Small solution: Start banning IP's, not accounts. After getting a spam report, investigate it, and if it's a character with a name of "Gsfhgty" or some such, nail the IP address.

Mythic was able to pull this off, and they've got a hell of a lot fewer resources to work with.

Also, start permabanning both those that sell gold, and those that buy it. The TOS exists for a reason, and Blizzard needs to be outright ironfisted and draconian in enforcing it.

If Chinese goldsellers just switch to proxies and problem persists, start banning whole servers.

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Q u o t e:
Game masters handle a broad range of issues. It would take more than the entire staff of the game master department to monitor trade chat on every single realm 24 hours a day. It's quite clear this is a very inefficient way of doing things. It's very costly, requires too much man power, and ultimately wouldn't help to address the range of Terms of Use violations. Instead, we have great reporting systems and a hacks team dedicated to verifying exploits in the game via automated means to not only stop those who are doing it, but to help us develop methods for preventing the same types of exploits from recurring.

Granted, you may still come across people abusing the Terms of Use, however, I caution you not to use that as evidence that we're not constantly working through ways of stopping them, much less that we're complicit in the activities.

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Implying complicitness is probably going too far, but I must refer you to the broken window analogy that software developers will often use to describe why writing and testing good code is important. Scientific studies have been conducted demonstrating that if you take a perfectly clean city block, one that has a nominal history of vandalism or crime, and you break a single window in a prominent location, the condition of that block will almost immediately begin to degrade. If you fail to repair the window for an extended period of time, the deterioration rate of the block will increase exponentially, soon spray paint will adorn formerly pristine building exteriors, garbage will be thrown into the streets instead of into the garbage bins, so on and so forth. However, if you repair that one window (the analogy is to letting code bugs persist between releases rather than hotfixing them) in short order, not only will the rate of additional deterioration level off, it will actually reverse.

What's the point of this seemingly random analogy? Gold seller spam is the broken window. When the same gold seller keeps spamming for hours after being reported, it's the same as the window going unrepaired despite how obvious it is that it needs it. After a period of time, human nature is to assimilate this as the normal state of things, and adjust expectations accordingly. Where you once had a single gold spammer, you now have ten who are feeling emboldened or competitively motivated by the fact that the original one could act with impunity, and a player base who would normally weigh the risk of account action now assuming from lack of action that Blizzard either doesn't care or doesn't have the resources to enforce, leading to an escalating probability of some of the players buying gold when they otherwise wouldn't accept the risk. Of course none of these conclusions may be true at all, but the net effect on perceptions is the same regardless of the actual reason for the lack of swift corrective action.

Bottom line is if the GMs are general contractors who are dealing with the building's foundation, as well as traffic cops, as well as librarians, and fixing windows is pretty low on their list, shouldn't you perhaps consider hiring some window repair specialists before that one broken window becomes something that requires way more overall resources to clean up?

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Q u o t e:
Unfortunatly, I don't think there is a way to stop these things.

Whenever Blizz develops a way to detect these hacks, a new one comes out within the next hours.

Blocking IP from china will result in the use of proxies or wathever.

Permabanning account will do nothing since its stolen account to start of.


And ouf course, people will never stop buying gold, sadly (you cant stop lazyness).

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**DING DING DING** - We have a winner!

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html

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Q u o t e:

Mythic was able to pull this off, and they've got a hell of a lot fewer resources to work with.

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What else did they have a whole lot fewer of? Hmm..

Maybe Blizzard shouldn't work on banning all these accounts and shouldn't try to constantly stop them from selling gold. Hear me out, cause I have a bit of a weird idea here. Figure out which accounts are linked to the hacks, underground farming, and moving large sums of gold. Figure out who is responsible and keep tabs on them. Track all the gold they ever move from one account to another. Don't ban the sellers, ban the buyers. Make it so that buying gold is almost a sure fire way to get your account banned instantly. Money laundering might come into play here and complicate things, but it is at least a different approach worth considering.

It wouldn't surprise me if Blizzard secretly owned and operated all of these gold selling websites.

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Q u o t e:
Maybe Blizzard shouldn't work on banning all these accounts and shouldn't try to constantly stop them from selling gold. Hear me out, cause I have a bit of a weird idea here. Figure out which accounts are linked to the hacks, underground farming, and moving large sums of gold. Figure out who is responsible and keep tabs on them. Track all the gold they ever move from one account to another. Don't ban the sellers, ban the buyers. Make it so that buying gold is almost a sure fire way to get your account banned instantly. Money laundering might come into play here and complicate things, but it is at least a different approach worth considering.

