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Especially when you consider that in China only God knows many of the "Gold Farmers" are actually prisoners in government run penitentiary's who are forced to due the RMT farming and power leveling services for 12 hours a day as part of their time in jail.
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Originally Posted by Ad Astra
Regarding international law - yeah, that's really more of an agreement between nations that there are certain rules that "everyone" will follow, provided, of course, that everyone signs on. And the Chinese pretty much don't sign on, so anyone trying to "enforce" international contract or intellectual property "law" is hosed when dealing with them.
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Don't forget that some people sell their accounts to those companies as well when they decide to quit playing.
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Originally Posted by Zybron1
I've seen them there very occasionally. Hacked accounts, probably, but it's happened. Not nearly as much as the non-VIP servers, of course.
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If this is true, wouldn't just saying "Free Tibet!" or something pro-Falun Gong solve the problem? Gotta name a few pets that way |
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Especially when you consider that in China only God knows many of the "Gold Farmers" are actually prisoners in government run penitentiary's who are forced to due the RMT farming and power leveling services for 12 hours a day as part of their time in jail.
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Story arcs: �Viva la Represi�n! (#2327) | Mysterious Virus (#11762) | Four Horsemen of the 2012 Apocalypse (#531874) | Deadly Dragon | White Slime
My story on union.virtueverse.com
Sure, and while we're at it, let's take care of that pesky poverty and homeless problem too.
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It's impossible. |
Originally Posted by OMGMOREDEBT
I do believe in the past with some game service that they actually drag people into court for this type of thing. Because they're selling what technically is not theirs to begin with.
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The overwhelming majority of the RMT spammers are in China, which means you have to get permission from China before you can prosecute them.
And China isn't going to allow them to be prosecuted because it's a lucrative business.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Well the devs could just shut down the servers! Yeah!! That'd stop those damn RMT Spammers!!! They can't spam the game if there's no servers to log onto!!!!
Rabble! Rabble! Rabble!
I really can't believe the idea of prosecuting these people is even being considered. That would be a horrible waste of resources on our legal system. Furthermore, for the people that are saying "They're selling something that doesn't belong to them", there are MANY ways around this. For instance, they can simply state that they are selling the *service* of collecting influence on behalf of a player and not the influence itself.
Furthermore, what crime is being committed here? Violating the terms of service agreement MIGHT be construed as breach of contract, but the likelihood of any debilitating legal ramification being executed is slim.
Maybe the solution to this is to embrace it. Make all the items from the market purchasable with cash in the in-game store. At least then the money is going into the pockets of NCSoft, which could help raise funds for greater improvements to the game. Plus, if they were going to pursue legal action, this would strengthen their argument. If the spammers are circumventing their ability to sell their own product, there are punitive damages to compensate for. Since influence and power leveling are not for sale by NCSoft, they aren't losing money as a result of the sale.
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The abuse and torture of political prisoners is the crime. In China they force the prisoners to work 8-10 hours at hard labor then another 10-12 hours providing RMT services, and if a prisoner doesn't make his or her quota they get beaten by the guards.|
Originally Posted by Phynixx
Furthermore, what crime is being committed here? Violating the terms of service agreement MIGHT be construed as breach of contract, but the likelihood of any debilitating legal ramification being executed is slim.
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| Maybe the solution to this is to embrace it. Make all the items from the market purchasable with cash in the in-game store. At least then the money is going into the pockets of NCSoft, which could help raise funds for greater improvements to the game. Plus, if they were going to pursue legal action, this would strengthen their argument. If the spammers are circumventing their ability to sell their own product, there are punitive damages to compensate for. Since influence and power leveling are not for sale by NCSoft, they aren't losing money as a result of the sale. |
No, that isn't a solution and would be harmful to both the game and the players.
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How so?|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
No, that isn't a solution and would be harmful to both the game and the players.
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It'll break the market?
A) There are already full sets of enhancements in the store and the prices for those enhancements aren't cheap in the marketplace. (Obliteration for example)
B) What's currently happening is no different. The only change would be converting the spammer third party vendors into a legitimate source of additional revenue for NCSoft (less the spam).
