up themselves, or beginning to steal accounts which are already leveled
I fail to see why it should be our job to police the game. It seems to me that MMO's of today have forgotten what a GM's job *really* is. Today a GM is nothing more than a Tier 1 CSR with no real power. If Cryptic really wanted to get rid of them they could do so easily. A small team of 3-5 people could easily clean them off as they show up just by sitting in game and reading the chat as it flows by. After a couple weeks or so of insta-banning the farmers would probably give up. Or at least at any rate slow down enough that the player base could manage to play without constant harrasment.
This right here is the answer to the problem. The issue is it would require them to hire people which would cost them money. Money is more important than giving us a satisfactory gaming environment.
This could be really easy for Cryptic. You simply create a auto filter that after an account gets ten unique "spam" hits from users it is automatically blocked from actually broadcasting in general chat for one month. If it gets twenty unique "spam" hits it is blocked from chating or mailing to any user which is not on their friend list for one month. If it gets one hundred unique "spam" hits the account is perma-banned from chat or mail with anyone except their friend list.
The way to trick the spammers is to not let them know the spam ban is in effect. They still would see their messages being displayed in their chat screen, but have no idea that everyone else was auto blocking them (since most never engage in two way conversations anyway they wouldn't notice the diference). Then their advertising would cease to be effective, and we could all move on in the game in relative peace.
The other way to put a dent into these spammers is to never use their products. If nobody used the services, then there wouldn't be a market for buying many accounts to annoy users. If someone doesn't want to play a MMO fairly, then I don't have any sympathy for their buying services in contravention of the TOS.
Another thing I would do is put a condition in the rules explicitly saying that there is no expectation of privacy in conversations through mail or chat in the game. If the company receives complaints about a user they should be able to go through their logs to see if a user is buying or selling "services" in contravention of the TOS, then they should be able to ban the accounts involved with an e-mailed copy of the violating conversation along with the account ban notice. This won't stop it from absolutely happening, but it will put a major dent in the operation.
I would guess that in most MMO's it is only less than 3% of the user base which feels a need/desire to make use of such a service. I think that may be pretty close to the amount of people who cease playing an MMO because the farmers/gold sellers make the game too anoying for them to play. I therefore think it is worthwhile to put a hitch into their plans by making the price of doing business higher than it is worth.
The problem with that, is, despite what people believe, these spammers are not any kind of automatic program, they are indeed real people (Most from China), who actually DO PLAY the game if only to make the money to send out. So as in other games where they have implemented the fix you suggest, the spammers simply change their tactic, either leveling up themselves, or beginning to steal accounts which are already leveled
watch that. It's not the actual documentary, however the full documentary was kind of informativeand interesting
i agree.
aion for instance has many restriction in place. you have to be level 10 before you can whisper or zone/trade chat or mail. has numerous word filters in place.
and yet players are still innundated by RMT spam and mail, and often have to reset their ignore lists every couple weeks.
additionally, aion is the second most targeted game for phishing emails, and account hacking is rampant due in part to ncsoft's lax security protocols.
and RMT companies buy 50 accounts at a time using stolen credit cards. so when one gets banned they can bring 10 more in within an hour.
the only way to slow them down is to not buy their services and discourage your friends from buying their services. it may not have a big deal to buy some in game currency a few years ago, but now it's become epidemic.
I just hope they do something to integrate their banning with my ignore list. Last thing I want is for it to be maxed out full of @asdfwe posters that have already been banned. Funny how they're able to get away with creating those names anyways seeing as that's against the name conventions.
The problem with that, is, despite what people believe, these spammers are not any kind of automatic program, they are indeed real people (Most from China), who actually DO PLAY the game if only to make the money to send out. So as in other games where they have implemented the fix you suggest, the spammers simply change their tactic, either leveling up themselves, or beginning to steal accounts which are already leveled
watch that. It's not the actual documentary, however the full documentary was kind of informativeand interesting
Yeah i'd imagine if anything the suggestion above would just slow down their spamming not stop it. I'd imagine the full, paid for accounts that play the game and earn the gold are the ones they could do with getting rid of.
