Better Name Selection Filter to stop Gold Farmers.

[Maroger]

<p>I notice playing LOTRO yesterday that they have a pretty aggressive name filter. Acutally a name I have used on this many other game, was disallowed by Turbine as the error message said it was "Gibberish".</p><p>That got me to thinking -- these goldfarmer and plat sellers name are also pretty much gibberish. I had a tell from someone today that WAS all consonants. I have noticed that Platsellers tend to have names which are all consonants. Well I was thinking that SOE could prohibit the creation of a character whose name was all consonants -- sort of a gibberish filter.</p><p>While it might not stop them it would slow them down a bit. </p>

[zaun2]

Its a good idea, but I'm pretty sure it won't help much...  The plat farmers will change their name generator to stuff a vowel in here and there, and the only people really adversely affected will be players.

[DngrMou]

<cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I notice playing LOTRO yesterday that they have a pretty aggressive name filter. Acutally a name I have used on this many other game, was disallowed by Turbine as the error message said it was "Gibberish".</p><p>That got me to thinking -- these goldfarmer and plat sellers name are also pretty much gibberish. I had a tell from someone today that WAS all consonants. I have noticed that Platsellers tend to have names which are all consonants. Well I was thinking that SOE could prohibit the creation of a character whose name was all consonants -- sort of a gibberish filter.</p><p>While it might not stop them it would slow them down a bit. </p></blockquote>I 'R' confused.  How does forcing "Xlxxzbj" to change his name to "Bob" keep him from spamming?

[sah]

<p>but isn't there already a built-in random name generator in the character creation process (or maybe that was just EQ1)?...if there is, clicking that button would only take them an extra second or two to create their characters...</p>

[liveja]

<cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>While it might not stop them it would slow them down a bit. </p></blockquote> I'm curious as to why you think so.

[Laiina]

Youris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote><cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I notice playing LOTRO yesterday that they have a pretty aggressive name filter. Acutally a name I have used on this many other game, was disallowed by Turbine as the error message said it was "Gibberish".</p><p>That got me to thinking -- these goldfarmer and plat sellers name are also pretty much gibberish. I had a tell from someone today that WAS all consonants. I have noticed that Platsellers tend to have names which are all consonants. Well I was thinking that SOE could prohibit the creation of a character whose name was all consonants -- sort of a gibberish filter.</p><p>While it might not stop them it would slow them down a bit. </p></blockquote>I 'R' confused.  How does forcing "Xlxxzbj" to change his name to "Bob" keep him from spamming? </blockquote>This kind of confuses me also...

[Maroger]

<cite>Laiina wrote:</cite><blockquote>Youris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote><cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I notice playing LOTRO yesterday that they have a pretty aggressive name filter. Acutally a name I have used on this many other game, was disallowed by Turbine as the error message said it was "Gibberish".</p><p>That got me to thinking -- these goldfarmer and plat sellers name are also pretty much gibberish. I had a tell from someone today that WAS all consonants. I have noticed that Platsellers tend to have names which are all consonants. Well I was thinking that SOE could prohibit the creation of a character whose name was all consonants -- sort of a gibberish filter.</p><p>While it might not stop them it would slow them down a bit. </p></blockquote>I 'R' confused.  How does forcing "Xlxxzbj" to change his name to "Bob" keep him from spamming? </blockquote>This kind of confuses me also... </blockquote><p>It probably really won't but it will just give them more grief -- plus it will turn up a name that is easier for us to type in when we do REPORT. I find doing REPORT slows me down when I have to study all those consonants and type them in. </p><p>Turbine was thinking of blocking all IP addresses from SE Asia which I think is a good idea too. Sure they will find someone in the US, but each little thing makes them jump through one more hoop. And I like that -- the more hoops they have to jump through the better it is.</p><p>I have always been disappointed that SOE is not more aggressive dealing with gold sellers. They won't even give us an option to block TELLS by zones -- like the Outposts which is where all the gold sellers hang out. </p>

[sah]

<cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote> <p>It probably really won't but it will just give them more grief -- plus it will turn up a name that is easier for us to type in when we do REPORT. I find doing REPORT slows me down when I have to study all those consonants and type them in. </p><p>Turbine was thinking of blocking all IP addresses from SE Asia which I think is a good idea too. Sure they will find someone in the US, but each little thing makes them jump through one more hoop. And I like that -- the more hoops they have to jump through the better it is.</p><p>I have always been disappointed that SOE is not more aggressive dealing with gold sellers. They won't even give us an option to block TELLS by zones -- like the Outposts which is where all the gold sellers hang out. </p></blockquote><p>Haha, you know there's a random name generator in the name selection screen?</p><p>Blocking IP addresses would be a bad thing for SOE because of all of the legitimate customers they would lose...and if those plat farmers are smart enough which they probably are, it wouldn't take them long to be able to get past that...</p><p>Blocking tells from the newbie zone would be useless because it takes like 1 minute to get off the island...blocking tells from people below a certain level would be a better idea if it is possible... </p>

