I've been spammed repeatedly today by an adena sales message. I asked some friends and clannies and they all got spammed.
I suppose the farmers must have some kind of list over players now. Any idea how they got hold of everyone's name? I didnt go to town lately so I suspect that my name must have been picked up earlier somehow.
I reported the character right away but I'm guessing they were using a trial account. So no big loss for them :(
Last week, there were people receiving blank PMs from strange characters (4455 was one I got). Somehow, they were picking up player names and making a list.
So that's what it was! I got long blank message last week from a player with a random name. They must have making lists of players then. Great..so now I'll be spammed until I go crazy? :mad:
lol.. I just read the ad. I only looked at the first line before. 99 friggen dollars for level 1-40?? Maybe I should get into that business :eek: (Note to Moderator5, this is a joke).
Problem is PMs are how a lot of new players are contacted by their existing friends that brought them to the game.
Maybe make it to where trial accounts cannot PM, but can reply just fine?
I dunno. Removing PMs doesn't seem like it would be a solution that won't cause problems.
And to those who say "Just friend list them" well, you can't if you don't know the name. They can tell you their name in PMs, but if you don't know it you can't PM or friend list them.
Yeah that's a problem :( But they should at least be able to restrict it. Like 5 PMs every 10 minutes or something. Isn't it unlimited now? One trial account can spam hundreds of players in a few minutes...and over and over X.X
And so it begins. Maybe we should do the same, have it backfire somewhat. Make a database in a sticky thread of all of the names so we can add them to our block lists. Does anyone know if there's a limit to the number of people you can have in your list?
I WoW they've set it up so trial accounts cannot pm others unless they are responding to a PM or the other person have put them on their friendslist.
This of course creates its own set of problems, I was trying to get a hold of a friend in WoW, but just had to sit there frustrated because I couldn't PM her and with no way of telling her to add me to her friendslist, I was screwed. Ended up having to ask a WoW Staffer to log onto the game and deliver a message.
I'm still getting spammed by the same message. 3 different chars now and I've reported them all. As soon as they get banned they just make a new trial account and start spamming again...
We all saw this coming. The "PM Spam" test was 1st clue. Some enterprising farmers have finally found a way to mass spam their services in game w/o any thought to the player base. I hope now that NcSoft will revise it's banning policies around farmers and botting. These are all symbiotic activities. Without farmers & without botting these pukes who sell adena would not exist. They now have taken the issue to a new level.
NcSoft the ball is clearly in your court. Time to wake the hell up. Time to really take a look at the servers and get rid of the accounts whose only goal is to gather and sell adena.
It's crunch time....what ya going to do? Your response to this activity could well decide the future of the game in N/A. I for one will not stand to be spammed all day by adena farmers trying to sell what they gathered illegally and what I grind so hard to get...
It's not fair to a real life playing PAYING customer like myself to have to put up with this crap. 1st you turn a blind eye on the MASSIVE farming/Botting activities then you allow us to get abused in game by those very rule breaking POS's.
Just goes to show how persistant gold sellers are, and doubly or even more that for .. well. Other evil doers :)
In WoW, even with those restrictions, the goldsellers just spam party invites to people then when some n00b joins (I did), they start spamming their gold seller info.
Meh, the spam is just the same as it was with the earlier trial accounts. There's always been adena marketing pm's associated with them. Last time they used shout in conjunction with the pm's for some added shock effect and visibility.
Nothing new here, move along. And petition every one of them and hope NC actually does something.
PS. They did this long before "mass spamming" everyone with blank messages. Most likely, those blank messages were a BOTCHED ad spam. Prolly had the walker turned to korean/chinese/whatever still and the game could not support the characters.
Somehow getting Hero status and using blue chat to advertise.... haha.
that would never happen. Nc has temp banned bartz heros for even mentioning the word bot in hero chat before... "discussion of tos violations is a tos violation" or some nonsense...
Meh, the spam is just the same as it was with the earlier trial accounts. There's always been adena marketing pm's associated with them. Last time they used shout in conjunction with the pm's for some added shock effect and visibility.
Nothing new here, move along. And petition every one of them and hope NC actually does something.
PS. They did this long before "mass spamming" everyone with blank messages. Most likely, those blank messages were a BOTCHED ad spam. Prolly had the walker turned to korean/chinese/whatever still and the game could not support the characters.
I disagree. These PM's are a much more focused method of getting to the player base. It's not a shout in Giran that everyone can see it's specific and its to you. Anyone who sat through the "Gathering of Names" PM's last week will tell you how annoying it is to get purple text, a text color that we have trained ourselves to pay attention too, from someone trying to sell you something. It really reduces the in-game enjoyment of the game itself and generally annoys the heck out of people. Remember it's not just in town that players are getting spammed they are getting it over and over while hunting. The problem has grown by 100X worse IMHO.
Look at it from the techoweenie side of it. The program that our little friends are using is now sophisticated enough to gather names of nearby players, organize them into a viable list of and spam PM's to them so fast that the servers (and GM's) have a hard time keeping up. Any idea how 300-3000 PM's in just a few seconds (or minutes?) will affect the server? How much lag could that create? How 'bout how many /gm responses are then flooded to the GM's? It's a geometric issue. And one we should NOT have to deal with if NcSoft had taken care of the problem in the past. What is next? How far can they go?
And it needs to be stopped. They've up the ante and now it's time for NcSoft to act.
They're obviously using a third party program for this that's not even using the client.
They're easily getting past the (draconian) text restrictions.
Looking on another forum it looks like this is an exploit which NC are apparently looking into. Once of the server's heros found the toon in question (EE78) sitting in TI.
People have mentioned that they've been PMed on accounts they're just re-activated or just started playing after x months. Looks like there is some kind of back door or command which they've found to be able to either PM everyone at once or generate a list of everyone's toon names.
Seems like the latter to me because the order the PM's went out in was in reverse chronological (i.e. Z-A-9-0)
My guess is they have a toon in each city that records the names of everyone that passes by them. Then later they put that list on one of there trail accounts and starts the PM's.
...but these PMs were going to people who just signed up and/or just re-activated their accounts. I have a level 1 dwarf which I use for warehouse stuff and he recieved a PM and the last time I used him was around 3 months ago.
I guess I am at a loss as to why NcSoft can't check the pm's and if the website is in there, delete / not deliver the pm and pm ban the account for 48 hours.
check the toon out, see if they are real or bot and destroy it.
Even if it is a 3rd party app making the pm's, doesn't the pm go thru the system as normal and therefor should be logged somewhere???
Oh, got the pm's this morning on Bartz. My toon had been int he cats since I left him there last night when I logged out for clan stuff.
These are still trial accounts. I have said they don't shout they go in giran and PM everyone there. Its funny how they limited the shouts and not PMs with the trial accounts. They don't care if they person PMing gets banned.
Well, it's obviously happening on all servers (Lionna here). And one domain got spammed for in the same manner several times (weeks, 2 months I think the for first time) in the past.
Which is when I petitioned it.
Along with the DNS and whois info. That domain is HOSTED in the USofA and obviously NCsoft is either unable or unwilling to sue their pants off even in when this is happening in their own backyard. Or the mills of justice grind extremely slow, I really can't tell from here. Hey maybe they fear a presidential pardon for the adena sellers? :p
But what I can tell is that wasting my time on a petition in these cases is just that, a waste of time.
Technical solutions to rate limit things would be another thing, but as somebody working in the ISP business for a long time I can guarantee you that if you have the option of a clear cut legal action, you take it. It tends to be lot more effective (you take out one organization) and it acts as a deterrent at the same time.
Just adding my name to the list. The problem needs to be corrected immediately. My dwarf got the message 3 times in a short span of time from the same user.
Heh now my sales dwarf got not only one, but TWO spamming messages from the same person.
Problem is, those are clearly random generated names. Blocking them will obviously do no good, since they can just spam you with another randomly generated name.
Don't need to worry about the names until cleanup. Need to focus on silencing the message itself. After that, cleanup is easy since most of them will be gone after the trial periods end.
Zhanig, well im sure if they have the SEVER LISTS like they do which i find itself is quite disgraceful of ncsoft to let an error like this go on for so long releasing everyones names even if it was accidental, there should not be a flaw like this.
So now their scripts mass spam us when we log in or otherwise.
Either way they will happily pay $10 to active an account and to spam for a day or so until they get banned.
Either way, havnt even had Ncsoft comment on it or progress on isolating how it is happening and the leak of the info
Either way, havnt even had Ncsoft comment on it or progress on isolating how it is happening and the leak of the info
Actually, I did. There are multiple threads popping up about this. I commented on the first one I saw and already stated that I'd alert the GMs about it. They are in the process of banning people, and we're looking into what proactive measures we can take.
Either way, havnt even had Ncsoft comment on it or progress on isolating how it is happening and the leak of the info
Actually, I did. There are multiple threads popping up about this. I commented on the first one I saw and already stated that I'd alert the GMs about it. They are in the process of banning people, and we're looking into what proactive measures we can take.
I saw u trolling and was just baiting u hun haha :>
Just wanted to see you post as i knew was around the time ud be in!
I saw u trolling and was just baiting u hun haha :>
Just wanted to see you post as i knew was around the time ud be in!
Lol, meanie. :x I'm trying to get some work done off the forums, but I didn't want you all to feel forgotten or neglected. :(
I bet you just keep glancing up and your like ooo new post on general and you go click it and have to reply :> im kinda like that, im trying to go to bed but every section im trolling gets a reply just as im about to go or i go brush my teeth then come back and reply more :>
It would seem the trial accounts need to be further modified regarding chat. Preventing Trial Accounts from PM'ing would cause it's own problems. A possible solution would be that if you were PM'd by a Trial Account a small message (small being the operative word - more akin to the chat with friends than the accept trade window) appears along the lines of 'Trial Player <name> requests chat' with allow/decline option.
Then you would still be able to receive PM's from friends who are trialling the game or players with legitimate queries attempting to contact you, yet still enable us as players some control over these messages.
It does make one wonder if this is a sign of desperation from the adena sellers though. NC is the only one with any real control over the situation. For us players it's just a matter of how to deal with these frustrations.....
I find the points for leaving in game PMs available for trial accounts kind of funny.
If, and a big if here, I had a friend that was getting into the game, there are many more means to contact them other than the PM to try and get their attention. TeamSpeak and Vent come to mind rather quickly along with msn (that is in the game), and POTs.
At this point, a larger stick is in order since the banning is really not going to do much without the IP bans. If they use Credit Cards, well, those are easily stolen and re-used. The free account trials was very, very welcome. The fact that the sellers are using them is in fact proof that they do work, just not as the programmers had inteneded.
At this point, since maintenance is around the corner, a total ban on the trail account pm's may need to be considered especially if NcSoft can't ban just these messages somehow.
A possible solution would be that if you were PM'd by a Trial Account a small message (small being the operative word - more akin to the chat with friends than the accept trade window) appears along the lines of 'Trial Player <name> requests chat' with allow/decline option.
I think that's a great idea. I'll chat with the team today to see if that would be feasible. We've been discussing a few other possible long-term solutions, but I do agree that disabling PMs all together would be problematic and unnecessarily difficult for legitimate new players. I'll let you all know what we end up doing.
One concern about this option ('Trial Player <name> requests chat' with allow/decline option.) is that it could quickly become a spam festival. Similar to how some people spam clan / trade / party windows at you.
Something to consider in your discussions, Alyra. I like the idea, personally.
If it was similar in notification to the mail system it may prevent any spam festival. For me, being someone that is often in buy/sell shop or semi-afk while crafting, it would be handy to still be able to check who has tried to contact me after the event. Rather than me having to be present for a 5 second popup window. Also notification like the mail system is small enough to not be an issue while hunting/pvp'ing etc and irrelevant if one person or twenty attempt to contact you.
Alyra you may want to start with the fact that they are not using the L2 client. Last time I checked my tell command did not allow that much text to be sent or be broken up over lines as the message has been from the spammers.
Alyra you may want to start with the fact that they are not using the L2 client. Last time I checked my tell command did not allow that much text to be sent or be broken up over lines as the message has been from the spammers.
The second part isn't true; try using "\n" (displays as "Wn", with the "W" having a horizontal line striking through it) anywhere in your text.
You can break up your chat in lines using a command - I can't remember exactly what it is right now, but I've tried it, and it works. Maybe someone else will fill in the blanks. But anyway, yeah, they're most definitely not using the real client. Just wanted to say that you can do it :)
Alyra you may want to start with the fact that they are not using the L2 client. Last time I checked my tell command did not allow that much text to be sent or be broken up over lines as the message has been from the spammers.
More importantly, it isn't possible to use the standard L2 client to spam the same message to hundreds of people at the same time. It would be too time consuming and as far as I know everyone recieves the spam message at almost the same instant.
Unfortunately, if NCsoft could detect the bot client and ban it they would have done so a long time ago.... and we wouldn't have to see those funny robotic players moving in zombie style through all l2 dungeons and good xp places.
I disagree. These PM's are a much more focused method of getting to the player base. It's not a shout in Giran that everyone can see it's specific and its to you...
AS I SAID: They've done it before. PMing people that is. The blank pms were a new one, but adena marketing pms for the masses have been here way before anyone reported those blank messages. Heck, I think I got the first adena spam messages almost half a year ago.
Perhaps re-read what I said and dont just focus on the word shout.
A possible solution would be that if you were PM'd by a Trial Account a small message (small being the operative word - more akin to the chat with friends than the accept trade window) appears along the lines of 'Trial Player <name> requests chat' with allow/decline option.
I think that's a great idea. I'll chat with the team today to see if that would be feasible. We've been discussing a few other possible long-term solutions, but I do agree that disabling PMs all together would be problematic and unnecessarily difficult for legitimate new players. I'll let you all know what we end up doing.
No Alyra, that's not a great idea....it's a slapdash fix for bad management.
The best way to remove the adena sellers spam is to remove the adena seller!
BAN the bots. BAN the farmers which do not *play* the game, but exploit it (and players) and in short do the job that should have been done right from the start. Remove the supply(ers) of adena and the spam goes away, because won't have anything to sell to begin with.
