ROFL Anyone who honestly thought this would help was deluding themselves. I've removed myself from all the Public Channels, and since I play with my Wife I have no need for them for a while. (No idea when the instanced dungeons or what have you occur. We're only LVL 10 on a few toons) Now I have to wonder why the companies don't just get into the gold selling business themselves? I mean might as well make the extra money yourself. (Yes I'm being silly)
are you being silly? or did you just uncover their master plan!?
The EU version of Runes of Magic suffers from the same crap.
No amount of reporting makes any difference and sometimes the scum are using the SAME character 3 days after being reported.
At least there are some decent ADDONS to combat this now with custom and auto ban-lists.
They seem to have added the level 5 ban to zonechat too but leveling is too easy as Aion.
But to the point on this game, why don't the devs build filters for the naming of characters to block keyboard hammerings like the good old goldspammers "sadfsadfghjk" deal? And ANY name with the same character 3 times or more.
If they had to sit down and create real sounding names it would slow them another 5% I expect
(have the filter give them 3 tries then delete the account, with a message warning that stupid names are not acceptible)
Raising the lvl for chat will not stop the spammers. Even other MMOs have issues. right now AION is being flooded by it as it is the new hot game of the moment.
You can right click the name of the offender and then click block. Today I blocked for the first 2 mins on and had very few issues afterward. If players do not buy the currency and promised powerlvling through bots then this will cause the advertisers to go away as they will be unable to make money.
There is only so much the GMs can do as the spammers change accounts faster than a super model changes clothes in a photo shoot. If they are abusing the trial account then maybe this should be done away with to only allow paying players access or make a seperate server for trial accounts that does not affect players that play.
AION is pretty fun and I have no problem lvling and making kinah so I do not understand why anyone would use that route.
Keep in mind too that if you do buy from these spammers you could be compromising your account and personnal information.
The best prevention falls to players of all MMOs to stop buying from these gold sellers and stop buying their power lvling bot programs. This will cause them to not make money and they will go away. As long as they have customers they will continue to advertise.
What I think they should do (this is just my two-cents, mind) is not allow whispers from people that aren't on your friends list. This doesn't have to be mandatory! But it could be an option. No one can whisper you unless you add them as a friend. If someone else wants to talk with you (say, someone passing by), then they can either form a group with you and talk that way, or just speak out loud. Of course, banning ip addresses would probably work too... until the gold spammers find a way around it.
make yourself invisible, no one can see you on the search menu, and only appear online to guildies
BLAME THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP BUYING GOLD IN GAMES! They cause all of these issues. If people weren't so ridiculous and lazy that they need to spend real world money to get gold and get a short cut then this wouldn't happen.
Which is partially true and partially untrue.
First, crime occurs when opportunity meets inclination - the spammers are like those nasty little men who hang out in alleys - "hey bud, c'mere, I got somethin for ya". They are trying to make a buck by convincing people that "hey, it's ok, look, it's not your fault the darn game is so hard - here, let us help you... "
But if that opportunity is not pushed down your throat 10-15 times per MINUTE most of the players will happily grind away, killing the mob, rescuing the kidnapped, being the hero [or heroine]. That is called immersion and the best games have it and have it spades... Right now, the spam has ruined immersion - you CANNOT have general chat on or looking for group so your game world grows smaller and your engagement with your faction grows less.
As someone who looked forward to Aion from the first whispers I heard over two years ago, I must say I am somewhat disappointed. I know other games [as popular] have addressed the problem of gold sellers directly and indirectly, by banning and making it fast and easy for players to police the game. NCSOFT has done neither.
The "report-a-bot" button works five times. Supposedly that is five times / day but in reality, it is five times period. Which doesn't make a whole lot of difference because 2 weeks in, there are no longer any GMs in game during peak business hours. And to add insult to injury, the button is buried under 3 or 4 or 5 menus and sub-menus but whatever, it still doesn't work.
Two weeks in and I hear from my Legion that several players are already sick of this gold selling mess and getting ready to move on [Mirkwood is coming out] and that makes me a sad panda. Aion - the game - is a fun as it gets. Sharp graphics, crisp gameplay - really fricking hard quests [lol = TOO HARD~!] great pvp [though there is concern about how far ahead of the Elyos the Asmos are - pfft] but... but... but... the gold sellers are ruining it.
