How about giving us the ability to block tells

[Chay]

So far the plan to stop gold sellers isn't working. I get hit with tells just as much as I was before and it is annoying and disruptive. I want it to stop. There is no reason I should ever get a tell from anyone on the starting islands. They shouldn't be able to send tell to anyone not in the same zone. Since SOE seems reluctant to do anything about this that has an actual global impact then give us the ability to filter /tells by level. Blocking levels 1-5 or 1-10 should work. The auto reply should be "The party you are trying to reach does not accept tells from this zone or level range. If you are advertising any product go away." I'm not worried about friends/guildmates starting new characters. Anyone that has played the game can level a character easily enough and get off the island. I'm just done with being solicited by 3rd parties. This needs to be done. The problem needs to be fixed. Now is a better time than later.

[Cele]

<p>You do realize this has been brought up about a zillion times, yes? </p><p>/feels sorry for poor dead horse</p>

[Galithdor]

<cite>Celena wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>You do realize this has been brought up about a zillion times, yes? </p><p>/feels sorry for poor dead horse</p></blockquote>Meh let them rant...even if its been brought up a lot of times lol...though this thread will be locked like the rest of them

[valkyrja]

I really find it hard to believe you get so many tells it's disruptive.  AT MOST, I get 1 a month.  I do a /report and move along.

[-AtPlay-]

<cite>valkyrja wrote:</cite><blockquote>I really find it hard to believe you get so many tells it's disruptive.  AT MOST, I get 1 a month.  I do a /report and move along. </blockquote>I get about 5 a night...and on an Exchange Server no less. 

[Badaxe Ba]

<p>I've noticed I get more on weekends, and harcly any on weekdays.  Are they taking advantage of a lack of staff?  A lot of spamming can be done before monday morning.......</p><p>/report, then /ignore</p>

[Bramwe]

Rather than block all tells, I would rather have a level range to block.  Friends of course bypass the block.   Receive no tells level 1-9 Recieve no tells level 10-19 etc. Edit - I see you mentioned the level block but I failed to read your entire post /apologize.

[Nastharl]

TURN ON ANON

[Ebjelen]

Nastharl@Nektulos wrote: <blockquote>TURN ON ANON </blockquote><p> I wish it were that simple. The "spies' are everywhere, it;s not just a simple /who search. I'm sure a few are also maintaining lists. The problem is these guys are organized, not just sending random tells.</p><p>I'm sooo paranoid <img src="/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>I get about 5 a week plus a couple of emails. The onl;y really disruptive ones are the ones you get during a battle so that you can't immediately /report gjgjkgjf gold spammer.</p>

[Mwahaha]

One thing I've noticed is that since I've switched over to Nagafen I haven't got a single plat seller tell yet.  IDK if being /anon or /roleplay all the time has something to do with it.

[Looker1010]

<cite>valkyrja wrote:</cite><blockquote>I really find it hard to believe you get so many tells it's disruptive.  AT MOST, I get 1 a month.  I do a /report and move along. </blockquote> I average 3-4 tells per day and yes, they are exceedingly annoying and disruptive.

[Looker1010]

Nastharl@Nektulos wrote: <blockquote>TURN ON ANON </blockquote> I heard about that. Having 9 gals I figured I'd try it with some of them. I can tell you, from first hand experience that going to anonymous does nothing to help with the plat sales spam. When they do a /who they get your name which is all they need.

[kenm]

Nastharl@Nektulos wrote: <blockquote>TURN ON ANON </blockquote>I always play anon and I get plat seller tell 2-3 times a night still.  Heck, I even see the idiots sitting in QH spamming /shout advertising the crap.

[liveja]

<p>I actually got a plat seller tell the other day. It was my first one in months. I've been on /roleplay the whole time.</p><p>/shrug </p><p>Works for me, sure do hate it for the rest of you.</p>

[Melchiah]

I wouldn't mind being able to block tells on my alts, mainly because they're unguilded, and I get a lot of creepy tells from random people.

[RipFlex]

<cite>Bramwell wrote:</cite><blockquote>Rather than block all tells, I would rather have a level range to block.  Friends of course bypass the block.   Receive no tells level 1-9 Recieve no tells level 10-19 </blockquote><p> As OP and this poster, this is an EASY solution that should be implimented immediately.  Yes yes you are awesome the people that get no /tells for selling gold so you assume no problem because it never happens to you... typical.  But those that want to be available in LFG and not be spammed by adverts because I'm not in anon/roleplay modes shouldn't have to suffer.  I get 6+ a day in /tells and a few more in Mail.</p>

[Armae]

the sellers are selling cuz ppl are buying..obviously stopping the selling isnt working...crack down on the buyers

[Maranatha]

I agree.  Would love to see a system installed to better manage incoming /tell traffic. As for this being yet another beating of the dead horse, I present...carpet reverse speed. I don't know what others were doing, but every time I would log in with a toon that used the carpet, I'd send another /bug or /feedback moaning about wanting the reverse speed back.  Hundreds of messages.  Sometimes several a day. Something worked.  They fixed it. So, never doubt the Power Of Positive Bellyaching!  <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> It might just do the trick here.