It'll give members with money advantage over those without money?
A) Please observe the ENTIRE structure of the Freedom system. It gives free members a significant disadvantage compared to paid members.
It's not fair to those that work super duper hard in the game to EARN their influence?
A) You work super duper hard in-game to earn influence, they work super duper hard in real life to earn the money they're spending. Seems like a fair trade to me.
If I were the devs I'd seriously consider the following technical fix:
Create a new dev-only command called "/bantext <pattern>". When this is executed it adds <pattern> to a list of patterns that, if detected in a message from an F2P account, the system will ignore it and immediately tag the account as a global spammer and disallow sending further messages. The <pattern> would be formatted as a regular expression, allowing the GMs to add new banned text on the fly.
Typically the <pattern> would be the URL for the RMT company. If they can't tell us what the URL is for their website, they can't bother us.
In addition to banning specific domain names, regular expressions allow for generally banning URLs without knowing the specific names. For example, the following pattern would ban any F2P user who included ".com" or "dot com" in a message, even if spaced out.
/bantext "(d *o *t|[.]) *c * o *m"
Since adding banned text is a ten-second operation, the devs could ban RMT website names faster than RMTers could register new domain names.
Regular expressions can't match across messages, but if spammers try to get around this by emitting their spam one character at a time, regular expressions can also match those.
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Because you have dichotomy develop between those with real money to burn and those without.|
Originally Posted by Phynixx
How so?
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It'll give members with money advantage over those without money? A) Please observe the ENTIRE structure of the Freedom system. It gives free members a significant disadvantage compared to paid members. |
I could (but wont') simply chuck thousands at this game.
Maybe as a single-person I wouldn't affect the internal game market much. But if everyone does it, the auction house effectively dries up. Making it nearly for people trying to progress without spending real money to acquire anything other than common IOs. As recipe drops are utterly random.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Sort of like the dichotomy between the group of paid members that can farm in AE and the ones that are forced to play the traditional way because they can't afford the AE license? Or hell, I'd even go so far as to say the dichotomy between the members that start at lvl 1 with three extra paragon rewards powers vs. the ones that only start with their primary and secondary powers? Whether we like it or not, paid members DO have it easier. |
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Because you have dichotomy develop between those with real money to burn and those without.
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
There's a difference between "play for free with limits" and "This person paid MORE than you, so THEY "win", not you."
I could (but wont') simply chuck thousands at this game. Maybe as a single-person I wouldn't affect the internal game market much. But if everyone does it, the auction house effectively dries up. Making it nearly for people trying to progress without spending real money to acquire anything other than common IOs. As recipe drops are utterly random. |
If anything, the market could improve because you wouldn't have people buying 1BIL influence and then severely overpaying for items (causing inflation). Furthermore, there will still be a large amount of people that simply can't or won't make a financial investment in the game above the VIP subscription, thereby maintaining a valid need for the market. We can defend it 'til we're blue the face, but what it boils down is one thing: Enhancements, Salvage, and Recipes are ALREADY being purchased with real money via these spammers.
What evidence do we even have that this would "break the market" anyway? Did this come from an economics expert? Has it happened in the past? Or is it a wide-spread opinion backed by all the same sheep that used to swear up and down that "customized power colors are impossible; it will never happen." Those people claimed to have intimate knowledge of the technological reasoning for this impossibility, but as of Issue 16... Well, I think we all know how that turned out.
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How odd. You don't usually see the slippery slope fallacy in reverse. "You already have several holes in your head - it can't hurt you if I make several more."
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Originally Posted by Phynixx
It'll give members with money advantage over those without money?
A) Please observe the ENTIRE structure of the Freedom system. It gives free members a significant disadvantage compared to paid members. |
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Umm C_L...|
Originally Posted by Celestial_Lord
This is the one of the two main reasons why I jumped to the Exalted server the day it opened. Despite being the #3 server population wise, haven't had a single gold vendor there yet as far as I'm aware of. VIP server ftw.
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A few have been idiotic enough to show up on Exalted's help channel as well.
As to the OP...
Honestly, the best we palyers can do is /IgnoreSpammer. Otherwise, like Michelle stated, Don't use the services in the first place! Eventually the overall environment will not be profitable and they'll go away.
Anything else will be more draconian on the Free/Premium players, annoying on the VIPs, and not really affect the Spammers at all.
Thank you for the time...
@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test) 
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You make it sound like there's a head to begin with. NCSoft is a for-profit company. The only reason they've even opened up to free players is to compete with other free games and hopefully convert the new freebies into paid subscriptions. That's why the splash page is decked out in advertisements for VIP content that can be purchased. That's also why they leave the costume options, archetypes, and powersets open to be selected while you create a character: So you can see what you're missing as a free member. There are very aggressive marketing tactics being implemented here.|
Originally Posted by Hopeling
How odd. You don't usually see the slippery slope fallacy in reverse. "You already have several holes in your head - it can't hurt you if I make several more."
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I'm simply stating that the ideology that unpaid and paid members should be equal is one that is only shared by the blind. It sure as hell isn't a value held by NCSoft.
This is common sense - The spammers exist because of supply and demand. As long is there is demand, they will find a way to produce a supply. Removing the demand is impossible. The only options are to ignore the problem until it escalates out of control or gain control of a more appealing supply to satisfy the demand.
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No it isn't. This game went for years without any RMT interference. It was only the addition of IO's that brought them around in large numbers. If the devs had made the IO's "soulbound" from the start (like the ones that sell in the Paragon Market) the RMTers wouldn't have anything to sell except their PL services.
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Originally Posted by Phynixx
Removing the demand is impossible.
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Also even with IOs the RMTers eventually gave up when they realised that, prior to the F2P model, there simply wasn't the demand for the time and cost invested because, unlike other MMOs, if you're lucky you can make a huge amount of influence from 1 single purple IO drop, usually enough to outfit a character in a substantial amount of non-purple IOs. Also, unlike other MMOs, where suppliers closely fight over 'their niche' on a server and will refuse to tell anyone else how they've made so much money in the Auction House, here people like Catwhoorg were giving out guides on how to become rich.
They got laughed off of servers because people were like "ooh 100 million...whatever, I just made that selling 1 IO".
It was quite funny on the EU servers seeing the prices slowly get more and more desperate in the emails/tells because nobody was buying, it started out as 100 million for $50, then it double to 200 million, then 300 million, then they halved the cost, then again until eventually they were basically trying to give inf away for next to nothing and still nobody was interested.
The EU servers were completely abandoned by RMTers about a year before they eventually gave up US side, less players and obviously you had to have an account then to spam Emails and such, so it was costing them a paid for account every time they got banned.
Heck with the alignment system about 2 hours play (if you just blitz the missions for the complete) over 4 days nets you a very expensive non-purple set IO like Luck of the Gambler:+Recharge.
However, F2P people don't get access to that unless they buy it, hell they don't get access to the Auction House unless they pay for it.
As mentioned though F2P sadly brings in this kind of scum because it costs them nothing and the F2P peeps don't have access to the easy money generators that are the Alignment system or even the IO system itself.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
IMHO ... CoH should embrace the sellers -to an extent-. Make a chat that they can use, and give them an account they can monitor. example: CoH advertises "In an effort to promote small business owners, We are making account changes so "gold" traders can advertise without harrasing." Then they ask all new accounts if they are a "gold" trading site. If they answer yes, they are allowed a F2P account with a limit to only one chat (advertising chat) and the ability to RESPOND to tells. The advertising chat is so they won't post on all the other chats. those that are interested and would purchase "gold" can go there, all the rest can remove that chat from the list.
If CoH and other MMOs used -embrasing trade- they would keep and keep happy all players.
Side note: They work for the "gold" they sell too. I don't see why they can't sell it. I could sell my account (should I choose too). CoH sells enhancments ("gold" is used for) for $, why can't those sites sell "gold" for $ too.
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If I am understanding this correctly, this would ban ANY message containing ".com" or "dot com" automatically. Any website posted would ban a user. |
Originally Posted by Rodion
For example, the following pattern would ban any F2P user who included ".com" or "dot com" in a message, even if spaced out.