Why farm when for $24 you can buy a million Ki? So the lazy, time challenged, cheaters buy the ki/drugs the spammers/pushers sell and NCSoft/the law just looks the other way and the view that they are profiting by the gold sellers is re-inforced. Yes, this is worse than L2. There was a gold seller in Sanctum. A toon with some garbage name, selling on the main street of Sanctum. So the players click "block" "block" "block" and try to use NCSoft's report line - which is also convoluted - turns out that all of the reports which were initially supposed to go to the Aion Forum on the aiononline.com website instead were supposed to go to the help.ncsoft.com location. And since they haven't heard any complaints. So.
They got $60 for the early launch game. They got another $40 [roughly] for a 3 month sub. A $100 x 2 cause my spouse plays. And if they don't clean this up, we are leaving. Everything else to the side, we play MMORPGs to relax, talk with friends and like that. All we ask for is a fair game [guess what gold buyers - you're cheaters!] and no spam - right now, Aion is definate fail on the second count and the influx of bought ki is destroying the economy [there's that Lineage 2 model again] with the result that the new players will be squeezed into either cheating [buying] or they will leave - when a mob drops something worth 200K that was something... but now prices are up = $12 Million for items?
Finally - as most of the spam traffic arises in the East and NCSoft is based in Korea, is there a "helping out the folks back home" message being played out? I don't know but I do know that WoW, Eve, LotRO had a very similar problem with in-game gold sellers and addressed it. Ban buyers and sellers would be a good start. Compare transactions with ki levels - be creative.
Or don't. If you ban some accounts, yes, you will lose those customer cheaters but if you don't you will lose people who want to play a very cool immersive rpg - something incredibly like Aion only without the spam.
But it comes down to the line I say everytime there is any thread like this. Stop blaming the company which can only do so much to stop it. BLAME THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP BUYING GOLD IN GAMES! They cause all of these issues. If people weren't so ridiculous and lazy that they need to spend real world money to get gold and get a short cut then this wouldn't happen.
EEEEt! WRONG. If Blizzard can impliment systems to control gold spamming (which they have done a very good job at), so can NCSoft. You can blame the people who buyt he gold, but is that really gonna accomplish anything? Blame away! It's not gonna cease because they are getting blamed.
Between the constant spam whispers & the looOOOOooooong queue times, I've gone back to my regular MMO, WoW until something is done about the spammers & queue times. (WTF is with the coding on this post!)
Moo. There. Are you happy now? ---------------------- Don't feed the trolls. If you must comment, consider participating in a long held internet tradition of responding to trolls with random discussions about food. Elk Jelly anyone?
What I think they should do (this is just my two-cents, mind) is not allow whispers from people that aren't on your friends list. This doesn't have to be mandatory! But it could be an option. No one can whisper you unless you add them as a friend. If someone else wants to talk with you (say, someone passing by), then they can either form a group with you and talk that way, or just speak out loud. Of course, banning ip addresses would probably work too... until the gold spammers find a way around it.
make yourself invisible, no one can see you on the search menu, and only appear online to guildies
I've tried that, I still get 4-5 whispers a minute from spammers selling ki. Nothing seems to work & it seems NCSoft is none-too-concerned about it. You'd think they would hear us literally SCREAMING for them to do something.
Moo. There. Are you happy now? ---------------------- Don't feed the trolls. If you must comment, consider participating in a long held internet tradition of responding to trolls with random discussions about food. Elk Jelly anyone?
Spammers get your name from chat participation so going anon doesn't always work. If they had your name before you went anon that's also a factor. No one thing is going to fix this problem. It'll take actions from gamers and NCSoft to really get this under control. This weekend's spam bots will probably give NCSoft some legal avenues they can look into as well.
1) Stop buying gold you lazy asses.
2) NCSoft should look at what Blizzard has done to combat gold spammers and use what will work from their actions for Aion game.
3) Report any bots you see. Stupid names like Gffggqq are a dead give away. There's a function under Actions (I forget the actual name) that lets you target the character and auto report them. The problem is as far as I can tell it only gives you 9 or 10 reports. This should reset after a certain time, so they really need to change that.
4) Sending a list of spammer names to help.ncsoft.com really isn't affective since the spammers get to 5 spam to hell then delete that character. Rightclick <name>: Report Spam and having it send the spam text associated with the name plus the account name is needed.
5) Newbies should have their own channel until level 10. Harsh but ya gotta do what you gotta do for the greater good. This limits the number of players affected by spam and makes it easier for a GM to monitor that channel.
6) Filter chat looking for certain keywords known to be common to gold spammers. It won't catch it all but like I said no one thing is going to fix this.
7) Stop enabling these assholes by just thinking it doesn't affect you. Gold spam/selling/buying/powerleveling affects everyone in an MMO in one way or another, so stop being an enabler and report them.