[Eleena True-Heart]

I am on Najena and I get sent plat selling tells 1-2 times everytime I am online sometimes more on long days. I think blocking a lvl range is a GREAT idea!!

[DngrMou]

<cite>Chayna wrote:</cite><blockquote>So far the plan to stop gold sellers isn't working. I get hit with tells just as much as I was before and it is annoying and disruptive. I want it to stop. There is no reason I should ever get a tell from anyone on the starting islands. They shouldn't be able to send tell to anyone not in the same zone. Since SOE seems reluctant to do anything about this that has an actual global impact then give us the ability to filter /tells by level. Blocking levels 1-5 or 1-10 should work. The auto reply should be "The party you are trying to reach does not accept tells from this zone or level range. If you are advertising any product go away." I'm not worried about friends/guildmates starting new characters. Anyone that has played the game can level a character easily enough and get off the island. I'm just done with being solicited by 3rd parties. This needs to be done. The problem needs to be fixed. Now is a better time than later. </blockquote><p> There are some problems with this idea.</p><p>1.  It leaves all those under level 'X' toons victim to the same spam that you're complaining of.  </p><p>2.  The vast majority of under level 'X' toons out there are just playing the game.  It's extremely unfair to limit the ability to interact with others in this game based on level, in the hopes of stopping a few spam tells.</p><p>3.  If the cutoff for tells is level ten, spammers will simply level their toons to that point, and continue spamming.  It does'nt take more than an hour to do so....less, if the gold sellers use collections to level those toons.  End result:  Spam continues, all toons under level 'X' are still prevented from sending tells to most players.</p><p>4.  Those with under level 'X' toons spend the same per month as anyone else, and should have access to the same game features that everyone else does.</p><p>5.  Solutions like this always seek to find 'some other' group of people to restrict.  If you don't like the tells, disable tells entirely on all your chat windows.  That way you don't get plat spam, and all those innocent players that just happen to play an under level 'X' character are not having arbitrary, and punitive restrictions on their gamplay being forced on them solely to benefit certain other players.</p><p>6.  It does nothing to stop the gold farming, does nothing to stop those sending plat tells, does nothing to halt the sale of plat for real currency....it accomplishes nothing, other than alienating paying customers.</p><p>7.  A simple solution for you and others:  Create your own private channel.  Share this channel with your guild, and your friends.  Join this channel, and disable all tells on your chat windows.  You can still send tells, and if you wish to speak with someone in game, you can send a tell asking them to join your private channel.  No more plat tells!</p>

[Chay]

I don't care if its a dead horse... It needs to be fixed. I don't care if its been suggested before... It needs to be fixed. I get quite a few each day. It doesn't matter if I'm anon, roleplaying, or whatever. I get them on all my characters sometimes multiple times from the same spammer regardless of reporting and petitioning. I get them. I look back at my petition log and its full of them. Someone stated that the low levels would still subjected to spam tells... No they could simply turn them off as well if they like. I don't think it limits them at all. I can work past level 10 in a very short time of casual playing. I've been on less than an hour today and gotten two tells from two different people to buy gold. Make that 3 times. I got another while writing this. To the person above.. You'd rather alienate me by not fixing it.

[DngrMou]

<cite>Chayna wrote:</cite><blockquote>Someone stated that the low levels would still subjected to spam tells... No they could simply turn them off as well if they like. I don't think it limits them at all. I can work past level 10 in a very short time of casual playing. </blockquote><p> Don't you think those plat spammers can level their toons past 10 in just as short a time?  They will....it's why they exist.  Implement this, and there's a lovely new restriction imposed on SOME players, that accomplishes nothing.</p>

[DngrMou]

<cite>Chayna wrote:</cite><blockquote> To the person above.. You'd rather alienate me by not fixing it. </blockquote><p> I'm having some trouble finding exactly where I suggested they not fix this.  </p>

[tass]

when I find a farmer that his hooked to the spammer I train them. Over and over and over and over and over again. I have them spittn out so many words in a dead language half the zone can hear em shouting. And I enjoy every second of it lol.

[Bayne]

<cite>Bramwell wrote:</cite><blockquote>Rather than block all tells, I would rather have a level range to block.  Friends of course bypass the block.   Receive no tells level 1-9 Recieve no tells level 10-19 etc. Edit - I see you mentioned the level block but I failed to read your entire post /apologize. </blockquote>I LOVE this idea! Not only would it cut down on seller tell spam which I get between 2-12 a night (yes one night I got 12) but it will also stop those annoying begger lowbies asking for money. It would also allow me to block high level toons begging my low level alts to mentor down so they can do a quest turn in. p.s. /anon dosen't work, I had all my toons on /anon for like a month, and for the first month it worked... then I started to get /tell spam on all of them again. p.p.s. Yes I know I'm anti-social

[Cathars]

<cite>Looker1010 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>valkyrja wrote:</cite><blockquote>I really find it hard to believe you get so many tells it's disruptive.  AT MOST, I get 1 a month.  I do a /report and move along. </blockquote> I average 3-4 tells per day and yes, they are exceedingly annoying and disruptive. </blockquote> I get about the same amount, but it doesnt bother me at all.  Glace at chat window, notice Xklbawr;hbi tells, glace away and resume playing.  How is it possibly disruptive?  The idea that anyone would pay real money for fake offends me, but one tell an hour?  Just cant fathom how thats disruptive considering how much text flies through the various chat windows on any given day.

[Jai1]

<p>I have come to a conclusion today that is working for me.  WE ALL are paying real money for fake [Removed for Content].  Let's see...  I'm in line to pay somewhere around 900 bucks in subs a year.   I may not be playing on an Exchange server or buying gold but that's real money so that I can progress in a virtual world.  Nothing I get out of progression with commited time will get me any return on that investment.   Unless, I move to Exchange and sell the account for a fraction of what my time is worth in the workplace.</p><p>Why is there a market?  Most people make more in RL than in the virtual reality, that is a game, in the same amount of time.  So there is a market.  Vanguard for instance is selling gold at 1.15 per and I would have a very hard time making 100 gold in months of regular play.  I make that money in RL in short time.  I don't want my account banned though but I do see the appeal.  Maybe Sony should ban accounts.</p><p>I don't see spam tells as all that disruptive though.  It's my personal take on it because it scrolls through my chat bar in seconds if I'm doing anything usually.  The mails I don't even read and deleting them is not all that bad.  It's not like I have to put an item in my inventory before I delete it.  I find blind invites to be more diruptive, but again, it's all a personal take on it and I don't report. </p><p>I don't think the OPs solution would work all that well.  Especially, if there was a returned message.  If you can make a profit of selling virtual gold and items, it's not a very high paid professions and whats a day to level a character to 20.  Hell, they could powerlevel I imagine to some extent.  I just think a good analogy for the situation is to compare it to the war on drugs.  Is there a winner in that battle?  More like, there's a high demand and people willing to try to make money at it even if it against 'the rules'.  I know players have great ideas on how to stop them but there's money to be made here.  Anything and everything I imagine has a work around.   </p>

[zaun2]

I've stated this in a previous post, but I do think this is pertinent. First, don't bother with spam filters.  The big spammy sites are already using zeros for letter "O"s, and spacing their sitenames out randomly.  Grab the spammers by something they can't get around.  If a spammer has to slow down their barrage of /tells, a second algorithm can take hold, or a manual GM can see it. Spammers have three characteristics they are very hard pressed to get around:  Low account ages, Low account play times, and a brief perior of a high ratio of /tells or E-mail to DIFFERENT people per time unit. First, they send a lot of /tells in a short time period, to many different people.  Here, there are two variables, t for time and n for number of different people sent /tells. A threshold algorithm would go along the lines of  A=(n/t).  Server-side, the server would retain the number of /tells to different people per a time period, resetting its counter every 5 minutes.  Every time the server does a do_tell() process, it checks against this counter, and if there are too many /tells to different people, it automatically disconnects, disallows access for 15 minutes to an hour, and flags the account as a low priority item for GMs to look at.  If someone is nearing the threshold, the server can do non-destructive actions such as adding a delay before /tells are processed, and having the delay go up exponentially. Adding to the threshold algorithm would be two more factors -- account age and total time /played amongst all the characters present.  Few spammers are willing to devote the resources to leaving level 1 chars afk for long levels of time to boost an account's /played time.  So, one can add the account age as a multiplier (more like a divider) to allow for players who have had levels and/or play time to send more /tells out without them hitting Mr. Autoboot. Algorithm #2 is similar to #1, but its the amount of /tells reported as by the /spam command in a time period, say 15-30 minutes.  Same deal.  If enough people report a person's /tells as /spam in a unit time, the server autoboots. Lastly, the ban stick needs some revising.  EQ should be able to get system info clientside such as the BIOS id of the video card and motherboard, one-way hash it (SHA-1024), then send that hash up.  Because the values are encrypted, there is absolutely no way that SOE would know anything about the machine other than that one number. This will allow SOE to ban by machines.  If the machine connects to the Launchpad, the Launchpad does a search, hashes the info, sends the SHA-1024 hash up to SOE's servers, it can be matched to a blacklist of machines, and the server can immediately shut down the connection.  Now would-be hackers would either have to run EQ2 in a virtual machine, or have to patch the code of the Launchpad process directly to get around this check.  Privacy is protected, as no data that is identifiable is sent up... just a big number that tells that PC "A" is a different PC from anyone else's.

[sah]

<p>I do like the OP's idea...I don't think that it'd be as simple to implement as you guys think it'd be, but it's definitely something that should be looked into...</p><p>server-side filtering would also be an interesting an idea, but your particular algorithm would generate way too much lag...also, I think "auto-booting" would be a bad idea...maybe just block their tells, but booting a player would cause alot of customer service problems...</p><p>algorithm 2 is a horrible idea...I can just see people abusing it to get people banned...it would just end up causing way more problems and would do nothing to stop the problem...</p><p>banning machines won't work very well because as you already said, it'd be easy to get by...it'd maybe stop them for a week or two, but once they find a way around the system it'll be trivial for them to do it again...also, I don't think the current license agreement allows SOE to get system info, so they'd have to come up with a new legal document.  and I'm not sure about this, but I don't think any major commercial software exists that requires you to send system info...all the software that I've encountered doing this, has made it optional only...</p>

[RipFlex]

<p>If the account a Trial account then they cannot us /tell at all ?</p><p>This will not discourage the trial player in anyway, they are playing for free to get the experience of the mechanics of the game, they have no need to use /tell anytime too often, and if it's an alt it's more than likely they leave the island in under an hour if not immediately.</p><p>Where this punishes the 1-4 people playing on the island and unfair to them.... ummm I can care less, not like there were 100 ppl on Trial island wanting to chat it up anymore... not like it was at launch.</p>

[sah]

<p>well noone except a dev really knows for sure whether or not it's easy...but from what I understand, the free trial is a separate client program from the standard eq2 client so it should be easy to flag all tells from the free trial as coming from the free trial (since it's a logical assumption that messages transmit name/server/game info along with the actual message)...level and zone information are not necessary to transmit a message and it's generally a good idea to send as little information as possible so it's a pretty safe bet that that information is not currently sent in a tell...so really there are 2 options:</p><p>1)  the easiest option is for the receiving client to secretly do a /who before displaying the message.  it would have to be a little more complicated though since a person could just use /anon or /roleplay to get past that.  the secret /who would have to have a way to get the information from an anon/roleplay person which might need a little tweaking of the system since there are probably security features in place to prevent a person from accessing that information.  and then another tricky thing would have to be with cross-server tells since a player never has access to level/zone information of a player on another server.  not to mention that this check would generate alot of lag with public channels...a well-timed posting of a parse into Guk.raid could generate enough chat lag to screw up another raid's pull...</p><p>2) the second option would be to transmit the level/zone information with the tell...the problem then lies with cross-game tells which is a feature that SOE loves even though it isn't used very often...the information would have to be sent along with the tell in a way that would still allow cross-game tells without having to modify all of the other games...and without knowing exactly how the whole chat system works I can't really say whether this is easy or not...if the chat system was originally designed with this sort of extension in mind, the change could be trivial, but I doubt it...</p><p>Also, regardless of whether or not people like it, MMO's are about interacting with other players.  This sort of change would allow players to completely ignore other players of a particular level range which would be a very serious deterrent for someone to start playing this game...if this change were implemented, it would pretty much guarantee that there wouldn't be any new players to the game...</p><p>And like other people have said...it'd probably take a spammer maybe an hour to hit lvl 10 without using collections...all this change would do would be to significantly increase prices on collections and probably prevent new characters from being able to adventure through the lower levels...</p>

[liveja]

<p>The last I heard, people on Trial accounts cannot send tells or emails to people who aren't on Trial accounts. Did that change? If so, can anyone actually prove that it changed, with documented patch notes or statements from SOE?</p>

[FairysTear]

I was surprised this week when I got a tell from one of these farmers, Not because I got the tell but because of their responce when I didnt respond. This person goes on to give me a lesson in manners. They felt I was being Rude for not responding to them. They decide to teach me a lesson and spam me with a paragraph that said over and over how rude it was to ignor someone when they are talking to you and sending tells. I must have gotten about 30 tells that filled my page in about 2 minutes. I just sat there /shakes her head as I reported the pages of spam.

[liveja]

Lexee@Blackburrow wrote: <blockquote>I was surprised this week when I got a tell from one of these farmers, Not because I got the tell but because of their responce when I didnt respond. </blockquote><p>Was it the same person with the same name that sent you the previous /tell?</p>

[Jai1]

<p>I've never seen anything documented on this but I know that trial accounts don't get mail and I'm pretty sure they can't send tells.  I guess the best way to find out is to try it out for yourselves.  My impression from SoE is that fighting the 3rd party sellers was an uphill battle.  Every counter measure could be overcome and it's really hard to fight it.  I do believe they go after the reported accounts and they have tools to follow the flow of money.  They can bring up any account and investigate obscure transactions.  I imagine this means they could go after the buyers if they wanted.  However, the way Sigil is handling it in Vanguard is leaving a few innocent accounts banned.  They may not have the same tools but I don't think SoE wants to alienate it's players.  They surely don't want to ban innocent accounts and I imagine their investigations are thorough.</p><p>I like the idea of using account age vs the amount of tells to different characters.  I don't imagine these accounts have a very long lifespan.  I think they use outside tools to send mail tells because I get tells on two separate accounts at about the same time.  This has happened on a number of occasions.  The reason the algorithm or whatever may not really affect anything is because the tells would have already be sent by the time it identifies a spam account.  I don't think these spammers expect to have there account that long and it always seems like a different name is used to send them.  Also, it's like 10 dollars to get the original game.  I figure there's always a work around. </p>

