---

Originally posted by bloodaxes
Never said they don't have to do anything but the chat filter is a good step forward for now, IF it will continue to work against gold spammers they can focus on botters.
Now if they do nothing on bots then it will be a serious problem yes I will give them a chance for this next month if they try to improve good I may stay if they don't I will go looking for something else to play.

---

I second this. They are making regular progress in resolving major player issues. If they continue to make regular progress I will be satisfied.

Ha you guys make me laugh, cheering that a company patched in a feature that prevents spam tells... It like cheering the US government for building a 100 mile wall on the border which is 100s of miles long lol...not gonna do much to stop the issue, at all. Gold farmers will destroy Aion's economy just like they have in every other game, so cheer for your hollow victory!

Originally posted by Zarynterk

Ha you guys make me laugh, cheering that a company patched in a feature that prevents spam tells... It like cheering the US government for building a 100 mile wall on the border which is 100s of miles long lol...not gonna do much to stop the issue, at all. Gold farmers will destroy Aion's economy just like they have in every other game, so cheer for you hollow victory!

Well if you think that gold farmers destroy MMos economies you must be dumb. They are just making it easier for people who want to spend money instead of grinding a million mob. It's exactly like RL. Money makes a difference. Some people are working harder than you are and don't wanna grind to enjoy the game. What is the problem with it? Anyway,  you won't stop it.

Moreover, gold farmers usually make it easier for regular players to make money (flux, mats) At the moment they are necessary to most MMos economy.

The real issues is that some morons are flooding channels and using boting softwares. Those guys are ruining MMos.

---

Originally posted by glid

---

Originally posted by Zarynterk

Ha you guys make me laugh, cheering that a company patched in a feature that prevents spam tells... It like cheering the US government for building a 100 mile wall on the border which is 100s of miles long lol...not gonna do much to stop the issue, at all. Gold farmers will destroy Aion's economy just like they have in every other game, so cheer for you hollow victory!

---

 
Well if you think that gold farmers destroy MMos economies you must be dumb. They are just making it easier for people who want to spend money instead of grinding a million mob. It's exactly like RL. Money makes a difference. Some people are working harder than you are and don't wanna grind to enjoy the game. What is the problem with it? Anyway,  you won't stop it.
Moreover, gold farmers usually make it easier for regular players to make money (flux, mats) At the moment they are necessary to most MMos economy.
The real issues is that some morons are flooding channels and using boting softwares. Those guys are ruining MMos.

---

I think that people are complaining about botting to farm gold, which really does cause inflation because bots can farm 24/7, unlike a human being. I would agree that there is a distinction between Joe Schmo selling his character and equipment to somebody on ebay and a bot farming operation, but that is perhaps a debate for another day, and I think they're mostly talking about the bots.

Originally posted by glid

Originally posted by Zarynterk

Ha you guys make me laugh, cheering that a company patched in a feature that prevents spam tells... It like cheering the US government for building a 100 mile wall on the border which is 100s of miles long lol...not gonna do much to stop the issue, at all. Gold farmers will destroy Aion's economy just like they have in every other game, so cheer for you hollow victory!

 

Well if you think that gold farmers destroy MMos economies you must be dumb. They are just making it easier for people who want to spend money instead of grinding a million mob. It's exactly like RL. Money makes a difference. Some people are working harder than you are and don't wanna grind to enjoy the game. What is the problem with it? Anyway,  you won't stop it.

Moreover, gold farmers usually make it easier for regular players to make money (flux, mats) At the moment they are necessary to most MMos economy.

The real issues is that some morons are flooding channels and using boting softwares. Those guys are ruining MMos.

What, "legit gold farmers"? Even more... economy savers? Ignoring the RMT-loving comments, where do you think all these gold websites get their kinah from, people farming for them, or bots farming for them? Considering the number of bots *currently* in this game, the answer is pretty obvious... the current farmers aren't part of your "legit" gold farmer concept.

Originally posted by EricDanie

Originally posted by glid

Originally posted by Zarynterk

Ha you guys make me laugh, cheering that a company patched in a feature that prevents spam tells... It like cheering the US government for building a 100 mile wall on the border which is 100s of miles long lol...not gonna do much to stop the issue, at all. Gold farmers will destroy Aion's economy just like they have in every other game, so cheer for you hollow victory!

 

Well if you think that gold farmers destroy MMos economies you must be dumb. They are just making it easier for people who want to spend money instead of grinding a million mob. It's exactly like RL. Money makes a difference. Some people are working harder than you are and don't wanna grind to enjoy the game. What is the problem with it? Anyway,  you won't stop it.

Moreover, gold farmers usually make it easier for regular players to make money (flux, mats) At the moment they are necessary to most MMos economy.

The real issues is that some morons are flooding channels and using boting softwares. Those guys are ruining MMos.

What, "legit gold farmers"? Even more... economy savers? Ignoring the RMT-loving comments, where do you think all these gold websites get their kinah from, people farming for them, or bots farming for them? Considering the number of bots *currently* in this game, the answer is pretty obvious... the current farmers aren't part of your "legit" gold farmer concept.

They Also get it from hacking peoples accounts and sellling off their items so they can take the gold, there are no legit gold farmers.

Originally posted by glid

Originally posted by Zarynterk

Ha you guys make me laugh, cheering that a company patched in a feature that prevents spam tells... It like cheering the US government for building a 100 mile wall on the border which is 100s of miles long lol...not gonna do much to stop the issue, at all. Gold farmers will destroy Aion's economy just like they have in every other game, so cheer for you hollow victory!