8) NCSoft needs a group of GMs who's only job is to track down spammers/botters/buyers/sellers.
And I'm sure there's more that can be done as well.
zam.com all those site there are all gold seller site and thats just the tip of that company
they sell everything from gold to item in all game yes including wow
they own wowhead
they own thottbot.com
yep gold seller own very close to all website linked to gaming ,soe opened their own site for gamer eq2 but its one of the very few one that actively combat that gold selling company (ige if i recall exactly)
As I explained before how I handled them in WoW is to turn off chat sounds, put all non guild chat into a window close, or cover that window, and avoid, or leave all other chat channels. Addons may help as long as guild chat and whispers don't consist of filter words. Even addons don't help when gold spammers can't spell or mix up their words. Bye gold now! Buy g0ld P@ydotc(om.
I'm the type of person who spends a few hours dealing with my broker. I've noticed the gold farmers will stand there next to me asking everyone who walks up for gold, and as soon as one leaves another one shows up to start again, so even being in the public areas makes me get more whispers despite my efforts to reduce the amount of whispers I get a minute.
A recent patch to Aion implemented a crude but temporary fix to address the rampant gold spam taking place in Aion: The Tower of Eternity. The patch disallows characters under level five from sending whispers, similar to general chat which also maintains this restriction. Having never played Aion, roughly how long does it take to hit level five? Do you think this change will make an impact on gold spam? Or will it simply serve to annoy legitimate players? Let us know in the comments!
considering the huge amount of discussions on the forums here, this "fix" simply has not solved anything.
but alas, ncsoft did not get to terms with botters and goldsellers in lineage2 (the worst thing i ever tried) and here they do it no better.
since they do not allow addons nobody out there can make anything to help them combat this...i would say to them to look into some of the Mods players have developed for WoW to fight off spammers of all times, they work extremely well and maybe they could implement that behavior into their chat.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." - Lewis Thomas
At the rate this is going...I don't think the GMs log on.
I'm on Zikel. In the newbie area, ALL channels have spam, including General (/1). In every other area, every public channel but /1 is flooded with Goldbot spam. This was the worst idea the history of goldbot spam killing attempts, imo. Now the gold bots easily have access to not only every character's name due to the Search feature, but also access to every public channel. It is literally impossible to do single public channel related thing like Trading and Finding Groups without using General. Nice job NCSoft.
Well...in Lineage II the word was that NCSOFt itself was involved in the Gold Selling...I left that game because of RMT first and foremost and vouged never to play another NCSOFt game unless I have confirmation that it is not made for RMT...
Seems like the Team from Lineage II is back to their old tricks and made another game for RMT to an unsuspecting new generation of players.
I am glad I did not fall for the "breathtaking graphics" trap this time around and held off getting AION.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
You said: BLAME THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP BUYING GOLD IN GAMES! They cause all of these issues. If people weren't so ridiculous and lazy that they need to spend real world money to get gold and get a short cut then this wouldn't happen.
Stop putting the blame on gold-buying players. Players, whether or not they have purchased virtual currency , are not the suspects here , they are only victims. The damned game REQUIRES more in-game gold than any MMO ever released. Do you really think that I'm going to grind 40 hours a week just to play the game I already pay a TON of money to play? Get a grip. Or change the game design. Idiots.
Comments
are you being silly? or did you just uncover their master plan!?
and poor voiceless noobs
The EU version of Runes of Magic suffers from the same crap.
No amount of reporting makes any difference and sometimes the scum are using the SAME character 3 days after being reported.
At least there are some decent ADDONS to combat this now with custom and auto ban-lists.
They seem to have added the level 5 ban to zonechat too but leveling is too easy as Aion.
But to the point on this game, why don't the devs build filters for the naming of characters to block keyboard hammerings like the good old goldspammers "sadfsadfghjk" deal? And ANY name with the same character 3 times or more.
If they had to sit down and create real sounding names it would slow them another 5% I expect
(have the filter give them 3 tries then delete the account, with a message warning that stupid names are not acceptible)
Raising the lvl for chat will not stop the spammers. Even other MMOs have issues. right now AION is being flooded by it as it is the new hot game of the moment.
You can right click the name of the offender and then click block. Today I blocked for the first 2 mins on and had very few issues afterward. If players do not buy the currency and promised powerlvling through bots then this will cause the advertisers to go away as they will be unable to make money.
There is only so much the GMs can do as the spammers change accounts faster than a super model changes clothes in a photo shoot. If they are abusing the trial account then maybe this should be done away with to only allow paying players access or make a seperate server for trial accounts that does not affect players that play.
