General Discussion

Suggestions forums: Let me remind people this is the Suggestions forums. where players like me can make a Suggestions.

GOLD SPAMMER ?? How to Stop them or slow them down alot.

Hey look,

It like this I hate gold spammer more then anything in the world. I know alot people that well quit a game if there whisper 100 times aday by gold spammer.

So I try to come up with way to slow them down. Your never going to Stop them.

1. All trial Accounts can only whisper people that has them on there friends list. (If you invite your friend to the game you should know there game name)

2. Searching for: People, Raids, Groups, Zone, Server what ever else.

Searching for people only useable at some kind of level. Like lvl 10 or so.
Why? gold spammer don't like to level up there toons.

If you go to any online game and look at there Gold spammer levels there all ways lvl 1

Make a note in the Rules. If a Gold spammer gets Reported for spamming players and the GMs look up there Account and Find your message the gold spammer The names on the Search list. your Account is also ban.

This may not Stop the Gold spammer but it sure would slow them down Alot.

I well keep think of new way to Slow this gold spammer LOSER down. this is just a new idea I come up with. Good luck

No I don't mean gold farmers. I mean Gold Spammers the gold spammers that Harass players by whispring them in game tell them to go buy gold at there website.

A sure fire way to stop gold farmers and spammers is for little kids not to buy gold in the frist place. I've never played a game where you had to buy gold.

If a GM of MMORPG.com reads this please let all the beta games know about this. I was think this would be the easyest way for me to get this idea out there.  Thanks and Good luck!!!

Even in Atlantica OBT there are a lot of gold spammers. And I believe that you can slow them down by active GM monitoring. The players have to play a part too. Anyone can put on a "report" button in their game, how about a direct link telling the GMs that player so and so is spamming gold. A small level check will do, for these ppl dont earn exp very often.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT

Has a gold spammer report. Right click on the players name. Click Report gold spammer. But see alot people use that just to ignore the player in the game. 

And if a player has the rights to mute someone in chat thay could just mute anyone thay don't like. Gold spammers or not. 

And see that still don't fix the GOLD SPAMMERs I can make up a 100 names aday. each time I am going to spam you 1 time before you mute me.  Making up 100 names aday 

That would be you getting 100 whispers by Gold Spammers a day. 

The game can not give Players the rights to ban them Accounts.

That would shut the game down. Frist person you don't like and you ban them. I don't think  thay would be coming back to the game. where anyone can ban them for anything and everything. 

One solution could be to give players the ability to moderate the chat themselves.

Although it'd have to be carefully monitored to prevent abuse, maybe something like 10 reports of a player within 30 seconds would mute that player for 15minutes.

Maybe only allowing active players to participate in the moderation could prevent abuse (Preventing using bots and such to abuse the feature to harass non-offending players)

GM's setting up watchlists for key phrases and words would probably be the best idea though, and the easiest to impliment, although my experiance of MMOs so far, this either hasnt been considered, or dosent work

Ok folks, let me spell it out for you. You get IMed by a goldspammer ONCE per character. There are sweatshops full of chinese babies creating new characters constantly and running spam bots. Blocking doesn't help. Letting players ban would be stupid. NO amount of chat moderation will help, actually. What you need are hard coded prevention measures. Fortunately for you, I'm here to help.

Firstly, you flat out can't stop them. Unless the market dries up, they will always be there. The best you can hope for is to slow them down a bit.

Step 1: Trigger phrases for auto ignore. All tells and general chats would be scanned for said trigger phrases. Since it would be a client side thing, space would be limitless. If it finds the trigger phrase (Say, the url of the goldseller's site), it instantly ignores the character. It would of course send you a friendly "You have ignored fwhqhgads" message in your system window, but you'd be able to turn those off. It would be absolutely VITAL to include boolean operators. So they can't mix it up on you with "Best akhfga Prices poiasdchva go to ..."you get the idea. So you should be able to block messages with MMO and GOLD and COM and "Best Prices" in any order.

