Re: What exactly ARE you doing?

Its a damned disgrace that Blizzard seem to be doing bugger all to solve the
problem.
Sure, they've made some half-assed attempts to allow people to 'Report Spam'
or some other nonsense, but hey, IT DOESN'T WORK.

Now, there are certain things about spammers that we can exploit.

1.They have to make their website sufficiently readable to allow players to
remember their website.
In other words, spam generally contain the words
'gold','level','power','com','sales','service','EU','1000g',etc.
We need to be able to filter chat for those and any words. *
Now, you could claim that they would instead use words like
'g0ld','|eve|','p0w3r','<om', etc, but the harder they make it to read, the
less likely players will be able to use them.
The filter should exist client side, so the servers are not burdened having
to filter chat, and a filter could implement measures that are common in
email clients that judge spam already.

One could argue that an addon can already do this for you, but I don't know
if you've tried levelling an alt recently. The spamming is <merciless>.
Between 1-20, you are getting bombarded by spam every few minutes.
If I was a new player, and had to put up with this ***, I would stop
playing.
The solution has to be 'in-game'.

* Having a chat filter would be cool anyway. Something to enable me to
ensure I don't miss out on things I was interested in on any channel,
without having the superfluous info from the channel bothering me.

2.They have to use an in-game character to pimp their wares.
Now, I know Blizz has supposedly done a lot of work to reduce exactly what a
new character can do. The problem is, ITS NOT WORKING AGAIN. I'm in IF right
now, getting spams from 'dkjsdlkjalsd' who is a level 1 char. He is spamming
Trade and Yell.
Now, I don't know about you, but I didn't discover /2 and /y until about
level 20 on my first char, and I wasn't missing much.
What Blizz has to do is filter out spam accounts from genuine accounts. How
do we do this? Simple...by the presence of higher-level alts on the same
account. So, for example, reaching level 20 on any char 'unlocks' trade for
all characters. Reaching level 30 unlocks yell, Reaching level 40 unlocks
mailing to more than 5 other accounts per day, etc. Effectively, you have to
invest time into these accounts before you can possibly spam.
Now, you could say that Gold Sellers will just power-level accounts to the
point when they can spam. Well, that brings me on to my next point...

3.They have to get as many people to see their advert as possible,
increasing the likelyhood it will be noticed by someone 'important'.
In combination with #2, we need to knock out their accounts as soon as
possible.
Now, I don't know what GMs do with their time. I don't know if they have to
'police' a number of servers at the same time. But if I assume that a GM
covers a single server, they need tools to improve their ability to jump on
spam asap.
What GMs need is the opposite of #1, a spam filter that shows (rather than
removes) spam. If they have this ability to filter only spam, ensure it is
monitoring the entire chat channel list.
They should then have the ability to ban a char, an account, or an IP
address.
It may be best to have an incremental ban. eg First offence=1 day. 2nd
Offence=2 days, etc.
The GM should therefore also be furnished with information on how many times
the char/account/IP Address has been banned, and over how long.
The combination of #1, #2, #3 should effectively make spamming <<<Much>>>
harder for these gold-sellers.

There is a final option, which could be used to counter the argument against
#3, where a GM may have to be employed solely to counter spam.

4. Use the community itself to ban gold-sellers.
Now, this may be more controversial, but I would suggest having a new 'tier'
of character.
Introduce a new player accomplishment or reputation. Something with a new
title, like 'Paragon' or whatever.
Something so esteemed, that if you have the title, you'll be very careful to
not lose it.
How does Blizz decide who gets these titles? I dunno. Speak to the guild
leaders on each server, or have a vote, or whatever. I have no idea how many
will be needed, but at a guess, 50.
Give these Paragons similar abilities to those described in #3. The power to
kick or ban a player or account.
People may ask, 'what if these powers are abused?'.
Well, perhaps they might be underestimating the calibre of the people that
play this game, but if someone does abuse their power, strip them of their
rank, and perhaps even give them a title for a short time reflecting this.

So there you go, it took me under an hour to come up with those suggestions.
Taken as a whole, it could work. The question is, 'Why doesn't Blizzard come
up with a solution?'

cheers,
drone


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