I have suggested this before but I guess it fell on deaf ears. The way to end the spam in game hopefully is to filter the names of their domains in the swear filter. You can filter 923 and you can filter chutney, why can you not filter spamsite.com ? The spammers might stop spamming if you keep banning the words of their site and force them to purchase new domains every week.
Is this something you can implement into the client? I know you modify the banned word list as [censored] was a banned word until a grade came into the game, hence a grade soulshots acronym is [censored]. The censored word list has changed and can change again. I hope you can pass this on to whatever developers you got left. I am sure it is just adding some data to a table in a database somewhere in your top secret code.
spamsite.com simply becomes 's p a m s i t e . c o m' .... filter avoided (reason for ban? :) )
Exactly. When this issue first began, adding site names to the filter was one of the temporary fixes I suggested to our team. It is possible to do, yes, but it is not a permanent solution. We are working on solutions that will be more permanent, and in the meantime banning offenders as they are reported. Unfortunately, even if we put in chat restrictions, such as a system that would allow you to get PMs only from friends, clanmates, and allies, these offenders will likely still stand in town and spew their blather to any in the area (this is where the good old ban hammer will have to do the job).
spamsite.com simply becomes 's p a m s i t e . c o m' .... filter avoided (reason for ban? :) )
Well being a programmer myself, these censor filters can be coded to not ignore spaces and/or dashes, underscores, etc.
whereas the private message "visit our wonderful illegal site s p a m s i t e . c o m" would be changed to a string with no spaces (client side) to "visitourwonderfulillegalsitespamsite.com" and then can be filtered again in the same manor your words were always censored to visit "oursonderfulillegal-_-"
It would be an extra layer of analysing the string and is fairly simple to code. This would make it more difficult to get around the filters for all swearing and site advertising. You can also include further pruning of the string to avoud - _ , . ETC ETC.
It is a very small block of code and it does wonders :) I hope you have someoen who can do this on your team. If not I would volunteer my services to provide you with an adequate function in C++ (or the language Lineage 2 is coded in) to filter spaces and/or symbols from a string.
in further thinking.... this would result in the private message being illegible so you would be best to just delete the entire message that would match this banned word (site) criteria.
This would eliminate teh end user from even receiving the spam at all.
There would be no spam amazing.... I can further explain this if required/requested. This would eliminate spam entirely and new hostnames can be added to the filter. and if they use different symbols to space their site names you can add further symbols to prune out of the string (message). You could even make this flag the account for ease of banning.
PLEASE IF THIS IS NOT CLEAR ASK ME TO FURTHER EXPLAIN. I can profide pseudo code or a logic/flow chart to explain it in detail.
It's double-edged sword if you search and censor only specific words ... for example you censor "adena" because it's most commonly used word in those site names, you are screwed in normal conversation as well.
It's double-edged sword if you search and censor only specific words ... for example you censor "adena" because it's most commonly used word in those site names, you are screwed in normal conversation as well.
something as simple as that would not need to be sensored
I have suggested this before but I guess it fell on deaf ears. The way to end the spam in game hopefully is to filter the names of their domains in the swear filter. You can filter 923 and you can filter chutney, why can you not filter spamsite.com ? The spammers might stop spamming if you keep banning the words of their site and force them to purchase new domains every week.
Is this something you can implement into the client? I know you modify the banned word list as [censored] was a banned word until a grade came into the game, hence a grade soulshots acronym is [censored]. The censored word list has changed and can change again. I hope you can pass this on to whatever developers you got left. I am sure it is just adding some data to a table in a database somewhere in your top secret code.
Is this too much to ask?
you re wrong, that s client side and not database. and they will just modify the name, don't you think? spamsite_com instead of spamsite.com?
but they could modify the code so trial is not allowed to pm at all, like they did when they disabled trade options on trials.
I dont think there is ever going to be a perminant solution to this since its the nature of the way the chat system works. They will always be able to advertise in local and wide area chat. The thing is, it's the nature of the adena business to find a way around blocks and prevention systems, if a new filtering method is implemented, they will always look for a way round it.
LAZY LAZY LAZY PERSONS.
I HATE YOU ALL...
they say that the evil prevails when common people fail to act.
For heaven sake what have you people done to stop the spam? ( besides complaining)
In order to stop the spam i opened mozilla,
in address bar i typed www.youknowwhatshere.com (http://www.youknowwhatshere.com)
I was redirected to another site.
Note: any site that does something remotely with paypal credit cards or any other method of payment must respect w3standards more or less, and every site that respects itself must have a privacy policy,
After carefully reading the fine prints i found this in their privacy policy:
"Corrections, Updates and Removal of Information
If you are concerned about the accuracy of personally identifiable information maintained by MMOinn or would like your personally identifiable information removed from our records, you may use the programs made available on our site to update or remove such information or you may contact us by e-mail or mail at the address set forth at the bottom of this Privacy Policy. If you choose to delete your personally identifiable information, you may not be able to access some functions and/or services of our site."
I loaded this slug into my clipboard and armed with it i proceeded to next step.
Trying to contact them,
Failing to find a contact e-mail, i used the live-support option.
After waiting for a few minutes a operator started to chat with me.
Much to my dismay right after telling that im bothered by the excesive number of pm ingame he asked me for my characters name and server.
I didnt even had time to elaborate my planned speech.
He than apologized for the inconveniece,
he apologized because on his time zone it was midnight and the database admin was in his off hours , and he assured me that the problem will be taken care of as soon as possible.
Today i played for almost 5 hours.
No spam messages for me,ever again.
Now you do it yourself and stop crying like a baby.
I dont think there is ever going to be a perminant solution to this since its the nature of the way the chat system works. They will always be able to advertise in local and wide area chat. The thing is, it's the nature of the adena business to find a way around blocks and prevention systems, if a new filtering method is implemented, they will always look for a way round it.
I will have to disagree here. That is like saying we should all close down our websites, our on line banking, etc becasuse the .ru mob or the .cn hackers will always prevail.
My problem is I am assuming that their spam program has to be using the system servers to connect and send out to our clients. They already have rate limiting set in place for all the other shouts. Why is it they can find out how many per sec. per minute pm's are going out from a single IP? You could track all pm's in game and start developing statics and trends to combat it that way. Find the IP that has a significantly large number of pm's to different people over the course of a minute, five minutes and pm ban that account for 5 days. Have all the info of that account then put into a report that every week trys to look at IPs, payment options, anything that can start to id what and how they are doing it. If you find an single ip is running this over a given point in time, you could then ban the IP at the router level given a certain trigger level and then report that change to the powers that be.
granted, that isn't the greatest of solutions, but this type of thing is how mail admins have been doing it for years.
I have a feeling that NcSoft is just as ****** as we are because it runines the game for its customers and they have yet another issue to deal with instead of fixing code and making in game things better.
or make a "trial account server" for them to play on (like a free L2 demo)
Wouldnt speak for the trial function tho.
I used to give trial keys to my friends, so they can try the game and play with me.
Imagine you get a trial key to check a game and you find yourself on an isolated server full of farmer spam and not able to play with the friend who gave u the key. Would you consider to get a full account for that game? ^^''
LAZY LAZY LAZY PERSONS.
I HATE YOU ALL...
they say that the evil prevails when common people fail to act.
For heaven sake what have you people done to stop the spam? ( besides complaining)
In order to stop the spam i opened mozilla,
in address bar i typed www.youknowwhatshere.com (http://www.youknowwhatshere.com)
I was redirected to another site.
Note: any site that does something remotely with paypal credit cards or any other method of payment must respect w3standards more or less, and every site that respects itself must have a privacy policy,
*cut out to make it shorter*
Today i played for almost 5 hours.
No spam messages for me,ever again.
Now you do it yourself and stop crying like a baby.