Secondly, the report goldspammer button. All these things do is report the goldspammer. What they SHOULD do is automatically add the message to your autoblock trigger list. Of course, this won't stop them for too long (Fr3e V|agr a anyone?), but it would be a nice stopgap measure and rather easily implementable on any chat system unless you coded it stupid. Judging from my own spam experiences, a spammer changes their message every week or so, so that will put you in the clear for quite some time and beats just blocking them one throwaway at a time.

The above two steps combined should deter spammers, forcing them to change their message both frequently and drastically, in ways it would be hard to write a bot for. Of course, they'll likely find a way.

So, as an above poster said, restrict searching for players until level X SEEMS like a good solution. But, this will piss off lower level players. A lot. ANY restriction on lowbies and chatting will piss off your players royally, especially if they're like me and end up creating 10 characters before they're happy with one. Plus, remember, there are sweatshops with chinese babies working to sell you phat gold at low low prices. If they have to, they can bot up to whatever level you want, in multiple instances. Level restrictions don't phase the clever spammer.

The goal of such a measure would of course be to limit the number of characters they can create, thus limiting the number of unblocked tellss they can send. So that's the goal. Why not just DO that? You can't make more than 5 characters per day per account. Maybe even 5 characters per WEEK. I know what you're thinking. Worst idea ever, right? Because you make enough characters to populate a small country before you're actually happy with one. I do the same thing. That's where the REMAKE button comes in.

The Remake button keeps your name (that way people who blocked you will still have blocked you, you filthy spammer), but lets you remake your character from scratch otherwise. I feel the need to point out that the name entry screen should be the FIRST screen, not the last like the weenies at DDO seem to think. You can Remake your character as long as he's below level X. Of course, they end up level 1 again, but come on, you can't tell me you don't get sick of deleting your characters to remake them.

So, while goldspamming isn't impossible under this system, each account can only spam you 5 times per week and they have to change their message EVERY TIME. To boot, I added great features for the common man to use, and I haven't restricted any legitimate player in any way! Clearly I am a genius.

As suggested above:

*personal text filtering blocking.

*block button.

*Once GM verifies account as gold spammer = invisible-MUTE the entire ACCOUNT. (Do NOT delete it else they will make another one) Now spammer can spam all he wants thinking players are listening to all his spam/mails, but in reality they are muted but he wont know it. Good way to "contain" a lot of them in a silence chamber of sorts.

* Log IP of verified spammer. Keep a database of IPs. If 5 different (or subsequent) account are from same IP. Ban the IP. Since these days its mostly DSL, IP's tend to be relatively static in about half the world. Now if IP is dynamic - then what is the probability that a normal person who is assigned the same IP *will* also be flagged as spammer? Wont happen unless they too spam for gold. Has to happen 5x times to be banned for say 1 month.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Okay, you posted this on the wrong board.

This board is for OPEN BETA DISCUSSIONS. Questions about open betas, open beta games, etc etc. I've had to sit by and watch people forget that fact time and time again. Read which board you're in before posting, -please-.

Gold farmers will never go away because people will keep buying gold, it gives them an edge.

Want to stop gold farmers? Stop playing MMORPGs. That'll stop them.

As a WOW player I can say at least for myself that I will report every spammer i find out there. Best way though is also the creative way they come up with names (Such as "whjklkdfsg" or "sdddjklphmr") {Ahh button mashing}

I do think the mute would be a great tool ... Funny thing is i know real players with viable accounts I would mute. But I think that is anyone were to get say 10 reports in 30 sec that the Mute be automatic for 30 min. That way you would be effected for a mere 30 sec.

Sad thing is that the Gold Spammers are simply advertising, really anoying advertising, but still that is what they do. Eliminate the need for the service you kill the need for advertising.

Ok first off, we're not trying to stop gold farmers. You can't stop them from farming, it's just not possible without restricting legitimate players. We're trying to stop SPAM.

Now then, my muting solution was specifically designed so that all of it is handled client side. If ANY PART OF THE SYS