[Selintoo]

<p>MY OPINION: </p><p>When you report/petition a plat seller and they are banned, they just go out and buy the game again and start a new account from their same home/sweat shop and start the whole process again. It seems unlikely to me that SOE will take any extreme action such as IP banning to stop these individuals because SOE makes money each time a plat seller has to re-purchase the game. It's good for SOE's bottom line. I think the plat sellers are here to stay <img src="/smilies/2e207fad049d4d292f60607f80f05768.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Stormcrest]

<cite>sahet wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote> <p>It probably really won't but it will just give them more grief -- plus it will turn up a name that is easier for us to type in when we do REPORT. I find doing REPORT slows me down when I have to study all those consonants and type them in. </p><p>Turbine was thinking of blocking all IP addresses from SE Asia which I think is a good idea too. Sure they will find someone in the US, but each little thing makes them jump through one more hoop. And I like that -- the more hoops they have to jump through the better it is.</p><p>I have always been disappointed that SOE is not more aggressive dealing with gold sellers. They won't even give us an option to block TELLS by zones -- like the Outposts which is where all the gold sellers hang out. </p></blockquote><p>Haha, you know there's a random name generator in the name selection screen?</p><p>Blocking IP addresses would be a bad thing for SOE because of all of the legitimate customers they would lose...and if those plat farmers are smart enough which they probably are, it wouldn't take them long to be able to get past that...</p><p>Blocking tells from the newbie zone would be useless because it takes like 1 minute to get off the island...blocking tells from people below a certain level would be a better idea if it is possible... </p></blockquote>Random name Gen... Check, hello captain obvious. How would blocking IP addresses be a bad thing? If they were stupid enough to block a complete Class C address range then yeah it would be a bad idea. If they blocked addresses they could eventually narrow it down to the point they would force the Plat salesmen to use Proxies. Win? No. Blocking tells from newbie zones would cost any guild member 2 minutes of time to send a tell to an officer and get tagged to flex on an isle of newbies after they clicked on the captain of the ship that Ingrid is now captain (forgot the name)... voice chat? Then you wouldn't need to worry...Teamspeak is free for the guilds that don't want to deal with 'who is paying' etc. A guy playing a gal that doesn't want to use voice chat? Wait the time it takes you to load to Q/FP and then send a tell. A newbie can wait that long without sending a tell from the islands. Tell me one part of the tutorial that explains how to send a tell and I will shut up... yes that was aimed at all of the plat seller providers wanting their source of income to remain on the islands.

[sah]

<cite>Stormcrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Random name Gen... Check, hello captain obvious. </blockquote>Uhmm...the original post was about using a filter to block random names to stop spammers...I was just saying that that would be pointless since there's already a random name generator in the game...

[Zyphe]

<cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I notice playing LOTRO yesterday that they have a pretty aggressive name filter. Acutally a name I have used on this many other game, was disallowed by Turbine as the error message said it was "Gibberish".</p><p>That got me to thinking -- these goldfarmer and plat sellers name are also pretty much gibberish. I had a tell from someone today that WAS all consonants. I have noticed that Platsellers tend to have names which are all consonants. Well I was thinking that SOE could prohibit the creation of a character whose name was all consonants -- sort of a gibberish filter.</p><p>While it might not stop them it would slow them down a bit. </p></blockquote> Almost every name that comes up using the random name generator is "gibberish," so I doubt this idea would work.

[Rijacki]

<cite>Zyphe wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I notice playing LOTRO yesterday that they have a pretty aggressive name filter. Acutally a name I have used on this many other game, was disallowed by Turbine as the error message said it was "Gibberish".</p><p>That got me to thinking -- these goldfarmer and plat sellers name are also pretty much gibberish. I had a tell from someone today that WAS all consonants. I have noticed that Platsellers tend to have names which are all consonants. Well I was thinking that SOE could prohibit the creation of a character whose name was all consonants -- sort of a gibberish filter.</p><p>While it might not stop them it would slow them down a bit. </p></blockquote> Almost every name that comes up using the random name generator is "gibberish," so I doubt this idea would work. </blockquote>I've found a lot of really nice names through the random name thingy.  My dirge's name, Ohelia, was from the random generator (she wasn't supposed to be a "main" character when I made her *laugh*).  I've also used the random name thingy to make other "quickie" alts.

[Ciarr]

<cite>Stormcrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>How would blocking IP addresses be a bad thing? If they were stupid enough to block a complete Class C address range then yeah it would be a bad idea. If they blocked addresses they could eventually narrow it down to the point they would force the Plat salesmen to use Proxies. Win? No. </blockquote><p>many ISP use IP rotation to prevent users from setting up services (e.g. public websites) on home DSL (business version with static IP can be sometimes as high as 10-30x more expensive) so even blocking single IPs is bad since it gets reassigned</p><p>but I really like OP's idea... I haven't had that much laugh in ages <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[liveja]

<cite>Maroger wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I find doing REPORT slows me down when I have to study all those consonants and type them in. </p></blockquote><p>Type /r, then cursor back over to the beginning of the name & replace "reply" with "report".</p><p>Do the same again to put them on iggy. Takes mere seconds, no extra typing, & no worries about mis-spelling a stupid name. </p>

[Nanamadar]

Personally, and knowing full well that there is likely no real person there reading the message I send, I enjoy immediately sending a reply to the plat seller named Qhhrrhsgre or such suggesting that he return to the more enjoyable activity of servicing his father, mother and sister and allow his brother to get back to servicing him.  I also enjoy throwing in as many foul words as I can in the hopes that they understand at least a LITTLE English, if they are seeing my message.  Ok, so it's childish and accomplishes nothing, but as I am otherwise powerless to do anything at all about them, it at least provides me some small satisfaction to think that, if they DID see my message, it may have at least upset them a little.  I also tend to spam the message to them until they delete the character which is, of course, usually within 5 minutes.  It is my sincere hope that one day I will so enfuriate one of them that they "go postal" and machine gun their entire boiler room group.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[UlteriorModem]

<cite>Nanamadar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally, and knowing full well that there is likely no real person there reading the message I send, I enjoy immediately sending a reply to the plat seller named Qhhrrhsgre or such suggesting that he return to the more enjoyable activity of servicing his father, mother and sister and allow his brother to get back to servicing him.  I also enjoy throwing in as many foul words as I can in the hopes that they understand at least a LITTLE English, if they are seeing my message.  Ok, so it's childish and accomplishes nothing, but as I am otherwise powerless to do anything at all about them, it at least provides me some small satisfaction to think that, if they DID see my message, it may have at least upset them a little.  I also tend to spam the message to them until they delete the character which is, of course, usually within 5 minutes.  It is my sincere hope that one day I will so enfuriate one of them that they "go postal" and machine gun their entire boiler room group.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote> No speaky engrish.

[sah]

<cite>Nanamadar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally, and knowing full well that there is likely no real person there reading the message I send, I enjoy immediately sending a reply to the plat seller named Qhhrrhsgre or such suggesting that he return to the more enjoyable activity of servicing his father, mother and sister and allow his brother to get back to servicing him.  I also enjoy throwing in as many foul words as I can in the hopes that they understand at least a LITTLE English, if they are seeing my message.  Ok, so it's childish and accomplishes nothing, but as I am otherwise powerless to do anything at all about them, it at least provides me some small satisfaction to think that, if they DID see my message, it may have at least upset them a little.  I also tend to spam the message to them until they delete the character which is, of course, usually within 5 minutes.  It is my sincere hope that one day I will so enfuriate one of them that they "go postal" and machine gun their entire boiler room group.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote> you assume that someone is actually at the spammer's machine reading what you type...and they probably send so many tells per second that even if a person were at the machine your message would get lost before they saw it...  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[UlteriorModem]

<cite>sahet wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nanamadar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally, and <b><u>knowing full well that there is likely no real person there</u></b> reading the message I send, I enjoy immediately sending a reply to the plat seller named Qhhrrhsgre or such suggesting that he return to the more enjoyable activity of servicing his father, mother and sister and allow his brother to get back to servicing him.  I also enjoy throwing in as many foul words as I can in the hopes that they understand at least a LITTLE English, if they are seeing my message.  Ok, so it's childish and accomplishes nothing, but as I am otherwise powerless to do anything at all about them, it at least provides me some small satisfaction to think that, if they DID see my message, it may have at least upset them a little.  I also tend to spam the message to them until they delete the character which is, of course, usually within 5 minutes.  It is my sincere hope that one day I will so enfuriate one of them that they "go postal" and machine gun their entire boiler room group.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote> you assume that someone is actually at the spammer's machine reading what you type...and they probably send so many tells per second that even if a person were at the machine your message would get lost before they saw it...  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>Reading is fundamental.

[Nanamadar]

<cite>UlteriorModem wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>sahet wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nanamadar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally, and <b><u>knowing full well that there is likely no real person there</u></b> reading the message I send, I enjoy immediately sending a reply to the plat seller named Qhhrrhsgre or such suggesting that he return to the more enjoyable activity of servicing his father, mother and sister and allow his brother to get back to servicing him.  I also enjoy throwing in as many foul words as I can in the hopes that they understand at least a LITTLE English, if they are seeing my message.  Ok, so it's childish and accomplishes nothing, but as I am otherwise powerless to do anything at all about them, it at least provides me some small satisfaction to think that, if they DID see my message, it may have at least upset them a little.  I also tend to spam the message to them until they delete the character which is, of course, usually within 5 minutes.  It is my sincere hope that one day I will so enfuriate one of them that they "go postal" and machine gun their entire boiler room group.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote> you assume that someone is actually at the spammer's machine reading what you type...and they probably send so many tells per second that even if a person were at the machine your message would get lost before they saw it...  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>Reading is fundamental. </blockquote><p>Thanks, you just saved me the effort of doing that... was logging in to reply when your message popped up <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p> While I have never had a reply from a plat spammer, I HAVE actually gotten reponses from the botters sometimes.  Usually it's something that makes it clear they didn't understand a word I said, like thanking me for suggesting that their mother was not only cheap, but also spread diseases, but one night, I did actually have a coherent conversation with one and asked him just why he did it.  He said it was easy money.  This guy was a college student, clearly intelligent... but had no qualms about participating in illegal activities for a buck... it's good to know that we can still have some influence on the East.... : </p>

[sliderhouserules]

Illegal activities? Umm...

[Sir Longsword]

I would rather keep the gibberish names.  The name 'Bob' wouldn't offer any initial clues, but 'Onntttgg' is certainly easier to pick out of a crowd.  <img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[DngrMou]

<cite>Nanamadar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Personally, and knowing full well that there is likely no real person there reading the message I send, I enjoy immediately sending a reply to the plat seller named Qhhrrhsgre or such suggesting that he return to the more enjoyable activity of servicing his father, mother and sister and allow his brother to get back to servicing him.  I also enjoy throwing in as many foul words as I can in the hopes that they understand at least a LITTLE English, if they are seeing my message.  Ok, so it's childish and accomplishes nothing, but as I am otherwise powerless to do anything at all about them, it at least provides me some small satisfaction to think that, if they DID see my message, it may have at least upset them a little.  I also tend to spam the message to them until they delete the character which is, of course, usually within 5 minutes.  It is my sincere hope that one day I will so enfuriate one of them that they "go postal" and machine gun their entire boiler room group.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote> They understand enough english.  I got a tell from one while I had an alt on newbie island....and there, not twenty feet away was the offending sender.  So I ran my alt up to him, emoted my alt urinating on his head...and he went linkdead.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[wilba]

<p>I think it might be a better idea if SOE actually got up and DID what they suggested had been done 2 weeks ago. STOP all Queen's Colony direct tells outright. Then on top of that add a lockout of all direct tells from mainland characters under level 9. BTW how are they scripting the chatline to parse wholists etc. in the first place? I had no idea there was a scripting function in EQ2 chat.</p><p>(My feedback for the last 2 months has been to initiate a checkable chat filter to allow serious players to only accept guild and friendslist players to send direct tells)</p>

[wilba]

<cite>Selintoo wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>MY OPINION: </p><p>When you report/petition a plat seller and they are banned, they just go out and buy the game again and start a new account from their same home/sweat shop and start the whole process again. It seems unlikely to me that SOE will take any extreme action such as IP banning to stop these individuals because SOE makes money each time a plat seller has to re-purchase the game. It's good for SOE's bottom line. I think the plat sellers are here to stay <img src="/smilies/2e207fad049d4d292f60607f80f05768.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote><p>I generally find they only harrass OUTSIDE office hours and the CS (Customer dis-Service) is so automated there is hardly ever a real GM online unless they are raiding. </p><p>Although they can most likely afford to buy the game I think the large number are just using the same account or the free trials. You will find SOE are still unable/unwilling to create/use a tool that has the power to fully access the large quantity of data in each users account database. They simply can't sift the logs to find the account names and relationships between deleted characters and regular ones over any length of time, to be honest it is probably so time consuming they wouldn't bother to try or even pay an employee to go back over past logs unless half the players lost hard to get items or something.</p><p>I had dealings with them over this the first week EQ2 came out and accidently created 2 accounts instead of the station pass, I tried to get the characters transfered over to my existing OLD EQ1 account and was told they didn't have the tools or ability to to that kind of thing.  Hence I had to remake 4 characters from scratch and not able to reuse the names!</p><p> Yes there is IP Spoofing which easily avoids IP bans unless they hammer down an entire Asian/European ISP's list which WOULD be counter productive to PROFITS.</p>

[liveja]

wilba wrote: <blockquote><p> BTW how are they scripting the chatline to parse wholists etc. in the first place? I had no idea there was a scripting function in EQ2 chat.</p></blockquote><p>I'm pretty sure there is no such scripting function (I could be wrong, of course) & that the spammers are using an external program to spam.</p><p>That is why putting yourself on /anon or /roleplay helps. The spam program most likely checks /who lists -- like, for example, a filter is written for /who 60 70 -- & sends out pre-generated spam to everyone that is returned by the filter. If you're on /anon or /roleplay, your info won't be returned to the filter, thus the spam program won't send you spam. Note that this idea is purely a guess on my part; I've no idea if this is how it's actually working, but it seems sensible enough. I've been on /roleplay for close to 3 months now, & in that time, the only characters that have gotten plat seller spam, were those I'd forgotten to put on /roleplay. My 70 main, however, has not had a SINGLE plat spammer tell in that entire time, & only 1 plat seller email. </p>

[DngrMou]

<cite>wilba wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I think it might be a better idea if SOE actually got up and DID what they suggested had been done 2 weeks ago. STOP all Queen's Colony direct tells outright.</p><p><span style="color: #0099ff">Once again the proposed solution is to place restrictions on the gameplay of OTHERS.  That's mighty generous of you.  Nothing like a sacrifice, as long as it's someone else that's doing the sacrificing, right?  </span> Then on top of that add a lockout of all direct tells from mainland characters under level 9. <span style="color: #0099ff">More of the same.</span> </p><p>(My feedback for the last 2 months has been to initiate a checkable chat filter to allow serious players to only accept guild and friendslist players to send direct tells)</p><p><span style="color: #0099ff">There is already a way to do this.  Disable tells on all your chat windows.  Create a private channel, share that info with your guild, and friends.  No more plat tells ever again...and it does not involve placing restrictions on other players, or require additional coding from SOE.  It's in there now...you can use it any time you want.</span></p></blockquote>

[liveja]

<cite>wilba wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>(My feedback for the last 2 months has been to initiate a checkable chat filter to allow serious players to only accept guild and friendslist players to send direct tells)</p></blockquote><p> Just so you know, this change would be rather cumbersome for anyone that does any amount of PUGs, because you'd pretty much have to drop your filter every time you wanted one, just so you could communicate with your potential groupmates.</p><p>As Youris mentioned, you can actually do all of this yourself anyway, without asking SOE to do any coding. I have a feeling that the reason more people don't follow that suggestion is, A: they don't even know it's a possibility, or B: they've already tried it & discovered that it's actually even more inconvenient than merely ignoring the plat spam in the first place.</p><p>In the last two weeks, I've "won" more than 20 different Internet-only lottos; been offered 4-5 jobs as a "payment disbursal agent, working in the comfort of my own home!"; been offered more stock options than I can even count; been directed to countless "Internet pharmacies" at which I can buy the latest in "men's medications"; & far too much other spamming garbage than I can even think of. I'm utterly stunned, frankly, to find that there are people who deal with the REAL world, where spam is almost impossible to eliminate, who think that SOE, alone among ginormous laden-with-wealth corporations, is somehow capable of doing something -- eliminating spam -- that nobody else has figured out.</p><p>Seriously, if someone could explain to my why they believe that SOE is more capable of eliminating spam than Microsoft, I'm all ears. However, before you begin your explanation, I'd like to see your internationally recognized qualifications as a programmer & network security specialist, because if you're not one of the world experts in this field, you've got nothing new to say.</p><p>Finally, I'd like to nominate the original post of this thread for "Silliest Idea EVER Suggested On An MMO Forum", & am now choosing to believe it was all an April Fool's joke, which the OP never intended anyone to take seriously.</p>