AION is pretty fun and I have no problem lvling and making kinah so I do not understand why anyone would use that route.
Keep in mind too that if you do buy from these spammers you could be compromising your account and personnal information.
The best prevention falls to players of all MMOs to stop buying from these gold sellers and stop buying their power lvling bot programs. This will cause them to not make money and they will go away. As long as they have customers they will continue to advertise.
make yourself invisible, no one can see you on the search menu, and only appear online to guildies
You said:
BLAME THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP BUYING GOLD IN GAMES! They cause all of these issues. If people weren't so ridiculous and lazy that they need to spend real world money to get gold and get a short cut then this wouldn't happen.
Which is partially true and partially untrue.
First, crime occurs when opportunity meets inclination - the spammers are like those nasty little men who hang out in alleys - "hey bud, c'mere, I got somethin for ya". They are trying to make a buck by convincing people that "hey, it's ok, look, it's not your fault the darn game is so hard - here, let us help you... "
But if that opportunity is not pushed down your throat 10-15 times per MINUTE most of the players will happily grind away, killing the mob, rescuing the kidnapped, being the hero [or heroine]. That is called immersion and the best games have it and have it spades... Right now, the spam has ruined immersion - you CANNOT have general chat on or looking for group so your game world grows smaller and your engagement with your faction grows less.
As someone who looked forward to Aion from the first whispers I heard over two years ago, I must say I am somewhat disappointed. I know other games [as popular] have addressed the problem of gold sellers directly and indirectly, by banning and making it fast and easy for players to police the game. NCSOFT has done neither.
The "report-a-bot" button works five times. Supposedly that is five times / day but in reality, it is five times period. Which doesn't make a whole lot of difference because 2 weeks in, there are no longer any GMs in game during peak business hours. And to add insult to injury, the button is buried under 3 or 4 or 5 menus and sub-menus but whatever, it still doesn't work.
Two weeks in and I hear from my Legion that several players are already sick of this gold selling mess and getting ready to move on [Mirkwood is coming out] and that makes me a sad panda. Aion - the game - is a fun as it gets. Sharp graphics, crisp gameplay - really fricking hard quests [lol = TOO HARD~!] great pvp [though there is concern about how far ahead of the Elyos the Asmos are - pfft] but... but... but... the gold sellers are ruining it.
Why farm when for $24 you can buy a million Ki? So the lazy, time challenged, cheaters buy the ki/drugs the spammers/pushers sell and NCSoft/the law just looks the other way and the view that they are profiting by the gold sellers is re-inforced. Yes, this is worse than L2. There was a gold seller in Sanctum. A toon with some garbage name, selling on the main street of Sanctum. So the players click "block" "block" "block" and try to use NCSoft's report line - which is also convoluted - turns out that all of the reports which were initially supposed to go to the Aion Forum on the aiononline.com website instead were supposed to go to the help.ncsoft.com location. And since they haven't heard any complaints. So.
They got $60 for the early launch game. They got another $40 [roughly] for a 3 month sub. A $100 x 2 cause my spouse plays. And if they don't clean this up, we are leaving. Everything else to the side, we play MMORPGs to relax, talk with friends and like that. All we ask for is a fair game [guess what gold buyers - you're cheaters!] and no spam - right now, Aion is definate fail on the second count and the influx of bought ki is destroying the economy [there's that Lineage 2 model again] with the result that the new players will be squeezed into either cheating [buying] or they will leave - when a mob drops something worth 200K that was something... but now prices are up = $12 Million for items?
Finally - as most of the spam traffic arises in the East and NCSoft is based in Korea, is there a "helping out the folks back home" message being played out? I don't know but I do know that WoW, Eve, LotRO had a very similar problem with in-game gold sellers and addressed it. Ban buyers and sellers would be a good start. Compare transactions with ki levels - be creative.
Or don't. If you ban some accounts, yes, you will lose those customer cheaters but if you don't you will lose people who want to play a very cool immersive rpg - something incredibly like Aion only without the spam.
Urantia, Brig Gen
Valkyries, Israphel
Moo. There. Are you happy now?
----------------------
Don't feed the trolls. If you must comment, consider participating in a long held internet tradition of responding to trolls with random discussions about food. Elk Jelly anyone?
make yourself invisible, no one can see you on the search menu, and only appear online to guildies
I've tried that, I still get 4-5 whispers a minute from spammers selling ki. Nothing seems to work & it seems NCSoft is none-too-concerned about it. You'd think they would hear us literally SCREAMING for them to do something.
Moo. There. Are you happy now?
----------------------
Don't feed the trolls. If you must comment, consider participating in a long held internet tradition of responding to trolls with random discussions about food. Elk Jelly anyone?
Spammers get your name from chat participation so going anon doesn't always work. If they had your name before you went anon that's also a factor. No one thing is going to fix this problem. It'll take actions from gamers and NCSoft to really get this under control. This weekend's spam bots will probably give NCSoft some legal avenues they can look into as well.
1) Stop buying gold you lazy asses.
2) NCSoft should look at what Blizzard has done to combat gold spammers and use what will work from their actions for Aion game.
3) Report any bots you see. Stupid names like Gffggqq are a dead give away. There's a function under Actions (I forget the actual name) that lets you target the character and auto report them. The problem is as far as I can tell it only gives you 9 or 10 reports. This should reset after a certain time, so they really need to change that.
4) Sending a list of spammer names to help.ncsoft.com really isn't affective since the spammers get to 5 spam to hell then delete that character. Rightclick <name>: Report Spam and having it send the spam text associated with the name plus the account name is needed.
5) Newbies should have their own channel until level 10. Harsh but ya gotta do what you gotta do for the greater good. This limits the number of players affected by spam and makes it easier for a GM to monitor that channel.
6) Filter chat looking for certain keywords known to be common to gold spammers. It won't catch it all but like I said no one thing is going to fix this.
7) Stop enabling these assholes by just thinking it doesn't affect you. Gold spam/selling/buying/powerleveling affects everyone in an MMO in one way or another, so stop being an enabler and report them.
8) NCSoft needs a group of GMs who's only job is to track down spammers/botters/buyers/sellers.
And I'm sure there's more that can be done as well.
lol wow is just diff lol
go on
zam.com all those site there are all gold seller site and thats just the tip of that company
they sell everything from gold to item in all game yes including wow
they own wowhead
they own thottbot.com
yep gold seller own very close to all website linked to gaming ,soe opened their own site for gamer eq2 but its one of the very few one that actively combat that gold selling company (ige if i recall exactly)
As I explained before how I handled them in WoW is to turn off chat sounds, put all non guild chat into a window close, or cover that window, and avoid, or leave all other chat channels. Addons may help as long as guild chat and whispers don't consist of filter words. Even addons don't help when gold spammers can't spell or mix up their words. Bye gold now! Buy g0ld P@ydotc(om.
I'm the type of person who spends a few hours dealing with my broker. I've noticed the gold farmers will stand there next to me asking everyone who walks up for gold, and as soon as one leaves another one shows up to start again, so even being in the public areas makes me get more whispers despite my efforts to reduce the amount of whispers I get a minute.
Mhmmm
considering the huge amount of discussions on the forums here, this "fix" simply has not solved anything.
but alas, ncsoft did not get to terms with botters and goldsellers in lineage2 (the worst thing i ever tried) and here they do it no better.
*Enjoying the Developments*
So? Why are there so many Gold Sellers in AION? Is it as I have thought...another Lineage II with Wings?
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
since they do not allow addons nobody out there can make anything to help them combat this...i would say to them to look into some of the Mods players have developed for WoW to fight off spammers of all times, they work extremely well and maybe they could implement that behavior into their chat.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
At the rate this is going...I don't think the GMs log on.
I'm on Zikel. In the newbie area, ALL channels have spam, including General (/1). In every other area, every public channel but /1 is flooded with Goldbot spam. This was the worst idea the history of goldbot spam killing attempts, imo. Now the gold bots easily have access to not only every character's name due to the Search feature, but also access to every public channel. It is literally impossible to do single public channel related thing like Trading and Finding Groups without using General. Nice job NCSoft.
---
This is but a brief parting.
Well...in Lineage II the word was that NCSOFt itself was involved in the Gold Selling...I left that game because of RMT first and foremost and vouged never to play another NCSOFt game unless I have confirmation that it is not made for RMT...
Seems like the Team from Lineage II is back to their old tricks and made another game for RMT to an unsuspecting new generation of players.
I am glad I did not fall for the "breathtaking graphics" trap this time around and held off getting AION.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Stop putting the blame on gold-buying players. Players, whether or not they have purchased virtual currency , are not the suspects here , they are only victims. The damned game REQUIRES more in-game gold than any MMO ever released. Do you really think that I'm going to grind 40 hours a week just to play the game I already pay a TON of money to play? Get a grip. Or change the game design. Idiots.