Credit Seller Spam is Getting Worse Lately

[DEATHICIDE]

to be fair, there will always be someone doing it just to be mean, and if someone is innocent but it reported a lot for whatever reason, then with the time Bioware takes to investigate they will be banned for 2 days and pissed off the whole time. Also, lastly, a temporary autoban won't stop them from doing it anyway, they will just keep making accouts regardless, with the fact they are selling credits in the game where its extremely easy to farm credits shows what little sense and the beserker mentality these stupid spammers have.

 

I appreciate your points, but you missed a few of mine:

 

I did say several reputable subscribers with security(keys), now its an easy piece of code to see if a website was mentioned when the players right clicked and reported it as spam, and several is many, who all would have the understand that malicious use of said feature would result in disciplinary action, much as doing any other mean thing in game does such as stalking.

 

Also my point was that if the toon the got to lvl 10 then brought to the fleet was banned after they had only been spamming for 2 minutes, forcing them to go repeat the process, who is losing money on that deal?

 

The pot is not sweet enough compared to the time investment, they could make more money pretending to be homeless and pan handling on the streets, quite literally.

 

Doing nothing and just whacking the ignore button just justifies their behavior.

 

I'd love to see certain websites based purely around manipulating someone else's product being forcibly removed from the internet, and damages being paid in court.

 

But hey, I'd settle for timely bans.

[Arvig]

Well, that's one of the consequences of f2p accounts. I usually only see it from time to time on the starter planet and here and there on the fleet. Considering other games I've played with f2p accounts this game still does really well I feel. Try a f2p game and see if you still think it's so bad here.

 

.

 

I suppose f2p might exasperate the situation some, but I played EQ2 for years, and until only a couple years ago that game was subscription only. Yet it had a bad plat/gold seller problem for a while, with the sellers usually sitting in the n00b area but spamming via /tell, some spam done via in game mail also. Their solution was to impliment a pretty effective filter, one that works well enough that even when the game did go to a f2p model similar to SWTOR's, a major gold seller problem didn't reemerge.

 

I guess my point is that it's far from exclusive to f2p games, and one shouldn't try to blame this game going f2p as a primary reason as to why we currently have gold seller issues. At least they for the most part on fleet just spam in /say and/or /yell on my server, and thus can be put on ignore after the first time they do such. Still, I'd love to see a lot better enforcement and/or some sort of filter.

[FlyinSpaghetti]

Well, that's one of the consequences of f2p accounts

 

Tell that to Blizzard, whom their subscription game happens to be the holy grail of gold sellers.

 

Gold selling can happen in any game regardless of payment model, reason there wasn't many credit sellers at the start was because by time the free trial to level 15 was out the game was pretty much bleeding interest and losing subs by the second. F2P made the game popular again and with that popularity came more gold sellers.

 

If you think I'm wrong, show me a popular subscription based game that doesn't have gold spammers in.

[Pantronic]

It is not possible to remove gold seller from mmo because they serve a purpose and it is to provide currency to players while charging a very low amount of real money. of course one can decide to get credits by selling cash shop items but it is never as much as they can get from currency sellers for the same price. we may think that these currency sellers don't make enough money but out of that thought 2 months ago i created a fake account on such gold selling site and put up adds that i have 100 millions of credits and i want to sell, i got about 25 emails with request confirming that i got orders and obviously after 2 days when i could not sell i got banned from that site. it only shows there are players in this game, even in my server who regularly buys credits from credits sellers. back then i was not subscriber or i would have reported all of those 25 players for real money trading. the only way any mmo publisher could destroy the currency sellers if they had some sort of real money trading for in game currency feature. otherwise it is pointless even if the publishers work their butt off.

 

Wait.. you advertised gold for sale, in an attempt to entrap people who are apparently desperate for gold? That's despicable.

[skomerko]

deleted Edited March 31, 2019 by skomerko

[Obreck]

Unfortunately just being Pay-2-Play wouldn't stop or even really slow down the sellers. I just got back from giving FF14:ARR a try (a P2P game) and it is absolutely plagued with RMTs (and bots but that's another story).

 

They are absolutely ruthless on that game. Forget spamming in town: those scum will endless spam you with whispers non-stop anywhere you go Makes the fleet spammers of this game seem quite tame and easily ignored by comparison.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Obreck

[DarthTHC]

I don't think it's just me that's noticing it. I report and ignore each time, but they are getting more prolific recently. There are bots that spam it in general and in say by the galactic markets every few seconds, at least on Ebon Hawk.

 

Just my 2 cents requesting Bioware make a special push soon to squash these guys.

 

It was comical on Ebon Hawk Republic Fleet last night.

 

One spammer would shout about credits for something like $8 per million. Immediately after that, a second site would shout $6 per million. A bit later, the first one's back with his $8 per million.

 

They're not too bright. But I imagine they've just set the game up with a macro program to spam the same thing into chat every minute and 3 seconds or whatever and they're not actually watching.

 

It's obvious that BioWare cares not one whit about the credit spam or credit sellers.

Edited January 17, 2014 by DarthTHC

[DarthTHC]

Also understand that they dont just ban on sight. They investigate and track down any account linked to it, or accounts that were passed credits to and from.

 

Then they hit them all. It might be a day later, it might be a month later, but Bioware do a pretty good job of nailing the lot of them in the chain.

 

Do you have any evidence at all that supports the claim that BioWare has ever actually done that?

[Screaming_Ziva]

For a long time you hardly ever saw credit seller spam on fleet most likely because you have to finish the first planet to get to fleet. If you are just doing it by yourself, it takes about 40 minutes or so if you're just doing class quests (at least for the last Inquisitor I pushed to fleet). Maybe credit sellers have found a quicker way to do this now? I'd be interested to know if all the credit sellers are the same class on fleet or not and they found a much quicker way to get characters to fleet.

[Zorvan]

Obviously, you guys are imagining things.

 

EAware specifically made their F2P laughably draconian because "it prevents goldspammers".

 

So, either the goldspammers are only in your imagination, or EAware made SWtoR F2P the laughing stock of the industry for nothing.

 

Hmm, which could it be, I wonder...

[PlasmaJohn]

I'd be interested to know if all the credit sellers are the same class on fleet or not.

Pub side JC one of the spammers use a 10th level trooper (no AC) in default gear standing near the GTN. If you run the same set of missions every day, I'll bet you can get that run down to a 2-3 hours.

[DarthTHC]

Pub side JC one of the spammers use a 10th level trooper (no AC) in default gear standing near the GTN. If you run the same set of missions every day, I'll bet you can get that run down to a 2-3 hours.

 

Then he wasted some time. I'm pretty sure I've made it to Fleet, without completing all class quests on my origin world, by level 7 at least once recently.

[AlienEyeTX]

I don't think it's just me that's noticing it. I report and ignore each time, but they are getting more prolific recently. There are bots that spam it in general and in say by the galactic markets every few seconds, at least on Ebon Hawk.

 

Just my 2 cents requesting Bioware make a special push soon to squash these guys.

 

Just buy their credits. Then they'll go away because they won't have any credits left to sell.

 

Duh.

[Beslley]

Just buy their credits. Then they'll go away because they won't have any credits left to sell.

 

Duh.

 

You are cute. Horribly naive, but cute.

[AlienEyeTX]

You are cute. Horribly naive, but cute.

 

You're too kind.

[GalacticKegger]

wait, didn't the fact ppl could sell CM items eradicate gold sellers ? guess not

It eradicated the need for players to buy from gold sellers, not the gold sellers themselves. I doubt anything will physically stop them from trying short of source IP range banning.

 

Wish we had an account-wide ignore function that auto-filtered chat posts, PMs and in-game mail messages based on user-entered words or phrases before they were posted or delivered. (I already posted this in the suggestion box some time ago.) Open the filter, enter the website address being spammed, save and voila ... all chat and mail entries using that website's address anywhere in the message never make it to the player's chat window or mailbox. There would probably be a couple second long filter processing delay for legit entries to pass through, but I'd gladly live with that.

 

They would have to keep changing their web addresses to beat the filter. That wouldn't necessarily put them out of business, but the cost incursion to do so might be prohibitive enough for them to look elsewhere.

Edited January 17, 2014 by GalacticKegger

[DarthMurdek]

Not as bad as WoW. Oh look seven guild invites and 24 friend requests from people named buygold73682684

[Zorvan]

It eradicated the need for players to buy from gold sellers, not the gold sellers themselves. I doubt anything will physically stop them from trying short of source IP range banning.

 

It didn't eradicate the "need" for credsellers, otherwise they wouldn't be selling credits. lol

 

EAware has overhead. Credsellers don't. EAware has to worry about game and economy balance. Credsellers don't. And no matter how low the cred to CM ratio gets, credsellers can always afford to undercut both legit players and EAware. Because they a.) don't buy CM stuff to get their creds, and b.) use F2P accounts to farm creds.

[DarthTHC]

It didn't eradicate the "need" for credsellers, otherwise they wouldn't be selling credits. lol

 

EAware has overhead. Credsellers don't. EAware has to worry about game and economy balance. Credsellers don't. And no matter how low the cred to CM ratio gets, credsellers can always afford to undercut both legit players and EAware. Because they a.) don't buy CM stuff to get their creds, and b.) use F2P accounts to farm creds.

 

Nope. That's not how they do it.

 

If you do just the tiniest bit of research, you will find that the vast majority of ingame currency seller sites have links right there on their sites via which they also purchase ingame currency.

 

They're a middle-man, not a producer.

Edited January 17, 2014 by DarthTHC

[Zorvan]

Nope. That's not how they do it.

 

If you do just the tiniest bit of research, you will find that the vast majority of ingame currency seller sites have links right there on their sites via which they also purchase ingame currency.

 

They're a middle-man, not a producer.

 

Perhaps in addition to their normal methods, but not in replacement of. Free product ( farming ) makes more than bought product ( reselling ).

[DarthTHC]

Perhaps in addition to their normal methods, but not in replacement of. Free product ( farming ) makes more than bought product ( reselling ).

 

This would be true if farming were actually free. Farming requires labor, equipment, and utilities, all of which cost money. Same reason General Motors doesn't make tires.

[Zorvan]

This would be true if farming were actually free. Farming requires labor, equipment, and utilities, all of which cost money. Same reason General Motors doesn't make tires.

 

Except most of your goldseller companies have been around for *years*. They haven't had to buy new equipment for at least four-five years outside of maybe the occasional hardware piece failure, as far as being able to run any mmo on low settings, and they don't only farm for one game. Farming labor is cheap as hell when you're paying asian students/unemployed and letting them sleep on the floor/keeping them in ramen in exchange for their labor.

 

So yeah, trust me, the good old ways are still employed. They've just added additional ways to get extra stock if the farming runs low.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Zorvan

[GalacticKegger]

It didn't eradicate the "need" for credsellers, otherwise they wouldn't be selling credits. lol

 

EAware has overhead. Credsellers don't. EAware has to worry about game and economy balance. Credsellers don't. And no matter how low the cred to CM ratio gets, credsellers can always afford to undercut both legit players and EAware. Because they a.) don't buy CM stuff to get their creds, and b.) use F2P accounts to farm creds.

It did indeed eradicate the need for credit sellers. They are scam artists preying on get rich quick impatience (which is NOT a need) by trying to trick the unsuspecting into believing that their impatience is a need. So they would be out there spamming chat regardless because, like cockroaches infesting plentiful food stores, it's what they do. They are predators. There's nothing lol about it.

 

To legitimize their efforts as F2Pers, the assumption would have to be that they are licitly farming and selling mats & their crafted wares, questing, leveling and participating in WZs, FPs and space missions for the in-game credits they are advertising to sell for real money. Problem is F2P players are limited to 5 warzones, 3 flashpoints and 3 space missions per week, and their GTN usage is restricted to 2 simultaneous transactions. Oh, don't forget the 200k credit cap.

 

Which means "spend money to make money" preferred or subbed accounts are doing all the work and making the actual sales. But I'll stick to our credit seller convo because you suggested they use their F2P accounts to farm credits.

 

Can't make a marketable amount of credits as F2P

Even if they were in fact legit farmers without restrictions it would take them a full balls to the wall 8 hour day farming end game planets to get even a half million credits (personal experience). This assumes they are geared enough to advance their character through their class stories & obtain a starship that allowed them travel to those planets. Have you seen their gear? When was the last time a credit spammer was found in a warzone, in a flashpoint or on an advanced planet?

 

Exactly. Which means they're limited to selling low level planet farmed items or drops with prohibitive GTN privileges, reselling CM purchases made with achievement coins ... and completing 5 WZs, 3 FPs and 3 SMs a week to get their credits with a 200k credit cap to hold it all. Their earning 500K credits a day is therefore impossible without multi-boxing multiple accounts that take shifts farming and selling, or using an auto-farm bot with a credit cap hack. In 2+ years I have yet to see a farm bot. Likely because the addon APIs are off limits to outsiders. A fair trade for not having addons imho.

 

Speaking of trade, F2P can't send in-game mail or engage in trading either. So after their website takes your money, who in-game physically delivers your $1M? An F2P account that is incapable of trading and can't possess more than 200K credits at a time?

 

It's a trap!

 

Overhead numbers game

You mentioned cred sellers don't have overhead. Assuming an average of 500K credits per day was somehow earnable even with all of the F2P restrictions, and considering the typical spam-advertised rate is $8/1million credits, it would take one farmer 2 full 8-hour work days to cover a single sale. $8 in gross revenue for 16 hours of work equates to a whopping 50¢ an hour.

 

At 50¢ an hour they can't afford to undercut anything - even if everything was free: the computer(s) they work on, the bandwidth they work through, the space they work in, the website they promote (and the IT staff required to maintain it) the EFT payment processing system they use to physically take a customer's money (including all banking, payment gateway and transaction fees), the network they use to connect it all, the electricity they use to power it all, etc.

 

They have plenty of overhead; and that 50¢ an hour won't cover expenses and support the worker too, regardless of what country they operate from.

 

I'm taking an awful risk Vader...

So their end game deduces to the acquisition of some sorry sap's credit card or game account information in the hopes of hitting the "account without a Security Key" mother lode. By hacking into an account they could sell everything that every toon in that player's account has, steal whatever personal information they can from the burgled account then launder the returns in game across multiple accounts before disappearing.

 

The mother lode part comes from logging into the hacked account (subs are the big target) and purchasing CM items and packs with the hacked account's credit card, then reselling those items in-game for major credits (likely a big reason why there is a 2-day cooldown in C-pack items going BoE) as well as robbing guild banks on all guilded characters.

 

An ounce of prevention

This is why I have a security key. This is also why our guilds have multiple levels of membership between recruit and officer. The lowest level members & recruits do not have gbank withdrawal privileges. The higher level members and above do, but must show proof of security key ownership before they are so privileged. We do this by having them physically drag & drop a security key vendor Fleet Pass into a trade window, which is easily distinguishable from the CM's Fleet Travel Pass.

 

If I see a fire sale on a pricey item on the GTN, I don't get greedy and buy it - I report it immediately. In real life I avoid counterfeit goods because their revenue trails have been traced to organized crime and terrorist organizations. I stay away from credit sellers similarly because I don't see how they can legitimately stay in business. Anyone with half a brain doesn't need a terms of service agreement to tell them that offering up their credit card information to these people is stupid, if not outright dangerous.

 

Even operating as a sweatshop, account theft is how they make their money - and they won't go away until they are made to go away. Sorry, but I find defending credit sellers on any level to be complicit.

 

http://www.swtor.com/free/features

Edited January 20, 2014 by GalacticKegger