In-game spam

[Richard Carpenter]

Played for a while last night, and there were at least two different
characters being used to spam all public chat channels with plat
seller/powerlevelling ads in a constant stream, one after the other -
no exaggeration. All I could do was put the characters on /ignore.

I have never seen it that bad before. It was beyond ridiculous. Yay
free 14-day trial keys. :(

--
Rich Carpenter

[Lance Berg]

Post by Richard Carpenter
Played for a while last night, and there were at least two different
characters being used to spam all public chat channels with plat
seller/powerlevelling ads in a constant stream, one after the other -
no exaggeration. All I could do was put the characters on /ignore.
I have never seen it that bad before. It was beyond ridiculous. Yay
free 14-day trial keys. :(
--
Rich Carpenter

We have these guys on Combine, and they are very annoying. What they
are doing seems wrong to me, though, and I don't mean illegal or immoral
(although its both)... I mean illogical.

Advertising in order to make people aware of what you are offering makes
sense, but the way they are going about it seems practically designed to
turn off customers and generate hatred for themselves.

The text of their message is mangled, they are offering Gold rather than
Platinum which would be impossible to get wrong even if you didn't speak
any English at all unless you don't actually farm plat.

And they spam their message not once per half hour or once per hour,
which would be more than enough to reach every player (nobody plays EQ
for less than a half hour at a time) but rather several times per
minute. On, as you note, multiple channels (on combine its not every
one, just ooc auction newplayers and planes... somehow they miss
general... oh, because they don't automatically get general when they
zone into POK as they are level 1 toons)

Here's something I've noticed, though, all other plat sellers are gone,
I haven't heard a peep from one in weeks.

Place these guys on ignore (which you'll have to do at least once a day,
as they keep changing their names) and you'll have peace and quiet.

What if this is a plan?

How hard would it be for SOE to ban their accounts every time they pop
up, they use the same text for their spam, so it should even be possible
to automate the banning process. I assume they are using 14 day free
trial accounts, so check, anyone using this text from a free account
gets banned automatically. Barring automation, one person with GM
powers could rotate thru the servers looking for the spammers, they
aren't at all hard to find, and ban them manually.

But what if SOE has deliberately set up fake plat sellers to drown out
and thus stop the real plat sellers?

Then everything makes sense; the bad wording and grammar are a
deliberate parody to help turn them into an enemy and to make people
suspicious of their offerings (and by extension, those of other plat
spammers as well). The outlandishly overexaggerated spam schedule
engenders dislike or even loathing even among people who might be swayed
by ordinary plat sellers. And the failure of them to do anything about
the problem is explained because its not a problem, its a solution.

[Richard Carpenter]

Post by Lance Berg

Post by Richard Carpenter
Played for a while last night, and there were at least two different
characters being used to spam all public chat channels with plat
seller/powerlevelling ads in a constant stream, one after the other -
no exaggeration. All I could do was put the characters on /ignore.
I have never seen it that bad before. It was beyond ridiculous. Yay
free 14-day trial keys. :(
--
Rich Carpenter

We have these guys on Combine, and they are very annoying. What they
are doing seems wrong to me, though, and I don't mean illegal or immoral
(although its both)... I mean illogical.
Advertising in order to make people aware of what you are offering makes
sense, but the way they are going about it seems practically designed to
turn off customers and generate hatred for themselves.
The text of their message is mangled, they are offering Gold rather than
Platinum which would be impossible to get wrong even if you didn't speak
any English at all unless you don't actually farm plat.
And they spam their message not once per half hour or once per hour,
which would be more than enough to reach every player (nobody plays EQ
for less than a half hour at a time) but rather several times per
minute. On, as you note, multiple channels (on combine its not every
one, just ooc auction newplayers and planes... somehow they miss
general... oh, because they don't automatically get general when they
zone into POK as they are level 1 toons)
Here's something I've noticed, though, all other plat sellers are gone,
I haven't heard a peep from one in weeks.
Place these guys on ignore (which you'll have to do at least once a day,
as they keep changing their names) and you'll have peace and quiet.
What if this is a plan?
How hard would it be for SOE to ban their accounts every time they pop
up, they use the same text for their spam, so it should even be possible
to automate the banning process. I assume they are using 14 day free
trial accounts, so check, anyone using this text from a free account
gets banned automatically. Barring automation, one person with GM
powers could rotate thru the servers looking for the spammers, they
aren't at all hard to find, and ban them manually.
But what if SOE has deliberately set up fake plat sellers to drown out
and thus stop the real plat sellers?
Then everything makes sense; the bad wording and grammar are a
deliberate parody to help turn them into an enemy and to make people
suspicious of their offerings (and by extension, those of other plat
spammers as well). The outlandishly overexaggerated spam schedule
engenders dislike or even loathing even among people who might be swayed
by ordinary plat sellers. And the failure of them to do anything about
the problem is explained because its not a problem, its a solution.

I get that you're just playing devil's advocate here, Lance (I think),
but it seems to me that the people most likely to be put off by the
spam are those who wouldn't be interested in buying plat in the first
place

Don't get me wrong, I would love a sting operation like this whereby
those who visit the advertised sites and try to make a purchase get
banned, but I just don't see SoE as being either that insightful or
interested in the matter.

--
Rich Carpenter

[Don Woods]

Post by Lance Berg
But what if SOE has deliberately set up fake plat sellers to drown out
and thus stop the real plat sellers?

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
explained by stupidity." [Robert J. Hanlon]

To be fair, even if SOE did set up an automated or minimally manual
banning of this spammer's accounts, the spammer could just create
new ones, and the main result would be massive churning of the user
database. A better solution would be some way to prevent trial
accounts from sending the spam at all; LOTRO did that, and gold spam
has mostly vanished there. (Actually, I think LOTRO banned tutorial
characters from sending to most channels, including tells, and it
takes long enough to go through the tutorial that it's not worth the
spammers' efforts.) But in EQ, a level 1 trial-account character is
able to zone into POK and interact with "regular" characters, plus
preventing such characters from using the NewPlayers channel would
sort of defeat its purpose.

Speaking of the LOTRO spam, though, my recollection is that the site
that was doing most of the spamming there is the same as the one I've
been seeing in EQ, so I really doubt it's SOE doing it, unless it's a
*really* devious plot!

-- Don.

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[Lunaren]

Post by Richard Carpenter
Played for a while last night, and there were at least two different
characters being used to spam all public chat channels with plat
seller/powerlevelling ads in a constant stream, one after the other -
no exaggeration. All I could do was put the characters on /ignore.
I have never seen it that bad before. It was beyond ridiculous. Yay
free 14-day trial keys. :(
--
Rich Carpenter

We have these guys on Combine, and they are very annoying. What they are
doing seems wrong to me, though, and I don't mean illegal or immoral
(although its both)... I mean illogical.
Advertising in order to make people aware of what you are offering makes
sense, but the way they are going about it seems practically designed to
turn off customers and generate hatred for themselves.
The text of their message is mangled, they are offering Gold rather than
Platinum which would be impossible to get wrong even if you didn't speak
any English at all unless you don't actually farm plat.
And they spam their message not once per half hour or once per hour, which
would be more than enough to reach every player (nobody plays EQ for less
than a half hour at a time) but rather several times per minute. On, as
you note, multiple channels (on combine its not every one, just ooc
auction newplayers and planes... somehow they miss general... oh, because
they don't automatically get general when they zone into POK as they are
level 1 toons)
Here's something I've noticed, though, all other plat sellers are gone, I
haven't heard a peep from one in weeks.
Place these guys on ignore (which you'll have to do at least once a day,
as they keep changing their names) and you'll have peace and quiet.
What if this is a plan?
How hard would it be for SOE to ban their accounts every time they pop up,
they use the same text for their spam, so it should even be possible to
automate the banning process. I assume they are using 14 day free trial
accounts, so check, anyone using this text from a free account gets banned
automatically. Barring automation, one person with GM powers could
rotate thru the servers looking for the spammers, they aren't at all hard
to find, and ban them manually.
But what if SOE has deliberately set up fake plat sellers to drown out and
thus stop the real plat sellers?
Then everything makes sense; the bad wording and grammar are a deliberate
parody to help turn them into an enemy and to make people suspicious of
their offerings (and by extension, those of other plat spammers as well).
The outlandishly overexaggerated spam schedule engenders dislike or even
loathing even among people who might be swayed by ordinary plat sellers.
And the failure of them to do anything about the problem is explained
because its not a problem, its a solution.

I have a feeling SOE employees are much too busy spamming us about thier own
money maker, the cards game, to bother spamming anything else.

The ignore command daily works. It sucks but it works.

[Impmon]

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:40:01 -0800 (PST), Richard Carpenter

Post by Richard Carpenter
Played for a while last night, and there were at least two different
characters being used to spam all public chat channels with plat
seller/powerlevelling ads in a constant stream, one after the other -
no exaggeration. All I could do was put the characters on /ignore.
I have never seen it that bad before. It was beyond ridiculous. Yay
free 14-day trial keys. :(

Yeah some asses are taking advantage of free software and trial to
spam. Banning account does no good as they can get another free
account and ignore doesn't do good either, they change toon very
often.

There is a way to boot them off temporarily. There is a minor bug
with chat channel invite: no time out. If several people were to set
a hot key to spam the offending person with invite 5 times (max in EQ
macro) and all do it at once, a flood of channel invites will kill the
spammer. If you use MQ2 (and you shouldn't), it may be possible to
make a fast invite spammer.

[Lance Berg]

Post by Impmon
On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:40:01 -0800 (PST), Richard Carpenter

Post by Richard Carpenter
Played for a while last night, and there were at least two different
characters being used to spam all public chat channels with plat
seller/powerlevelling ads in a constant stream, one after the other -
no exaggeration. All I could do was put the characters on /ignore.
I have never seen it that bad before. It was beyond ridiculous. Yay
free 14-day trial keys. :(

Yeah some asses are taking advantage of free software and trial to
spam. Banning account does no good as they can get another free
account and ignore doesn't do good either, they change toon very
often.
There is a way to boot them off temporarily. There is a minor bug
with chat channel invite: no time out. If several people were to set
a hot key to spam the offending person with invite 5 times (max in EQ
macro) and all do it at once, a flood of channel invites will kill the
spammer. If you use MQ2 (and you shouldn't), it may be possible to
make a fast invite spammer.

While I shouldn't admit this in an open forum, my... dog, yeah, a
creature with no legal existance, it was my dog. Anyway, I, er, he, set
this up and got ten other people, er, dogs, to set up their own channels
and make similar invite hotkeys.

We, no they, all spammed at once, about 80 times in a row, nothing
happened. (each using a hotkey to do a 5 invite. Tested this out by
spamming my bot with it and it does work, no delays pumps out 5 invites
for each button press and spams them as fast as you can press the button)

I've heard that this trick relies on overwhelming the connection of the
target, and that it requires a large force to do so (someone said 40+
people), and that it only works if the target is on a slow connection,
perhaps Dial Up, certainly not a T3.

I don't know how good the connection is for the spammers, but I can at
least report that its better than the spam power of 10 puppies.

[Lunaren]

Post by Impmon
On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:40:01 -0800 (PST), Richard Carpenter

Post by Richard Carpenter
Played for a while last night, and there were at least two different
characters being used to spam all public chat channels with plat
seller/powerlevelling ads in a constant stream, one after the other -
no exaggeration. All I could do was put the characters on /ignore.
I have never seen it that bad before. It was beyond ridiculous. Yay
free 14-day trial keys. :(

Yeah some asses are taking advantage of free software and trial to
spam. Banning account does no good as they can get another free
account and ignore doesn't do good either, they change toon very
often.
There is a way to boot them off temporarily. There is a minor bug
with chat channel invite: no time out. If several people were to set
a hot key to spam the offending person with invite 5 times (max in EQ
macro) and all do it at once, a flood of channel invites will kill the
spammer. If you use MQ2 (and you shouldn't), it may be possible to
make a fast invite spammer.

While I shouldn't admit this in an open forum, my... dog, yeah, a creature
with no legal existance, it was my dog. Anyway, I, er, he, set this up
and got ten other people, er, dogs, to set up their own channels and make
similar invite hotkeys.
We, no they, all spammed at once, about 80 times in a row, nothing
happened. (each using a hotkey to do a 5 invite. Tested this out by
spamming my bot with it and it does work, no delays pumps out 5 invites
for each button press and spams them as fast as you can press the button)
I've heard that this trick relies on overwhelming the connection of the
target, and that it requires a large force to do so (someone said 40+
people), and that it only works if the target is on a slow connection,
perhaps Dial Up, certainly not a T3.
I don't know how good the connection is for the spammers, but I can at
least report that its better than the spam power of 10 puppies.

Well we thank you, err, them... for trying. ;-)