I ask this because it seems like the spammers are reproducing faster then you can kill them. Maybe we should have called THEM tribbles.
BTW incase you didn't know, just sit in SOL station or Sirius sector to get them, thats where they often are.
You ban and a 3 more will pop up. The problem is they use random account names which probably only last a day then start over with new characters to spam with.
It's and endless and thankless job banning them ;/.
The problem is they use random account names which probably only last a day then start over with new characters to spam with.
how exactly are they doing this? I had to pay $50, and give up my credit card number to create an account. Are these spammers really paying for all of these accounts? Or did Cryptic start giving away free trial accounts? (If so I want my money back)
You cannot fix the problem by trying to stop the suppliers... it never works. As long as there is a demand for their services there will be Farmers and Spam.
Do not ban them, tag them... See where the money and items are going, and then later Ban all accounts involved involved, a large network of significant transactions are likely to be uncovered and bots can do most of the work... Large shifts of internal currency, they generally strip power levelled characters of most of their cash.items as well before handing them over to the buyer.
The harshest punishments should be handed out to those who receive the goods or services because they are the ones driving the economy.
However, all people involved are paying subscribers, so the question for the developer/distributor is how much income is lost stopping the trade compared to that lost by allowing it to continue. You will probably find for Cryptic as with other MMO companies a moderate discouragement for the practice is the most viable way to go as far as profit is concerned.
You ban and a 3 more will pop up. The problem is they use random account names which probably only last a day then start over with new characters to spam with.
It's and endless and thankless job banning them ;/.
The great thing about the way Cryptic has things set up, if you "report as spam" (or even just "ignore player") the whole spammer account gets ignored for you, not just the one name, .Spammers would actually have to buy a whole new account (game) to spam you again.
What really chaffs me is that as long as MMO's and so-called farmers have been around, only a handful of MMO's actually do anything to actively empower the customer from getting harassing messages in game.
There are SO MANY easy ways to implement filters such as:
1. Requiring *or* giving players an option to be a certain level before sending/receiving system/zone chat.
2. Giving players an option to refuse mail from non-friends or players below a certain level.
3. Giving players options for filtering text containing keywords or URLs.
4. Require a player to be above a certain level to trade credits to another player.
The biggest issue at hand is a lot of these transactions are not secure. There are always going to be players that don't know that these "businesses" cannot always be trustworthy. I imagine a lot of these throwaway accounts are paid for with credit card numbers these "businesses" get from unsuspecting kids using their parents credit card info.
Kind of makes me think that some MMO developers don't really want to stop the farmers. Not when they have the potential of making money off of stolen credit card transactions for multiple copies of their game every time some kid uses a parent's card to try to score easy in-game currency.
It's a fact of MMO life. WoW still has gold spammers. LOTRO still has gold spammers, EVE still has gold spammers. HELL, Unltima Online has gold spammers and that game isn't even officially run anymore
DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) has no gold spammers. None. And it's a free to play game now, with extra content for sale in bits and pieces. And it's working for them big time.
They banned the entire Chinese IP range from accessing their servers. The Chinese Govt could care less what a game in North America does.
And the silence is bliss. So yeah, there is a solution. Somebody in the game with authority just has to have the guts to say it, and then the moxie to do it.
This could be really easy for Cryptic. You simply create a auto filter that after an account gets ten unique "spam" hits from users it is automatically blocked from actually broadcasting in general chat for one month. If it gets twenty unique "spam" hits it is blocked from chating or mailing to any user which is not on their friend list for one month. If it gets one hundred unique "spam" hits the account is perma-banned from chat or mail with anyone except their friend list.
.
I say one spam hit get the account banned permanently and the user has to contact Cryptic to get it back, upon which Cryptic checks the logs to see if there was really gold spamming going on. If not then the account gets reinstated and the accuser gets banned for abusing the system.
I fail to see why it should be our job to police the game. It seems to me that MMO's of today have forgotten what a GM's job *really* is. Today a GM is nothing more than a Tier 1 CSR with no real power. If Cryptic really wanted to get rid of them they could do so easily. A small team of 3-5 people could easily clean them off as they show up just by sitting in game and reading the chat as it flows by. After a couple weeks or so of insta-banning the farmers would probably give up. Or at least at any rate slow down enough that the player base could manage to play without constant harrasment.
And people wonder why crime flourishes. Apathy.
It isn't our job, but they DID ask us to HELP them by reporting. The SAME way the Police ask you to report crimes. And for the SAME reason; because they can't be everywhere at once.
For all the people talking about how easy it would be....if it was easy don't you think the spammer problem would have been solved by now? Yet, EVERY SINGLE MMO out there has this EXACT PROBLEM. Gold farmers and spammers. Why? Because the companies don't want to hire 3-4 people? Heck, Blizzard could probably hire 10 times that number and their profit margin wouldn't even notice. Yet, they don't. It has nothing to do with corporate greed and EVERYTHING to do with it NOT being easy.
These gold sellers are NOT just a handfull of people. They are a worldwide organization with variable levels of operation. You have the farmers who actually make the in game currency. These are usually people in the 3rd world who make pennies an hour. They are shown how to play the game and that is all they do. THEY are not the ones messaging you. They don't message anyone. They don't have the time to, they're to busy making their quota. They are very hard to catch because they're quiet.
Then there are the couriers. They're the ones who actually transfer funds, depending on how the game runs things. These guys are easy to catch, but guess what? Catching and banning them does nothing. Because they're all just throw away accounts, or stolen accounts from people who have done business with the sellers.
Next are the actual spammers. These are the people who message you in game, or in email. Guess what? THEY'RE on disposable accounts as well. They spam for a few minutes then log off and switch accounts in an attempt to avoid GM detection and banning. When they're caught it doesn't matter because there are plenty of other accounts to use.
In game currency selling is a hot market. It's profitable for these people because they don't pay their people much and they use systems that are just good enough to run the game. Not to much overhead. Probably the most expensive thing for them to buy is a new game. Each game, of course, coming with a free month so they never need to pay for a monthly sub. And with many games including free passes and demos....
I say one spam hit get the account banned permanently and the user has to contact Cryptic to get it back, upon which Cryptic checks the logs to see if there was really gold spamming going on. If not then the account gets reinstated and the accuser gets banned for abusing the system.
That would not be a good thing.
Do you believe that you would be spared the grief that would come about by anyone being able to report you and once people know they can grief other players this way they will do it constantly.
Do you believe that you would be spared the grief that would come about by anyone being able to report you and once people know they can grief other players this way they will do it constantly.
lol Yeah. People would report others to get everyone else disconnected so that the server won't crash again.
What really chaffs me is that as long as MMO's and so-called farmers have been around, only a handful of MMO's actually do anything to actively empower the customer from getting harassing messages in game.
There are SO MANY easy ways to implement filters such as:
1. Requiring *or* giving players an option to be a certain level before sending/receiving system/zone chat.
2. Giving players an option to refuse mail from non-friends or players below a certain level.
3. Giving players options for filtering text containing keywords or URLs.
4. Require a player to be above a certain level to trade credits to another player.
The biggest issue at hand is a lot of these transactions are not secure. There are always going to be players that don't know that these "businesses" cannot always be trustworthy. I imagine a lot of these throwaway accounts are paid for with credit card numbers these "businesses" get from unsuspecting kids using their parents credit card info.
Kind of makes me think that some MMO developers don't really want to stop the farmers. Not when they have the potential of making money off of stolen credit card transactions for multiple copies of their game every time some kid uses a parent's card to try to score easy in-game currency.
Love this post.
Every MMO in gaming history has never implemented effective anti-spam features before their game is released. They always do something about it after the game is released and usually months after. On top of that, they wait until their customers get p*ssed and complain about it.
Comments
right click report auto ignores
A GM was just in and took care of some spammers but don't rely on them report and they can see the @ addresses and wipe accounts better then popping in game or other means
Be your neighborhood watch
Report and Ignore all in one quick button move
It's a fact of MMO life. WoW still has gold spammers. LOTRO still has gold spammers, EVE still has gold spammers. HELL, Unltima Online has gold spammers and that game isn't even officially run anymore
Agreed. All it would take is ONE PERSON to look at the chat scrolling by every so often and give them the power of 'insta-ban'.