LAZY LAZY LAZY PERSONS.
I HATE YOU ALL...
they say that the evil prevails when common people fail to act.
For heaven sake what have you people done to stop the spam? ( besides complaining)
In order to stop the spam i opened mozilla,
in address bar i typed www.youknowwhatshere.com (http://www.youknowwhatshere.com)
I was redirected to another site.
Note: any site that does something remotely with paypal credit cards or any other method of payment must respect w3standards more or less, and every site that respects itself must have a privacy policy,
After carefully reading the fine prints i found this in their privacy policy:
"Corrections, Updates and Removal of Information
If you are concerned about the accuracy of personally identifiable information maintained by MMOinn or would like your personally identifiable information removed from our records, you may use the programs made available on our site to update or remove such information or you may contact us by e-mail or mail at the address set forth at the bottom of this Privacy Policy. If you choose to delete your personally identifiable information, you may not be able to access some functions and/or services of our site."
I loaded this slug into my clipboard and armed with it i proceeded to next step.
Trying to contact them,
Failing to find a contact e-mail, i used the live-support option.
After waiting for a few minutes a operator started to chat with me.
Much to my dismay right after telling that im bothered by the excesive number of pm ingame he asked me for my characters name and server.
I didnt even had time to elaborate my planned speech.
He than apologized for the inconveniece,
he apologized because on his time zone it was midnight and the database admin was in his off hours , and he assured me that the problem will be taken care of as soon as possible.
Today i played for almost 5 hours.
No spam messages for me,ever again.
Now you do it yourself and stop crying like a baby.
seeing as "lineage 2" is a trademark, and these spam-sites use NC's trademark to earn money.
why not just sue them.
one site that spammed me was based in NA
(i went on there site n emailed them to stop spamming me... i received an apology, and it worked until i made a new toon -.-)
the point is that we the players should not have to do ANYTHING - the company is using a flaw in the code to spam every toon on the server - hence it is NC's to fix.
the point is that we the players should not have to do ANYTHING - the company is using a flaw in the code to spam every toon on the server - hence it is NC's to fix.
Ok, but keep in mind that other game companies have this exact problem. Therefore it's more than just this engine (which I understand has issues).
If it was easy to fix then you would find other game companies with a fix. yet it exists elsewhere.
Why they don't send an e-mail and send a pm though... that is of interest as in other games you will get an in game e-mail
I have unchecked the whispers from the first chat window and I am not annoyed anymore. I'd rather have the option to disable trial accounts from PMing me at all because I'd rather be available for PMs.
We called these guys 4 different times, and I still get the messages, btw. There is an audio file on the "other" forums of a guy from Bartz who called them. It's hilarious. That is why we tried it as well. I guess you just got the right person, Rohirrim, and we didn't.
***inn = best way to get rid of the spam is by going to live suport and chat with them.
***spa = best way is to send them a mail.
To see if it still helps. I created a new toon few days ago for the academy, went to Giran and mdt, waited for a few hours and I got spammed. Then I used the methods I typed above depending on which of those two where spamming me and no more spam after giving them 24 hours to prosses my request to get removed from the list.
See that is the really weird part of the PM's - you can have a level 1 toon that has never left the starting area and it still gets the PMs. I can understand that if you had toons in Giran adn that's how they got the toon name... I'm not starting rumors, but it really makes you think how they are able to get the names in the first place.....
ahehe... as they about to make native european langueges available to input, you won't have any profit. as ncsoft declares, they don't investigate cases of non-english bad language abuse. so they need just to switch to their native languages (especially if it uses Cyrillic alphabet or much of symbols with dots and lines) to avoid any punishment. look at ct1.5 pts right now. it feels like a dissolute russian private server. :p
i mean now you can read the spam, and you will be unably to do so in future. xD
What they should do is write a script that watches the chat messages for suspected 'spamsite.com' messages. If it finds one it should automatically generate a petition for GM review. The script would need to track the offending characters name to make sure that there is only one petition in the queue for any given character name.