[Sunlei]

<p>  Been asked questions by newbies a lot more than offers to sell gold. so, no I want the newbies to be able to see chat and send tells. EQ is not a single-player game! sick of soe nurfing everything because of gold farmers and plat sellers!</p><p> It's the free trials that are the problem with the peons who spam tells. Wish soe would require payment info up front with the free trials. </p><p>The idea of a free trial is to get paying subs and real players! </p><p>If they don't have a credit card it's just a waste of time to allow anything 'free'. </p><p>They still can cancel and not pay anything if they don't like the game. </p><p>Any bank has money cards that can be used like a credit card if the person has an account. Again if a person doesn't have a bank account, a creditcard or parents who will pay..everquest games don't need the freeloaders.</p><p>sure the bigger gold sellers will spend the 20$ to run their ads but then that account will be gone/banned and soe needs to ban that credit info forever. </p><p>Add a charge fee if in the first free month the account is used to spam gold sales. Would not mind at all if a months charge, if account used to spam, is added to the eula. Be a good way to pay for all that cs time soe has to spend on banning free trial accounts.</p><p>start requiring credit info soe!, people are paying for their computers, their isp and will still have their free time. Get rid of the deadbeats. Just make them show they are real newbies not leeches. </p>

[Maranatha]

Ok, here's another idea.  Why not have an option (that a player can chose to use or not) that will block /tell from any account with an age of under 31 days.  Most, if not all, of the spammers use random character names, so using a name filter would be mostly useless.  However, I'm going to assume that SOE kills spamming accounts (if reported by enough people) within the first month of use.  A filter that blocks by age would stop all but the most dedicated spammers. Sure, the spammers could activate accounts, let them sit a month, then use them.  But, this would eliminate trial accounts from spam usage.  It would also hurt the wallets of spammers, since they would basically have to pay for the second month to get the account past the 31 day cutoff.  This would make the whole spam gig annoying and painful for those who would choose to use it. For friends and such that would like to talk where young accounts are involved, a private channel could be set up between them.

[liveja]

Sunlei wrote: <blockquote><p>It's the free trials that are the problem </p></blockquote><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=352249" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">"Specifically, Buddy Key accounts will soon be under a set of restrictions similar to Trial accounts."</a></p><p>The actual post from Grimwell refers to "buddy keys". However, as I quoted above, the restrictions are "similar to to Trial accounts".</p><p>Read Grim's post to see what those restrictions are.</p><p>  </p>

[Sunlei]

<cite>livejazz wrote:</cite><blockquote>Sunlei wrote: <blockquote><p>It's the free trials that are the problem </p></blockquote><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=352249" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">"Specifically, Buddy Key accounts will soon be under a set of restrictions similar to Trial accounts."</a></p><p>The actual post from Grimwell refers to "buddy keys". However, as I quoted above, the restrictions are "similar to to Trial accounts".</p><p>Read Grim's post to see what those restrictions are.</p><p>  </p></blockquote><p>   sure those buddy keys, I got 10 in the vanguard box and a bunch in all the eq boxes. People give those away and I'm sure gold sellers  look for those free things. May as well stop the buddie keys too, we can just give friends  the url to a trial.  OR just require a credit card and a spam charge to cover cs time dealing with the spammer accounts.</p><p>  should make that spam charge 50 or 100 dollars too <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Then we can have a REAL FREE trial to give friends, instead of some gimped up thing that's not very much like the real game.</p>

[Youngone31]

<p>Well I have to say the Sapphira is on the ball this morning, locked my thread in under 20 minutes so I guess I am posting here. If a person is starting on and trial or buddy acount, they do not need all of the functions a paying customer would need. They are starting off on an island in the middle of nowhere and should not really have the ability to communicate with the outside world. They should not be able to use all of the chat channels. Last time I checked, you can not buy books to craft with. People on the island do not need access to the crafting channel. People on the island can not trade with others off the island so they do not need the traders channel. There are not part of Qeynos or Freeport so they do not need those channel or any other channel that communicates off of the island. If they are paying for the account then yes let them have all of the features. If they are paying for free, some of those features need to be limited to paying customers. This may help cut down on some of the spam.</p><p>This is an afterthough because I am typing this at work and am costantly being interuptted. Just disable all the chat channels on the island except lvl 1-9, shout, and ooc. When you leave the island, then let people be able to use all of the channels.  </p>

[UlteriorModem]

<p>Spam them back ?</p><p> Imagaine if everyone they spammed replyed over and over whew they would be hammered.</p>

[Jai1]

<p>The problem is that trials are not contained only to the island now.  Nice link Livejazz.  I think that should eliminate some of the worries.  I imagine the perception that SoE does nothing comes from the fact that people still get spammed.  After Grimwells post, I think we can rest assured that the function of trial and buddy accounts are limited.  What does that mean?  Well, the gold sellers aren't probably using buddy and trial keys anymore.  They have been moved on to paying customers.  That is the work around.</p><p>I'm not sure blocking the age of the account means much because the game doesn't log you out on idle time like WoW does.  With a solid connection, they can let multiple accounts sit on a machine and gain age.  I know it sound like it would be so easy to get rid of the menace but the bottom line is that there is money to be made and a whole lot of poor people in this world.  Most players don't game to make a living.  It changes the whole dynamic of the issue when this is the case.  Players see it as an annoyance.   To others, it's pays for essentials and probably not a whole lot of them.</p>

[Youngone31]

I forgot about Grimwell's post on the buddy accounts, it was from 3/20. A month has past now. When are those changes suppose to take effect???

[Of_mice_and_men]

<p>I get them quite often and my Fury is always anon.  It's not a big problem though ... I just report them if I have time or ignore them completely.  It's not like it's an annoying pop up window or something.  Just easily ignored along with the other tells I don't care to recieve from players.</p><p>Yes, it's not cool but I don't *personally* think it ruins anything about the game.  If all tells frighten you then just send them off to a window you dont read?</p>

[erin]

Some of my chars are anon, some are roleplay, all are blocked from seeing alts.  I've yet to see a difference in plat seller spam among them.  I get at least 1 spam every couple of hours.  What's worse, if you are boxing multiple chars, they will hit all at once, which is extra annoying.  But the tells don't bother me much, I report (or not) and move on. The mail drives me nuts, because I just don't know who its from (spammer or customer, I'm an avid tradeskiller). I don't have a brilliant solution for how to fix it, but I want it fixed.  For me, one way would be to be able to see your mail, at least the senders name, even when out in the field.  That would solve my problems.

[Ama]

<p>The ingame mail and tells have been calming down a bit for me.  This could be me not being on at a certain time of day, but *shrug*.  </p><p>I really think the CSR/GMs are ontop of this.  It would be interesting to see the devs implement a word catcher for CSRs.  The instant a tell message has a certain phrase or website reference a CSR/GM is alerted to that particular server.  This would go the same for ingame mails and the offending account would automatically be suspended.  </p><p>SoE still gets their money and the plat sellers have to rebuy new accounts.  Have a feeling the plat sellers and SoE will go at it till plat sellers finally give up permanently moving to WoW where their accepted.  </p><p>What would be funny and interesting is if SoE did stings paying the 10-20 bucks for a huge amount of plat.  They then ask if they want more are there other toons.  After that bam nab all of them up and spank em.  </p>

[erin]

Would be much better if the same tell from the same character to more than 5 people was immediately flagged for a CSR, who would instantly ban the account if it was plat selling.  Do that for a couple days and they would have to regroup.  I honestly can't think of a legitimate reason why 1 character would be sending tells to 5 or more people at virtually the same instant (within say 30 seconds).  But I'm sure someone will come up with some reason that someone needs to be able to do this and what an atrocity it would be to remove that ability.  As someone else said, slow them down, that hurts their bottom line!

[Pain Divine]

<p>Why would SOE give us the ability to block tells from their sales affiliates? <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Lord_Quaymar]

<cite>Chayna wrote:</cite><blockquote>So far the plan to stop gold sellers isn't working. I get hit with tells just as much as I was before and it is annoying and disruptive. I want it to stop. There is no reason I should ever get a tell from anyone on the starting islands. They shouldn't be able to send tell to anyone not in the same zone. Since SOE seems reluctant to do anything about this that has an actual global impact then give us the ability to filter /tells by level. Blocking levels 1-5 or 1-10 should work. The auto reply should be "The party you are trying to reach does not accept tells from this zone or level range. If you are advertising any product go away." I'm not worried about friends/guildmates starting new characters. Anyone that has played the game can level a character easily enough and get off the island. I'm just done with being solicited by 3rd parties. This needs to be done. The problem needs to be fixed. Now is a better time than later. </blockquote><p> What about the annoying banter that goes on in public channels? Would you like to ignore all of those too? It might be easier if you just played a single player game.</p><p>Get over it already. It isn't going away. Think of it like junk mail or telemarketing calls IRL and blow it off. Don't let it ruin your game.</p><p>I'm not saying it's ok for them to do what they're doing but, honestly, you are beating a VERY dead horse here and making a suggestion that has already been made 73472534253475 times in the last few years.</p>

[Valdaglerion]

<p>This does need to be fixed. it's interesting I heard someone say they simply ignore the messages and delete the emails, its no big deal. The scary thing was the similar responses to spam in the early to mid 90's. Now,  we have spam of epidemic proportions that disrupt business and cost into the billions in lost productivity each year.</p><p> Consider for a moment another problem people complain about, LAG. How much of that lag is being generated by spammers generating logs with /who commands to turn those into high speed /tell commands obviously being scripted? How much of that lag might be generated by the macroed high speed production of emails with a database of toon names acquired over time?</p><p> There are a few simple solutions to this problem really. Instead of blocking all tells (which punishes the players and limits their communications) or blocking a level range (which again, punishes the player) how about empowering the player with one more simple option "Only receive tells from friends". People not on your friend list would not be able to send you tells.</p><p> This solution gives the player some control over whom they will receive blind tells from.</p><p>To assist in alleviating the server side resources used, limit players to the number of unique people they can send tells and emails to in a single day. From my experience, limiting the number of emails to unique players to 15 in a day and unique number of players to send tells to at 30 (thoughts - higher or lower??) would be a high enough number as to not disrupt gameplay for normal players and low enough to disrupt plat spammers and significantly impact their efficiency.  It would negate their automation all together and make it a non-profitable venture. Human labor is the most expensive overhead in that venture. If a person has to sit there and switch toons and accounts constatntly to let some script run for 5 seconds to send the tells and emails, they have more human labor needed than computer automation efficiency. They will have to find another way to advertise. </p><p>Remember this is based on unique players not total number of tells. It wont prohibit you from sending tells to your friends all day long as long as you dont have more than 30 friends to send tells to in a 24 hour period. Thoughts?</p>

[sah]

<p>I do agree that this is a problem that needs to be fixed but your idea of blocking tells to anyone except friends is a horrible idea...it would totally ruin pickup groups and raids...it would pretty much eliminate the use of LFG and LFW...</p><p>Also there are alot of people who send tells to more than 30 people in a day...a pickup raid leader can hit 50+ for a single raid...most people who spend all day doing pickup groups can pass 30...people who spend alot of time LFW can pass 30 pretty easily...druids and wizards who offer to port people can pass 30 very quickly.  Also, in order to do this effectively, it would require storing a list of players that a person has sent a tell to for every character who hass logged on in the pass 24 hours which would generate considerably more lag than the spammers probably do...This particular idea may actually work against mail spam because of the existing 30 minute delay but again, crafters and maybe even guild leaders can easily pass 15 mails a day...</p><p>This has already been discussed before but searching for specific words just won't work...any sort of efficient algorithms would be easily bypassed...it's basically the same reason why many people use "at" instead of @ when posting their email address...algorithms do exist that could fairly effectively search for those things but take more time to run which means more lag...</p><p>The main reason why it's difficult to stop people from sending a certain amount of tells within a certain period of time is the lag it would cause...a real-time chat server would probably be storing almost nothing, all it does is forward the messages...in order to limit the number of tells a player can send it would have to store the names of every player who has sent a tell recently and having to constantly search and update the list takes alot of time...</p>

[bleap]

SOE doesn't know how to fix it, so instead of giving players the tools to try they just lock threads and let the gold sellers win...it's easier for them..

[sah]

<cite>bleap wrote:</cite><blockquote>SOE doesn't know how to fix it, so instead of giving players the tools to try they just lock threads and let the gold sellers win...it's easier for them.. </blockquote> this thread isn't locked yet!  <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[liveja]

<cite>Lord_Quaymar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Get over it already. It isn't going away. Think of it like junk mail or telemarketing calls IRL and blow it off. Don't let it ruin your game.</blockquote><p>QFE. I guess I'll just never understand why it's such a big issue for some people.</p><p>OTOH, it's almost entirely gone away for me, which causes me to wonder why some people insist they get so much. </p>

[Mawie]

It is really interesting, I get MAYBE one tell a month... MAYBE. (Notice the emphasis on MAYBE.) The only times I ever get them is when I am not on anon or roleplay. And when I do get them, I just ignore them at this point. The only reason people get annoyed with them is because they are allowing themselves. It only disrupts gameplay because people allow it to.

[Valdaglerion]

Mawie@Mistmoore wrote: <blockquote>It is really interesting, I get MAYBE one tell a month... MAYBE. (Notice the emphasis on MAYBE.) The only times I ever get them is when I am not on anon or roleplay. And when I do get them, I just ignore them at this point. The only reason people get annoyed with them is because they are allowing themselves. It only disrupts gameplay because people allow it to. </blockquote><p> Sounds like maybe the problem is more prolific on certain servers. If I only got maybe one a month, I wouldnt see that as a problem but I get typically 2 per hour during prime time during the week. If I play on a saturday, the figure is higher. Glad to know it isnt a problem for everyone but for the people who are getting a lot it is disruptive. Most annoying is in a group or in combat and you get a tell which quickly scrolls out of sight due to combat info or channel chat, so you scroll back up to see what it was and darn it, spam!</p>

[Valdaglerion]

<cite>sahet wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I do agree that this is a problem that needs to be fixed but your idea of blocking tells to anyone except friends is a horrible idea...it would totally ruin pickup groups and raids...it would pretty much eliminate the use of LFG and LFW...</p><p>Also there are alot of people who send tells to more than 30 people in a day...a pickup raid leader can hit 50+ for a single raid...most people who spend all day doing pickup groups can pass 30...people who spend alot of time LFW can pass 30 pretty easily...druids and wizards who offer to port people can pass 30 very quickly.  Also, in order to do this effectively, it would require storing a list of players that a person has sent a tell to for every character who hass logged on in the pass 24 hours which would generate considerably more lag than the spammers probably do...This particular idea may actually work against mail spam because of the existing 30 minute delay but again, crafters and maybe even guild leaders can easily pass 15 mails a day...</p><p>This has already been discussed before but searching for specific words just won't work...any sort of efficient algorithms would be easily bypassed...it's basically the same reason why many people use "at" instead of @ when posting their email address...algorithms do exist that could fairly effectively search for those things but take more time to run which means more lag...</p><p>The main reason why it's difficult to stop people from sending a certain amount of tells within a certain period of time is the lag it would cause...a real-time chat server would probably be storing almost nothing, all it does is forward the messages...in order to limit the number of tells a player can send it would have to store the names of every player who has sent a tell recently and having to constantly search and update the list takes alot of time...</p></blockquote><p>if teh blocking except friends was a toggle it would have zero affect on pickup raids, etc. If you are LFG or LFW, simply toggle it off so you can get incoming messages. No downside there.</p><p>I will concede the additional traffic in needing to track the messages. I was curious to see what people thought of the numbers. I would also offer that if they tracked this information for a month or so they could, if they truly wanted to, track down the account holders spamming by the credit cards used for those accounts and get rid of the problem at the source.</p>

[sah]

Valdaglerion wrote:  <blockquote>if teh blocking except friends was a toggle it would have zero affect on pickup raids, etc. If you are LFG or LFW, simply toggle it off so you can get incoming messages. No downside there.</blockquote><p> this would be so freakin annoying...turn it on to block tells, turn it off to find a group, turn it back on, turn it off to find replacements or another group, turn it back on again...and alot of times I try to send tells to people with items listed on the broker which probably won't work any more...if I ever want to ask a question, I have to make sure I turn it off before I ask the question to get a response and then turn it on again after I get my answers...pickup group leaders would be constantly turning it on and off again...if I'm LFG and I forgot to turn it off then I'll never get a group...not to mention that i would have to add a ton of people and all of their alts to my friends list...a less annoying solution would be preferred...  <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Valdaglerion wrote: </p><blockquote>I would also offer that if they tracked this information for a month or so they could, if they truly wanted to, track down the account holders spamming by the credit cards used for those accounts and get rid of the problem at the source.</blockquote><p>they already have this information when people report the spammers...noone except SOE employees knows for sure whether or not they ban credit cards or if the spammers actually use credit cards...the only way anyone would be able to find out is to send out enough spam to get their account banned and see if their credit card still works...hahaha  <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Ealthina]

I get about 2 a week weather or not I'm anon or roleplay.  If I'm not on they mail 'em to me..  heh.  I then /reply back with a few not so politically correct words then /petition and /report and /ignore and be done with them.  I once mad a bot group REALLY mad by following them in a dungeon for about a 4 day period.  Same route same time and round through the place.  I decided to time the spawn timers and watch the routes.  Timed their movements.  Got a nifty bit of info and /petitioned it all.  ABout two hours later I was following them and mid fight on a name..POOF!  all gone from zone.  Did not last long of course as a different group showed up 2 days later.  But for two days people could actually play in the zone.  Now it's barren again.

[FairysTear]

<cite>livejazz wrote:</cite><blockquote>Lexee@Blackburrow wrote: <blockquote>I was surprised this week when I got a tell from one of these farmers, Not because I got the tell but because of their responce when I didnt respond. </blockquote><p>Was it the same person with the same name that sent you the previous /tell?</p></blockquote>

[Laoch69]

<p>I think it is being brought up again, and again, because the problem is worse than ever.</p><p> I am getting 3 tells a day, and at least 1 mail a day.  I report, and /petition each and every person that send me a tell in regards to selling platinum.</p><p>Yet the number of plat selling companies seem to be increasing.</p>

[Ruut Li]

<p>I find it immensly funny that some people think that people are making up spam stories just because they themselves dont experience the spam, roflmao! What an ignorant attitude <img src="/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. So for a long while I was not spammed but my friends/guildies were; I should of told them to stop imagining things? Hahaha!</p><p>Anyways, I have never played anon or role and I been lucky and not been spammed. This week I ran out of luck; all my toons receive SPAM; its many many tells per hour. And it does get freakin annoying to see the same [I cannot control my vocabulary] from different names over and over when all I want to is enjoy my questing (immersion..remember?). Hell no Im not gonna spend more time petitioning than PLAYING the game.</p><p>Also its funny to ask customers to not be annoyed over something "trivial" when you conspiracy theorists get all worked up when customers give feedback about something that annoys them. You see its very trivial to choose NOT TO CLICK THIS THREAD. Honestly it is, but I guess its hard for trolls to realise <img src="/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  Oh my dear god! I just saw that one of them created a thread about the "whiners", talk about being way off rofl! Spam tells pops up in my face, these threads dont pop up in ur face unless you click em vegetable + bodypart lol!</p><p>As for a solution; I dont have a suggestion. I just wanted to laugh at the trolls and tease em a bit <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>