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Sure, ban the players but goldsellers will still continue their spam because they will still be making money. They don't care if you get your account banned when you buy their gold ; all they want is your money!

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Q u o t e:

Game masters handle a broad range of issues. It would take more than the entire staff of the game master department to monitor trade chat on every single realm 24 hours a day. It's quite clear this is a very inefficient way of doing things. It's very costly, requires too much man power, and ultimately wouldn't help to address the range of Terms of Use violations. Instead, we have great reporting systems and a hacks team dedicated to verifying exploits in the game via automated means to not only stop those who are doing it, but to help us develop methods for preventing the same types of exploits from recurring.

Granted, you may still come across people abusing the Terms of Use, however, I caution you not to use that as evidence that we're not constantly working through ways of stopping them, much less that we're complicit in the activities.

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BS, you need to devote more time and money to protecting your customers. We feed you.



plz dont flake on us.

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Q u o t e:

Game masters handle a broad range of issues. It would take more than the entire staff of the game master department to monitor trade chat on every single realm 24 hours a day. It's quite clear this is a very inefficient way of doing things. It's very costly, requires too much man power, and ultimately wouldn't help to address the range of Terms of Use violations. Instead, we have great reporting systems and a hacks team dedicated to verifying exploits in the game via automated means to not only stop those who are doing it, but to help us develop methods for preventing the same types of exploits from recurring.

Granted, you may still come across people abusing the Terms of Use, however, I caution you not to use that as evidence that we're not constantly working through ways of stopping them, much less that we're complicit in the activities.

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i think what he is trying to say is the time frame that ppl get a response form the reporting system is quite long so it would seem that nothing is being done on the basis that it appears you dont prioritise. ppl who report hackers or bots spamming quite often notice that they report the problem . it takes lets say 2 days to get a response.. meanwhile the spammer initially reported has logged that toon off and deleted it . we also never really get told of any outcome. " we will look into it " does not instill confidence. A follow up email / whisper informing us that something has been done ( no need to go into details for privacy reasons ) i think would give me at least a lot more confidence in the reporting and actioning system .

i do understand that ppl's privacy needs to be preserved. but since you are always changing the terms of use could it not have a clause in there that ppl have to agree to stating if they are found to be in violation of any of the TOU or ELUA that the details of the action taken can be made public knowlege.

what i mean about this is .. no names involved toon name is pretty anonomys except to ppl who know them IRL..... " in response to your issue that you reported. the action we took was to ban the account. thanks for your efforts " or some such. i dont see how that is a violation of someone's privacy especially since blizzard announces periodically that they remove millions of gold form accounts and ban thousands of farmers. how is telling someone about action taken any different?

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Q u o t e:

Granted, you may still come across people abusing the Terms of Use, however, I caution you not to use that as evidence that we're not constantly working through ways of stopping them, much less that we're complicit in the activities.

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Caution? Or else what? I think the player base is just calling it as we see it. It's no secret that all these things happen with little repercussion. We're all waiting for a serious response on Blizzard's part. Do something. =\

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Q u o t e:
Small solution: Start banning IP's, not accounts. After getting a spam report, investigate it, and if it's a character with a name of "Gsfhgty" or some such, nail the IP address.

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Most people do not have a static IP address. This won't work.

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Q u o t e:
This is BS,I can't make a living on Duskwood server anymore.You guys are are working on new content,and you can't even slow down these mining hackers?I don't think Blizz cares at all,hell it would only take 1 gm on every realm to sit in trade and ban the "susan Express" guys,but they won't.Don't tell me that would be impossible,do you know how many ppl they have working on hacked accounts? IMO they are selling the gold,it's just too easy to fix for Blizzard not to have a hand in it,sorry if I'm wrong.These mining hackers are destroying the economic side of the game,as well as the gold sellers.These are the people who hack accounts.I f we got rid of the gold sellers there would be no need for hacking accounts,or using cheats.Blizzard could spend less time getting rid of the sellers than they spend repairing hacked accounts.I have seen nothing done by Blizzard to remove gold sellers,it's so easy to do,sit in trade perma ban the gold seller advertisers,and give them no credit for their lost timecard.It would be too expensive to keep spending $15 to advertise once and lose the account.Until I see something saying different,I will believe Blizzard has a hand in the gold sellers.So to sum up,fix the old problems before you bring new content,and do something about the gold seller,and the buyers for that matter...5,000 gold for runecloth on the AH? c'mon.

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First of all use paragraphs. Makes it much easier to formulate your point and for us to read it.

Secondly I doubt blizzard is ignoring the "minning hacks" they're just taking the same course of action as with the instance problem: Wait 6 months then fix it.

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Q u o t e:
It wouldn't surprise me if Blizzard secretly owned and operated all of these gold selling websites.

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Think about that for one second...

If blizz operated it, why would they go to the trouble of actually mining and selling stuff. Why wouldn't they just gift themselves a unlimited supply of gold. Are you implying that Blizzard indiscriminately hacks it's own customers, then bothers many of it's other customers by hacking it's own game to steal nodes from paying customers...THEN has to SPEND additional time and resources to return said hacked accounts back to a pre-hacked state? All to get maybe $10 total dollars from the 1 out of 1000 D-bags that actually spend real cash on in-game gold. All the while risking losing $180 a year from MULTIPLE customers that threaten to quit over this OUTRAGE, just to get that ONE TIME payment of $9.95 (if you use the special coupon!!).


Not to mention that your claim would mean that blizzard is willingly breaking several ethical business laws in many different countries.


Think about that again....

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Q u o t e:

A great deal of time and money is devoted to protecting customers. Ultimately though customers must protect themselves. I'll relink what a player above pointed out regarding cheats, exploits, hacks, and gold selling: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html

An overwhelming majority of these activities take place on compromised accounts.

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Make a stand then. Require all players to use the authenticator. Save yourselves "a great deal of time and money". Make players happy with a trade chat that isn't dominated by gold sellers. Make the hard choice and do the right thing.

"What are YOU prepared to do?" -Malone, The Untouchables

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Q u o t e:

Game masters handle a broad range of issues. It would take more than the entire staff of the game master department to monitor trade chat on every single realm 24 hours a day. It's quite clear this is a very inefficient way of doing things. It's very costly, requires too much man power, and ultimately wouldn't help to address the range of Terms of Use violations. Instead, we have great reporting systems and a hacks team dedicated to verifying exploits in the game via automated means to not only stop those who are doing it, but to help us develop methods for preventing the same types of exploits from recurring.

Granted, you may still come across people abusing the Terms of Use, however, I caution you not to use that as evidence that we're not constantly working through ways of stopping them, much less that we're complicit in the activities.

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You get get 15 dollars a month per account... I think blizzard can afford to hire some more gm's to cover this issue... I'm like the OP... I think blizzard is the gold sellers. Only makes sense.. they will do anything for a fast buck... look at faction changes... way back when they said it would never happen... see how far that got eh?

OP can you (or anyone else) explain what the hack/bot looks like in WG or basin?

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Q u o t e:
I think blizzard is the gold sellers

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Come on you can't really be THAT paranoid. If Blizzard wanted to conduct micro transactions for in game currency they would have set up a system to do just that.

Creating fake companies designed to hack accounts seems like a total waste of time and money when they could just change the Terms of Service.

There are MMOs that allow you to buy gold and items but Blizzard realizes that hurts poor players and causes rich players to get rewards they don't deserve.

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Q u o t e:
I usually do not get involved in reporting people, but for a week I noticed this one character farming the fire elementals in one area. Night, Day, Early, Late, he was always there. I also noticed his patterns as being unnatural to a real player. I was there farming myself on an alt, but after I noticed him I went back a few times at odd times to check on him.

I was absolutely positive it was a bot, so I then reported him.

I checked back 24 hours later and he was gone. Have not seen him since.

I am no fan boy by any stretch, but I think they do a good job and try as to this from what I have seen.

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That's the exception, not the rule.

Both my wife and I have tracked a number of bots for months at a time, reporting them over and over. Now, I'm not saying they are all still operating, in fact, many have been taken care of. However, like I said, all of them took WAY more than 24 hours to be dealt with - most took over a month. It took more than 24 hours to get a response to the ticket itself.

That said, the process does work. I can't begin to imagine the work that has to be done to ban even just 1 account.

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Q u o t e:
That said, the process does work. I can't begin to imagine the work that has to be done to ban even just 1 account.

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Its also a lot harder to report bots now a days.

Back in Burning Crusade most bots were hunters that grinded 24/7 and were easy to report. Now a days they are hacked accounts that spend their entire day using speed hacks to farm nodes.