Such a script would make it possible to at least chat ban, if not out right ban, the spammer shortly after they sent their first message.
first of all this script must block that user's chat ability for at least one hour with detailed information to his/her PM's about what was said wrong.
PM's are the problem for this filter. the option to turn it off and on is highly necessary. who knows what thing we can discuss via PM's by ours wish... or the filter needs to be very smart.
i think both scenarios are unreal. it seems the best thing we can have is another "DON'T DO THIS" spam from user "Announcements"... :)
The real solution would be to not allow trail accounts to PM anyone. Yes it would hurt the 1% of trial accounts that are real players, but honestly.. they will get over it. If they only allow Pm on paid accounts and NC bans fast enought that will hit them (the adena selling people) in the pocket book and make them stop.
The real solution would be to not allow trail accounts to PM anyone. Yes it would hurt the 1% of trial accounts that are real players, but honestly.. they will get over it. If they only allow Pm on paid accounts and NC bans fast enought that will hit them (the adena selling people) in the pocket book and make them stop.
+1 except trial should be able to only pm "friends"
actually if anything they shouldnt be bothering to develop a filter, isntead have them look at eq2 and try to get that filter of SoE. They got by far the most effecftive filter i have seen in my years as mmorpg player and they are stacking up slowly :P
The spam there before the filter:
every hour 3-4 spam messages atleast, on some servers every few minutes even
The spam there after the filter:
1-2 messages a day on the busiest servers, on the other servers the spam was totally and completly purged and filtered out
as for the trial accounts, over there they cant sent tells anymore and i presume that helps alot, and figured l2 did that too already
Just block them all.. and report once per month to NCSoft.
impossible. they change spammer toon evey 1-2 hours after getting banned. OEFEIOFH, OIEFHEHU, ALKJEFH etc random "hit a couple times your keyboard with left leg" names...
it's brutal idea. what should do mere newbie? how can he/she communicate to someone to ask bring some crap stuff and couple million of adena? this makes another problems. to help someone you must have him/her in your contacts list somewhere else, be it msn, icq, e-mail, old voice phone (=RL friend) etc... i think this is worst solution for worldwide service such as NCNA's L2 operation is.
i should've mentioned that and i appoligize for that, but that is filtered aswell. All means of communications got that filter ran over it (including worldwide channels there which would just be hero chat here)
and to add (as edit)
if ya dont believe what i am saying ask over Here (http://www.eq2flames.com) this is one of the most critical sites i know of eq2 all together and well the site name sais it all (eq2flames) all stuff that cant be said on the official boards about almost anything (except hacking/botting etc) goes there, and including the first doubts about that filter but even they, the biggest criticasters of eq2 turned around
and another edit \o/
Trial accounts cant sent tells like i said but there is an exception, unless they are on someones friendlist at which point they are able to sent tells to people they know
This will be a different approach to most of you. When I worked for an major ISP, we naturally had our share of people who would be professional spammers. What we did was maintain a list of blacklisted credit cards which could not sign up to our services. Now you guys are going to tell me about time cards. Yes, I did not say my solution was perfect, but it is a start to cut down on the issues. If you also block them from purchasing things directly for the PlayNC store, it will help as well.
Not sure if someone suggested this or not, but it would be so much easier to report these spammers if there was an instant report spammer option so theres no waiting and no need to type :P Then they can be wacked around a bit by the ban hammer quicker.
But still I don't actucally find them that annoying, they pm me... I glance at it then carry on killing, no biggie.
actually they do 1 or 2 (or 3 if they have luck) spam distribution and ban hammer finds them. they have huge number of toons (unlimited with free trial registrations), so if the corporation bans one, they use the next one. the problem is they spam too much and too often. sometimes i trade in my store in giran and spammer messages appear faster than messages of 7s npc...
I just posted a solution that could put the adena shop spammers out of business on my had enough adena spam post.