See one spam message? Ban. Poof! No more spammer.
Heck - give it to me and I'll do it for FREE (and yes, I'll still pay you your monthly fee). Of course, I might ban a few people who ask where Sulu is a few too many times too...
The problem with that, is, despite what people believe, these spammers are not any kind of automatic program, they are indeed real people (Most from China), who actually DO PLAY the game if only to make the money to send out. So as in other games where they have implemented the fix you suggest, the spammers simply change their tactic, either leveling up themselves, or beginning to steal accounts which are already leveled
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4
watch that. It's not the actual documentary, however the full documentary was kind of informativeand interesting
This right here is the answer to the problem. The issue is it would require them to hire people which would cost them money. Money is more important than giving us a satisfactory gaming environment.
The way to trick the spammers is to not let them know the spam ban is in effect. They still would see their messages being displayed in their chat screen, but have no idea that everyone else was auto blocking them (since most never engage in two way conversations anyway they wouldn't notice the diference). Then their advertising would cease to be effective, and we could all move on in the game in relative peace.
The other way to put a dent into these spammers is to never use their products. If nobody used the services, then there wouldn't be a market for buying many accounts to annoy users. If someone doesn't want to play a MMO fairly, then I don't have any sympathy for their buying services in contravention of the TOS.
Another thing I would do is put a condition in the rules explicitly saying that there is no expectation of privacy in conversations through mail or chat in the game. If the company receives complaints about a user they should be able to go through their logs to see if a user is buying or selling "services" in contravention of the TOS, then they should be able to ban the accounts involved with an e-mailed copy of the violating conversation along with the account ban notice. This won't stop it from absolutely happening, but it will put a major dent in the operation.
I would guess that in most MMO's it is only less than 3% of the user base which feels a need/desire to make use of such a service. I think that may be pretty close to the amount of people who cease playing an MMO because the farmers/gold sellers make the game too anoying for them to play. I therefore think it is worthwhile to put a hitch into their plans by making the price of doing business higher than it is worth.
I hope this helps.
i agree.
aion for instance has many restriction in place. you have to be level 10 before you can whisper or zone/trade chat or mail. has numerous word filters in place.
and yet players are still innundated by RMT spam and mail, and often have to reset their ignore lists every couple weeks.
additionally, aion is the second most targeted game for phishing emails, and account hacking is rampant due in part to ncsoft's lax security protocols.
and RMT companies buy 50 accounts at a time using stolen credit cards. so when one gets banned they can bring 10 more in within an hour.
the only way to slow them down is to not buy their services and discourage your friends from buying their services. it may not have a big deal to buy some in game currency a few years ago, but now it's become epidemic.
Yeah i'd imagine if anything the suggestion above would just slow down their spamming not stop it. I'd imagine the full, paid for accounts that play the game and earn the gold are the ones they could do with getting rid of.
You ban and a 3 more will pop up. The problem is they use random account names which probably only last a day then start over with new characters to spam with.
It's and endless and thankless job banning them ;/.
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj13/danny_aindow/STO/goldspam.jpg
The only reason there's none below is because i reported/deleted them earlier, usually the exchange sales are dotted between gold spam
how exactly are they doing this? I had to pay $50, and give up my credit card number to create an account. Are these spammers really paying for all of these accounts? Or did Cryptic start giving away free trial accounts? (If so I want my money back)
Do not ban them, tag them... See where the money and items are going, and then later Ban all accounts involved involved, a large network of significant transactions are likely to be uncovered and bots can do most of the work... Large shifts of internal currency, they generally strip power levelled characters of most of their cash.items as well before handing them over to the buyer.
The harshest punishments should be handed out to those who receive the goods or services because they are the ones driving the economy.
However, all people involved are paying subscribers, so the question for the developer/distributor is how much income is lost stopping the trade compared to that lost by allowing it to continue. You will probably find for Cryptic as with other MMO companies a moderate discouragement for the practice is the most viable way to go as far as profit is concerned.
