Slashdot Mirror
Gold Spam Becoming a Sore Topic For Aion Players
Usagi_yo writes "Endless whispers for Kinah (Aion's in-game currency), scrolling chat tabs of multi-line spam messages from currency traders, phishing scams, key-logger scam, power leveling — it's all there and it's very ugly for NCsoft's release of Aion MMORPG, as players are starting to revolt only two weeks into the game's release."
This reader originally pointed to the Aion general forums, which displayed a ton of threads complaining about spammers. Many of those threads have since been deleted (though more continue to crop up). Make of that what you will. I've been playing Aion a bit, and the spamming is certainly becoming a problem. When it began, it was mainly just whisper-spam from level 1 accounts, which NCSoft quickly stepped on by denying whispers before level 5. Not the most elegant solution, but it was a decent attempt to complement the /anon command, which makes your character invisible to /who searches. Then the spammers just started leveling to 5, which doesn't take too long, but in order to make up for lost time, they co-opted the global "looking for group" channel, flooding it such that the channel is now useless. You can easily block the channel from view (giving up entirely on what was once a helpful channel), or individually block each of the spammers as they arrive, but hopefully NCSoft will soon implement a solution that's less annoying to players. They say they're still on the case.
This sounds like a job for regular expressions!
I should post an obligatory XKCD
This is not the funny you're looking for.
Spammers have been around since the dawn of selling virtual items and services in a MMORPG. People complain about having chat huds full of stuff? I remember begging NCSoft/ArenaNet to do something about this in the original Guild Wars circa summer 2005 when it was released, cause they actually had a limit of how many players you could /ignore
This is nothing new folks, it comes with the territory, especially in an Asian made MMORPG that has opened itself to a foreign audience. Honestly, stop complaining. Blizzard has the same issues with WoW, do I still complain about seeing spammers there? No, just like I didn't complain when they were in EQ, WoW, Diablo 1/2, etc etc etc
Does it suck? Yea it's annoying but its just part of the game. If it bothers you that much, don't play. Want to communicate with people in your party? Group chat, guild chat or Teamspeak/Ventrilo.
As for fixing it, some simple word filters and IP filters would work.
Aw Frell this
Weird, DDO doesn't have this problem. Does this mean it's doomed? Can you now predict success of an MMO on spam levels?
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
I was one of the first ones on headstart (-2 days before actual launch). There was no gold spamming to speak of until about a week later. Not only is the spam in the LFG channel and whispers, they will also send you spam in your mailbox entitled "sorry to bother". The worst part is that you get a indicator on your GUI for new mail when this happens. Banning the spammers is in ncsoft's best interest, they'll just buy another $50 copy of Aion and continue spamming. The good news is blocking the several new ones that popup when you login usually cures the problem for the couple hours you're logged in.
Warhammer doesn't seem to have much of a problem with gold spammers. When the game first came out, there was already a dedicated feedback button for "Report Gold Spammer." I have never seen more than 7 gold-spam mail messages in my box. And, plus, gold is easy to come by in that game anyway. There is just no market for the spammers to tap into.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]