Put in a lineage 2 bank where players can buy adena in game and either have it money in minutes or money on maintence day.
To take care of hackers and stuff in game there would need to be security issues in place where you go to the in game bank and it sends you to the ncsoft account services site where the transaction would be taken care of.
Effectively putting the adena spammers out of business becuz now players are buying from ncsoft while they play.
It's an idea but then the spammers would probably still be in game trying but ya never know unless ya try and who better to run the lineage 2 banks than :) yep you guessed it.
DWARFS THE BANKERS OF LINEAGE 2 after all they are in charge of the economy.
I just posted a solution that could put the adena shop spammers out of business on my had enough adena spam post.
Put in a lineage 2 bank where players can buy adena in game and either have it money in minutes or money on maintence day.
To take care of hackers and stuff in game there would need to be security issues in place where you go to the in game bank and it sends you to the ncsoft account services site where the transaction would be taken care of.
Effectively putting the adena spammers out of business becuz now players are buying from ncsoft while they play.
It's an idea but then the spammers would probably still be in game trying but ya never know unless ya try and who better to run the lineage 2 banks than :) yep you guessed it.
DWARFS THE BANKERS OF LINEAGE 2 after all they are in charge of the economy.
question:
just some numbers for you to think about... lets pretend the adena selling companies only keep 100 billion adena on hand. we know NC has unlimited amounts because of the /gm functions.
lets say NC charges 100 dollars per billion.
lets say the spammers advertise to sell for 80 dollars per billion.
not unrealistic for companies to undercut; happens all the time. the question is, who ends up making more money, faster? the unlegit. it never fails in economics; advertise to sell your crap cheapest and youll always sell out. NC would collapse if it started selling adena. hell, the game would be chaotic. you wouldnt see ONE person in low gear or mismatched / sealed sets. D weapons for 500m anyone ? he, you can just ebay back the money ... in minutes.
I just posted a solution that could put the adena shop spammers out of business on my had enough adena spam post.
Put in a lineage 2 bank where players can buy adena in game and either have it money in minutes or money on maintence day.
To take care of hackers and stuff in game there would need to be security issues in place where you go to the in game bank and it sends you to the ncsoft account services site where the transaction would be taken care of.
Effectively putting the adena spammers out of business becuz now players are buying from ncsoft while they play.
It's an idea but then the spammers would probably still be in game trying but ya never know unless ya try and who better to run the lineage 2 banks than :) yep you guessed it.
DWARFS THE BANKERS OF LINEAGE 2 after all they are in charge of the economy.
question:
just some numbers for you to think about... lets pretend the adena selling companies only keep 100 billion adena on hand. we know NC has unlimited amounts because of the /gm functions.
lets say NC charges 100 dollars per billion.
lets say the spammers advertise to sell for 80 dollars per billion.
not unrealistic for companies to undercut; happens all the time. the question is, who ends up making more money, faster? the unlegit. it never fails in economics; advertise to sell your crap cheapest and youll always sell out. NC would collapse if it started selling adena. hell, the game would be chaotic. you wouldnt see ONE person in low gear or mismatched / sealed sets. D weapons for 500m anyone ? he, you can just ebay back the money ... in minutes.
FAIL idea.
LOL UMM nice try on the noone in mismatched gear or low gear you might wanna edit that to maybe hardly anyone cuz i refuse to go out and buy game adena so i would be that one you think that won't be arround.
Other than that everyone has brought up valid points and great ideas on how to fix the issues.
We get rid of harassement pm spam and i'm a happy player.
it's brutal idea. what should do mere newbie? how can he/she communicate to someone to ask bring some crap stuff and couple million of adena? this makes another problems. to help someone you must have him/her in your contacts list somewhere else, be it msn, icq, e-mail, old voice phone (=RL friend) etc... i think this is worst solution for worldwide service such as NCNA's L2 operation is.
Add to friend list and use chat function on the MSN Menger thingie (Friends Tab). It's not that difficult.