Gold Spammers will kill this game.

Teala · January 2016

If NCSoft doesn't fix this serious issue with their game soon - it will make people quit.   Spammers have pretty much taken over regional and faction chats to the point that you can't report and block them fast enough. On top of that, you are limited to blocking only 50.   In the past 6 days I filled that 50 over 10+ times. Think about that really hard.

Did you do the math?

That is over 500 spammers reported and blocked.

It got so bad I had to remove faction chat and regional chat just to be able to communicate with people in game.   If this keeps up I'll give up on the game as well.   This is beyond ridiculous and NCSoft should make this issue priority #1 - besides the queue times some people are putting up with - this is now the biggest issue in game.

BillMurphy · January 2016

I agree. Not much more to say.

Hakulani · January 2016

It's NCSoft what do you expect, I quit buying there games long ago for that main reason. Also the bot farmers out there, I doubt NCSoft will ever do anything to fix those problems.

k61977 · January 2016

There isn't really a good way to stop this in a F2P game. You can disable the account but they just create another one. You could limit talking in chat, hasn't worked yet in a F2P game they just make new accounts and rotate through them. You could try IP blocking, there are tons of ways around this also. This is part of the problem with F2P titles, it is very hard to stop somebody that wants to do something like this. About the only thing that would stop this is a legal system battle with developers vs. gold sellers which you will hardly ever happens because most the gold sellers live in areas that have no laws regulating this.

I did think of one way that would solve it and it has been done and that is for developers to just straight out sell the gold themselves for real money. But this just creates a whole other problem in the game that it just isn't worth it.

JDis25 · January 2016

Not worried about it. Nothing worthwhile being talked about in Faction chat anyway. Annoying definitely but not a game breaker. And once the hype dies down so too will the gold spam.

Teala · January 2016

Know what else...those spammer bots are taking up a place a live gamer could be using. How many of the 7000 people on the servers are actually bots - and is that the reason the queue's are so long because these spamming bots just stand around and spam chat taking up space on the server - when actual players would be signing out on a regular basis when their play session is over. Bots don't have a play session. Also...here is a simple fix.

In order to use chat you have to input a random could that is flashed onto the screen. If you don't input that code you can't use chat. Hell use a captcha type system. I don't care. NCSoft needs to address this.

Pepeq · January 2016

A better solution would be to come up with a means of negating their existence in the first place...

Gold (or whatever currency they choose) should be BoP and only useable with NPC vendors.

All other business transactions in-game would be done via the trading of goods.

Rare crafting resources will be BoP to prevent their being used as an alternate form of currency.

Of course those who play "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" within the MMO would be SoL.

"I'll trade you two chickens, a yak pelt, and a bundle of wood for your 12-slot quiver."

Mikeha · January 2016

The spam is bad at low levels. I made a new toon yesterday and could not believe how bad it was. It was not like this when I made my first character because that was during the headstart before everybody started playing.

I am currently in Jade Stone Village and its not like that at all. You only get a couple spammers so its easy to block them and then chat is fine.

Only thing they can do is increase the level requirement to use those channels but honestly I am having too much fun to care about it. It is a problem that needs to be fixed because it will make new players instantly quit when they log in for the first time and see nothing but gold spam.

Dahkoht · January 2016

Best solution is even a small moderate buy fee , 5 or 10 dollars.

This reason along makes me ignore all F2P games.

Neverwinter in early access for paid users only , chat was quite enjoyable , then F2P hit and instantly was unusable.

Swore off F2P , then tried Skyforge with paid early packs. Enjoyed it.

F2P beta opened up , I asked for a refund within an hour.

I like to communicate in zone with people outside my guild and party , if I have to turn off zone/area chat due to F2P spamming , then its not worth my time.

HellboundHeart · January 2016

Teala said:

If NCSoft doesn't fix this serious issue with their game soon - it will make people quit.   Spammers have pretty much taken over regional and faction chats to the point that you can't report and block them fast enough. On top of that, you are limited to blocking only 50.   In the past 6 days I filled that 50 over 10+ times. Think about that really hard.

Did you do the math?

That is over 500 spammers reported and blocked.

It got so bad I had to remove faction chat and regional chat just to be able to communicate with people in game.   If this keeps up I'll give up on the game as well.   This is beyond ridiculous and NCSoft should make this issue priority #1 - besides the queue times some people are putting up with - this is now the biggest issue in game.

Same exact reason I quit too lol

Daikuru · January 2016

Aion had the same problem at the beginning, not a big problem, they wont last long.

Wicoa · January 2016

I won't give up on the game, this is where my friends are at. However:

1) Remove faction chat and regional chat ability from any character below 20
2) If character is premium allow faction chat and regional chat from when they become available.

I had dealt with the bots through blocking. However yesterday a new one came up every 10 seconds and I could not keep up.

Before that though Faction chat was full of trolls some of them mildly amusing "Warlock just released Im relogging to make it". I wonder how many fell for that one. So I have to say as a "PvP channel" its not much used for pvp talk

They have just introduced report spam/bots tool in chat name right click.

HikaruShidou · January 2016

Sad truth is, gold spammers only exist because the PLAYERS support them.

SomeOldBloke · January 2016

"Gold Spammers will kill this game"... if you did a search on this phrase it would appear for every MMO launched over the last 10 years. Only way to avoid it is for the game publisher to offer the it's own cash for gold service.

Noxeron · January 2016

I turned off region and faction chat. I only see gold spammers while in the cross-server lobby. And there I only see 1 or 2 at a time, which is easy to block.

Reizla · January 2016

Teala said:

If NCSoft doesn't fix this serious issue with their game soon - it will make people quit.   Spammers have pretty much taken over regional and faction chats to the point that you can't report and block them fast enough. On top of that, you are limited to blocking only 50.   In the past 6 days I filled that 50 over 10+ times. Think about that really hard.

Did you do the math?

That is over 500 spammers reported and blocked.

It got so bad I had to remove faction chat and regional chat just to be able to communicate with people in game.   If this keeps up I'll give up on the game as well.   This is beyond ridiculous and NCSoft should make this issue priority #1 - besides the queue times some people are putting up with - this is now the biggest issue in game.

http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/444738/rmt-as-expected#latest - nothing more to say other than that those who mocked me for it are obviously wrong... Not to mention (as I already stated in my post), RMT comes with botting and that makes it hard to impossible to play as a legit player on the spots where bots are. Knowing NCWest they won't do a thing about it and eventually will indeed kill the game to a point where only a few die-hard legit players stay and there st of the server is filled with bots.

Lemme post it once again to show how well NCWest handles botting...

Wicoa · January 2016

The problem is you need faction chat at 45

++ Block list is full. ... .. .. ..

Bye bye region, faction and party finder chat <unticked chat box>

IAmMMO · January 2016

Shows the importance of a live dedicated team of hired employees within running a MMO biz that acts in real time to kick and ban accounts with well developed tools to aid them. Banning a number of ways right down to HWIP all can be spoofed and F2P accounts endlessly created. Even more so when the game has just launched and everybody is competing against each other. Live patrol MMO police is necessary these days. Especially in other countries where you're running servers and it's peak time when it's the middle of the night for you.

MihoshiK · January 2016

HikaruShidou said:

Sad truth is, gold spammers only exist because the PLAYERS support them.

Exactly. Only thing that would stop gold spammers is that no one would use their services. So basically you can thank your fellow gamers who use gold spammers for their existence.

They just provide a service obviously enough people are willing to use despite the problems they cause.

ChromeBallz · January 2016

k61977 said:

There isn't really a good way to stop this in a F2P game. You can disable the account but they just create another one. You could limit talking in chat, hasn't worked yet in a F2P game they just make new accounts and rotate through them. You could try IP blocking, there are tons of ways around this also. This is part of the problem with F2P titles, it is very hard to stop somebody that wants to do something like this. About the only thing that would stop this is a legal system battle with developers vs. gold sellers which you will hardly ever happens because most the gold sellers live in areas that have no laws regulating this.

I did think of one way that would solve it and it has been done and that is for developers to just straight out sell the gold themselves for real money. But this just creates a whole other problem in the game that it just isn't worth it.

The problem is that they are trying to deal with this retroactively, instead of proactively.

I don't see how it is such a big problem to have 2 or 3 gm's monitoring region chats on all servers in a text only client, immediately permabanning bots and possibly putting an IP block on there as well (if just temporary).

But, they seem to be operating with their eyes closed, whispering 'please go away please go away'.

Antiquated · January 2016

Spammers mean your game is popular, right? Otherwise, not enough customers buy gold.

ChromeBallz said:
I don't see how it is such a big problem to have 2 or 3 gm's monitoring region chats

Customer Experience is an unnecessary expense, from a corporate beancounter point of view.

Gamers will one day figure it out. All of that CE staff was cut from the budget before the game ever opened.

The corporate guys are just waiting for all of the "offended" players to put up or shut up. If it's "driving you from the game," go ahead an leave. Make a big, dramatic exit. Go out in a blaze of glory.

The guys buying the gold will be plentiful enough to keep the game running. And they've demonstrated they'll pay cash for their gaming (which is a double plus benefit for our cash shop...)

This is what's called a win-win.

Kyleran · January 2016

DMKano said:

Gold spammers never killed any game. Wont happen here either.

Depends on what you call kill I suppose. Out of control gold selling spam botting, and hacking have driven me from several free to play titles including ArcheAge most recently.

Looks like this particular issue is going to drive some players away from playing blade and soul.

You might say so what you're just one person perhaps but I spend almost $800 a year on the eve alone and if they don't need my money that's fine

Dakeru · January 2016

I'm sick of hearing that there is nothing that the companies can do to protect themselves.
There are botnets and there are measures against them. If a company doesn't place protection measurements BEFORE they launch then they are simply after a quick buck before trashing the game.

When GW2 launched Anet got a hold of one of those black market lists with typical account names and passwords and they blocked people from using these names.

Only a fool would think that there is nothing that can be done about this.

YashaX · January 2016

MihoshiK said:

HikaruShidou said:

Sad truth is, gold spammers only exist because the PLAYERS support them.

Exactly. Only thing that would stop gold spammers is that no one would use their services. So basically you can thank your fellow gamers who use gold spammers for their existence.

They just provide a service obviously enough people are willing to use despite the problems they cause.

I think player demand for gold sellers' services is fueled and facilitated by a game's design.

Denambren · January 2016

eh, I solved this by creating a new chat tab, and adding all channels that aren't being spammed, and I haven't seen gold spam since. I already do this with every other MMO I play (general chat and trade chat in WoW), just because regular human spam is annoying (non-bot).

For finding parties I walk up to the party finder object in front of dungeons and press F to immediately find a party. I usually get one in a few seconds after clicking Apply for one of the listed parties. I imagine this faster than actually coordinating with humans via party chat.

It's true though that the amount of gold spammers on opening day was pretty shocking, and I agree the players slots potentially being taken by gold farmers is a problem to address, but ultimately the queue times are dropping and I don't see spammers when I play, so the problem doesn't seem as severe to me as the OP makes it sound. I am surprisingly impressed with how much this game offers without having to spend money (though I bought one of the Christmas outfits to support the game, so far).

MrSnuffles · January 2016

The content locusts will swarm the game and then move on. Gold spammers will do the same. What else is new?

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Gold Spammers will kill this game.

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV