Open letter to Arenanet regarding goldsellers

Sorry about posting on an old topic...

I've often debated on a support request along the lines of...

"My ignore list is broken. How do I ignore all the RMT websites and bot sellers with only 10 spots in the ignore list?"

I'm sure such a request would be ignored/deleted but I think it would actually fit in accnt/tech support.

Removing/banning accounts who spam goldseller ads is totally useless. They have to shut down those websites and they have the power to do that, but do they want to use/waste resources to do that ? I don't think so, it's not worth for them.

I used to ignore the gold sellers but it's gotten pretty bad as of late.

They spam the trade as well as the all chat in Kamadan, Embark and in Pre Searing. Not sure if they're anywhere else atm. The interesting part is that they wouldn't be there unless people were buying.

I never understood the idea of buying a game and in certain areas, paying someone else to play it for you.

The last 'employee' I saw was someone on as gaile gray's self named ranger in kama aed1 a few months ago. It wasn't actually her as her account had been hacked (supposedly it's restored now). Whoever it was used her special text color so it was definitely her account. The best part of that day was the person using the account figured out enough of the gm commands to mute all the gold sellers. They tried to figure out a ban command with no luck, the command was either disabled or they weren't using the correct command syntax.

I think I have a few screenshots of some of it all. If anyone who wasn't there wants to see them I can upload them somewhere and send links.

Quote from Looney

The last 'employee' I saw was someone on as gaile gray's self named ranger in kama aed1 a few months ago. It wasn't actually her as her account had been hacked (supposedly it's restored now). Whoever it was used her special text color so it was definitely her account. The best part of that day was the person using the account figured out enough of the gm commands to mute all the gold sellers. They tried to figure out a ban command with no luck, the command was either disabled or they weren't using the correct command syntax.

I think I have a few screenshots of some of it all. If anyone who wasn't there wants to see them I can upload them somewhere and send links.

Use toolbox's chat filter and you won't ever have to worry about the bots spamming

We now have people openly advertising bots for sale in kamadan.

Yeah, it's getting only getting worse and worse with new bot sellers and more website spam. I never used 3rd party programs, even ones anet said were ok like multiloaders and texmod. This current crop of cow patties is really making me reconsider that decision. If they can openly sell ectos, arms, and other items, it's kinda obvious toolbox as a chat filter probably won't matter because anet just plain gave up / doesn't care.

Its a shame Anet isnt as involved in moderation as they could be - even just one GM for an hour a day could be enough to IP ban the accounts being used to blatantly ban this stuff. The issue is for some reason people are obviously buying from them or they wouldn't be there!

Tempted to start a KickStarter to fund a GM for GW 1 haha!

I spoke with Izzy directly about this and asked if even appointing respected community members with the ability to mark and or mute gold sellers would be a good way to get things rolling.

-------> Izzy's / Anet view point:

Prob not something we're gonna likely do anytime soon would take work and we're so focused on other things.

-------------------------

Realistically the only type of moderation that could occur on this game is by volunteer work. Arena Net is done banning and or going out of the way to do things. They may wave their magic wand once every so often in the instance of kiki, lynie but that's it. Even setting up a volunteer program is too much for them currently. Even though they could technically require you to send in a picture of your State I.D or driver's I.D like they did for the Test Krewe and or once upon having that information video chat with you to ensure you resemble the information provided.

Seriously, wtf. I just saw someone selling a faction farming service. You pay them XXXe a day or a weekly price for their bots to get enough faction to hold a main town. A-Net doesn't even have to login to see the problem, decltype shows enough of it. Most rmt sellers aren't showing there (it seems to ignore messages on a set timer) but enough players know A-Net isn't doing squat that they are breaking into the arms, ectos, zkeys, bots, etc for cash game. Now it's iBot you pay me ectos too.

Ignoring this is stupid on A-Nets part since it affects gw2 as well. People sometimes buy stuff in gw1 just to trade it for gw2 stuff thinking if they don't trade with a known gold seller directly in gw2 they will avoid a ban.

Quote from Looney

Seriously, wtf. I just saw someone selling a faction farming service. You pay them XXXe a day or a weekly price for their bots to get enough faction to hold a main town. A-Net doesn't even have to login to see the problem, decltype shows enough of it. Most rmt sellers aren't showing there (it seems to ignore messages on a set timer) but enough players know A-Net isn't doing squat that they are breaking into the arms, ectos, zkeys, bots, etc for cash game. Now it's iBot you pay me ectos too.

Ignoring this is stupid on A-Nets part since it affects gw2 as well. People sometimes buy stuff in gw1 just to trade it for gw2 stuff thinking if they don't trade with a known gold seller directly in gw2 they will avoid a ban.

Muting and banning gold sellers directly doesn't solve the problem. You would also need to investigate the income source i.e the botters, and players buying from the sellers. It's a lengthly process until they can counter the bots and or macros with cheat detection which requires updates frequently. It is not as easy as it sounds and even with community volunteers only part of the problem would get solved. Not to mention there are forums where people post where they sell currency not only in game (think of jsp or epvp). Also it's hard to find all the bots due to VPN's. Too many elements make it a resource investment (for support to investigate, suspend, ban, appeal, update anti cheat, and distinguish the legit from the unlegit. Given this game is only up due to the hall of monuments promotion for gw2 we should appreciate that we have the game at all. Just my 2c. If you understand the economics of it you appreciate and understand why they choose to do nothing although I still believe respected community volunteers can at least clean up the trade chats and or get rid of the spammers in the out posts. But again that's not even going to impact what goes on in the game. Because for that it requires throwing massive resources. $$

Quote from Looney

The last 'employee' I saw was someone on as gaile gray's self named ranger in kama aed1 a few months ago. It wasn't actually her as her account had been hacked (supposedly it's restored now). Whoever it was used her special text color so it was definitely her account. The best part of that day was the person using the account figured out enough of the gm commands to mute all the gold sellers. They tried to figure out a ban command with no luck, the command was either disabled or they weren't using the correct command syntax.

I think I have a few screenshots of some of it all. If anyone who wasn't there wants to see them I can upload them somewhere and send links.

sorry for bumping old thread, but incase anyones not seen, it was all documented in screenshots

http://imgur.com/a/F3n94

pretty sad/awesome to see