Gold Sellers on Isle of Refuge [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

View Full Version : Gold Sellers on Isle of Refuge

Miroh

07-27-2006, 06:38 PM

Wasn't sure where to put this but since most of it is coming from people making new accounts every 5 minutes and getting on Isle of Refuge can we please cut this whole island off from the rest of the EverQuest zones. Getting spammed all day is not a fun thought for me. Everytime I get these annoying tells I do /report and I guess they get banned but hey....who cares!!! They can play "Trial of the Isle" for free...WOOT. So, one account gets banned, another one is made in no time. This has become a serious issue, I know the GM's are tired of banning constantly and I know people are sick and tired of being hurrassed by these losers. Solutions:<ul><li> Cut off all outside world communication from Isle of Refuge. i.e tells, channels, banks etc etc</li><li> Put all the Trial of the Isle on Nektulos Server...jk :smileyvery-happy:</li><li> Put it on Test Server and leave it there (Not kidding)</li><li> Discontinue the free trial. People learn about this game more by word of mouth or watching someone they know play it, thru magazines or stores.....they don't need a free trial imo </li></ul> People are seriously getting tired of this SoE...I do mean seriously tired of it. You may be banning them right and left, we don't know....we can't tell by all the tells still coming in. Please do something about this, banning will not stop it. <div></div>

Elorah

07-27-2006, 06:41 PM

I can tell you that they are working on something to solve this problem. But as with most things, it takes a while for it to be completed. They will take care of it as soon as they can For now, just do a /report followed by a petition and they will take care of it that way. Not a final solution, but every little bit helps <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Btw. Putting the trial on test server is not fair to those that play on test. They have to deal with MANY more bugs then Live servers have, no need to add plat sellers to their issues as well...lol Message Edited by Elorah on 07-27-2006 10:43 AM

Miroh

07-27-2006, 06:45 PM

I basically play on a test server.....least with all the bugs on live it seems like test, but thats another topic. I think they should just completely cancel the Trial of the Isle all together so that way these gold horders have to actually pay for the game and subscription over and over until they get tired of it and stop all together and just stick to being quiet and having websites up and hope some [Removed for Content] comes and buys their gold.<div></div>

Keldo

07-27-2006, 06:47 PM

cancel the trial.. good one, maybe that's why you just play the game and don't run it<div></div>

Scarrlette

07-27-2006, 08:36 PM

The trial is there to encourage new players to try the game, I don't believe taking that feature away would be a smart move. Keep up the /report and petitioning of coin sellers, and hopefully they will find some sort of solution for this very annoying problem.

Miroh

07-27-2006, 08:59 PM

<div><blockquote><hr>Scarrlette wrote:<div></div> The trial is there to encourage new players to try the game, I don't believe taking that feature away would be a smart move. Keep up the /report and petitioning of coin sellers, and hopefully they will find some sort of solution for this very annoying problem.<hr></blockquote> Just a thought....but as I said, most hear of the game from people they know and usually make a toon on their friend's account to see how it is. I would have never known about the game had my brother in law never told me about it. I honestly don't think I would go to a station website just out of the blue and see "Free Trial" on my own. But due to the free trials the gold sellers have a new means to make business.....do you not see the problem here Scarrlette? Do you not get spammed everyday by people trying to sell gold and doing a /who all idiot and see them in the Isle of Refuge...sure ban their account they can make a new one easily....not if they had to buy the game and pay for it I am sure most of it would stop. But due to lack of action many people are getting fed up with it all....I don't think I need to point out what the future will bring if something isn't done.</div>

AgedWond

07-27-2006, 09:10 PM

Well here is someone who learned about the game through the free trial. I had heard about the game already but I wanted a chance to try it without any commitment and that's exactly what it did. After playing for only one day I wanted to subscribe..but without the trial I'm not sure I would have played.While I do undertand what you are saying I think there has to be a better solution that just cancelling the free trial. Do I have the answer? No. However, I think we should give SOE some time to work on one.

Rendoir

07-27-2006, 09:11 PM

We're just discussing this in guild after each of us being spammed 3 times since server up it seems. Nothing seems to be being done - the top kills on all servers are ridiculous and point in most cases to farming crews - gp have a look at Vox server top 100 kills. Kill tells from the trial of the isle. Get some people investigating people that have made 50,000 kills in 5 days... I mean come on - it is so obvious what is going on, I cannot comprehend Sony's reluctance to deal with this issue that is bothering so many legit players. I have been reporting these players since almost gamelaunch, I have followed bot teams around watching them all casting at the same time etc, I have CS'ed in game and had GMs come into the world and wathc them at it, I have sent numerous emails to various SOE staff. This is a massive problem - you have people who are messing up their REAL out of game life by buying ingame coin for bucks, of this I am sure, and yet nothing is done about it. We as a player community have seen 100s of posts about this issue on these forums since launch and still nothing has been done to sort it out. There are more 3rd party sites than ever before selling EQ2 plat. Where is it going to end? Or is it just going to be ignored till the game ends? Please do something - at the moment these sites and the practise of buying/selling coin, characters and powerlevelling makes this game a crock of.. The bottom line is that buying things like this is against the EULA - if sony isn't seen to be defending it's own EULA then why should anyone take it seriously?

Scarrlette

07-27-2006, 09:31 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Miroh69 wrote: <DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE> </BLOCKQUOTE> Just a thought....but as I said, most hear of the game from people they know and usually make a toon on their friend's account to see how it is. I would have never known about the game had my brother in law never told me about it. I honestly don't think I would go to a station website just out of the blue and see "Free Trial" on my own. But due to the free trials the gold sellers have a new means to make business.....do you not see the problem here Scarrlette? Do you not get spammed everyday by people trying to sell gold and doing a /who all idiot and see them in the Isle of Refuge...sure ban their account they can make a new one easily....not if they had to buy the game and pay for it I am sure most of it would stop. But due to lack of action many people are getting fed up with it all....I don't think I need to point out what the future will bring if something isn't done. </DIV> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>I assure you that I am very aware of the issue. I am an actual avid gamer of this game and many others, and have seen this same thing go on all over the place. When I get a /tell from one of these people, I, just like everyone else, do a /report then file a petition in hopes that the offender will be immediately booted. I truly hope that SOE comes up with a long term fix and not just a bandaid for this particular situation.

MystaSkrat

07-27-2006, 09:38 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Miroh69 wrote: <UL> <LI> Put all the Trial of the Isle on Nektulos Server...jk :smileyvery-happy:</LI></UL> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> I hate you. :smileytongue: It would be nice if you could somehow make it so you can't recieve tells from characters under a set level (like 12 or so), you'd think that would completely stop most of it.

Mjollnyr

07-28-2006, 01:57 AM

Add a flag that auto-ignores messages from characters from the trial. Much like the flags to auto-decline group invites, or duels. This way if a friend joins via the trial, you simply disable this feature. Also have it on by default.

J4k

07-28-2006, 03:22 AM

<DIV>I like the idea of People on the noob islands not being able to send tells outside of the island OR Trial accounts are flagged and cannot send tells to anyone untill you subscribe.</DIV>

vinterskugge

07-28-2006, 04:11 AM

<DIV>I've never actually received a tell like this on Splitpaw - guess Euros and Pounds aren't good enough for them.</DIV>

Cowdenic

07-28-2006, 07:37 AM

Funny, I just go to Sony's secure forums and post about it there.

Faynne

07-28-2006, 08:45 AM

<blockquote><hr>Mjollnyr wrote:Add a flag that auto-ignores messages from characters from the trial. Much like the flags to auto-decline group invites, or duels.This way if a friend joins via the trial, you simply disable this feature. Also have it on by default.<hr></blockquote>I was about to agree completely with Miroh till I read Mjollnyr's post. I think that is a great idea. I too am very tired of getting these random /tells from the Isle, esp when raiding!Please do something SOON SOE!

Methesa

07-28-2006, 09:04 AM

I really pay no attention to the tells and in-game mails i get. I simply ignore the person. Its quicker than dealing with mindless GMs who dont really care.

Troubor

07-28-2006, 07:28 PM

My random comments: 1) Removing the Trial of the Isle would only make it harder for them to recruit new legitimate players. It wouldn't stop the plat sellers from spamming us. Oh, it might slow it down some, but given the amount of money they make, they would be willing if they have to, to buy accounts. In fact, I've gotten Norrath mail from plat sellers adverting the URL usually advertised by the plat sellers on my server. No, I've only gotten one spam Norrath mail, compared to maybe a couple dozen spam /tells now, but even with free accounts they are apparently willing to buy accounts at least some of the time. I've never seen a Norrath mailbox on the trial isle. 2) Having said that, I did /report and /petition for a while. But I kept getting canned responses, often in almost as bad of "Engrish" as the plat sellers. So, I'm not exactly encouraged to do so now. Way I see it, SOE has the URL..they almost always put it in their plat selling spam. So, they have the information of who is doing this spamming, and have had it for months now. Maybe it's going to take even longer for them to act, but IMO this shows that a) It's too expensive for them to do anything about it, or b) They just don't consider it a large enough problem to do anything about it. As an aside, I'll admit to trying to spam the plat sellers back...in fact on our server's 60-69 level chat, we often announce the names of the plat sellers, and people will start spamming them back, since we do feel otherwise helpless to do anything about it. They usually just ignore it or log off quickly, but I've gotten them to talk to me a couple times, and it does seem like the same "Engrish" each time, and thus I suspect I've talked to/spammed back the same person twice. Yes, I'm sure there's more then one person coming on each day to spam/harass us, but at the same time there can't be too many people, if I've apparently hit the same person twice on two different days. It can't exactly be a huge operation doing this. (As an aside, the URL they give isn't the infamous well known one, it's one I never heard of before they started the spamming. I won't mention it nor the "well known one" since I refuse to advertise for them, but again this makes me wonder if the ones doing the spamming are a much smaller company and seperare from the infamous large well known one. At least the infamous large one doesn't spam people, one has to actually find out about them)

Miroh

07-28-2006, 09:32 PM

Well SoE cracked down hard at one point in time to stop people using ebay. So, if they wanted to they would at least try. Also, sure they can buy accounts....but you know if they constantly got banned, the loss of money would outweigh the earned and have some effect. If they truely wanted to they could do something. Also, to the arguement of the Trial of the Isle....it can go both ways, they are getting just as many gold sellers are they are legit players, if not more gold sellers. EQ2 must be hurting to keep this going.....<div></div>

Scarrlette

07-28-2006, 10:04 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Arvig wrote: My random comments: 1) Removing the Trial of the Isle would only make it harder for them to recruit new legitimate players. It wouldn't stop the plat sellers from spamming us. Oh, it might slow it down some, but given the amount of money they make, they would be willing if they have to, to buy accounts. In fact, I've gotten Norrath mail from plat sellers adverting the URL usually advertised by the plat sellers on my server. No, I've only gotten one spam Norrath mail, compared to maybe a couple dozen spam /tells now, but even with free accounts they are apparently willing to buy accounts at least some of the time. I've never seen a Norrath mailbox on the trial isle. This is my general thought on it. I don't see the benefit in losing a very good part of bringing in new gamers to solve this issue. 2) Having said that, I did /report and /petition for a while. But I kept getting canned responses, often in almost as bad of "Engrish" as the plat sellers. So, I'm not exactly encouraged to do so now. Way I see it, SOE has the URL..they almost always put it in their plat selling spam. So, they have the information of who is doing this spamming, and have had it for months now. Maybe it's going to take even longer for them to act, but IMO this shows that a) It's too expensive for them to do anything about it, or b) They just don't consider it a large enough problem to do anything about it. Have you looked into the legalities of internet usage? It's very complicated and very relaxed. In my own personal experience with internet interactions, it's next to impossible to enforce anything on behalf of a company in things like this. Its not a big enough problem for law makers to come up with widespread law, and generally these companies (coin sellers) operate from foreign countries where our US laws don't count. And even when they don't, enforcing policy via internet is far more trouble then it's worth. You take down one site, and within hours, a new one will be up doing the same thing. The only solutions that will happen will be those that game makers come up with to combat coin sellers on our own gaming turf. As an aside, I'll admit to trying to spam the plat sellers back...in fact on our server's 60-69 level chat, we often announce the names of the plat sellers, and people will start spamming them back, since we do feel otherwise helpless to do anything about it. They usually just ignore it or log off quickly, but I've gotten them to talk to me a couple times, and it does seem like the same "Engrish" each time, and thus I suspect I've talked to/spammed back the same person twice. Yes, I'm sure there's more then one person coming on each day to spam/harass us, but at the same time there can't be too many people, if I've apparently hit the same person twice on two different days. It can't exactly be a huge operation doing this. I suspect it's a select few, likely doing it for commissions of some sort. Kinda like how e-mail spammers do for herbal [Removed for Content]. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Personally, I've only gotten 2 tells in game, and no in game mail. The canned response is what they are supposed to give you. Did you expect them to come back and say "Account has been banned, thank you!" Of course not, that isnt information that they are allowed to give out. Those 2 times that I've reported it, the player shortly disappeared and did not come back, so they must be doing something. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (As an aside, the URL they give isn't the infamous well known one, it's one I never heard of before they started the spamming. I won't mention it nor the "well known one" since I refuse to advertise for them, but again this makes me wonder if the ones doing the spamming are a much smaller company and seperare from the infamous large well known one. At least the infamous large one doesn't spam people, one has to actually find out about them) <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>That's just what I know from personal experience. Unfortunately, most of us here don't have the power to do anything about this problem. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Miroh

07-28-2006, 10:41 PM

Herbal [Removed for Content] 4tw<div></div>

Dirtgirl

07-28-2006, 11:05 PM

Ummmmm <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Miroh69 wrote: Herbal [Removed for Content] 4tw <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> ?!?!?!

Troubor

07-29-2006, 08:56 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Scarrlette wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE> I suspect it's a select few, likely doing it for commissions of some sort. Kinda like how e-mail spammers do for herbal [Removed for Content]. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Personally, I've only gotten 2 tells in game, and no in game mail. The canned response is what they are supposed to give you. Did you expect them to come back and say "Account has been banned, thank you!" Of course not, that isnt information that they are allowed to give out. Those 2 times that I've reported it, the player shortly disappeared and did not come back, so they must be doing something. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> I do understand that yes, in general it is overseas companies and that yes, one is dealing with vague laws quite often with small international companies. But, the one that has been spamming my server with /tells, if you go to their website has a Texas phone number. Also, as I admitted before, we'll announce the names of the plat sellers on our server's level chat to try to spam them back. I spammed one for a while, got him to admit he's in Houston. So..the one that's actually been agressivley spamming us, at least on my server, is apparently a USA based company. The spammer's English was actually adequate..more what I call "AOL speak/light l337 then Engrish", at least the one I spammed back just now. Thing is, yes..I understand that I won't get a confirmation if someone has been banned. But, I do expect something other then JUST a canned reply. Something indicating that they actually read my report, not just cut and pasted the first few lines, put it into a macro, pasted that into the reply and then "round filed" it. Okay, I don't want to derail this thread into a discussion of if the CS agents in game are effective or not, but it does really feel like I'm just wasting my time with a /report and /petition sometimes, and I'm far from the only one, based on how many also resort to trying to spam the plat sellers back, as opposed to reporting them. That, and even if the CS agents were on the ball 100% of the time, banning each plat seller account won't do anything. As people pointed out, they have free Trial of the Isle accounts. Ban one, they just key in a new free trial key code, come on with a new random name, and spam everyone again. Again, SOE has the URL of the place doing the spamming. Their URL lists a USA phone number, among other things. I do understand that the legalities of the Internet are nebelous..but this then brings me back to something I've said before. They can't seem to be doing much about it, either because they can't, or they won't. I guess if I give them the benefit of a doubt and say they would do something if they could, then it boils down to they can't do anything about it, at least as far as actually making them stop. Well..it's down to either finding a way to modify the Trial of the Isle (I don't think it should be removed, if nothing else I'm kind of fond of it, I'll make new alts just to visit it for a couple hours), or players become "vigalante" and spam back the plat sellers..which isn't doing anything but helping people to vent a bit. They still spam us...the one I mentioned today that everyone spammed seemed to stay on a long bit, I almost suspect he was enjoying the spamming. Anyway...in short, some change to the Trial needs to be done. Either block all /tells from there, or make it so one can't get a /tell there unless one manually unchecks a box. YES, they probably would buy accounts to spam us, but at least they would have accounts that cost them a tiny bit of money. And IF the CS agents really would ban people if they could, they would have something to ban.

Godzmodi

07-29-2006, 03:09 PM

<blockquote><hr>vinterskugge wrote:<div>I've never actually received a tell like this on Splitpaw - guess Euros and Pounds aren't good enough for them.</div><hr></blockquote>ur lucky. i get about 15 a day, and its always like 3 at a time. i bug them and ask them for free plat everytime, then i ask them if i can put them on my buddy list so i can have someone to bug each and everyday about gettin free plat (mainly cause mirohs too cheap to support us). and if they make some smart comment i add them to my buddy list and make a macro and i spam the crap outta em<div></div>

Ualday

07-31-2006, 06:17 PM

Ever had one of those guys mess up and instead of telling you their whole "buy from my site" they tell you "WINDOWS CLIPBOARD WAS NULL !"? It seems they copy/paste that whole message they do to speed up their in game spamming. If the developers would turn off the ability to copy/paste into the client I think we'd see a big decline in spam. It would affect a few people using it for legitimate reasons, but I think if they disabled the ability to copy/paste specifically in the Trial of the isles client that hardly anybody but the spammer would notice.<div></div>

etaipo

07-31-2006, 08:55 PM

<div></div>From 'their' website offering live support:Contact us by MSN <a target="_blank" href="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/Help/Help/CustomerSupport.aspx">[Removed for Content]@hotmail.com</a> <img src="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/Help/Image/e-mail.jpg">EAMIL: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/Help/Help/CustomerSupport.aspx">[Removed for Content]@gmail.com</a> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/Help/Help/CustomerSupport.aspx">sales@[Removed for Content].com</a> <img src="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/Help/Image/ICQ.jpg"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/Help/Help/CustomerSupport.aspx"> I C Q:324-090-739</a> <img src="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/Help/Image/Phone.jpg"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.[Removed for Content].com/Help/Help/CustomerSupport.aspx"> Phone:1-713-893-5178</a>Enjoy!<div></div>

SteelPiston

07-31-2006, 09:28 PM

<DIV> ----------///////////----------- Add a flag that auto-ignores messages from characters from the trial. Much like the flags to auto-decline group invites, or duels. This way if a friend joins via the trial, you simply disable this feature. Also have it on by default. ----------//////////---------- I love this idea. It gets a big thumbs up from me. Alternatively, we could always track down the gold sellers in real life and dip them in hot honey. Muttley - level 50 Bruiser.</DIV>

Magic

08-01-2006, 04:46 AM

There are other threads about this already in progress. I would like to see the trial be put on the Exchange server where selling in-game items for real money is allowed.Message Edited by Aljola on 07-31-2006 08:47 PM