Discussion: Zero Tolerance RMT Tells and Spam
By
Agent_Kendt,
Posted on: 2007-08-07 13:34 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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One problem I foresee is some of these spammers buying up all those $5 copies of CoH floating around on the internet somewhere. They activate the game and just use the first free month, do what they want, and even if they get banned, as long as at least 1 person decides to use the service, they made their money back.
Of course, there aren't an infinite number of copes sitting around, but there's quite a few...
Just as an aside, is is safe to assume that other forms of in-game advertising, such as using broadcast, request, help chat, or even having it in your character bio, are able to be petitioned, too?
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Then make use of the in game /petition command to let our Customer Support Team know of the activity so we can address it.
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could you elaborate on this, as to exactly what information you need the petition to contain, what petition topic to enter it under. also how do you globally ignore someone without knowing their global name ?
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I agree. Most of the time, all you get is their throwaway toon's name not their global.
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When you use the /gignore command, it will tell you the global name. Let's say, for instance, that you get a tell from asdfjkl. You can immediately
/ignore asdfjkl
It will tell you that asdfjkl is ignored. Now, you
/gignore asdfjkl
In your window, you should see it telling you that you have globally ignored @yaddayadda.
That's the global name that you can now include in your petition.
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Then make use of the in game /petition command to let our Customer Support Team know of the activity so we can address it.
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could you elaborate on this, as to exactly what information you need the petition to contain, what petition topic to enter it under. also how do you globally ignore someone without knowing their global name ?
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I agree. Most of the time, all you get is their throwaway toon's name not their global.
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When you use the /gignore command, it will tell you the global name. Let's say, for instance, that you get a tell from asdfjkl. You can immediately
/ignore asdfjkl
It will tell you that asdfjkl is ignored. Now, you
/gignore asdfjkl
In your window, you should see it telling you that you have globally ignored @yaddayadda.
That's the global name that you can now include in your petition.
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While very useful for reporting offenders, I feel that being able to get anyone's global handle is a big security risk.
Let's say I wanted to stalk someone - I can /gignore them, get their global handle, and then send them tells no matter who they are on as. If they are not aware of the chat-handle system, they may have very little recourse.
Using it properly, though, that is a good method of getting their account name to put an end to their spamming...
I got a couple spam tells today, from the same person, in the space of five seconds. Petitioned it. Goodbye loser.
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Let's say I wanted to stalk someone - I can /gignore them, get their global handle, and then send them tells no matter who they are on as. If they are not aware of the chat-handle system, they may have very little recourse.
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Well, not really - the other person can /gignore you in turn, and the harassment ends there. Not only that, now THEY have YOUR global handle, which they can use to petition you for harassment if you press the issue further.
Mad props to NCSoft for being swift to address this issue. I'm not happy about what gold farmers do to the in-game economy, but I could overlook that. It's the constant spamming that was the irritating part in WoW.
For best results, mention the character name that sent the tell, the global handle, the server, and the time of day in your petition so they can pinpoint it in the chat logs.
Arc #41077 - The Men of State
Arc #48845 - Operation: Dirty Snowball
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Just one request, LH:
I'd like to see an 'example petition' of what formatting works best for you guys.
No offence, but the screening process on the 1st layer of Hell at PlayNC has in the past produced some whacky results, such as Petitions from COH being forwarded to the staff of entirely different games. As such, I'd rather we be armed as well as possible to get our petitions regarding RMTs forwarded to the proper authorities as expediently as possible.
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"Thank you for contacting Guild Wars support..."
Yeah, I would like to see this too. Anything that can make the process more efficient I'd be willing to do.
I suppose it might be a bit much, but perhaps we can even get a specific heading for this sort of thing to file it under when we fill out the /petition added to the UI.
Assuming that would help filter these out from the normal exploit/harassment petitions that are received and get them responded to as expediently as possible.
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Let's say I wanted to stalk someone - I can /gignore them, get their global handle, and then send them tells no matter who they are on as. If they are not aware of the chat-handle system, they may have very little recourse.
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Well, not really - the other person can /gignore you in turn, and the harassment ends there. Not only that, now THEY have YOUR global handle, which they can use to petition you for harassment if you press the issue further.
Mad props to NCSoft for being swift to address this issue. I'm not happy about what gold farmers do to the in-game economy, but I could overlook that. It's the constant spamming that was the irritating part in WoW.
For best results, mention the character name that sent the tell, the global handle, the server, and the time of day in your petition so they can pinpoint it in the chat logs.
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I understand what you're saying, and yes, you're right. However, if the stalkee wasn't aware of the slash commands, they'd be pretty screwed. That's why I say that...
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I wonder though if someone buys items from one of these merchants do they get banned also?
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I would assume so.
It's good to see that the devs are taking a stand against the spamming advertisers, but as Lemur Lad pointed out, the accounts these tells come from are just Minions. It will also be important to go after the Lieutenants, Bosses, and AV's who run the sites.
But there is one more thing that can be done, and that is going after the Giant Monster, Demand. While we now have the Invention system that drew them here, the game's emphasis on wealth and items is still lower than in most MMORPG's and is still an excellent weapon against demand, and that is why they aren't as great a menace here as they are in other games.
But as long as people are willing to buy from them, they will sell. We should go after the people who buy from them as well as those who sell for them. A potential buyer would think twice about using their services if they knew they'd get banned.
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Arc ID# 70466: From the Abyss.
Arc ID# 403174: The Serpent's Revenge.
Arc ID# 534236: The Clockwork Angel.
Thank you for being on top of this guys. The constant spamming was one of the reasons I left WoW. We need to make it clear that spammers are not wanted here and will not be tolerated.
Wouldn't the best way to deal with these creeps be to make their real-world company name known, show the connection between their sleazy business and their sleazy business practices, and encourage a game-wide boycott?
If they get punished hard enough, not only by NCsoft, but by the players as well, then wouldn't that discourage other people from trying this?
Heck, I wish that hackers would quit trying to infect innocent computer-users with viruses, and specifically go after jerks like this, who deserve it. I would call THAT using your power for good instead of evil.
I've got to admit, I don't know a lot about how this works or honestly what they're even selling; influence? How do they generate influence to sell? Do they sit around playing the game to raise influence? That sounds stupid, so I must not be getting it.
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Hero A hands the item to B who hands the item to C who sells it on consignment, bought by D who trades it directly to E for some other nice loot.
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Assuming hero A can be linked to one of the gold-farming services, presumably by sting operation or such? A gets banned. If B still has the item in his possession, the item gets deleted; if not, an equivalent amount gets subtracted from B's inf total. For second offense, B gets banned, too.
Look, what do you have to offer for an alternative? If there aren't going to be any penalties for the buyers, then any penalties on the sellers are pointless, because they don't address the root of the problem. If you don't believe me, look up the history of Prohibition and the effect that not having penalties for consumption and use of alcohol back when alcohol was illegal to manufacture or sell had on America.
These spams in game are absolutely ridiculous anymore. I got 5 tells in the course of 10 minutes from these guys. Ignore and then petitioned each and every time. I have actually gotten to the point to where I pretty much put my characters on hide just so I won't be bothered with them.
I am glad that something is being done about it. I've gotten some tells from these kind of people and is very annoying. Its like getting pop ups or junk mail that you don't need. Thanks for showing that you care LH.
got one tonight about 1030ish on liberty, petitioned his butt.
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Wouldn't the best way to deal with these creeps be to make their real-world company name known, show the connection between their sleazy business and their sleazy business practices, and encourage a game-wide boycott?
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A WHOIS turns up a bunch of contact information in Changsha, China. From the looks of it, it's a work-from-home enterprise, and their physical host either doesn't know or doesn't care what's going on. Third-party hosting, third-party credit card processing (Paypal? psh, -real- professional), and looks like they even outsource their gold farmers. No wonder their prices are so obscenely high! Everyone's a middleman!
Anyway, you wouldn't buy your pet food from China; why in the world would you buy imaginary wealth? Even if I were inclined to buy influence, I'd want to make sure I'm buying from a reputable, non-anonymous company, with avenues of recourse if the seller doesn't come through.
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Just one request, LH:
I'd like to see an 'example petition' of what formatting works best for you guys.
No offence, but the screening process on the 1st layer of Hell at PlayNC has in the past produced some whacky results, such as Petitions from COH being forwarded to the staff of entirely different games. As such, I'd rather we be armed as well as possible to get our petitions regarding RMTs forwarded to the proper authorities as expediently as possible.
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/signed
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While I soundly agree with zero tolerance for spammers, I want to ask if anything is being done to track down and stop the people actually doing the farming in the first place?
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While your post brought up a legitimate point, it's going to be nearly impossible for them to find and punish people farming things to sell for RMT and actual players doing it for badges, salvage, inf, etc. I certainly don't want them punishing me because I was out farming for arcane salvage the other day and I don't want them to make getting a Hamidon Goo any harder than it already is. How do you propose they tell the difference? If they can do it without making things harder on legitimate players, that would be terrific and I'd fully support it.
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One technique that has been used elsewhere is to do the following.
You start the "sting" by actually having a CS representative buy ingame currency via RMT. You now know a player that has "farmed" money. You check the server trade logs to trace it back to the original source. You then go to work banning accounts.
If the game needs "in game" help to transfer currency between alts (as we do), then some additional care is needed to make sure that you don't ban an innocent helper, but in all cases, study of chat logs can avoid banning an innocent. It may let one of the launderers escape, but you still get the final handoff account and the farmers.
Scrappers are just like chainsaws. Somewhat hard to handle, EXTREMELY dangerous, and by far the most fun when wielded by the slightly insane.
@Alissara - an Angry Angel
The Angry Angels. When it absolutely positively has to be spanked today.
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The website referenced is always the same site in 90% of the instances.
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Interesting... If they refer to the same website that could be used as a way to identify these lowlifes before they have a chance to annoy many people. Either flag or auto-gag (not ban) any account that has a character mention one of these sites in broadcast, tell or private tell. Just an extension of the 'bad word' filter list really, only instead of replacing the word with random punctuation marks flag the account that originated the message. After a (small) number of warning flags has been reached the account is automatically gagged and suspended pending investigation by customer service. Or whatever they need to do to investigate scammers before they can ban them.
Nadira
I'm doin my share to help. I continuously kill the chinese farmers in RV (even though they decreased since the heavy nerf).
If they hide in the afk zone, I just confuse my dom and kill them.
This thread got me thinking;
I'm starting to notice that the CoH community has an interesting way of coping with these controversial situations which are common to other MMO's in that rather than just get heated and post rants, it has shown to be a uniquely supportive community in that it asks how they can help.
Then I was reminded of those in-game billboard ads for an Attorney at Law around Paragon City and I thought, wouldn't it be neat if there was a court house or legal establishment building in-game that posted write-ups on these kinds of controversial MMO topics; like this crackdown on in-game spamming ads for RMT and how the CoH community has helped deal with it?
Thinking it might be cool to have a place that commemorated these board topics which could potentially be events of historical significance to future changes made to the game as well as bring awareness to new players of how the CoH community deals with these common MMO issues.
Just a random thought.
By the way: I got these messages twice this last night while playing. One happened at around 12:30 AM and another at 1:30 AM on the Guardian Sever. Hope this helps in tracking this issue down.
Of course, since there's no agency comparable to the SEC in Paragon or the Rogue Isles to minimize predatory trading practices, $inf farmers can, after a few days' worth of time investment, accumulate enough rare pieces of salvage and recipes to get a foot into the trading market.
Once that door is open to them, they can then begin to manipulate it at their whim. Praying on underpriced recipes and salvage and forcing a higher return for their investment by jacking the prices up. With a partner, or even an alt, possibly even double boxing it, they can then quickly trade the same item back and forth, quickly making the trade prices look legitemate.
I have read some work written by game theory experts regarding Silent Auctions and though all the literature I've seen appears to promote it for lots of different things interested in fairness, it's never, to my knowledge, been attempted on the scale that Cryptic has attempted. I think that in any large system involving money, corruption is bound to seep in, and I've definately seen signs of extensive oddities in the ebb and flow of the market. Also at issue is that in the academic studies of silent auctions that I've seen, the participants had no way of speaking with one another to achieve a mutually beneficial result.
I recognize this is essentially a rough blueprint for market manipulation, and cause to have this post censored, however I think it's an activity that needs to be monitored, and as it only takes a few minutes a day, the return for time invested could be phenominal.
After a complaint like this, I like to offer some constructive advice to solve the problems mentioned, and the easiest way is to change how prior transactions are listed. Showing the last 5 or 6 transactions is a poor market indicator. Something showing the average or mean, or both, over the last 30 days would be brilliant. Computers are glorified calculators, let them calculate.
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Then I was reminded of those in-game billboard ads for an Attorney at Law around Paragon City and I thought, wouldn't it be neat if there was a court house or legal establishment building in-game that...
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Um, If I recall correctly, don't all of those billboards say something to the effect that criminals can call them to get out of jail right after a hero has arrested them?
I'm just sayin...
No way of talking, ever heard of Skype???
Until reciently I didnt get one of these tells till early this morning.
So I dug around to try and get some info on them:
Server Type: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
IP Address: 220.166.64.54
IP Location - Hubei - Mianyang - Sc-mianyang-idc
Blacklist Status: Clear
Domain Status: Registered And Active Website
Registrar History: 1 registrar
IP History: 4 changes on 5 unique name servers over 1 years.
Whois History: 6 records have been archived since 2007-01-18
Reverse IP: 7 other sites hosted on this server.
I dont want to post the site address, cause it would only add to there "word of mouth". Sadly the server is based out of the USA, so I doubt there is anything NCSoft can do to stop them directly, just stop-gap them.
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I must be either sheltered or not in game when these happen.
Has anyone noticed a patern concerning server/time/day?
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While not at epidemic levels, I have received a few of these in-game adverts in the last few weeks. In three years of playing this game prior to I9 and receiving no such /tells, I'm glad to see the devs on top of this quickly before it gets out of hand.
Q. Just wondering Posi, where are the new dance emotes we were told would come with GR?
A. Positron: Whoops, my bad.
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