/bantext "(d *o *t|[.]) *c * o *m" |
This could be problematic.
Almost every time I am in game, I will see a message containing a website. If a player is asking for information, quite often another player will copy/paste the URL to a Paragon Wiki article, or a forum post. Looking at the channels I am a member of right now, five of the MOTDs contain URLs.
You mentioned banning a F2P account for it, but as evidenced by some people, even Exalted is seeing these messages, albeit fewer.
One of the Global Channels I am in uses a URL shortener.... so it is goo.gl/whatever. RMT sites would just start using these services as well.
You said that the command would notice and take into account spacing, so for instance, "www.website. com" would be caught. Would the following?: "Hi Bramphousian. Come to Cimerora" ? It isn't an ad, it is conversation that happens to have a letter sequence that would get caught by the proposed filter.
In theory, a filter system is a good idea, but as you have proposed it, too many innocent and helpful items could get caught in it inadvertently.
Thank you, Champion.
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These are not humble, small business owners. These are, in several cases, companies that steal users' personal information. There was an article some time ago about how they employ slave-labour for their gold-farming. |
Originally Posted by Twigman
IMHO ... CoH should embrace the sellers -to an extent-. Make a chat that they can use, and give them an account they can monitor. example: CoH advertises "In an effort to promote small business owners, We are making account changes so "gold" traders can advertise without harrasing." Then they ask all new accounts if they are a "gold" trading site. If they answer yes, they are allowed a F2P account with a limit to only one chat (advertising chat) and the ability to RESPOND to a tells. The advertising chat is so they won't post on all the other chats. those that are interested and would purchase "gold" can go there, all the rest can remove that chat from the list.
If CoH and other MMOs used -embrasing trade- they would keep and keep happy all players. |
I don't think that Paragon Studios and NC want to promote forced-labour, identity theft and other such criminal acts.
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| Side note: They work for the "gold" they sell too. I don't see why they can't sell it. I could sell my account (should I choose too). CoH sells enhancments ("gold" is used for) for $, why can't those sites sell "gold" for $ too. |
- 8. You may not market, promote, advertise, or solicit within the City of Heroes, City of Villains, or Going Rogue game or on the official City of Heroes website.
- 10. You may not advertise the intent to or commit the act of buying, selling, trading, sharing, or transferring access to any City of Heroes, City of Villains, or Going Rogue account.
- 11. You may not advertise the intent to or commit the act of buying or selling items for cash or trading items from one server to another.
From the User Agreement:
Section 2:
(iv) sell, sub-license, rent, lease, grant a security interest in, borrow, lend, loan, network or engage in any activity that could in any way transfer or provide others access to any Service, Content, Software, or parts thereof, including but not limited to any serial code number, access key or the like.
Thank you, Champion.
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Yeah, and many other existing companies don't have slaves or nearly slaves either? ... I bet much of the products most people buy is made in this way. Obviously CoH/NCsoft would remove all sites that don't adhere to human rights, anti-slavery, and ID theft laws. BUT, this would require the companies being caught. If they aren't caught we can't assume they're guilty or we are breaking our constitution, innocent till proven guilty.|
Originally Posted by Bramphousian
These are not humble, small business owners. These are, in several cases, companies that steal users' personal information. There was an article some time ago about how they employ slave-labour for their gold-farming.
I don't think that Paragon Studios and NC want to promote forced-labour, identity theft and other such criminal acts. No, you can't. From the Rules of Conduct:
From the User Agreement: Section 2: (iv) sell, sub-license, rent, lease, grant a security interest in, borrow, lend, loan, network or engage in any activity that could in any way transfer or provide others access to any Service, Content, Software, or parts thereof, including but not limited to any serial code number, access key or the like. |
As far as the, agreement CoH/NCsoft has, they reserve the right to change it. If changing it so the "companies" can be recognized and funneled into one chat can improve some gamers expirience, then that would be a good thing.
I still think it would be better for them to recognize: this is an aspect of the company we can't remove. So, we opted to allow it, so we could keep track of it. If all the game companies did this, the owners of legitimate honest companies (not performing identity theft, and not being caught inslaving people) would actually be able to be honest about who they are, and set up accounts as such.
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That doesn't justify it. Company X uses slave labour to make its toasters, and Company Y uses sweatshops make its T-Shirts doesn't mean we should support Company Z using these practices to create Influence! Your following paragraph makes it clear that human rights laws should be observed, so why even post the above? |
Originally Posted by Twigman
Yeah, and many other existing companies don't have slaves or nearly slaves either? ... I bet much of the products most people buy is made in this way.
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| Obviously CoH/NCsoft would remove all sites that don't adhere to human rights, anti-slavery, and ID theft laws. BUT, this would require the companies being caught. If they aren't caught we can't assume they're guilty or we are breaking our constitution, innocent till proven guilty. |
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| As far as the, agreement CoH/NCsoft has, they reserve the right to change it. If changing it so the "companies" can be recognized and funneled into one chat can improve some gamers expirience, then that would be a good thing. |
So, no one is reading these messages. Why would the companies select "yes" on account creation? What is in place to prevent them from selecting "no", and continuing to spam broadcast/local/help? We are back to square one.
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| I still think it would be better for them to recognize: this is an aspect of the company we can't remove. So, we opted to allow it, so we could keep track of it. If all the game companies did this, the owners of legitimate honest companies (not performing identity theft, and not being caught inslaving people) would actually be able to be honest about who they are, and set up accounts as such. |
I just can't see there being any honest, hard-working powerleveling/gold-farming companies out there. I don't know if the practice is, in fact illegal (I would doubt it), but opening the game up to allow such behaviour would be a bad thing.
All users, could in theory, register a website and offer their services. Paypal me $15 and a billion inf could be yours! I'll even throw in 3 Hamidon Goo and a Mu Vestment. I could spam Brampy-Sells-Gold.com and you could be TwigmansGoldMine.net, and we could have Arcanavillegoldfarminginc.com and FulmensFarms.ca, and instead of 1-2 companies spamming 1-2 messages, we could have a thousand people spamming a thousand companies.
Thank you, Champion.
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This is the key that would keep this idea from being effective. If the companies lose their amplification by becoming an advertising account, they simply wouldn't use the advertisement accounts.|
Originally Posted by Bramphousian
Of course, NC could terminate or revise any aspect of their agreement. But you mentioned a "fix" in your previous post, allowing them to select "Yes, I am a Gold-Trading Site" on account creation, giving them access to an advertising channel. This allows other players to close that channel down and ignore it completely.
So, no one is reading these messages. Why would the companies select "yes" on account creation? What is in place to prevent them from selecting "no", and continuing to spam broadcast/local/help? We are back to square one. |
Furthermore, I think this idea opens NCSoft to a lot of negative attention. If they're deliberately putting you in touch with these people and they end up stealing your identity and clearing out your bank account, it obviously reflects poorly on NCSoft.
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With the recognition of the act (which is OBVIOUSLY happening anyway) They could set up a forum (players would post to) to post feedback on good sites/warning for bad, and a warning in the service agreement and at the heading of the posts stating information isn't founded on research and to puchase at your own will. |
Originally Posted by Bramphousian
So, they've heard that a company engages in criminal behaviour. No one is prosecuted, because, really, try to get a foreign government to comply with American law. What do they do now? Ban an account? A new one is created. Ban an IP? Use a proxy.
I just can't see there being any honest, hard-working powerleveling/gold-farming companies out there. I don't know if the practice is, in fact illegal (I would doubt it), but opening the game up to allow such behaviour would be a bad thing. |
An example of this is ... FactorFiction.com. Bad things happen, having a place where you can go and read reviews on it, Is a good thing. Like I said, It's obviously happening anyway.
The only other way would be to lock "gold" and other enhancments to the (global)player that earn it. But, PLing would still be out there. There is no winning.
Save Paragon one more time! http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....ic,4877.0.html
Petition to end shutting down CoH:
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes