An example of a GOOD way to manage PLAT vendors [Archive]

Pain Divine

03-29-2007, 03:56 PM

This is a letter on Vanguads main website to thier players. If SOE would adopt policies more like Sigils for EQ2, I think we'd have a LOT less problems with Spam and plat sales:----------------------------------Greetings! We would like to take a moment to thank our players for their assistance in helping us combat the RMT (real market trades), i.e. the gold selling and powerleveling organizations. Your assistance through reports and petitions has been invaluable to us in identifying these individuals and removing them from our game. Please continue to report individuals you suspect are involved in the transactions involving in-game items, money or services. With your help we have already banned more than 7000 gold selling, powerleveling and solicitation accounts used by various organizations.Some of these accounts were trial accounts and have resulted in our adjustment to the access a trial account has to some game mechanics. Moving forward trial accounts will not be able to be used in the delivery or advertisement of gold selling and powerleveling services.Further, we would like to reiterate how important it is that players not participate in RMT or have any association with companies that offer these services. Please be advised that we consider supporting these organizations a serious policy violation, and grounds for action against the offending account, up to and including the termination of the account.We remain very dedicated to the preservation and health of our economy and the integrity of our industry, and we hope that you, as players, expect nothing less. The Vanguard Customer Support Team!

Tyrani

03-29-2007, 03:59 PM

SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.

RpTheHotrod

03-29-2007, 04:40 PM

What I'm happy about is, even though their game is hurting in the sales department, they don't cave-in and allow the seller accounts for more money (though most are trial accounts).I hope they take the same stand against botters.

Pain Divine

03-29-2007, 05:09 PM

<cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. In vanguard the only spam you get is from the GMs.. when they broadcast server wide "SOANDSO HAS JUST BEEN BANNED FOR SELLING GOLD!!!"Now that's spam I don't mind.

Lamprey_02

03-29-2007, 05:45 PM

Wow, Sigil's actually doing something about spammers? I may try their game then once the first few post-release months pass!

DeathRider69

03-29-2007, 06:04 PM

Well it all sounds good, but unless they are willing to invest the financial resources to combat it, then it will never get fixed. Plus, while I detest the plat farmers, plat sellers, and spammers, you do have to look at it from a purely revenue stream for SOE. Here are my thoughts. 1. I have 2 accounts at $15/month for a total SOE income of $30. 2. A professional plat farmer/6-person bot has 6 (or more) toons @$15/month for an SOE income of $90. 3. Plat farmer has plat selling account @$15/month. So by this basic supposition, the plat farmer/bot group is paying SOE $105/month to my $30/month. Now the bot group goes out and farms instanced and contested zones to build their plat. We all know what they look like, but to SOE if each toon answers a tell and responds accordingly, then nothing is done unless they are impacting game play by hording a quest mob. This group loads up on Plat and then mails it off to either the Plat selling toon or to someone who will "deliver" it to purchasers. Now add in the fact the SOE is saying they are "against" the plat selling because people get ripped off, robbed, accounts stolen, etc. Thus they setup Station Exchange where they charge a listing fee + get 10% of the sale price + force the use of PayPal to get proceeds. While I cannot confirm a kick-back, why else would SOE be only allowing PayPal as the ONLY way to get funds. So from those I know that have been suspended and banned for buying plat, here is how it has worked. They are watching to see if someone gets X plat for a known seller. Then they go to the purchaser, ban/suspend the account as take the Plat purchased. Maybe they do something to the plat seller, most likely they do not. It is not about the fact that someone bought plat, it was entirely about the fact that they did not get their listing fee + 10% of the real-world money in the transaction. They way I am seeing it here is that for every "real" player account, there is at least one 6-player bot account. If SOE banned the bot/plat sellers, they immediate impact their bottom line. Plus drop out huge amounts of their active player counts. I just see this as total lip-service. Since they do not note to people when someone is banned for plat selling/botting, they have to occasionally make and example of a "real" player of two. The botter/plat farmer is not gonna get in channels or forums to scream that SOE banned them for selling plat/botting. It is going to be the real player that does that and thus everyone gets scared / cautious about plat buying. But then again, it is their game that we play by their rules for their proffit. They can and will do whatever they like to ensure that they are making money. SOE is making money off the plat farmers that sell through SE so they do not want to ban those bot/plat farmers because they are getting revenue. It is pure business sense. They either lose a $90 from a 6-player bot account + 10% on all of the sold plat or lost one $15 account which is not making them 10% on sales. No brainer. Thus this is why we get promised it will be fixed but find that no matter what is put in place that the undesirables are still there and always manage to find a way around what was just put in place.

bleap

03-29-2007, 06:10 PM

SOE will never adopted such a stance. They make too much money on those that buy accounts and by the advertising that goes on in the community sites or links from the community sites. The changes they have made to the game to "try" and combat these plat vendors has hurt any new players MUCH more than it has inconvienced the plat spammers/farmers/boters/sellers I really like that they are taking a proactive stance with the potential customers of the plat sellers. There have been others on these boards pushing SOE to take a direct stance with the buyers of RMT. As someone else recently posted, if no one buys, the sellers go away....and to publicly announce the name of the banned account is AMAZING! YAY SIGIL. SOE will do no such thing. Kudos to Sigil for taking such a stand. Now if they can get their game a bit more polished I will be heading over there....SInce I can now play 2 MMOs for LESS than the price of one station account... I have really enjoyed SOEs games, but they are too much in the pocket of the plat seller IMO...

Looker1010

03-29-2007, 08:33 PM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. In vanguard the only spam you get is from the GMs.. when they broadcast server wide "SOANDSO HAS JUST BEEN BANNED FOR SELLING GOLD!!!"Now that's spam I don't mind.</blockquote>That's something I'd like to see here. I /report and /petition EVERY coin sales tell I receive. I get the cookie cutter autoreplies from SOE. End of story. No clue what, if anything ever happened to the spammer. On the flip side I'd also like to see buyers removed - permanently. Buying is just as wrong as selling.I realize SOE will probably never do either of these things, profit margin being the be-all/end-all for them. <img src="/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

bleap

03-29-2007, 08:41 PM

<cite>Looker1010 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. In vanguard the only spam you get is from the GMs.. when they broadcast server wide "SOANDSO HAS JUST BEEN BANNED FOR SELLING GOLD!!!"Now that's spam I don't mind.</blockquote>That's something I'd like to see here. I /report and /petition EVERY coin sales tell I receive. I get the cookie cutter autoreplies from SOE. End of story. No clue what, if anything ever happened to the spammer. On the flip side I'd also like to see buyers removed - permanently. Buying is just as wrong as selling.I realize SOE will probably never do either of these things, profit margin being the be-all/end-all for them. <img src="/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </blockquote>I agree the buyers need to go, but /petition and /report is playing into SOEs hands...Sure they investigate your report and petition, find the offending account and ban it...BUT then the plat seller buys another account (download price $9.99 US) and uses it to mine names and send tells once they get a toon off the island. They get 6 toon slots so they can spam 6 servers...(it only takes a few minutes from the time they start mining names until they are sending out the tells..It's all automated) so they use 1 account to send tells to 6 servers before that acount gets banned. If they make one $10 sale generated by those tells before the account gets banned, they have broken even...And you know they are selling more than $10 worth of coin....The plat sellers make a profit, SOE gets the coin from the sale of the account and we get spam tells... Why would SOE stop the sale of their product if they were making money from it. Tis ashame...

Mirander_1

03-29-2007, 08:42 PM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. </blockquote>That's because they simply have to purchase an account before they can spam/buy/sell/farm/whatever... which is exactly what Vanguard will experience after their change. As for GMs announcing every ban, it might be nice to have the measures being taken publicly announced, eventually it would get just as annoying as plat-seller spam.

bleap

03-29-2007, 08:49 PM

<cite>Mirander_1 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. </blockquote>That's because they simply have to purchase an account before they can spam/buy/sell/farm/whatever... which is exactly what Vanguard will experience after their change. As for GMs announcing every ban, it might be nice to have the measures being taken publicly announced, eventually it would get just as annoying as plat-seller spam. </blockquote>Not if Sigil is serious about investigating and banning plat buyers. Would you take a chance and buy plat if you knew that they were actively investigating the plat BUYERS and perma banning their acounts once caught...Sure some would take the chance at first...But if you can minimize the buying the sellers will go away for lack of profit...It might not get rid of ALL but it certainly CERTAINLY would be more than SOE has tried...And besides, a new Vanguard account is $50. Do you really think the plat spammers are going to plop down $50 for every account that gets banned? EQ2 accounts can be DLed for $10. Your second comment underlines the problem..If you think the spam from banned accounts would be that bad, how many people do you think by plat on the EQ2 servers? Yes it might be bad at first...(personally I think it would be fun to see SOANSO has been banned for buying plat) but eventually people would get the hint and there wouldn't be very many... Right now ANYTHING would be better than what SOE has done. Gimping the game for new players just to try (in vain) to stop the plat spammers is rediculous...

Dasein

03-29-2007, 09:18 PM

Sigil's stance is not much different than what any other game has done, and is proving equally ineffective. The major RMT vendors don't need to advertise, people already know who they are. It's like prostitution - the street solicitation is a small fraction of the trade, with most going on behind closed doors and out of sight. The RMT companies that need to resort to spam advertising are not the ones doing the bulk of the trading.

Voq

03-29-2007, 09:21 PM

IMO, the only way plat/gold selling will stop if you end the demand. You kill the demand by banning/deleting the buyers. Banning isn't really enough - accounts need to be entirely delete, CC numbers blocked, etc. Zero tolerance.Once word got out that your entire account would be deleted for buying gold/plat the cheating losers who buy plat/gold would stop buying or stop playing - either would be fine with me. (And buying plat/gold IS cheating...the only difference between buying plat/gold/characters/items and using a trainer/hack/cheat code in a single player game is that you're paying extra to cheat, which makes you both a cheater and a fool.)

Lornick

03-29-2007, 09:28 PM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>Some of these accounts were trial accounts and have resulted in our adjustment to the access a trial account has to some game mechanics. Moving forward trial accounts will not be able to be used in the delivery or advertisement of gold selling and powerleveling services.</blockquote> Could they be any more vague then that?

bleap

03-29-2007, 10:05 PM

<cite>Lornick wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>Some of these accounts were trial accounts and have resulted in our adjustment to the access a trial account has to some game mechanics. Moving forward trial accounts will not be able to be used in the delivery or advertisement of gold selling and powerleveling services.</blockquote> Could they be any more vague then that?</blockquote>They shouldn't feel the need to tell their secrets..No reason to let the other guy know the changes and give them an early chance to counter.

bleap

03-29-2007, 10:15 PM

<cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>Sigil's stance is not much different than what any other game has done, and is proving equally ineffective. The major RMT vendors don't need to advertise, people already know who they are. It's like prostitution - the street solicitation is a small fraction of the trade, with most going on behind closed doors and out of sight. The RMT companies that need to resort to spam advertising are not the ones doing the bulk of the trading. </blockquote>Coin sales cannot be hidden. If Sigil wants to know who is buying in game coin they will find out. All coin transactions are tracked, The game is so new not too many people are going to have mega plat, if they do a good audit of all accounts, and then watch to see who's account recieves a large sum of money at one time or in small amounts over a short duration a simple investigation of where the money came from will tell all...Something SOE has refused to do...

Grimwell

03-29-2007, 10:24 PM

Interesting. So, as a guy new to the company I was very interested to see how this sort of stuff was handled for EQII. What I have learned is that /petitions and /reports are investigated, and the platinum farmers and sellers are banned daily. It's not something that is trumpeted out to the world at large because that isn't something we do. You may not see it, and therefore may not believe it, but it's happening each and every day. Volume is a part of the problem. If one plat farmer/seller falls through the cracks, it looks horrible to the people who see it. They think we don't know or don't care. I just spent a few hours over in CS yesterday watching the GM's put the tools to use, it was pretty cool to see how a /petition on one person could be investigated and acted upon (Yes, I watched accounts get banned for this activity). The rough spot was that it took some time. We can't just ban an account because someone says "Plat farmer!!!" There has to be some investigation to make sure we aren't banning someone who has an angry friend. Each /petition has to be investigated carefully, by real people here in San Diego, and that takes time -- which causes perception issues. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Bleap, we don't have any advertisements on the community websites. EQ2 Players, and EverQuest2.com don't have ads at all. No banners, no towers... so no space for sale. I'm pleased that Sigil is able to draw their own line and follow up on it, but I would hate to think that this makes people feel that we don't care or spend time trying to stem the tide.

bleap

03-29-2007, 11:16 PM

<cite>Grimwell wrote:</cite><blockquote>Interesting. So, as a guy new to the company I was very interested to see how this sort of stuff was handled for EQII. What I have learned is that /petitions and /reports are investigated, and the platinum farmers and sellers are banned daily. It's not something that is trumpeted out to the world at large because that isn't something we do. You may not see it, and therefore may not believe it, but it's happening each and every day. Volume is a part of the problem. If one plat farmer/seller falls through the cracks, it looks horrible to the people who see it. They think we don't know or don't care. I just spent a few hours over in CS yesterday watching the GM's put the tools to use, it was pretty cool to see how a /petition on one person could be investigated and acted upon (Yes, I watched accounts get banned for this activity). The rough spot was that it took some time. We can't just ban an account because someone says "Plat farmer!!!" There has to be some investigation to make sure we aren't banning someone who has an angry friend. Each /petition has to be investigated carefully, by real people here in San Diego, and that takes time -- which causes perception issues. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Bleap, we don't have any advertisements on the community websites. EQ2 Players, and EverQuest2.com don't have ads at all. No banners, no towers... so no space for sale. I'm pleased that Sigil is able to draw their own line and follow up on it, but I would hate to think that this makes people feel that we don't care or spend time trying to stem the tide. </blockquote>I don't think anyone debates wether some plat spammers accounts get banned..My guess would be nearly all of them get banned...Because people petition and report...But it should never get that far Grimwell, there are methods and ideas many players have had right here on these boards that could probably be put to use...One of the big ones is to catch the people buying the plat and making it known to the player base that SOE is actively searching for people who buy in game coin for real life $$ and that WHEN they are caught (not IF) they will be banned and their credit card number will be rejected for any future attemps at use with SOE. That would go a long way to stop the plat spammers..if they had no customers they would move on. Another idea is to use baited accounts...Log in a character on each server right there from SOE...Make it about level 50 and put it somewhere in game...Soon enough you will get plat spam...You could look up the name of the toon and ban that account right away...no need for investigation...GONE And as for community websites...they might not have the banner ads themselves, but I have seen links from their sites to other sites that do, I know this might be out of your control, but it still gives the appearance that you are condoning those sites to some people.

Sykophrog

03-30-2007, 01:22 AM

bleap, I think it comes down to resource management. Tracking all coin sales is possible, but major crafters and regular farmers (who just like having lots of cash to pay for expensive items on the brokers, not to sell plat) I imagine will have coin-trading patterns quite similar to RMTs. Especially if they do like some folks I know and give / lend cash to friends and guildies, sometimes in the 50-200plat range simply because they can afford it. I personally do a LOT of crafting for large volumes of plat, and have a big pile of it, and have loaned it out before. Playing the economic game in EQ2 is fun to some folks like myself. To sort out all the RMT's from all the rest would take a large amount of man-hours.I think that they do a pretty good job in this game. I only get bugged once a week which isnt a big deal to me. I spend maybe 3minutes doing a petition and forget about it because I'm fairly confident that a GM will handle it. Is it annoying? Sure. But I think if we want the game to succeed it would work better to have the occasional annoyance and work hand-in-hand with Sony to catch the RMT's. I honestly would rather have Sony spend the cash to hire / retain more programmers to update / improve / expand the game than to hire a bunch of extra GM's to stop each and every RMT before they annoy the playerbase (not that I think that's even possible regardless of the # of bodies you toss on the problem).As to how to stop the demand end, I again dont think its ever going to be possible to eliminate it. Banning / deleting an account, and stopping the credit card will do minimal if any change. I personally have 2 credit cards and a debit card that would all work to open an account. And if I hypothetically got caught 3 times and STILL wanted to play I could always use a CC of someone in my family. I'm sure for most folks that is the case. And what about gamecards? I could just go and purchase gamecards and open an account with those. I think a much better solution might be to just permanently send all accounts to Station Exchange servers if they get caught buying plat. Do the same rules as any other transfer and remove any tradeable items and all cash from the characters so as not to upset the SE economy. Make it so that credit card can only even make characters / accounts on SE. They can always use another card (or gamecards) but maybe they'd rather keep playing on SE (which obviously suits their playstyle of buying plat) instead of starting over. In which case you've permently gotten rid of a plat buyer (well gotten rid of from the normal servers anyhow). So in conclusion (long as this is it might as well be an essay so I'll wrap it up :<img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ) there are 3 points:1) Save $$ for programmers for content, not for a million GM's that will never EVER be able to stop 100% of RMT's. And we all know that all it takes is for 0.05% of them to make it into the game for hundreds of folks to scream on the forums that "SOE DOESNT CARE ABOUT RMTS!!!" or suchlike.B) Working with Sony (spend 3 minutes to report that RMT) will save them resources, and let them give us more content. I personnally have not ever had a "plague" of RMT's assaulting me with their pleas, at the worst it was 1 or 2 times a week and was simply annoying. If you want to have the attitude of "It's Sony's job, its THEIR job to stop RMT's and I shouldnt have to put up with them, this is what I pay Sony for" then you dont realize how the world works. There will always be a demand, and as such a supply, In a way like drugs (I know, tired cliche of comparing RMT's to drugs), but just like drug dealers the public has to help the compony "police" or else it makes the job 50 times harder / longer / and more resource intensive in a resource limited world.III) Solutions to the supply end problem are many and varied. But in the end, if someone really REALLY wants to buy plat they will, and nothing we can do can stop them 100% of the time. Actions after the fact are limited, especially with multiple CC's and gamecards available for sale. Maybe sending them to SE would work better, maybe not, who knows.. its just my 2cp.The previous was Phroggy Publication, have you kissed a phrog today?

retro_guy

03-30-2007, 01:32 AM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>This is a letter on Vanguads main website to thier players. If SOE would adopt policies more like Sigils for EQ2, I think we'd have a LOT less problems with Spam and plat sales:----------------------------------Greetings! We would like to take a moment to thank our players for their assistance in helping us combat the RMT (real market trades), i.e. the gold selling and powerleveling organizations. Your assistance through reports and petitions has been invaluable to us in identifying these individuals and removing them from our game. Please continue to report individuals you suspect are involved in the transactions involving in-game items, money or services. With your help we have already banned more than 7000 gold selling, powerleveling and solicitation accounts used by various organizations.Some of these accounts were trial accounts and have resulted in our adjustment to the access a trial account has to some game mechanics. Moving forward trial accounts will not be able to be used in the delivery or advertisement of gold selling and powerleveling services.Further, we would like to reiterate how important it is that players not participate in RMT or have any association with companies that offer these services. Please be advised that we consider supporting these organizations a serious policy violation, and grounds for action against the offending account, up to and including the termination of the account.We remain very dedicated to the preservation and health of our economy and the integrity of our industry, and we hope that you, as players, expect nothing less. The Vanguard Customer Support Team!</blockquote> Um, SOE has had these same policies in place for a long time, which part are you particularly referring to?

Jenarie

03-30-2007, 01:45 AM

I just wish they'd give us a special report so that we wouldn't need to report AND petition. I think /report name should be enough to get a advertiser banned... there is no explanation needed.

powerspike

03-30-2007, 02:24 AM

if you annoyed a friend, and they logged onto your account, and starting spam gold for sale, you wouldn't want it baned. One way to get rid of them, is to slow the demand, if SOE suspended buyer accounts for 1-2 weeks with detected, that would go a very long way to fix the problem. If they have enough evidance of plat sellers, it means that SOE would have some type of customer list attached with that.

doctorbow

03-30-2007, 05:24 AM

Ok spam is spam is spam... I just perused the EULA... yes, all of it. The only mention of RMT is on dedicated station exchange servers. With no note at all that it is prohibited on non-exchange servers. This doesn't necessarily indicated an 'endorsement' or a partnership with the plat-spammers, but it IS rather curious still, that the common public outcry from THEIR playerbase is that we want something DONE about it. They DO have a good enough game that enough people put up with it, and they know this, and there hasn't been enough done about it. So we sit and play, annoyed sometimes every 5 minutes. It's only text, but it BOTHERS ME that I PAY my SUBSCRIPTION TO SOE, and have to put up with ADVERTISEMENTS from some craptastic company in china that I don't want ANYTHING to do with!!!!! If I wanted to buy plat with RL Money, I would GO TO THE EXCHANGE server, I promise!!! But I don't, so I won't. and I don't want to see advertisements related to that during my gameplay, either... So, how about some REAL solutions? I will even offer up some terrific ideas. FIRST: CHANGE YOUR EULA. I'm happy that you have an exchange server for people that want to do this. Fair's fair. BUT: On a server where you do not officially ENDORSE it, then it should be officially CONDEMNED. FURTHERMORE, the accounts of those people that sell the farmed masters on public channels should be dealt with in the same manner as the sellers. Make it clear in the EULA that ANY plat-for-money transactions, or item-for-money transactions will be investigated, and the accounts dealt with as follows: Sellers Accounts: (IP's of account(s) should be noted) 1st offense: Account suspension, 1 month. 2nd: Account deletion. 3rd: IP suspension 1 month, then 3, then a year. That's basically 5 attempts from any given IP to break your EULA, before you bust 'em down permanently for an entire YEAR. Buyer's Accounts: 1st offense: Warning of EULA violation, WARNING of continuance will cause relocation to Exchange server. 2nd offense: Move them to the exchange server, free of charge!!! Guess what? If they want to buy plat, YES they should be free to do it, but it upsets economies when they do not have to put the same in-game effort to acquiring something that I might have to. They want to move back? Fine, they relinquish their purchased Plat (or have to 'buy-back' any plat they spent while on exchange) and STILL have to pay 50 bucks. And can't move back for 3 months. They were warned via the EULA, and a courtesy in-game warning as well. Let them pay the price. Well, then, how do you tell when one of these transactions has taken place? WELL first off: A POLLING system in-place on the main everquest2 website would be AWESOME. Split by server, ANY player can add the name of ANY OTHER player to this poll, and the numbers added up. This can also interface with an in-game /spammer (name) command that would tally the results. Because, I don't care WHAT kind of 'research' your CS staff has to do to determine the validity of spam reports, or bot reports, or any others. If you were to receive like, 200 reports a day of a suspected bot or spammer for a week or more, you can rest assure that they ARE in fact, a spammer. And if someone is just bein' a sphincter-clown and decides to put some random name on there, they won't be a blip on a radar if they have only 1 or 2 reports to their name (for instance, there are some people that do tend to be spammy while selling stuff, and might irritate somebody, but not everybody. they may get reported by 1 or 2 people, but they aren't the type of problem that we're talking about here, so would be overlooked). And then there's the people that all the players just KNOW is a spammer/seller, part of that 'network'... The point is, the real-life people that play your game also know it best. If we are given a real interface for reporting spammers specifically, other than the kinda shoddy /report-/petition system, the MASSES will tell you WHO needs to be banned. It needs to be separate from /report and /petition b/c petition can only have 1 open at a time, and IMO should only be used for REAL in-game issues, not this crap. As an example of people/players that simply do NOT get dealt with, on Everfrost, there is a player by the name of Buzo, who has alts Guardgo, and others. I have reported him COUNTLESS times. As have others. He is still around. IF a system like this were in place, and whole IP's banned from a result of countless accounts violating the EULA, the problem WOULD be eliminated. The fact is, SoE, this is YOUR game. YOU have a legal right to restrict access to ENTIRE IP ranges, if you so choose. It IS your property, and you do have a right to protect it. The warnings are a fair measure prior to blocking IP's that this activity will not be tolerated. They are welcome to PLAY on my server, just not to SELL on it, or Bot on it. They sell on it anyway? Fine, suspended for a month. Sell some more? Fine, account deleted. So they roll another account and sell some more? OK then we'll block your IP for a month or so. sell again? Delete account, block IP for another 3 months. Sell again? Delete account, block IP for a year. Peace and quiet. -Drakhammor, long-winded frustrated swashbuckler. 70. Everfrost.

hisawat

03-30-2007, 06:14 AM

<cite>doctorbow wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ok spam is spam is spam... I just perused the EULA... yes, all of it. The only mention of RMT is on dedicated station exchange servers. With no note at all that it is prohibited on non-exchange servers. This doesn't necessarily indicated an 'endorsement' or a partnership with the plat-spammers, but it IS rather curious still, that the common public outcry from THEIR playerbase is that we want something DONE about it. They DO have a good enough game that enough people put up with it, and they know this, and there hasn't been enough done about it. So we sit and play, annoyed sometimes every 5 minutes. It's only text, but it BOTHERS ME that I PAY my SUBSCRIPTION TO SOE, and have to put up with ADVERTISEMENTS from some craptastic company in china that I don't want ANYTHING to do with!!!!! If I wanted to buy plat with RL Money, I would GO TO THE EXCHANGE server, I promise!!! But I don't, so I won't. and I don't want to see advertisements related to that during my gameplay, either... So, how about some REAL solutions? I will even offer up some terrific ideas. FIRST: CHANGE YOUR EULA. I'm happy that you have an exchange server for people that want to do this. Fair's fair. BUT: On a server where you do not officially ENDORSE it, then it should be officially CONDEMNED. FURTHERMORE, the accounts of those people that sell the farmed masters on public channels should be dealt with in the same manner as the sellers. Make it clear in the EULA that ANY plat-for-money transactions, or item-for-money transactions will be investigated, and the accounts dealt with as follows: Sellers Accounts: (IP's of account(s) should be noted) 1st offense: Account suspension, 1 month. 2nd: Account deletion. 3rd: IP suspension 1 month, then 3, then a year. That's basically 5 attempts from any given IP to break your EULA, before you bust 'em down permanently for an entire YEAR. Buyer's Accounts: 1st offense: Warning of EULA violation, WARNING of continuance will cause relocation to Exchange server. 2nd offense: Move them to the exchange server, free of charge!!! Guess what? If they want to buy plat, YES they should be free to do it, but it upsets economies when they do not have to put the same in-game effort to acquiring something that I might have to. They want to move back? Fine, they relinquish their purchased Plat (or have to 'buy-back' any plat they spent while on exchange) and STILL have to pay 50 bucks. And can't move back for 3 months. They were warned via the EULA, and a courtesy in-game warning as well. Let them pay the price. Well, then, how do you tell when one of these transactions has taken place? WELL first off: A POLLING system in-place on the main everquest2 website would be AWESOME. Split by server, ANY player can add the name of ANY OTHER player to this poll, and the numbers added up. This can also interface with an in-game /spammer (name) command that would tally the results. Because, I don't care WHAT kind of 'research' your CS staff has to do to determine the validity of spam reports, or bot reports, or any others. If you were to receive like, 200 reports a day of a suspected bot or spammer for a week or more, you can rest assure that they ARE in fact, a spammer. And if someone is just bein' a sphincter-clown and decides to put some random name on there, they won't be a blip on a radar if they have only 1 or 2 reports to their name (for instance, there are some people that do tend to be spammy while selling stuff, and might irritate somebody, but not everybody. they may get reported by 1 or 2 people, but they aren't the type of problem that we're talking about here, so would be overlooked). And then there's the people that all the players just KNOW is a spammer/seller, part of that 'network'... The point is, the real-life people that play your game also know it best. If we are given a real interface for reporting spammers specifically, other than the kinda shoddy /report-/petition system, the MASSES will tell you WHO needs to be banned. It needs to be separate from /report and /petition b/c petition can only have 1 open at a time, and IMO should only be used for REAL in-game issues, not this crap. The fact is, SoE, this is YOUR game. YOU have a legal right to restrict access to ENTIRE IP ranges, if you so choose. It IS your property, and you do have a right to protect it. The warnings are a fair measure prior to blocking IP's that this activity will not be tolerated. They are welcome to PLAY on my server, just not to SELL on it, or Bot on it. They sell on it anyway? Fine, suspended for a month. Sell some more? Fine, account deleted. So they roll another account and sell some more? OK then we'll block your IP for a month or so. sell again? Delete account, block IP for another 3 months. Sell again? Delete account, block IP for a year. Peace and quiet. -Drakhammor, long-winded frustrated swashbuckler. 70. Everfrost. </blockquote>I thought posting player names is against foum rules. Well, blocking IP address doesn't work. There are a bunch of proxy servers on the internet and obviously plat sellers use proxy servers to hide their IP addresses.

TuinalOfTheNexus

03-30-2007, 08:20 AM

I have to say this stance seriously makes me think of going over to Vanguard.It's great to see a company that<ul><li>Is willing to tell all players that buying from these people is not only bannable, it's also unethical and extremely selfish, because it encourages farming to the detriment of the game as a whole.</li><li>Has no ambiguity on the issue - e.g. "it's okay to buy/sell if it's through SoE", "multiboxing is encouraged", etc.</li><li>Is willing to go to lengths to ensure these accounts are banned and deleted to the extent it ceases to be a profitable business. SoE can clam all they like about bans and account deletions, but when players are seeing the same bot group farming the same zones for months (we have a group that goes between mistmoore catacombs butler and kaladim avatar, basically monopolising class sleeves and gloves 24/7), it sounds like hot air. Certainly the banning can't be that effective if it contines to be worthwhile for the farmers.</li></ul>

Nodok

03-30-2007, 08:35 AM

doctorbow wrote: <blockquote>The point is, the real-life people that play your game also know it best. If we are given a real interface for reporting spammers specifically, other than the kinda shoddy /report-/petition system, the MASSES will tell you WHO needs to be banned. It needs to be separate from /report and /petition b/c petition can only have 1 open at a time, and IMO should only be used for REAL in-game issues, not this crap. </blockquote> I agree completely. Let the people who play this game and feel the impact of these farmers have their say. Someone suggested a polling system to vote on potential farmers. It could even be a private one where you simply /flag a suspected player. When someone reaches a threshold of /flags, they're investigated. Many have offered solid suggestions towards reducing this problem, but most official replies have been vague and quite frankly unhelpful. No offense meant Grimwell as I appreciate the hard work you guys do, but instead of dancing around the problem why not work with the community for some possible fixes? For starters let's get a serious discussion going, with firm SOE involvement and a genuine, observable commitment. This could go a long way towards reducing the conspiracies, not to mention actually coming up with real solutions. Most threads on this topic spiral into conspiracies and posts of "it'll never work, period". Neither are helpful to resolving the problem and should be moderated from any actual 'solution' discussion. Let's just focus on the issues and ways to resolve them. In short - give us a forum with mods who will keep the discussion on topic (like a focus group leader), and let us work towards a set of real, implementable solutions. Show us that you're truly committed to this problem and not just paying lip service.

Tyndaleon

03-30-2007, 09:00 AM

<cite>Grimwell wrote:</cite><blockquote>Interesting. So, as a guy new to the company I was very interested to see how this sort of stuff was handled for EQII. What I have learned is that /petitions and /reports are investigated, and the platinum farmers and sellers are banned daily. I just spent a few hours over in CS yesterday watching the GM's put the tools to use, it was pretty cool to see how a /petition on one person could be investigated and acted upon (Yes, I watched accounts get banned for this activity). The rough spot was that it took some time. We can't just ban an account because someone says "Plat farmer!!!" There has to be some investigation to make sure we aren't banning someone who has an angry friend. Each /petition has to be investigated carefully, by real people here in San Diego, and that takes time -- which causes perception issues. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </blockquote> I'd just like to go on record and back up what Grim is saying.....I'm sure some people take the time to /peition and give detail about a suspected farmer or farming bot, but I'm guessing alot of folks don't; there's alot of people who play games like this who on the one hand are quick to complain about things like this, but on the other hand can never be bothered to 'waste' 5 minutes of their precious powergaming time to actually be proactive and try and do something to help the situation themselves. I can personally verify and vouch for the above going on. I play on Everfrost, I don't have an end-game character yet (my main is currently 4% shy of 4<img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />, and I noticed a few weeks ago as I started harvesting in T5 more often and as Feerrott is my chosen zone to do this in (and even then it's a frustrating tier to have to harvest compared to places like TS or EL/Zek), that there is a persistent problem with some farming company running a harvesting character/bot around cherry picking certain nodes (mainly the rocks and roots) for rares. So far they've all held to a consistent theme; they're just high enough in level not to draw aggro in the zone, they're never guilded, they're always set to "Anoymous" mode, and you can literally find them on at all hours of the day/night. I added the first one to my friends list and monitored the activity, I'd log on real quick in the mornings before work and sometimes in the wee hours of the night if I woke up for some reason, they'd always be online and in Feerrott. So I petitioned after about 48 hours straight of seeing this, and lo and behold, about 2 days later.....suddenly 'Cefal' was no more, and I'd had a response from a GM to my petition. They were obviously vague about 'what was done', but the results spoke for themselves. 'Cefal' has been replaced twice now in the last 2 weeks since, and as soon as I've seen the replacements I've petitioned again, and both of the replacements are gone, the 3rd of which was removed just last night. I do agree though, if it's true that you can only have one open petition at a time, that this should be changed. If there has to be a limit, make it 5 or something along those lines, but I honestly don't see a reason why there needs to be a limit imposed. The GM's can just close petitions automatically and reference the original one if some twit starts opening multiple petitions for the same issue. But the bottom line is, GM's do work based off the feedback you give them, and taking the time to petition and/or report them does produce results.

JoarAddam

03-30-2007, 09:00 AM

<cite>powerspike wrote:</cite><blockquote>if you annoyed a friend, and they logged onto your account, and starting spam gold for sale, you wouldn't want it baned. One way to get rid of them, is to slow the demand, if SOE suspended buyer accounts for 1-2 weeks with detected, that would go a very long way to fix the problem. If they have enough evidance of plat sellers, it means that SOE would have some type of customer list attached with that. </blockquote> Giving your friend your account info is against the EULA... and honestly, I don't trust anyone with my reputation enough to let them represent me in that way... it's like handing your skin to someone else and saying hey, wander around as me today, fool my wife and kids.My guild leader suggested once that if he had had my info I might have gotten some EoF set gear that rotted while I was out doing some RL... I trust him a great deal, I know there's no way he'd ever go out of his way to damage that relationship, but it's still not going to happen. It's just not in me to trust anyone that much.

liveja

03-30-2007, 09:21 AM

<cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>And as for community websites...they might not have the banner ads themselves, but I have seen links from their sites to other sites that do, I know this might be out of your control, but it still gives the appearance that you are condoning those sites to some people. As you said, those ads are out of SOE's control. Since we all know they're out of SOE's control ... why does it "give the appearance" that SOE condones the sites? I ask this quite seriously, because it's a complete breakdown of logic to claim, or even imply, that SOE should "do something" about an issue over which they have no control. It's also grotesquely unfair. If you disagree, please explain to me what SOE should "do" when they have no control over the issue.If they can't do anything, then perhaps it's time for people to simply drop that line entirely.</blockquote>

liveja

03-30-2007, 09:26 AM

<cite>doctorbow wrote:</cite><blockquote> The fact is, SoE, this is YOUR game. </blockquote> It's amazing, really, how many people seem to forget that point, & instead believe that because they're customers, SOE should listen to their advice as to how to administer the game & run their business.This particular thread, for example, is pretty liberally filled with such people.

liveja

03-30-2007, 09:31 AM

<cite>Nodok wrote:</cite><blockquote> I agree completely. Let the people who play this game and feel the impact of these farmers have their say. Someone suggested a polling system to vote on potential farmers. It could even be a private one where you simply /flag a suspected player. When someone reaches a threshold of /flags, they're investigated </blockquote>This game is not a democracy. It's a product put forth by a company that has policies, & has the right to maintain & enforce those policies as it sees fit. If people don't like those policies, they should do what I did when I got disgusted with Blizzard: vote with your wallet, by paying a different company for its services.

Duethor

03-30-2007, 10:38 AM

I was thinking the other day, how many plat spammers actually pay for their accounts, with getting the first 30 days free on a new account, I bet they are banned long before then.

metacell

03-30-2007, 10:54 AM

<cite>livejazz wrote:</cite><blockquote>This game is not a democracy. It's a product put forth by a company that has policies, & has the right to maintain & enforce those policies as it sees fit. If people don't like those policies, they should do what I did when I got disgusted with Blizzard: vote with your wallet, by paying a different company for its services. </blockquote>Well, hopefully a profit-driven company wants their customers to tell them what is wrong so they can fix it, instead of just leaving. But in this case, SoE seems very aware of the problem, and how to handle it, they just can't get a 100% success rate. I'm playing on the Runnyeye server (UK English), and I can't say I'm getting much spam. It's less than one spam mail a week on the average, and almost no tells. To me, this is perfectly acceptable, hardly even an annoyance. If the problem is just as small on the other servers, I understand that SoE doesn't want to allocate more resources to it. Comparisons to Vanguard are also unfair. Vanguard is a new game with fewer subscribers. Since there are fewer potential customers, it's not as lucrative to sell things in Vanguard. Also, there are much fewer players at the level cap. People are busy learning the game and levelling their mains. It's not until they've reached the limits of their character, and gear is the only way to improve it further, that buying stuff becomes really interesting. Where is the spam/buying/selling problem worst? On the PvP servers?

Nodok

03-30-2007, 11:07 AM

<cite>livejazz wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nodok wrote:</cite><blockquote> I agree completely. Let the people who play this game and feel the impact of these farmers have their say. Someone suggested a polling system to vote on potential farmers. It could even be a private one where you simply /flag a suspected player. When someone reaches a threshold of /flags, they're investigated </blockquote>This game is not a democracy. It's a product put forth by a company that has policies, & has the right to maintain & enforce those policies as it sees fit. If people don't like those policies, they should do what I did when I got disgusted with Blizzard: vote with your wallet, by paying a different company for its services.</blockquote> True, although I think you meant to direct that towards plat buyers/sellers, since they're the ones breaking the rules. My post was a suggestion to help enforce their stance against commercial farmers. Personally I like the game and I follow the rules. I'd rather provide constructive, meaningful feedback and enjoy the game for years than bail on it.

Tyrani

03-30-2007, 11:24 AM

<cite>DeathRider69 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well it all sounds good, but unless they are willing to invest the financial resources to combat it, then it will never get fixed. Plus, while I detest the plat farmers, plat sellers, and spammers, you do have to look at it from a purely revenue stream for SOE. Here are my thoughts. 1. I have 2 accounts at $15/month for a total SOE income of $30. 2. A professional plat farmer/6-person bot has 6 (or more) toons @$15/month for an SOE income of $90. 3. Plat farmer has plat selling account @$15/month. So by this basic supposition, the plat farmer/bot group is paying SOE $105/month to my $30/month. Now the bot group goes out and farms instanced and contested zones to build their plat. We all know what they look like, but to SOE if each toon answers a tell and responds accordingly, then nothing is done unless they are impacting game play by hording a quest mob. This group loads up on Plat and then mails it off to either the Plat selling toon or to someone who will "deliver" it to purchasers. Now add in the fact the SOE is saying they are "against" the plat selling because people get ripped off, robbed, accounts stolen, etc. Thus they setup Station Exchange where they charge a listing fee + get 10% of the sale price + force the use of PayPal to get proceeds. While I cannot confirm a kick-back, why else would SOE be only allowing PayPal as the ONLY way to get funds. So from those I know that have been suspended and banned for buying plat, here is how it has worked. They are watching to see if someone gets X plat for a known seller. Then they go to the purchaser, ban/suspend the account as take the Plat purchased. Maybe they do something to the plat seller, most likely they do not. It is not about the fact that someone bought plat, it was entirely about the fact that they did not get their listing fee + 10% of the real-world money in the transaction. They way I am seeing it here is that for every "real" player account, there is at least one 6-player bot account. If SOE banned the bot/plat sellers, they immediate impact their bottom line. Plus drop out huge amounts of their active player counts. I just see this as total lip-service. Since they do not note to people when someone is banned for plat selling/botting, they have to occasionally make and example of a "real" player of two. The botter/plat farmer is not gonna get in channels or forums to scream that SOE banned them for selling plat/botting. It is going to be the real player that does that and thus everyone gets scared / cautious about plat buying. But then again, it is their game that we play by their rules for their proffit. They can and will do whatever they like to ensure that they are making money. SOE is making money off the plat farmers that sell through SE so they do not want to ban those bot/plat farmers because they are getting revenue. It is pure business sense. They either lose a $90 from a 6-player bot account + 10% on all of the sold plat or lost one $15 account which is not making them 10% on sales. No brainer. Thus this is why we get promised it will be fixed but find that no matter what is put in place that the undesirables are still there and always manage to find a way around what was just put in place. </blockquote> Ok, let's look at this from the point of revenue for SoE. In your example the total amount a botter/seller provides to SoE a month is $105.Now take this into account, for each account that SoE bans from the game, they potentially lose $15 a month. In reality, as someone else said, they are most likely banned before the first 30-day free time is up, but I digress. So what happens when this account is banned? They obviously come back, right? So if they come back, what does that mean...they have to buy another account. Let's lowball it and say that they buy the boxed EoF at $30.00 for all the expansions and, to be sure, they aren't out of commission for more than a month! So that means, within that month, for each account banned, SoE actually makes $30.00.So, going by your scheme of 6 farmer accounts and 1 seller account...if they ban each of those accounts, they'll make back $210.00, double what they would've made if they leave the farmers/sellers alone.Let's take it up a bit more, figure on average they ban a single account a day, but only on weekdays. Four weeks a month, 20 days. Twenty accounts a month left active, generates $300...while those same 20 accounts of farmers/sellers being banned would generate $600 because they have to buy the box again.

Tyrani

03-30-2007, 11:32 AM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. In vanguard the only spam you get is from the GMs.. when they broadcast server wide "SOANDSO HAS JUST BEEN BANNED FOR SELLING GOLD!!!"Now that's spam I don't mind.</blockquote> Yes, and so am I, but the point I was trying to make is that you were touting something Sigil did when SoE had already done it prior to Vanguard even being released.Just out of curiousity, did you play EQ2 before those changes were made? If so, you should know how bad it was before the trial account changes. If not, then I don't really think you can praise Vanguard for doing the same exact thing that SoE did.

Pain Divine

03-30-2007, 01:02 PM

<cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. In vanguard the only spam you get is from the GMs.. when they broadcast server wide "SOANDSO HAS JUST BEEN BANNED FOR SELLING GOLD!!!"Now that's spam I don't mind.</blockquote> Yes, and so am I, but the point I was trying to make is that you were touting something Sigil did when SoE had already done it prior to Vanguard even being released.Just out of curiousity, did you play EQ2 before those changes were made? If so, you should know how bad it was before the trial account changes. If not, then I don't really think you can praise Vanguard for doing the same exact thing that SoE did.</blockquote>My account was opened the day EQ2 was released. For the first year or so there was NO spam. NONE. Farmers were a problem, but no annoying spam. While appretiate Grimwells efforst here, his assurances arent enough for me. Fix the problem. SOE is shows no effort other than random cleverly worded posts about how they banned thousands of accounts... Wow, you did? Thats neat... but I'm still getting spam. Less talk, more action.

DngrMou

03-30-2007, 01:21 PM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>While appretiate Grimwells efforst here, his assurances arent enough for me. Fix the problem. SOE is shows no effort other than random cleverly worded posts about how they banned thousands of accounts... Wow, you did? Thats neat... but I'm still getting spam. Less talk, more action. </blockquote>I'm getting less spam, and email now than I ever have. Clearly SOE is doing plenty to combat this problem. Without qualification, I appreciate Grimwells post in this thread. Some people, however, will simply not be satisfied, by anything. <shrug>

rubels

03-30-2007, 01:28 PM

Previous poster : So, going by your scheme of 6 farmer accounts and 1 seller account...if they ban each of those accounts, they'll make back $210.00, double what they would've made if they leave the farmers/sellers alone.Let's take it up a bit more, figure on average they ban a single account a day, but only on weekdays. Four weeks a month, 20 days. Twenty accounts a month left active, generates $300...while those same 20 accounts of farmers/sellers being banned would generate $600 because they have to buy the box again.- So what happens when a majority of legit players leave , because of this. There left with what they thought was a good money making strat as you pointed out .... downside is the plat farmers leave because no one is here anymore to buy. This leaves SOE with a choice IMO . What do you want in all reality , a legit game where you have happy , fair playing players that will stay around longer. The second option being the quick buck that was pointed out, the second option has the side effect of people leaving , people that buy plat in general dont stay long ..... until the next big thing comes out and the damaging affect that this game currently has of being lax in its efforts.Game Support : I understand that you have to justify the need to ban accounts and are using the tools as was posted earlier , we also understand that its time consumming. The major complaint is why does it take so long when you get thousands of posts , /petitions that name the same people breaking the rules to take action.Perfect examples of this are plat farmers that where using MOA trials to farm plat . That alone took almost three months on Naj server to solve. THREE MONTHS.... We want faster control on situations like this because if as stated that you do care , then the people that have hundreds of /petitions , complaints should be monitored and checked first. I also think that these areas should be monitored if its designated as a "hot spot". I hope you understand are concern these games are more then games to alot of us . They are home away from home. I just dont want to live in a third world country because it takes three months to control and has ruined are economy, what should of taken at most a day , perhaps two days to solve.Next note : This is to game devs ... why does it take so long to make hot patches on exploit bugs like the above MOA trial problem. Three months to put a simple lockout patch in on downtime is acceptable to the player community. I dont there is a single person that honestly plays fair whould argue that. In comparison you whould instantly patch the game "hot fix" if the raiding community found the same type of Fabled exploit that allowed us to farm gear at those rates.- Krovax

nitrous

03-30-2007, 01:34 PM

<sigh> The age old cry that SOE will never do anything because SOE loves the plat farmer, yada, yada, yada. Quite frankly this is getting old. It seems that many beleive this to be true, that SOE is taking no action. For those of you that belevie this I propose a challenge. If you truely belevie that SOE lets plat farming go unanswered then do the following.1. get the basic EQ2 account for what I beleive is $9.95 (that is what seems to have been reported on these forums.2. Pick a server, your own if you like. 3. Get one of the many spam tells you have received from one of the plat seller websites we all know by name.4. Now, start picking ppl at random and send em that tell that we all hate.5. Be sure to have a watch to time your time online.6. report back here how long you lasted before a GM booted you.I think doing these very steps will show once and for all that SOE is taking action. Any one up to this challenge?

Pain Divine

03-30-2007, 01:39 PM

Youris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>While appretiate Grimwells efforst here, his assurances arent enough for me. Fix the problem. SOE is shows no effort other than random cleverly worded posts about how they banned thousands of accounts... Wow, you did? Thats neat... but I'm still getting spam. Less talk, more action. </blockquote>I'm getting less spam, and email now than I ever have. Clearly SOE is doing plenty to combat this problem. Without qualification, I appreciate Grimwells post in this thread. Some people, however, will simply not be satisfied, by anything. <shrug></blockquote>Well, my spam as well as gone down over the past couple of days. But then again, it does that all the time. Unfortunately I don't think these periodic declines have anything to do with SOE... I think they have to do with when sales are down for the plat vendors. Meaning, the plat sales sites don't need to advertize right now because buisness is good. Maybe they are running low on supplys. Once they start building up too much of an inventory of plat... bam! We'll get hit again.

Silverpaws

03-30-2007, 01:54 PM

Every single MMO active today has gold/plat/status/gear/toon/prestige sales illegally. The only way to combat it is to stop buying it. The plat sellers are making money because of the loosers that buy from them. Blame them, and hunt those people down. If everyone was scared they would loose their account if they bought from these sellers, there wouldnt be a market for them. Until the buyers go away, there will always be sellers. Ask any drug dealer or pawn shop owner. All it would take is a month of following the plat farmer /petitions and banning every single person that bought from them. Word would get around fast. But SOE wont do that. Because that would mean alot more money lost for them than one or 2 accounts. They probably sell to at least 20 people a day. x30 days..... that alot of monthly service. SOE wont do it. So manage your guilds, and /petition buyers as often as possible if you have the information to back it up. Thats the only way it will be resolved. As for Vanguard, sales are good. Just check any of the plat sites. The bannings arent do much at all.

Tyrani

03-30-2007, 01:55 PM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. In vanguard the only spam you get is from the GMs.. when they broadcast server wide "SOANDSO HAS JUST BEEN BANNED FOR SELLING GOLD!!!"Now that's spam I don't mind.</blockquote> Yes, and so am I, but the point I was trying to make is that you were touting something Sigil did when SoE had already done it prior to Vanguard even being released.Just out of curiousity, did you play EQ2 before those changes were made? If so, you should know how bad it was before the trial account changes. If not, then I don't really think you can praise Vanguard for doing the same exact thing that SoE did.</blockquote>My account was opened the day EQ2 was released. For the first year or so there was NO spam. NONE. Farmers were a problem, but no annoying spam. While appretiate Grimwells efforst here, his assurances arent enough for me. Fix the problem. SOE is shows no effort other than random cleverly worded posts about how they banned thousands of accounts... Wow, you did? Thats neat... but I'm still getting spam. Less talk, more action. </blockquote>As someone else pointed out earlier in regards to Vanguard, with the majority of the playerbase still learning the game, mechanics, and areas for the first year, there is no demand for plat at that point. That explains the reason there was no spam. In addition, the farmers have to learn the best spots, get leveled, get geared up, develop bot programs, etc. I will admit, I wasn't around for the first year of EQ2, but I've been around for the first year of a lot of games and this is the case in all of them.As far as SoE showing no effort, I believe they've posted twice that they mass banned accounts that were linked to plat farming/selling. Is the only sign of effort you acknowledge is from someone shouting that soandso has been banned? How many of those broadcasts on Vanguard have you seen? Or, even better...SoE could be like Blizzard and mass ban accounts that were even pseudo-suspected of farming/power leveling and catch a ton of people who just like to play a lot and level faster than average. In my opinion it's better to thoroughly investigate and be damned sure that you're banning a legitimate farmer/seller than to mass ban and [Removed for Content] off legitimate paying players by having to go through an appeal process to get your account reinstated.

Jrral

03-30-2007, 04:29 PM

<cite>Grimwell wrote:</cite><blockquote>You may not see it, and therefore may not believe it, but it's happening each and every day. Volume is a part of the problem. If one plat farmer/seller falls through the cracks, it looks horrible to the people who see it. They think we don't know or don't care. </blockquote>I think one of the problems is visibility. Plat spammers are really visible, but their accounts are throw-away and no matter how much SOE does to them it won't make much visible difference. Meanwhile, the things that really affect the plat-sellers (eg. the Adamsbill incident) aren't very visible. A couple of things that might be helpful: * Add a /spam or similar command explicitly to do a /report on plat-selling or power-leveling spam. All it'd do is a /report with keywords automatically added after the target character name to let the automated script pick them up. It probably won't make much practical difference, but it's a very visible change that directly targets the most visible manifestation. * Adding back the in-game browser to handle petitions was one of the best changes in a long time. A big challenge is still there, though: how to pick categories for a petition. It'd be nice to have a guide page available listing common situations people might want to petition and what categories are appropriate or best for them. * A reputation system for petitioners. An ordinary petition is neutral, zero points. A really good petition, clear, to-the-point, and most importantly correct and true where the GMs can verify it's true and take action on it, gets a "good" rating, +1 point (or perhaps more for really good ones). A bad petition, one that's got false information in it, is utterly incomprehensible or is about something the petitioner should've known wasn't valid grounds for a petition, gets a "bogus" rating, -1 point. The account's points divided by the number of petitions gives a rating: how likely is it that this account's petitions are worth pursuing. Most people will hover around 0, neutral. People who consistently submit good petitions the GMs can act on quickly get a higher positive rating, push them to the front of the queue and maybe if the rating's high enough send it directly to the US GMs. People who consistently use the petition system to try and harrass others, or who keep clogging up the queue with junk, can be shoved down the priority list and dealt with when there's no other pressing issues.

bleap

03-30-2007, 04:38 PM

<cite>retro_guy wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>This is a letter on Vanguads main website to thier players. If SOE would adopt policies more like Sigils for EQ2, I think we'd have a LOT less problems with Spam and plat sales:----------------------------------Greetings! We would like to take a moment to thank our players for their assistance in helping us combat the RMT (real market trades), i.e. the gold selling and powerleveling organizations. Your assistance through reports and petitions has been invaluable to us in identifying these individuals and removing them from our game. Please continue to report individuals you suspect are involved in the transactions involving in-game items, money or services. With your help we have already banned more than 7000 gold selling, powerleveling and solicitation accounts used by various organizations.Some of these accounts were trial accounts and have resulted in our adjustment to the access a trial account has to some game mechanics. Moving forward trial accounts will not be able to be used in the delivery or advertisement of gold selling and powerleveling services.Further, we would like to reiterate how important it is that players not participate in RMT or have any association with companies that offer these services. Please be advised that we consider supporting these organizations a serious policy violation, and grounds for action against the offending account, up to and including the termination of the account.We remain very dedicated to the preservation and health of our economy and the integrity of our industry, and we hope that you, as players, expect nothing less. The Vanguard Customer Support Team!</blockquote> Um, SOE has had these same policies in place for a long time, which part are you particularly referring to? </blockquote>UMMM No...There is a big difference in having the policies in place and actually enforcing them...When have you ever seen SOE send out a message thanking their players for helping track down cheaters? It has never hapened. The closest they came was to warn us about plat dupers and tell us that we would be banned if we participated in the coin duping...BIG DIFFERENCE... This is a PROACTIVE stance taken by SIGIL...SOE doesn't even take musch of a reactive stance...They only thing they appear to do is ban accounts that send out tells for plat sales..Because they are easy to track down. They don't appear willing to put out the energy or resources it would take to actuall STOP the RMT sales...And if they aren't willing to do it, then they might as well condone it..

bleap

03-30-2007, 04:39 PM

bleap

03-30-2007, 04:42 PM

<cite>doctorbow wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ok spam is spam is spam... I just perused the EULA... yes, all of it. The only mention of RMT is on dedicated station exchange servers. With no note at all that it is prohibited on non-exchange servers. This doesn't necessarily indicated an 'endorsement' or a partnership with the plat-spammers, but it IS rather curious still, that the common public outcry from THEIR playerbase is that we want something DONE about it. They DO have a good enough game that enough people put up with it, and they know this, and there hasn't been enough done about it. So we sit and play, annoyed sometimes every 5 minutes. It's only text, but it BOTHERS ME that I PAY my SUBSCRIPTION TO SOE, and have to put up with ADVERTISEMENTS from some craptastic company in china that I don't want ANYTHING to do with!!!!! If I wanted to buy plat with RL Money, I would GO TO THE EXCHANGE server, I promise!!! But I don't, so I won't. and I don't want to see advertisements related to that during my gameplay, either... So, how about some REAL solutions? I will even offer up some terrific ideas. FIRST: CHANGE YOUR EULA. I'm happy that you have an exchange server for people that want to do this. Fair's fair. BUT: On a server where you do not officially ENDORSE it, then it should be officially CONDEMNED. FURTHERMORE, the accounts of those people that sell the farmed masters on public channels should be dealt with in the same manner as the sellers. Make it clear in the EULA that ANY plat-for-money transactions, or item-for-money transactions will be investigated, and the accounts dealt with as follows: Sellers Accounts: (IP's of account(s) should be noted) 1st offense: Account suspension, 1 month. 2nd: Account deletion. 3rd: IP suspension 1 month, then 3, then a year. That's basically 5 attempts from any given IP to break your EULA, before you bust 'em down permanently for an entire YEAR. Buyer's Accounts: 1st offense: Warning of EULA violation, WARNING of continuance will cause relocation to Exchange server. 2nd offense: Move them to the exchange server, free of charge!!! Guess what? If they want to buy plat, YES they should be free to do it, but it upsets economies when they do not have to put the same in-game effort to acquiring something that I might have to. They want to move back? Fine, they relinquish their purchased Plat (or have to 'buy-back' any plat they spent while on exchange) and STILL have to pay 50 bucks. And can't move back for 3 months. They were warned via the EULA, and a courtesy in-game warning as well. Let them pay the price. Well, then, how do you tell when one of these transactions has taken place? WELL first off: A POLLING system in-place on the main everquest2 website would be AWESOME. Split by server, ANY player can add the name of ANY OTHER player to this poll, and the numbers added up. This can also interface with an in-game /spammer (name) command that would tally the results. Because, I don't care WHAT kind of 'research' your CS staff has to do to determine the validity of spam reports, or bot reports, or any others. If you were to receive like, 200 reports a day of a suspected bot or spammer for a week or more, you can rest assure that they ARE in fact, a spammer. And if someone is just bein' a sphincter-clown and decides to put some random name on there, they won't be a blip on a radar if they have only 1 or 2 reports to their name (for instance, there are some people that do tend to be spammy while selling stuff, and might irritate somebody, but not everybody. they may get reported by 1 or 2 people, but they aren't the type of problem that we're talking about here, so would be overlooked). And then there's the people that all the players just KNOW is a spammer/seller, part of that 'network'... The point is, the real-life people that play your game also know it best. If we are given a real interface for reporting spammers specifically, other than the kinda shoddy /report-/petition system, the MASSES will tell you WHO needs to be banned. It needs to be separate from /report and /petition b/c petition can only have 1 open at a time, and IMO should only be used for REAL in-game issues, not this crap. As an example of people/players that simply do NOT get dealt with, on Everfrost, there is a player by the name of Buzo, who has alts Guardgo, and others. I have reported him COUNTLESS times. As have others. He is still around. IF a system like this were in place, and whole IP's banned from a result of countless accounts violating the EULA, the problem WOULD be eliminated. The fact is, SoE, this is YOUR game. YOU have a legal right to restrict access to ENTIRE IP ranges, if you so choose. It IS your property, and you do have a right to protect it. The warnings are a fair measure prior to blocking IP's that this activity will not be tolerated. They are welcome to PLAY on my server, just not to SELL on it, or Bot on it. They sell on it anyway? Fine, suspended for a month. Sell some more? Fine, account deleted. So they roll another account and sell some more? OK then we'll block your IP for a month or so. sell again? Delete account, block IP for another 3 months. Sell again? Delete account, block IP for a year. Peace and quiet. -Drakhammor, long-winded frustrated swashbuckler. 70. Everfrost. </blockquote>The EULA is not enforceable in most countries outside of the USA and it is at best vague there...But the part that says that SOE owns the rights to ALL contents of teh game is the part they are in violation of. They are selling in game coin which they do not own. You can't sell what you don't own. It's called theft...

bleap

03-30-2007, 04:46 PM

<cite>Nodok wrote:</cite><blockquote>doctorbow wrote: <blockquote>The point is, the real-life people that play your game also know it best. If we are given a real interface for reporting spammers specifically, other than the kinda shoddy /report-/petition system, the MASSES will tell you WHO needs to be banned. It needs to be separate from /report and /petition b/c petition can only have 1 open at a time, and IMO should only be used for REAL in-game issues, not this crap. </blockquote> I agree completely. Let the people who play this game and feel the impact of these farmers have their say. Someone suggested a polling system to vote on potential farmers. It could even be a private one where you simply /flag a suspected player. When someone reaches a threshold of /flags, they're investigated. Many have offered solid suggestions towards reducing this problem, but most official replies have been vague and quite frankly unhelpful. No offense meant Grimwell as I appreciate the hard work you guys do, but instead of dancing around the problem why not work with the community for some possible fixes? For starters let's get a serious discussion going, with firm SOE involvement and a genuine, observable commitment. This could go a long way towards reducing the conspiracies, not to mention actually coming up with real solutions. Most threads on this topic spiral into conspiracies and posts of "it'll never work, period". Neither are helpful to resolving the problem and should be moderated from any actual 'solution' discussion. Let's just focus on the issues and ways to resolve them. In short - give us a forum with mods who will keep the discussion on topic (like a focus group leader), and let us work towards a set of real, implementable solutions. Show us that you're truly committed to this problem and not just paying lip service. </blockquote> I agree completely, a good discussion with SOE with some serious suggestive fixes... it will never happen...SOE looks at their customers like lemmings...

bleap

03-30-2007, 04:49 PM

Youris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>While appretiate Grimwells efforst here, his assurances arent enough for me. Fix the problem. SOE is shows no effort other than random cleverly worded posts about how they banned thousands of accounts... Wow, you did? Thats neat... but I'm still getting spam. Less talk, more action. </blockquote>I'm getting less spam, and email now than I ever have. Clearly SOE is doing plenty to combat this problem. Without qualification, I appreciate Grimwells post in this thread. Some people, however, will simply not be satisfied, by anything. <shrug></blockquote>And some SHEEPLE will follow SOE anywhere they want to take this game...What's your point? If there is still spam/farmers/botters/plat buyers then it's still not fixed is it?

Jrral

03-30-2007, 04:50 PM

bleap

03-30-2007, 04:57 PM

<cite>nitrous wrote:</cite><blockquote><sigh> The age old cry that SOE will never do anything because SOE loves the plat farmer, yada, yada, yada. Quite frankly this is getting old. It seems that many beleive this to be true, that SOE is taking no action. For those of you that belevie this I propose a challenge. If you truely belevie that SOE lets plat farming go unanswered then do the following.1. get the basic EQ2 account for what I beleive is $9.95 (that is what seems to have been reported on these forums.2. Pick a server, your own if you like. 3. Get one of the many spam tells you have received from one of the plat seller websites we all know by name.4. Now, start picking ppl at random and send em that tell that we all hate.5. Be sure to have a watch to time your time online.6. report back here how long you lasted before a GM booted you.I think doing these very steps will show once and for all that SOE is taking action. Any one up to this challenge?</blockquote>SO again what's your point? It shouldn't have to come down to SOE banning the plat spammers...the plat spammers should never be able to get to send the spam in the first place...there are methods of making sure that 99.9% of the spam is removed before it ever gets to the players...To go along with that, farmers/botters/buyers and anyone else that supports or is in league with the RMT vendors need to be tracked down and banned...Something we can all say SOE does not do on a regular basis. We get lip service and maybe once in a while a few accounts other than the spammers might get banned...But I can tell you that there are obvious farmers and bot groups on Guk that have been there for a LONG time and have been /reported and /petitioned and they are still there...I don't believe for aminute that anything has been done to address them....The biggest culprit on Guk is a 70 Wiz. His toon is 7 months old, he has close to 10,000 rare harvests off the nodes..Now tell me how someone collects 10,000 rares in 7 months and still have time to get a toon to level 70 AND his trade skill level is in the 40s...I will tell you how..He plays 24/7....Now does he have super human powers? He has been petitioned many times...he is still there....it's been 7 months....

DngrMou

03-30-2007, 05:05 PM

<cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>Youris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>While appretiate Grimwells efforst here, his assurances arent enough for me. Fix the problem. SOE is shows no effort other than random cleverly worded posts about how they banned thousands of accounts... Wow, you did? Thats neat... but I'm still getting spam. Less talk, more action. </blockquote>I'm getting less spam, and email now than I ever have. Clearly SOE is doing plenty to combat this problem. Without qualification, I appreciate Grimwells post in this thread. Some people, however, will simply not be satisfied, by anything. <shrug></blockquote>And some SHEEPLE will follow SOE anywhere they want to take this game...What's your point? If there is still spam/farmers/botters/plat buyers then it's still not fixed is it? </blockquote>Point is, (and yes, I'm repeating myself), I'm receiving less spam, and email now than I ever have. Obviously SOE is doing something about this. Was that clear enough for you the second time around? Here, I'll say it again, just in case this point remains lost to you: I receive now less plat spam, less plat email than I ever have...it's been declining steadilly for some time. Clearly SOE is doing something about this problem.Honestly, I can't make it any clearer than that.

mellowknees72

03-30-2007, 05:07 PM

Can I just pop in here and say...<img src="http://nrrdgrrl.net/Things/deadhorse.gif" border="0">SOE IS working on the plat seller problem. How much convincing does it take for people to believe it? You probably don't see criminals getting busted on a daily basis in front of your house, but does that make you believe that the police never arrest anyone?Do you get spam in your personal email? I do. I get it at work, too. My IT department blacklists spammers DAILY but it still happens. Do you know why? They figure a way around whatever is done to block them. Someone out there must be buying "VIFAGRA", because I keep getting emails about it...just like someone out there must be buying a bunch of plat from online plat sellers. If they didn't make money doing it, they wouldn't bother.I *do* however, agree that it would be nice to get some sort of statistical update as a previous poster mentioned. But I don't *need* that information to know that SOE is actually investigating claims of abuse of the EULA. Honestly, there would still be a large part of the player population who would choose not to believe it...just like they don't believe responses from people who actually work for SOE.../Report and /petition work. I've done both several times, and each time I've been contacted by a GM within a matter of no more than 1 hour.

Ballads

03-30-2007, 05:20 PM

You people need to quit breaking SOE's balls. Of course they are trying to stop the plat sellers. They have most the methods in place you have asked for and they keep adding new methods to catch these thieves every update it seems. If you think they don't print off a report of large money transactions everyday on every server your wrong( are guild leader has been questioned before because he passes out a couple thousand plat every month in are split.) The plat sellers are not dumb either.Stop one account and they open 6 more. I think the main problem lies outside the game in the limitations put on the legal action soe is able to take against the people who do this. The gaming industry needs to push for more defined laws and harsher punishments for people who sell "an online commodity" for real world money. If company's like soe were able to prosecute the partys responsible instead of just banning the accounts they use this problem would be solved. Until then they will keep banning the accounts they use as they catch them and many will still slip by undoubtedly upsetting their player bases. They are doing their best . It is not a simple as many of you believe it to be. Cut them some slack and if called to vote on or support legislature that allows owners of online commoditys to prosecute these thieves make sure you do.

Pain Divine

03-30-2007, 05:28 PM

Pipes@Najena wrote: <blockquote>SOE IS working on the plat seller problem. How much convincing does it take for people to believe it? You probably don't see criminals getting busted on a daily basis in front of your house, but does that make you believe that the police never arrest anyone?Do you get spam in your personal email? I do. I get it at work, too. My IT department blacklists spammers DAILY but it still happens. Do you know why? They figure a way around whatever is done to block them. Someone out there must be buying "VIFAGRA", because I keep getting emails about it...just like someone out there must be buying a bunch of plat from online plat sellers. If they didn't make money doing it, they wouldn't bother.I *do* however, agree that it would be nice to get some sort of statistical update as a previous poster mentioned. But I don't *need* that information to know that SOE is actually investigating claims of abuse of the EULA. Honestly, there would still be a large part of the player population who would choose not to believe it...just like they don't believe responses from people who actually work for SOE.../Report and /petition work. I've done both several times, and each time I've been contacted by a GM within a matter of no more than 1 hour.</blockquote>Your arguments are totally unrelated to our situation, and clearly show that you don't really understand the problem. Comparing this to email or crime is silly... I do receive spam in my email... but from servers outside by ISPs control. I have NEVER gotten a spam email from someone at my own ISP. Inside EQ2, EVERYONE is under the same ISP... SOE. So, SOE is entirely to blame for the problem. And you mention filters? OMG, we'd LOVE to have the same filtering ability that normal email clients do... and it would be so simple for SOE to implement... but they do not. Use /petition? Sure... but I've been using /petition in this game for YEARS and I STILL get spam. We are not beating a dead horse... this horse is alive and well... and still kicking. You want to convince us? Do what sigil does. Broadcast the bannings. SOE brags about how seriously they investigate these issues to make absolutely sure before banning someone... So there is no question that the banned are guilty. So let us know who they are... That'll be a start.

mellowknees72

03-30-2007, 05:37 PM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>Pipes@Najena wrote: <blockquote>SOE IS working on the plat seller problem. How much convincing does it take for people to believe it? You probably don't see criminals getting busted on a daily basis in front of your house, but does that make you believe that the police never arrest anyone?Do you get spam in your personal email? I do. I get it at work, too. My IT department blacklists spammers DAILY but it still happens. Do you know why? They figure a way around whatever is done to block them. Someone out there must be buying "VIFAGRA", because I keep getting emails about it...just like someone out there must be buying a bunch of plat from online plat sellers. If they didn't make money doing it, they wouldn't bother.I *do* however, agree that it would be nice to get some sort of statistical update as a previous poster mentioned. But I don't *need* that information to know that SOE is actually investigating claims of abuse of the EULA. Honestly, there would still be a large part of the player population who would choose not to believe it...just like they don't believe responses from people who actually work for SOE.../Report and /petition work. I've done both several times, and each time I've been contacted by a GM within a matter of no more than 1 hour.</blockquote>Your arguments are totally unrelated to our situation, and clearly show that you don't really understand the problem. Comparing this to email or crime is silly... I do receive spam in my email... but from servers outside by ISPs control. I have NEVER gotten a spam email from someone at my own ISP. Inside EQ2, EVERYONE is under the same ISP... SOE. So, SOE is entirely to blame for the problem. And you mention filters? OMG, we'd LOVE to have the same filtering ability that normal email clients do... and it would be so simple for SOE to implement... but they do not. Use /petition? Sure... but I've been using /petition in this game for YEARS and I STILL get spam. We are not beating a dead horse... this horse is alive and well... and still kicking. You want to convince us? Do what sigil does. Broadcast the bannings. SOE brags about how seriously they investigate these issues to make absolutely sure before banning someone... So there is no question that the banned are guilty. So let us know who they are... That'll be a start. </blockquote> They HAVE broadcasted about bannings and clean-up:<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=267134" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=267134</a>But apparently even when they DO let us know, people are still not satisfied.And, yeah, clearly I don't understand the problem. /sigh.

sah

03-30-2007, 05:43 PM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>Your arguments are totally unrelated to our situation, and clearly show that you don't really understand the problem. Compairing this to email or crime is silly... I do recieve spam in my email... but from servers outside by ISPs control. I have NEVER gotton a spam email from someone at my own ISP. Inside EQ2, EVERYONE is under the same ISP... SOE. So, SOE is entirely to blaim for the problem. And you mention filters? OMG, we'd LOVE to have the same filtering ability that normal email clients do... and it would be so simply for SOE to implament... but they do not. Use /petition? Sure... but I've been using /petition in this game for YEARS and I STILL get spam. We are not beating a dead horse... this horse is alive and well... and still kicking. You want to convince us? Do what sigil does. Broadcast the bannings. SOE brags about how seriously they investigate these issues to make absolutely sure before banning someone... So there is no question that the banned are guilty. So let us know who they are... That'll be a start. </blockquote>technically, bleap is the one who originally compared this to crime when he called plat sellers thieves...SOE is working on the problem and I think they've done a pretty decent job...During a 15 hour play session, I receive maybe 2-3 tells whereas almost a year ago I could have received over a hundred tells in that time period...Also, I do support chat filters but I was just curious exactly what would you filter out? can't filter out words like buy/sell or plat because then I can't ask someone "can i buy the master for 10plat?"...filtering out gmworker would be useless because it'd cost them like $5 to get a new website and updating the chat filter would require bringing down the server for a while...so what do you filter?????

Fish

03-30-2007, 05:54 PM

I do not believe I have ever posted to these forums before and probably will be quite some time before I post again, as I am sure I am about to become a flaming wreck. My point is this: You all sit and bemoan the humble plat farmer that is out there doing a job (quite possibly the only one they are able to find) to support a family in a country where the economy is so poor that the pittance they recieve for farming can support a family. If you don't want to hear from the spammers use /ignore_user or block them in your friends list. Delete the emails you recieve ingame (how long does this hold up your extremely busy "Play-Schedule" keyword PLAY). I have never bought a plat or sold one either for that matter, and yet by playing I am supporting Plat farming and so are you! If you have ever bought a crafted item, harvested item (rare or common), treasured, legendary, or even fabled item from the broker you have supported a Plat farmer in some way. If you are a complete and total idealist and have only leveled to your current level using nothing but your own skills crafting and buying only from npc's I salute you as you are a much more astute player than I can ever be. I do doubt there are many of you out there. So in closing and preparation for the flames I am sure will follow, Pull your heads out of the sand and suck it up!! Deal with it as a part of the realm we play in that there are people and bots out there farming for plat. Use them or not it makes zero difference to me but I sure like be able to sell my loot and crafted items on the broker so I can save up and buy that rare master spell some poor working stiff (Plat farmer) has looted from a master chest that I have never been able to find.

Pain Divine

03-30-2007, 05:58 PM

I'd filter the websites.

bleap

03-30-2007, 06:21 PM

Pipes@Najena wrote: <blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>Pipes@Najena wrote: <blockquote>SOE IS working on the plat seller problem. How much convincing does it take for people to believe it? You probably don't see criminals getting busted on a daily basis in front of your house, but does that make you believe that the police never arrest anyone?Do you get spam in your personal email? I do. I get it at work, too. My IT department blacklists spammers DAILY but it still happens. Do you know why? They figure a way around whatever is done to block them. Someone out there must be buying "VIFAGRA", because I keep getting emails about it...just like someone out there must be buying a bunch of plat from online plat sellers. If they didn't make money doing it, they wouldn't bother.I *do* however, agree that it would be nice to get some sort of statistical update as a previous poster mentioned. But I don't *need* that information to know that SOE is actually investigating claims of abuse of the EULA. Honestly, there would still be a large part of the player population who would choose not to believe it...just like they don't believe responses from people who actually work for SOE.../Report and /petition work. I've done both several times, and each time I've been contacted by a GM within a matter of no more than 1 hour.</blockquote>Your arguments are totally unrelated to our situation, and clearly show that you don't really understand the problem. Comparing this to email or crime is silly... I do receive spam in my email... but from servers outside by ISPs control. I have NEVER gotten a spam email from someone at my own ISP. Inside EQ2, EVERYONE is under the same ISP... SOE. So, SOE is entirely to blame for the problem. And you mention filters? OMG, we'd LOVE to have the same filtering ability that normal email clients do... and it would be so simple for SOE to implement... but they do not. Use /petition? Sure... but I've been using /petition in this game for YEARS and I STILL get spam. We are not beating a dead horse... this horse is alive and well... and still kicking. You want to convince us? Do what sigil does. Broadcast the bannings. SOE brags about how seriously they investigate these issues to make absolutely sure before banning someone... So there is no question that the banned are guilty. So let us know who they are... That'll be a start. </blockquote> They HAVE broadcasted about bannings and clean-up:<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=267134" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=267134</a>But apparently even when they DO let us know, people are still not satisfied.And, yeah, clearly I don't understand the problem. /sigh.</blockquote>WHOOP TEE DOOO they did this a grand total of ONE time, the spam got worse right after this was released and we started getting spam in our in game mail...YEAH that helped.... They don't broadcast their bannings, they don't make the information public and they don't enforce their own rules about cheating...Maybe people are not satisfied because the problem still exists...It isn't just about the spam in game, it's the big picture...CHEATERS IN THE GAME! We want SOE to so something about the CHEATERS IN THEIR GAME.... I'm sorry, but one little message about how they have banned 5000 accounts just isn't enough. Those that have been hanging around SOE games long enough know not to buy into everything that SOE says...Like "we aren't raising the price of station access because of Vanguard" 2 weeks after Vanguard announces that it fell WAY short of subcriptions to break even...They must think we are all following them blindly

bleap

03-30-2007, 06:25 PM

<cite>Ballads wrote:</cite><blockquote> You people need to quit breaking SOE's balls. Of course they are trying to stop the plat sellers. They have most the methods in place you have asked for and they keep adding new methods to catch these thieves every update it seems. If you think they don't print off a report of large money transactions everyday on every server your wrong( are guild leader has been questioned before because he passes out a couple thousand plat every month in are split.) The plat sellers are not dumb either.Stop one account and they open 6 more. I think the main problem lies outside the game in the limitations put on the legal action soe is able to take against the people who do this. The gaming industry needs to push for more defined laws and harsher punishments for people who sell "an online commodity" for real world money. If company's like soe were able to prosecute the partys responsible instead of just banning the accounts they use this problem would be solved. Until then they will keep banning the accounts they use as they catch them and many will still slip by undoubtedly upsetting their player bases. They are doing their best . It is not a simple as many of you believe it to be. Cut them some slack and if called to vote on or support legislature that allows owners of online commoditys to prosecute these thieves make sure you do. </blockquote>What new methods to catch these thieves? Name something new they have done to catch them? The only thing they have done is break their own game so that spammers can no longer send the mass tells from the newbie island and while on a free trial...But by doing so, they have also broken the game for any potential new players....It's not a fix, it's a band aide... LOL riiiiiight ...their best... HELLO....THEY ARE IN CHINA! our laws and governement have no control over this....DUHHHHHHH

bleap

03-30-2007, 06:33 PM

Youris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote><cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>Youris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>While appretiate Grimwells efforst here, his assurances arent enough for me. Fix the problem. SOE is shows no effort other than random cleverly worded posts about how they banned thousands of accounts... Wow, you did? Thats neat... but I'm still getting spam. Less talk, more action. </blockquote>I'm getting less spam, and email now than I ever have. Clearly SOE is doing plenty to combat this problem. Without qualification, I appreciate Grimwells post in this thread. Some people, however, will simply not be satisfied, by anything. <shrug></blockquote>And some SHEEPLE will follow SOE anywhere they want to take this game...What's your point? If there is still spam/farmers/botters/plat buyers then it's still not fixed is it? </blockquote>Point is, (and yes, I'm repeating myself), I'm receiving less spam, and email now than I ever have. Obviously SOE is doing something about this. Was that clear enough for you the second time around? Here, I'll say it again, just in case this point remains lost to you: I receive now less plat spam, less plat email than I ever have...it's been declining steadilly for some time. Clearly SOE is doing something about this problem.Honestly, I can't make it any clearer than that. </blockquote>It's not only the spam...its the whole problem....farmers/bots/sellers/BUYERS....Sure the spam has been lessened...because SOE has broken part of their own game to stop it...for now...it will only be a matter of time before they find a hole around this band aid... If SOE really wanted to stop this, they could just shut off the IP string from their ISPs....problem solved...and if they change ISP, do it again...but that won't happen...So no serious attempt has ever been made to stop the plat cheaters....Turning off their IPs would make it impossible for them to access the game to distribute the plat that people buy...problem solved...But that would be less profit for SOE....so forget about that ever happening..

mellowknees72

03-30-2007, 07:04 PM

<cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>HELLO....THEY ARE IN CHINA! our laws and governement have no control over this....DUHHHHHHH </blockquote> Dude...do you really want to have a productive discussion, or just yell at people?

Wossname

03-30-2007, 07:05 PM

sah

03-30-2007, 07:11 PM

<cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>It's not only the spam...its the whole problem....farmers/bots/sellers/BUYERS....Sure the spam has been lessened...because SOE has broken part of their own game to stop it...for now...it will only be a matter of time before they find a hole around this band aid... </blockquote>I don't think what they've done has broken the game...someone who wants to talk to their friend just has to have their friend put on them on their friends list...and there is really no need for a player on the newbie island to be in a guild or to be able to send mail...and you keep emphasizing buyers but noone in their right mind would go after the buyers...it's the same reason that the police and DEA focus more on drug manufacturers and sellers rather than individual users...it's a huge waste of resources that is much more ineffective than going after the sellers...the RIAA is the only organization stupid enough to go after their customers and it costs them tens of thousands of dollars per individual and ultimately does nothing more than [Removed for Content] off their customers...And supporting something and not doing enough to stop something are two different things...The US government didn't do enough to stop 9/11 but that doesn't mean that they supported it (unless you're one of those conspiracy theorists)...Sure, if SOE hired dozens of new people dedicated solely to going after plat sellers and allocated their entire dev team to figuring out a way to stop it, I'm sure they'd come up with something within a couple months but that'd be a huge waste of their resources and cost them much more money than it's worth...People are complaining that the recent DFC revamp didn't do enough and the dev in charge of the revamp has hinted that that was because significant artist and programming resources have already been assigned to the next expansion...and ultimately, the majority of players would rather pay for new content than to see the devs spend months coming up with a nearly perfect system to stop farmers and sellers that would only last several months before the plat sellers have found a way around the system and are back in business...

sah

03-30-2007, 07:20 PM

<cite>Wossname wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Grimwell wrote:</cite><blockquote>Interesting. So, as a guy new to the company I was very interested to see how this sort of stuff was handled for EQII. What I have learned is that /petitions and /reports are investigated, and the platinum farmers and sellers are banned daily. It's not something that is trumpeted out to the world at large because that isn't something we do. You may not see it, and therefore may not believe it, but it's happening each and every day. Volume is a part of the problem. If one plat farmer/seller falls through the cracks, it looks horrible to the people who see it. They think we don't know or don't care. If it only takes one plat spammer to get through the net and send the volume of /tells I get then you should really be getting a clue that your system is failing horribly. I just spent a few hours over in CS yesterday watching the GM's put the tools to use, it was pretty cool to see how a /petition on one person could be investigated and acted upon (Yes, I watched accounts get banned for this activity). The rough spot was that it took some time. We can't just ban an account because someone says "Plat farmer!!!" There has to be some investigation to make sure we aren't banning someone who has an angry friend. Each /petition has to be investigated carefully, by real people here in San Diego, and that takes time -- which causes perception issues. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Careful investigation? Pull the other one, it takes all of about 5s to read the /report log on a /petition and see it contains plat spam... Bleap, we don't have any advertisements on the community websites. EQ2 Players, and EverQuest2.com don't have ads at all. No banners, no towers... so no space for sale. I'm pleased that Sigil is able to draw their own line and follow up on it, but I would hate to think that this makes people feel that we don't care or spend time trying to stem the tide. You'll be needing to get used to hating to think that then. No-one I know thinks you are doing anything let alone a good job on spam. 5+ spam /tells an hour from level 1 toons on the Queen's Colony is hard evidence your reactive system is useless to combat the deluge of spam. </blockquote> </blockquote> I wouldn't say that they're system is failing horribly...a year ago I could have received over a hunder plat tells in a single play session (yes I have no life) but nowadays it's down to 2-3 tells per session which is a huge improvement...and considering that I get on average 5-10 spam e-mails per day I'd say they've done a decent job...Also, the careful investigation seemed to be aimed at plat farmers not spammers...It probably doesn't take more than a few minutes to ban a spammer's account but farmers do require investigation...I know tons of people who go around farming but as far as I know, none of them support plat sellers...5+ tells per hour nowadays seems like an exaggeration...I usually spend over 12 hours a day online and it is rare for me to get 5 tells in a single day...I have started seeing a slight increase recently though especially in mail so it does seem like the spammers are adapting and becoming more efficient in getting their spams out...

Mirander_1

03-30-2007, 07:52 PM

<cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>What new methods to catch these thieves? Name something new they have done to catch them? The only thing they have done is break their own game so that spammers can no longer send the mass tells from the newbie island and while on a free trial...But by doing so, they have also broken the game for any potential new players....It's not a fix, it's a band aide... </blockquote>Then why are people celebrating Vanguard "breaking their own game" in the exact same way? When EQ2 does it, it's breaking the game, when VG does it, it's a "good way to manage plat vendors". This is really the only preventative measure that can be taken against these people, yet when SOE takes it, some people have to kick up a s*** storm. And really, there is no 'fixing' the problem, because, short of turning the game into some sort of online police state, sellers are going to find workarounds for every action on SOE's part, it just makes them work a little harder, and spend a little more money on new accounts By the way, I'm still waiting for someone to say, besides anouncing every ban, how VG's anti-plat-seller methods are any different from EQ2's. Everything else I hear of sounds exactly the same.

Mirander_1

03-30-2007, 07:55 PM

<cite>Wossname wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Grimwell wrote:</cite><blockquote> I just spent a few hours over in CS yesterday watching the GM's put the tools to use, it was pretty cool to see how a /petition on one person could be investigated and acted upon (Yes, I watched accounts get banned for this activity). The rough spot was that it took some time. We can't just ban an account because someone says "Plat farmer!!!" There has to be some investigation to make sure we aren't banning someone who has an angry friend. Each /petition has to be investigated carefully, by real people here in San Diego, and that takes time -- which causes perception issues. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Careful investigation? Pull the other one, it takes all of about 5s to read the /report log on a /petition and see it contains plat spam... </blockquote> </blockquote>Grimwell's talking about farmers and botters, not spammers. They can't just go and ban everyone accused of farming just on some random person's say-so.

liveja

03-30-2007, 08:41 PM

<cite>sahet wrote:</cite><blockquote>5+ tells per hour nowadays seems like an exaggeration </blockquote>I think so, too. I have gotten exactly 2 messages & 1 e-mail, across all 5 of my characters, in the last 3 months. I just have a very difficult time believing people are getting 5 or more per hour.

bleap

03-31-2007, 01:27 AM

Pipes@Najena wrote: <blockquote><cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>HELLO....THEY ARE IN CHINA! our laws and governement have no control over this....DUHHHHHHH </blockquote> Dude...do you really want to have a productive discussion, or just yell at people?</blockquote> First off I am not a DUDE...I don't have the right parts to be a DUDE.. And forgive me, It appears that the person who posted this had no idea of what he was speaking.

bleap

03-31-2007, 01:34 AM

<cite>Mirander_1 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>What new methods to catch these thieves? Name something new they have done to catch them? The only thing they have done is break their own game so that spammers can no longer send the mass tells from the newbie island and while on a free trial...But by doing so, they have also broken the game for any potential new players....It's not a fix, it's a band aide... </blockquote>Then why are people celebrating Vanguard "breaking their own game" in the exact same way? When EQ2 does it, it's breaking the game, when VG does it, it's a "good way to manage plat vendors". This is really the only preventative measure that can be taken against these people, yet when SOE takes it, some people have to kick up a s*** storm. And really, there is no 'fixing' the problem, because, short of turning the game into some sort of online police state, sellers are going to find workarounds for every action on SOE's part, it just makes them work a little harder, and spend a little more money on new accounts By the way, I'm still waiting for someone to say, besides anouncing every ban, how VG's anti-plat-seller methods are any different from EQ2's. Everything else I hear of sounds exactly the same. </blockquote>]I saw nothing in that letter that said they had broken their game...They have fixed the TRIAL version to prevent plat spamming, but it doesn't say HOW they fixed it.... Many peple have already pointed out the one key method to getting rid of the sellers...get rid of the buyers...bannings..get rid of them all and don't allow them to use their credit card number to make a new account...How hard an it be to comprehend that if you remove the buyers the sellers will go away...It doesn't need to be a police state, it just needs to be a controled environment...and that already exists...

bleap

03-31-2007, 01:49 AM

<cite>sahet wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>It's not only the spam...its the whole problem....farmers/bots/sellers/BUYERS....Sure the spam has been lessened...because SOE has broken part of their own game to stop it...for now...it will only be a matter of time before they find a hole around this band aid... </blockquote>I don't think what they've done has broken the game...someone who wants to talk to their friend just has to have their friend put on them on their friends list...and there is really no need for a player on the newbie island to be in a guild or to be able to send mail...and you keep emphasizing buyers but noone in their right mind would go after the buyers...it's the same reason that the police and DEA focus more on drug manufacturers and sellers rather than individual users...it's a huge waste of resources that is much more ineffective than going after the sellers...the RIAA is the only organization stupid enough to go after their customers and it costs them tens of thousands of dollars per individual and ultimately does nothing more than [Removed for Content] off their customers...And supporting something and not doing enough to stop something are two different things...The US government didn't do enough to stop 9/11 but that doesn't mean that they supported it (unless you're one of those conspiracy theorists)...Sure, if SOE hired dozens of new people dedicated solely to going after plat sellers and allocated their entire dev team to figuring out a way to stop it, I'm sure they'd come up with something within a couple months but that'd be a huge waste of their resources and cost them much more money than it's worth...People are complaining that the recent DFC revamp didn't do enough and the dev in charge of the revamp has hinted that that was because significant artist and programming resources have already been assigned to the next expansion...and ultimately, the majority of players would rather pay for new content than to see the devs spend months coming up with a nearly perfect system to stop farmers and sellers that would only last several months before the plat sellers have found a way around the system and are back in business...</blockquote>WHOOOOAAAAA there....I lost family and co workers in the attacks on 911...The US government might have had some warning that there was going to be an attack, but they had no idea where or when it would take place...that's out of line...the ENTIRE blame for the 911 attacks fall SQUARELY on the shoulders of muslim extremists....Now lets get back to the topic at hand.... NOW then, don't go quoting about how law enforcement doesn't go after the drug users...We (that's right "We" as in I am in law enforcement) enforce those laws jsut as firmly as the ones that make sale and distribution illegal...We attack the snake from both ends....Just like SOE should be doing...instead they are wasting their resources attacking the problem from the end that is the hardest to reach. These plat sellers are not located in a country where our laws can reach, we have no juristiction AND attempts to have the laws in those countries enforced have failed miserably...It's also the hardest to enforce from a technology stand point. The plat spammers will continue to come up with new ways to get their messages out to the players...if you remove the buyers, and make sure the other players understand a no tolerance stance they will think twice before buying plat....They might do it again, and SOE has the tools to find out and ban their account for good.

Tid

03-31-2007, 09:34 AM

Heres the deal, Working for a leading MMO, I can say that Gold Farmers/sweatshops/Real world Traders are in violation of SOE's intellectual property, now this law is not recognised by countries in which 90% of these farmers operate. You could ban them all day long, but they will come back and change the way they operate. This industry in which they work is worth 100's of millions of £/$. Why would they stop, yes SOE could take them down, but the amount of resources they would have to use would be costly.

liveja

03-31-2007, 09:57 AM

bleap wrote: <blockquote>NOW then, don't go quoting about how law enforcement doesn't go after the drug users...We (that's right "We" as in I am in law enforcement) enforce those laws jsut as firmly as the ones that make sale and distribution illegalUm ... well, that's pretty much not true in California, & it's not much more true any where else in the United States. US law enforcement is far more predicated on eliminating supply, not demand, of drugs. If that weren't true, the President of Mexico would not be telling us to change our policies to go more after demand as well.It's true that law enforcement goes after the supply, rather than the demand, for the simple reason that truly affecting the demand would require draconian measures that would likely prove self-defeating. That is almost certainly true of eliminating the demand for plats, as well. If you think otherwise, kindly come up with suggestions for the bullet-proof way by which SOE will prove this well-grounded theory incorrect.It's also the hardest to enforce from a technology stand point. The plat spammers will continue to come up with new ways to get their messages out to the playersWhich is precisely why ideas such as "text filtering", etc., have been suggested numerous times in the past, & been shot down, because they don't work. That is why suggestions -- which you have made -- to the effect that ANY filter is better than what we have, which is nothing more than emotion-laden rhetoric, besides being utterly untrue. Now, however, it seems you're playing a different tune, acknowledging that technical measures of going after plat sellers & spammers won't work, & are instead claiming SOE should emphasize going after the buyer as well.Too bad that most likely won't work any better than going after the buyer works in the real world.no toleranceIMHO, "zero tolerance" = "zero brains".</blockquote>

Lord_Quaymar

03-31-2007, 11:01 AM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote><cite>Tyranire wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE has had limitations on the Free Trial accounts and the Buddy Accounts to combat this very thing.</blockquote>uh huh... I'm still getting spammed. In vanguard the only spam you get is from the GMs.. when they broadcast server wide "SOANDSO HAS JUST BEEN BANNED FOR SELLING GOLD!!!"Now that's spam I don't mind.</blockquote>And, oddly enough, we STILL get gold sales tells in Vanguard. Even with all they do in Vanguard, the tells continue just like here in EQ.Like I have said before, they cannot and will not ever be stopped until and unless people stop buying from them.

bleap

03-31-2007, 11:41 AM

I think we can all agree that there are things that SOE could do but have not. I think we can all agree that SOE COULD take a harder stand but they have not. I kow SOE thinks that the heavier stand would not be appreciated by their players, I also think that they are wrong. How many players do you know that think cheating in any game is OK? Most likely if they think cheating is OK they are.... People have applauded Sigil's stance on the matter Even if they can only stop a portion of the spam and transactions they are showing their customers that they are actually TRYING to combat this problem SOE has made exactly one post claiming to have banned 5000 accounts. We all see farmers/botters in game every day and we know what they are doing with the coin. We see in game spam and mail every day...what we don't see is communication from SOE telling us how many they banned or announcements of who gets banned or action against farmers/botters... ....This thread pretty much shows that SOE could take the same PUBLIC stance and people would applaud it too...It MIGHT even bring back some players that left... How can it hurt? Do you think that more people would actually say "SOE is being too harsh on those poor plat buyers and sellers, I am leaving in protest"? It's not going to make the game a "police state" as someone posted...It's all done in the back ground...If you have nothing to hide, you have no worries....If you have something to hide, then prepare to lose your account....It's that simple...

Rijacki

03-31-2007, 11:59 AM

SOE has made a lot more than just one post on it. You might not have been around long enough to know that, though. Sure, they don't make posts weekly or have in-game spam announcing bannings (which -I- would find exceedingly intrusive and probably leave the game over). Sigil hasn't said anything or done anything (aside from the in-game announcements) that SOE hasn't.

SageGaspar

03-31-2007, 12:21 PM

I don't dig the in-game announcements in Vanguard much either, but they claimed they were to encourage people to delete open petitions on the plat sellers to reduce the CS response time somewhere into the realm of reality, so I was okay with that. I don't really get why people care so much about it in this game. Ultimately it means very little. It's a stupidity tax that some people have figured out a way to collect. I got a couple spams three weeks ago when I first renewed my account and then none at all. If I weighed the amount that plat sellers, buyers, farmers, whatever have actually affected my game, I'd much rather SoE bilked them out of more money to fund the game for the rest of us if that is indeed what they are doing.

Noaani

03-31-2007, 12:33 PM

Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>I'd filter the websites. </blockquote>platsellerURL.com platsellerURL.co m platsellerURL.c om platsellerURL. com platsellerURL .com platsellerUR L.com platsellerU RL.com platseller URL.com platselle rURL.com platsell erURL.com platsel lerURL.com platse llerURL.com plats ellerURL.com plat sellerURL.com pla tsellerURL.com pl atsellerURL.com p latsellerURL.com platsellerURL.c o m platsellerURL. co m platsellerURL .co m platsellerUR L.co m platsellerU RL.co m platseller URL.co m platselle rURL.co m... etcThen there is the fact that URLs are a dime a dozen...Exactly how many words do you want in the filter that every single /tell or other message in game? You *DO* realise that each word added to a filter like that would add more lag, right?

Wossname

03-31-2007, 12:36 PM

<cite>livejazz wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>sahet wrote:</cite><blockquote>5+ tells per hour nowadays seems like an exaggeration </blockquote>I think so, too. I have gotten exactly 2 messages & 1 e-mail, across all 5 of my characters, in the last 3 months. I just have a very difficult time believing people are getting 5 or more per hour.</blockquote> Then you must play US primetime. When the CS guys are sleeping the spammers know perfectly well that they can do what they want with no fear that any /petition against them will be acted on. It is very noticeable that the spam /tells rate varies predictably through the day.

liveja

03-31-2007, 01:04 PM

<cite>Wossname wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>livejazz wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>sahet wrote:</cite><blockquote>5+ tells per hour nowadays seems like an exaggeration </blockquote>I think so, too. I have gotten exactly 2 messages & 1 e-mail, across all 5 of my characters, in the last 3 months. I just have a very difficult time believing people are getting 5 or more per hour.</blockquote> Then you must play US primetime. </blockquote>Nope, my primary play time is early morning, PST. I actually had a plat seller email in my box this morning; first one I've seen in more than a week. I can't remember the last time I had a tell on my main, but I did get one the other day on my n00b alt, before I remembered to put him on /roleplay./shrug

sah

03-31-2007, 04:47 PM

Noaani wrote: <blockquote>platsellerURL.com platsellerURL.co m platsellerURL.c om platsellerURL. com platsellerURL .com platsellerUR L.com platsellerU RL.com platseller URL.com platselle rURL.com platsell erURL.com platsel lerURL.com platse llerURL.com plats ellerURL.com plat sellerURL.com pla tsellerURL.com pl atsellerURL.com p latsellerURL.com platsellerURL.c o m platsellerURL. co m platsellerURL .co m platsellerUR L.co m platsellerU RL.co m platseller URL.co m platselle rURL.co m... etcThen there is the fact that URLs are a dime a dozen...Exactly how many words do you want in the filter that every single /tell or other message in game? You *DO* realise that each word added to a filter like that would add more lag, right? </blockquote>This is the perfect example of why text filtering won't work...The plat sellers would probably be able to buy hundreds of domain names for like a dollar each and SOE would be able to add maybe 3 of them to the chat filter every week...It would take an average person seconds to find a way around any simple chat filter but any more complex chat filters would generate significantly more lag...in the above example, anyone would just remove the spaces and see the address perfectly, but if a computer were to do that, it would essentially turn a linear amount of linear time operations into a big quadratic time operation which is really bad...Also, I never said that the police doesn't go after drug users, I said that they focus most of their effort on the suppliers...If I were to go clubbing in LA or NYC I could easily pass dozens of people using illegal drugs; why the hell isn't the police arresting them all?...the DEA spends thousands of man-hours going after a single drug dealer; why the hell didn't they put that effort into arresting the half dozen or so people who smoked marijuana in my dorm room's bathroom every week?...because it's a much for efficient and effective use of resources to go after suppliers than to go after buyers...I'm sure the police won't ignore someone who they see buying drugs just like SOE probably won't hesitate to ban someone that they're 100% sure is buying plat but the majority of their effort is focused on the sellers, which is where it should be...

Vonotar

03-31-2007, 06:10 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pain Divine wrote: <blockquote>I'd filter the websites. </blockquote>platsellerURL.com platsellerURL.co m platsellerURL.c om platsellerURL. com platsellerURL .com platsellerUR L.com platsellerU RL.com platseller URL.com platselle rURL.com platsell erURL.com platsel lerURL.com platse llerURL.com plats ellerURL.com plat sellerURL.com pla tsellerURL.com pl atsellerURL.com p latsellerURL.com platsellerURL.c o m platsellerURL. co m platsellerURL .co m platsellerUR L.co m platsellerU RL.co m platseller URL.co m platselle rURL.co m... etcThen there is the fact that URLs are a dime a dozen...Exactly how many words do you want in the filter that every single /tell or other message in game? You *DO* realise that each word added to a filter like that would add more lag, right? </blockquote>Exactly. I know a certain UK based gambling site that changes one of it's URLs everytime the Chinese Government blocks it ;o)) Gotta keep those customers!

liveja

03-31-2007, 07:09 PM

O forget it, I tried to edit this post & it just wigged on me.All I can say is that I'm glad SOE chooses not to be so heavy-handed, & that the current situation is just fine by me, & whatever Sigil chooses to do is entirely Sigil's business, whatever SOE chooses to do is SOE's business, & that's pretty much the end of it.If you don't like the way either of them does business, don't do business with them. It's that simple.

rubels

04-01-2007, 03:22 AM

Silly thought , why not ban the credit card numbers and nameds based off those cards. For example Joe stevens uses card xxx x x x x x he gets banned... this in affect bans Joe Stevens Name as a customer and that specific card. This chould also be tied into address on file to prevent #2 Joe Stevens not being able to join or use his card. Since the cards are tied to a address.In addition have Joe Stevens IP logged and banned. Link that IP to any new log ons from other accounts so BOB Smith logs on from that IP .... banned instantly. This prevents them from using diffrent cards, changing IPS etc. As stated so Joe Steven (first example) changes his IP reregisters a "new account" and even changes cards .... unless they pack up out there coffee shops .... banned.Just a thought .... any feed back or ways to mod it . Serious thoughts on how to fix this problem please post.- Krovax

sah

04-01-2007, 03:42 AM

<cite>rubelson wrote:</cite><blockquote>Silly thought , why not ban the credit card numbers and nameds based off those cards. For example Joe stevens uses card xxx x x x x x he gets banned... this in affect bans Joe Stevens Name as a customer and that specific card. This chould also be tied into address on file to prevent #2 Joe Stevens not being able to join or use his card. Since the cards are tied to a address.In addition have Joe Stevens IP logged and banned. Link that IP to any new log ons from other accounts so BOB Smith logs on from that IP .... banned instantly. This prevents them from using diffrent cards, changing IPS etc. As stated so Joe Steven (first example) changes his IP reregisters a "new account" and even changes cards .... unless they pack up out there coffee shops .... banned.Just a thought .... any feed back or ways to mod it . Serious thoughts on how to fix this problem please post.- Krovax</blockquote>credit card numbers are an okay idea although I'm sure that the plat farmers would easily get around it and this is assuming that plat farmers are actually using their own credit cards to pay for their accounts (rather than game cards, stolen credit cards, or tons of free credit cards)...banning real life names is a horrible idea...it's too easy for plat farmers to use fake names and if they did ban names and I were a plat farmer, what I would do is find names of legitimate players and get their names banned...banning IP's also wouldn't work...someone who's experienced at doing it would probably take a few minutes to fake an IP address and it's pretty safe to assume that plat farmers are not stupid people...

retro_guy

04-01-2007, 07:34 AM

To be honest seeing a broadcast "xdfgrtty has been banned for selling gold!!!!111eleven" every 10 minutes in Vanguard would be far more annoying than the 1 tell I get a day from the plat sellers in EQ2. Can I petition and have the GMs banned for spamming me and breaking my immersion in the game?

Jrral

04-01-2007, 07:38 AM

<cite>rubelson wrote:</cite><blockquote>Silly thought , why not ban the credit card numbers and nameds based off those cards. </blockquote>SOE already does ban credit-card numbers, when they've got them. Problem is, the plat-sellers are smart enough to use game-time cards to pay for their accounts and there's no way to trace who purchased a game-time card. Banning names... you haven't thought about how easy it is to enter a fake name, right? IP addresses are a better one, but there's still major problems. Faking an IP address takes more technical chops than the plat-sellers have, but the plat-sellers also don't use their home computers. They go to Internet cafes and other places, so there's no single IP address they can be tied to. The only way SOE could block by IP address is to block all of China for starters. SOE's tracked IPs and looked at the possibility, but they have too many legitimate players also originating from those same IPs or IP netblocks to be able to cut them off.

retro_guy

04-01-2007, 07:44 AM

<cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think we can all agree that there are things that SOE could do but have not. I think we can all agree that SOE COULD take a harder stand but they have not. I kow SOE thinks that the heavier stand would not be appreciated by their players, I also think that they are wrong. How many players do you know that think cheating in any game is OK? Most likely if they think cheating is OK they are.... People have applauded Sigil's stance on the matter Even if they can only stop a portion of the spam and transactions they are showing their customers that they are actually TRYING to combat this problem SOE has made exactly one post claiming to have banned 5000 accounts. We all see farmers/botters in game every day and we know what they are doing with the coin. We see in game spam and mail every day...what we don't see is communication from SOE telling us how many they banned or announcements of who gets banned or action against farmers/botters... ....This thread pretty much shows that SOE could take the same PUBLIC stance and people would applaud it too...It MIGHT even bring back some players that left... How can it hurt? Do you think that more people would actually say "SOE is being too harsh on those poor plat buyers and sellers, I am leaving in protest"? It's not going to make the game a "police state" as someone posted...It's all done in the back ground...If you have nothing to hide, you have no worries....If you have something to hide, then prepare to lose your account....It's that simple... </blockquote> Ok, how would you feel if you account was banned because you bought a item off a plat seller (on the market) and that plat was traced back to you after it was sold to another player offline? Maybe your account isn't permanently banned, and after 6 weeks it becomes unbanned without notice. So you get back in the game, but the sour taste left in your mouth after sending possibly hundreds of emails, (non of which get any replies) means you really don't want to play the game anymore. Is that the sort of stance you're talking about? As it it I see that SOE has achieved a good balance between keeping legitimate players happy and still banning botters, plat sellers and cheats. To give an example, I have played since day 1 (actually day 3), and averaged about 50 hours a week in game, and have only ever see 1 (yes one) player using a AFK 3rd party macro program (very badly I must say too), they way people rant and go on it's like people are botting everywhere. Yes, getting spam tells and mail annoys me, but it's like people calling you names, it doesn;t actually hurt you, just /petition, and move on.

mellowknees72

04-02-2007, 03:02 PM

<cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>Pipes@Najena wrote: <blockquote><cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>HELLO....THEY ARE IN CHINA! our laws and governement have no control over this....DUHHHHHHH </blockquote> Dude...do you really want to have a productive discussion, or just yell at people?</blockquote>First off I am not a DUDE...I don't have the right parts to be a DUDE.. And forgive me, It appears that the person who posted this had no idea of what he was speaking. </blockquote>You're also clearly not from the West Coast, where "DUDE" doesn't always mean "MAN" or "GUY"...sometimes it means "HEY", and that's how it was used in this case.And regardless of whether or not, in your opinion, someone knew what was being discussed, there's really no need to be so rude.

salle

04-02-2007, 08:53 PM

I've seen plat farmers get banned from /report sure it took a couple of days but then the chinese killstealer was gone. The only thing I wish that they (the CS-team) would do is send players who has reported people who then got investigated and banned for their activities an ingame mail or something with a short "your /report was investigated and player x (y, z and a whole lot of other letters) were banned for RMT (or whatever behaviour they now showed). Even if it's a very automated response it will still show the players that our /reports doesn't get lost on the way.

Seffrid

04-04-2007, 04:29 PM

It seems to me that one way genuine EQ2 players could accept that something was actually being done about plat sellers would be if, following a petition about obvious offenders and in respect of which no personal account action could be divulged, a GM were to send an ingame mail to the petitioner saying "Just to follow up on your earlier petition about possible plat sellers, I am pleased to be able to report that "x" accounts have been banned as a result of your petition - many thanks for helping to make this game a more enjoyable and honest one!" This would not breach any individual client confidentiality but would indicate that petitions were being acted upon.As for Sigil's approach, they may well be intent on acting firmly against gold sellers, but when I petition against a naming policy violation as obvious as "Dirtef Uck", receive an acknowledgement that appropriate action will be taken, and several days later I bump into the same character with the same name, I have my doubts as to any effective GM presence on the servers, especially as it now appears there is one GM per two servers!

retro_guy

04-12-2007, 11:53 PM

<cite>Seffrid wrote:</cite><blockquote>It seems to me that one way genuine EQ2 players could accept that something was actually being done about plat sellers would be if, following a petition about obvious offenders and in respect of which no personal account action could be divulged, a GM were to send an ingame mail to the petitioner saying "Just to follow up on your earlier petition about possible plat sellers, I am pleased to be able to report that "x" accounts have been banned as a result of your petition - many thanks for helping to make this game a more enjoyable and honest one!" This would not breach any individual client confidentiality but would indicate that petitions were being acted upon.As for Sigil's approach, they may well be intent on acting firmly against gold sellers, but when I petition against a naming policy violation as obvious as "Dirtef Uck", receive an acknowledgement that appropriate action will be taken, and several days later I bump into the same character with the same name, I have my doubts as to any effective GM presence on the servers, especially as it now appears there is one GM per two servers!</blockquote> I agree that the private message to confim that action has been taken would make most people happy, and far better than Vanguard where you get spammed every 10 mins with GM's saying they've banned people.

Beermizer

05-14-2007, 08:36 AM

What bothers me is /report has a 5 min timer, Funny how we get restricted when trying to do the right thing but the ones sending all those tells arent limited. Just put in a /tell limit per min, if nothing else it would slow them down.

Kelfizzle

05-14-2007, 10:26 AM

All farmes I have petitioned are gone. But SOE is doing nothing. They have banned tons of accounts. But SOE is doing nothing. Sigil did a broadcast that they have banned a farmer there and a farmer here... and they are the heroes, Bleap ? Reading your posts made me think, that your a living in world I have no key to. And I dont want that key.And for banning buyers: Then I will buy some plat and the plat goes to the char: Bleap. You get a ban or get a free move to a Station-X server and I got rid of you. Then the next. People I dont like ? No problem. 20 USD for some plat and problem solved.You should really THINK BEFORE YOU POST. There is no change to deal with buyers. If you do it the way to want, there will be a lot of colateral damage. Like in vanguard. Look into their forums. Not my way. Before one unguilty player is being banned or transfered I would 99 plat sellers do their business. NO WAY. NO TOLERANCE FOR COLATERAL DAMAGE.

Gonzo550

05-14-2007, 04:11 PM

geez Kel, get a dictonary. I still can't understand your rant because of your broken and poor grammer. And you claim they should think before they post. Try proof reading before you hit submit. Now as to the problem, this is a major one to be certain. You can't /ignore these people because their characters only last 10 minutes and are deleted. So what if the /ignore system were expanded to affect account instead? This would actually be a good thing as it would prevent young kids from hopping on alts to harass others after they think they have been /ignored. (I can back up that this does indeed happen) Another suggestion is to allow people to automatically ignore people below a certain level. Sure SOE would have a major problem with this as no lvl 9's would be able to ask lvl 70s to come power level them in the ruins but so what. If the lvl 70 doesn't want to receive tells from lvl 10s then they should have that right. Heck, I'd be happy just to be able to funnel the /tells from those low levels into a seperate tab which I wouldn't have to pay attention to. The plus side to this is, if I cut off the low level toons from /tell spamming me, the plat farmers would have to level their toons to reach us. They couldn't therefore delete a toon after 10 minutes and hope to avoid any /report or /petition. Once they did reach a suitable level, say we cut it off at lvl 20, the /report system must then be followed up on and SOE must actually look at banning people for violations. The names will remain the same so SOE will have no excuse not to target a player and investigate.

Bloodfa

05-14-2007, 04:23 PM

I'd have to disagree with the 'block tells from X level to XX level', as I have a wide range of alts, and sometimes get tells from friends or guildies to bring along So-and-so the monk/warden/whatever. But...... that suggestion about /ignore affecting an account instead of the name, now that I like. Also, just to chime in, farmers do get deleted. So do guys running 'bot programs. One in particular comes to mind. I miss farming/stalking him in SS. Killed him every time I saw him, regardless of whether he was worth status or not, just to keep him from harvesting. Eventually, he'd come back to his keyboard and actually play instead of botting. As a clothie he didn't last long, but then a necro running a bot program isn't exactly a genius. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Nylacra

05-14-2007, 04:37 PM

Are people really this crazy? Lemme get this str8.....1.) Being spammed by someone advertising about selling plat is annoying ( yes, I agree it is )2.) People are against those who BUY platinum, but you will take a Master 1 spell drop from a guild mate for free right? It is the same because you CHEATED to get the master spell.......you didn't rely on the game mechanics of random loot drops you were givin the spell from a friend. Fact is someone has something MORE than you, whether its TIME ( to camp excessively for items/plat ) or MONEY ( to buy items/plat that would normally take time to obtain ), perhaps the BUYER has no friends, and perhaps the BUYER purchases items from regular people selling items on the broker........so are those people selling there items cheating? Giving away Items/Spells ''they' earned to someone else for FREE from the mob - people argue it wasn't free I had to spend time and my time deserves to be compensated for.....BS......you were playing a game you killed a creature and it dropped an item u can't use and now you want to charge someone for that same item you got for free just by killing a mob, NO ONE sells the item that dropped for the price the vender would pay.....they up their price by like 20 times.......now that is a scam.I'm all for PERMA BAN on the advertising, but it would be completely pointless to ban SELLERs or BUYERs.Because people will always FIND someway to get more TIME or MONEY.

Barq Bandit

05-14-2007, 04:38 PM

Bloodfang@Nagafen wrote: <blockquote>I'd have to disagree with the 'block tells from X level to XX level', as I have a wide range of alts, and sometimes get tells from friends or guildies to bring along So-and-so the monk/warden/whatever. </blockquote> Someone mentioned the level range ignore idea today in my server's Qeynos_Crafting channel, and I have to say it's the best idea I've heard yet to at least remove the annoyance of plat seller spam from our game experience. Making those on your friends list, in your guild, group, or raid exceptions to the ignore filter could be part of the feature.Most players would set it to a very low level range. The possibility that you'll miss a tell from someone due to them not asking you to add their lowbie alt to your friends list beforehand is well worth it. No contest. I would love to see a level range block. People could use it as they see fit. If it proved to get in the way too much for you, you could toggle it off.Plat sellers would have no reason to try and circumvent it because the only ones using the feature would be those that expressedly do not want to buy their plat.

Rijacki

05-14-2007, 05:23 PM

Arrack@Crushbone wrote: <blockquote>Are people really this crazy? Lemme get this str8.....1.) Being spammed by someone advertising about selling plat is annoying ( yes, I agree it is )2.) People are against those who BUY platinum, but you will take a Master 1 spell drop from a guild mate for free right? It is the same because you CHEATED to get the master spell.......you didn't rely on the game mechanics of random loot drops you were givin the spell from a friend. Fact is someone has something MORE than you, whether its TIME ( to camp excessively for items/plat ) or MONEY ( to buy items/plat that would normally take time to obtain ), perhaps the BUYER has no friends, and perhaps the BUYER purchases items from regular people selling items on the broker........so are those people selling there items cheating? Giving away Items/Spells ''they' earned to someone else for FREE from the mob - people argue it wasn't free I had to spend time and my time deserves to be compensated for.....BS......you were playing a game you killed a creature and it dropped an item u can't use and now you want to charge someone for that same item you got for free just by killing a mob, NO ONE sells the item that dropped for the price the vender would pay.....they up their price by like 20 times.......now that is a scam.I'm all for PERMA BAN on the advertising, but it would be completely pointless to ban SELLERs or BUYERs.Because people will always FIND someway to get more TIME or MONEY.</blockquote>If you, or anyone, wants to spend real money on plat or in-game items or characters, there are servers expressly designed for that purpose, the Station Exchange servers. All other RMT activities are against the EULA.

MysidiaDrakkenbane

05-14-2007, 05:50 PM

The problem with banning the accounts is that it becomes a "Whack-A-Mole" game. One gets banned, two more pop up.You have to stop them at the source. Instead of merely banning the accounts, why not go to the websites they're advertising and stopping them there? If they're advertising selling the plat on a non exchange server, that's against EQ2 violations and you can force them to shut down their site.You can also enlist your playerbase to work for you. Let's say that you allow this for your playerbase on every server except the exchange ones. For every 100 accounts or websites they help quash, you reward them by: free time, a title, an in game item, a special outfit, a special mount...anything. This in turn gets your player base involved and they can see the results without having to hound the EQ Team for proof. You would also save money because you'd be using other things for currency for payment and you wouldn't have to hire a team devoted to this. But I'm telling you, you have to stop the websites, not the seller accounts. Squashing one or two ants isn't going to solve the problem. You need to get into the nest and eliminate them there.

mellowknees72

05-14-2007, 06:36 PM

<cite>MysidiaDrakkenbane wrote:</cite><blockquote>You have to stop them at the source. Instead of merely banning the accounts, why not go to the websites they're advertising and stopping them there? If they're advertising selling the plat on a non exchange server, that's against EQ2 violations and you can force them to shut down their site.</blockquote>Nice idea, but SOE is not the international police. Most of the plat-selling companies are not based in the USA. SOE may have a lot of weight to throw around, but last time I checked, they can't just shut down someone else's website.Best thing to do for now is to use /report and /petition and just keep doing it. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Littl

05-14-2007, 06:43 PM

They ban people everyday in this game. SOE has banning stings and operations just as Blizzard does. Sigil has a stan ce no different then SOE does and as of what happened lately with the p lat dupe exploits I don't think Sigil is exactly t he company to be using as a good example for this issue. Many people don't realize it but their really are tons of offenders breaking the rules, and SOE bans people every single day! The devs have talked about it openly a number of times (unlike many other game companies who don't). Everytime they ban a gold seller, that seller is coming back on another I.P. and credit card info or whatever. But that d oesn't mean they aren't doing anything about it. I've played many an MMOG and I have seen companies just not do anything about dupers and g old sellers. Hackers who post pictures of themselves duping in UO laughing at EA , did it for months and months, people posted it o n the forums and EA did nothing for the longest time. If you play some other games you 'll see what doing nothing about the problem reall y is. It's just not possible to kill the problem 100% though. As of right now their is no clear law protecting intellectual property rights, so SOE cannot get websites taken down such as another poster suggested. Although their have been a number of court cases on the same exact subject, their is no clear law. But their will be someday. I'm suprised it hasn't happened yet but it will happen. Maybe soon. As of now, the sellers use the defense/excuse saying that they don't sell items what they sell is a service, the work to get the item. But that is just exploiting the law in all obviousness, they are selling I.P. that is not theirs.