Whatever system NC is currently using for their automated replies (GM) is complete junk. How you are handling bots/3rd party software violators is worthless. FIX THOSE BEFORE you alter the game itself.
If NC would only enforce their terms of service and remove 'bad players' (aka adena selling mafia-opolies) then there wouldn't be a need to alter the way PM's work, as there would be no adena sellers to abuse the PM's to begin with.
The very same game design that makes it so 'easy' to bot, also makes it blindingly obvious when someone IS botting, that NC's (non) handling of those people is a standing *joke* among the actual players.
Once NC stops 'passing the buck', then and only then will the adena sellers and the problems that they cause come under control or go away. Until then you will *always* be chasing the 'little fires' trying to put them out without ever tackling the blaze that starts them.
A possible solution would be that if you were PM'd by a Trial Account a small message (small being the operative word - more akin to the chat with friends than the accept trade window) appears along the lines of 'Trial Player <name> requests chat' with allow/decline option.
I think that's a great idea. I'll chat with the team today to see if that would be feasible. We've been discussing a few other possible long-term solutions, but I do agree that disabling PMs all together would be problematic and unnecessarily difficult for legitimate new players. I'll let you all know what we end up doing.
No Alyra, that's not a great idea....it's a slapdash fix for bad management.
The best way to remove the adena sellers spam is to remove the adena seller!
BAN the bots. BAN the farmers which do not *play* the game, but exploit it (and players) and in short do the job that should have been done right from the start. Remove the supply(ers) of adena and the spam goes away, because won't have anything to sell to begin with.
Whatever system NC is currently using for their automated replies (GM) is complete junk. How you are handling bots/3rd party software violators is worthless. FIX THOSE BEFORE you alter the game itself.
If NC would only enforce their terms of service and remove 'bad players' (aka adena selling mafia-opolies) then there wouldn't be a need to alter the way PM's work, as there would be no adena sellers to abuse the PM's to begin with.
The very same game design that makes it so 'easy' to bot, also makes it blindingly obvious when someone IS botting, that NC's (non) handling of those people is a standing *joke* among the actual players.
Once NC stops 'passing the buck', then and only then will the adena sellers and the problems that they cause come under control or go away. Until then you will *always* be chasing the 'little fires' trying to put them out without ever tackling the blaze that starts them.
Yea and ncsoft will be bankrupt, geez your really good at running a business arn't you. Your still playing so their winning.
Wouldn't the easiest thing to do make it so you couldn't PM 800 people in seconds. I was on vent with 40+ people starting a raid and everyone got the same pm at the same time from the same person. And while they are at just IP ban that address.
If they are coming from game room accounts then give them a 3 step process and account goes away.
1) warning
2) 72 hour ban for the game room
3) perm ban the entire game room account
They're causing the servers to lag and crash too.....
Erica was fine all yesterday, the mass sales spams start and everyone complains of lag. The day before that Server was fine, mass spams start and it lags.. then 90% of the server DCed involving tons of deaths (myself included) and even a player losing the Zariche.
You can't fake the true IP. You can inject a false IP, but the two way communications established via IP makes this unlikely since you assume the spammers / hackers have access to the routers between them and NcSoft. At some point the packet must have a true IP address in it, even if it is one hop above the spammer.
IP spoofing really only works in Pen Testing and then you have access to some serious programs to do this with.
Yea and ncsoft will be bankrupt, geez your really good at running a business arn't you. Your still playing so their winning.
An old saying comes to mind here: "If you don't have anything good to say or constructive to say, don't say anything at all"
As far as NCsoft going bankrupt if they remove all the 3rd party users....I just can't help but to lmao at that comment.
If you don't think its possible, then go for it, but they obviously know they are alot more profitable with it in game, thats why they dont ban them lol
Sorry, you're way off here, the majority of income that adena companies have are from server "transfers", people quitting or highlevel rich dominant players trying to make a buck.
Even if all bots and farmers were removed, there'd still be plenty of money to go around.
Seriously, Alyra, all you have to do is put in code searching for pm's with length > max length and ban them. This is insanely easy to do, its not like there's any legitimate means to send 6 line pm's. Its embarrassing that NCSoft is so helpless.
Seriously, Alyra, all you have to do is put in code searching for pm's with length > max length and ban them. This is insanely easy to do, its not like there's any legitimate means to send 6 line pm's. Its embarrassing that NCSoft is so helpless.
Yes, there is one legitimate means to send such long messages:
This extremely complicated and involving fix will surely need about two months to get implemented, one month to get through the Q&A department, another three weeks to fix the bug the Q&A department found in the code, another month in the Q&A department, at which point it'll be too late for inclusion in CT1 and it will be delayed to CT2.
This is happening on Erica every day atleast once.. Change trial accounts please so that they can only private message people that have private messaged them first or something. This is getting VERY annoying