The great thing about the way Cryptic has things set up, if you "report as spam" (or even just "ignore player") the whole spammer account gets ignored for you, not just the one name, .Spammers would actually have to buy a whole new account (game) to spam you again.
If thats all it took, then I could ban you by getting three people to say your spamming?
There are SO MANY easy ways to implement filters such as:
1. Requiring *or* giving players an option to be a certain level before sending/receiving system/zone chat.
2. Giving players an option to refuse mail from non-friends or players below a certain level.
3. Giving players options for filtering text containing keywords or URLs.
4. Require a player to be above a certain level to trade credits to another player.
The biggest issue at hand is a lot of these transactions are not secure. There are always going to be players that don't know that these "businesses" cannot always be trustworthy. I imagine a lot of these throwaway accounts are paid for with credit card numbers these "businesses" get from unsuspecting kids using their parents credit card info.
Kind of makes me think that some MMO developers don't really want to stop the farmers. Not when they have the potential of making money off of stolen credit card transactions for multiple copies of their game every time some kid uses a parent's card to try to score easy in-game currency.
DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) has no gold spammers. None. And it's a free to play game now, with extra content for sale in bits and pieces. And it's working for them big time.
They banned the entire Chinese IP range from accessing their servers. The Chinese Govt could care less what a game in North America does.
And the silence is bliss. So yeah, there is a solution. Somebody in the game with authority just has to have the guts to say it, and then the moxie to do it.
I say one spam hit get the account banned permanently and the user has to contact Cryptic to get it back, upon which Cryptic checks the logs to see if there was really gold spamming going on. If not then the account gets reinstated and the accuser gets banned for abusing the system.
And people wonder why crime flourishes. Apathy.
It isn't our job, but they DID ask us to HELP them by reporting. The SAME way the Police ask you to report crimes. And for the SAME reason; because they can't be everywhere at once.
For all the people talking about how easy it would be....if it was easy don't you think the spammer problem would have been solved by now? Yet, EVERY SINGLE MMO out there has this EXACT PROBLEM. Gold farmers and spammers. Why? Because the companies don't want to hire 3-4 people? Heck, Blizzard could probably hire 10 times that number and their profit margin wouldn't even notice. Yet, they don't. It has nothing to do with corporate greed and EVERYTHING to do with it NOT being easy.
These gold sellers are NOT just a handfull of people. They are a worldwide organization with variable levels of operation. You have the farmers who actually make the in game currency. These are usually people in the 3rd world who make pennies an hour. They are shown how to play the game and that is all they do. THEY are not the ones messaging you. They don't message anyone. They don't have the time to, they're to busy making their quota. They are very hard to catch because they're quiet.
Then there are the couriers. They're the ones who actually transfer funds, depending on how the game runs things. These guys are easy to catch, but guess what? Catching and banning them does nothing. Because they're all just throw away accounts, or stolen accounts from people who have done business with the sellers.
Next are the actual spammers. These are the people who message you in game, or in email. Guess what? THEY'RE on disposable accounts as well. They spam for a few minutes then log off and switch accounts in an attempt to avoid GM detection and banning. When they're caught it doesn't matter because there are plenty of other accounts to use.
In game currency selling is a hot market. It's profitable for these people because they don't pay their people much and they use systems that are just good enough to run the game. Not to much overhead. Probably the most expensive thing for them to buy is a new game. Each game, of course, coming with a free month so they never need to pay for a monthly sub. And with many games including free passes and demos....
That would not be a good thing.
Do you believe that you would be spared the grief that would come about by anyone being able to report you and once people know they can grief other players this way they will do it constantly.
Here's the problem I have with that. I don't play a game to report spammers, I play a game to play the game.
There should be Cryptic employees monitoring the chats and high traffic areas 24 hours a day, every day.
lol Yeah. People would report others to get everyone else disconnected so that the server won't crash again.
Love this post.
Every MMO in gaming history has never implemented effective anti-spam features before their game is released. They always do something about it after the game is released and usually months after. On top of that, they wait until their customers get p*ssed and complain about it.