 

Well if you think that gold farmers destroy MMos economies you must be dumb.

The real issues is that some morons are flooding channels and using boting softwares. Those guys are ruining MMos.

Yup I must be dumb then lol... The REAL issues mmos have are those nasty channel flooding perpetrators, and the bots... not gold farmers at all, in any way... Thats like saying its not the drug dealers fault, its the addict. And you call them morons...

---

Originally posted by Zarynterk
The REAL issues mmos have are those nasty channel flooding perpetrators, and the bots... not gold farmers at all, in any way... Thats like saying its not the drug dealers fault, its the addict. And you call them morons...

---

Curious, not debating. What do you classify bots as? They are obviously not player characters, nor will they ever be them. If they are not farming gold and items, what are they doing?

 I am not an Aion player myself but its a good step forward from NC. Lets hope they can remove the botting and then the game can flourish.

I don't know why people spew hate about Aion citing the goldspammers and the botters as their excuse. In reality we hate spammers and botters in any game, so if one game can bring an end to their behavior, all the better, whether you play that game or not. If all games can effectively deal with them, then we get a much better gaming experience all round.

Originally posted by glid

Originally posted by Zarynterk

Ha you guys make me laugh, cheering that a company patched in a feature that prevents spam tells... It like cheering the US government for building a 100 mile wall on the border which is 100s of miles long lol...not gonna do much to stop the issue, at all. Gold farmers will destroy Aion's economy just like they have in every other game, so cheer for you hollow victory!

 

Well if you think that gold farmers destroy MMos economies you must be dumb. They are just making it easier for people who want to spend money instead of grinding a million mob. It's exactly like RL. Money makes a difference. Some people are working harder than you are and don't wanna grind to enjoy the game. What is the problem with it? Anyway,  you won't stop it.

Wrong. 100% absolutely wrong. This mantra is the classic argument from ignorance the pro-RMT folks just love repeating - as though saying it enough will make it true.

They absolutely *do* destroy MMO economies, which then drives away players. The people it drives away are the legit players who actually want to *play* the game but get sick of the ever-increasing prices caused by gold-buyers and RMT who continue to increase the prices. To those who, like yourself, support RMT, it just means having to pull out the credit card.

Let me share with you just one example that I've witnessed from beginning to end.

Some years back, in Final Fantasy XI, prices on the more in-demand items hovered in the low millions. Some popular but not so "rare" items, like a Jujitsu Gi in particular, sold for about 450k. I know because I earned the gil in game to buy it.  Now, that last statement might have thrown you off. I'm sure earning money in-game by actually *playing* it is probably an alien concept to you and right now you're thinking "Why would you do that? Just pull out the credit card and you can have it in a half hour!"... Just bear with me.

At some point, the RMT presence in the game ramped up significantly, and along with it, the economy started to spiral out of control. See... it goes like this... when the amount of money pouring into an in-game economy begins to overtake the amount of money going out (in the form of money sinks, etc), the value of the money decreases and prices tend to sky-rocket. 

Not surprisingly, the RMT themselves were dominating the spawns for the most valuable items, via bots/hacks/scripts that gave them an almost 100% success rate over legit players (legit players = people who don't cheat or buy their way through a game... just in case the term is new to you). Since they controlled the spawns and the drops, they also controlled the prices of the items when they listed them on the auction house. And guess what happened? Bingo! They kept increasing the prices, thus making it more difficult for people to afford them through normal means, thus making the idea of buying their gil (what you support) seem more necessary.

Of course, this has a ripple effect across the entire game and it got to the point where the legit players found it more and more difficult to make their way through the game because the price on everything was skyrocketing. That Jujitsu Gi I mentioned earlier went up over 3 million at one point... and that's one of the lesser examples. How about 2 million gil items going up over 20 million? Yep it happened. 

It got so bad that legit players started leaving the game, citing the out of control RMT and screwed up economy as the reason in many cases.

Finally, SE stepped in and realized they had to do something. They formed the "RMT Task Force", a separate team of people whose sole purpose was to research, track down and eliminate the botters and, with them, all the excess gil they were pouring into the economy.

They also changed the drop status of many of those high-demand items, making the world-drop versions of them "rare/ex" ("bind on pickup", basically) and, thus, useless to the botters since they now couldn't sell them. However, it benefitted legit players because they now had a chance at getting the drop, since the RMT were no longer monopolizing them.

SE implemented mobs in the game, called "Goblin Bounty Hunters" which patrolled shorelines of lakes, rivers and such and would attack the RMT fishbots lined up along them. The fishbots had been flooding the market with fish, which drove the price down on them and made it near impossible for people who made money in-game legitimately through fishing to make a profit. Within 24 hours of introducing the Bounty Hunters, almost all the fishing bots were gone. Those that weren't killed repeatedly were kicked directly.

Through their efforts, within the first few months of introducing the task force, SE eliminated 10s of billions of gil from the economy. They eventually drove out all but the largest RMT companies from the game.

And the net effect of all this? The economy came back down to earth - lower, in fact, than it was when the game first launched in the US. That 450k Jujitsu Gi that went up to over 3 million came back down to 150k. Legit players were able to actually play the game normally again and players who had left because of the economy started coming back.

That's just *one* very definitive example of how RMT does, in fact, ruin an economy.

Your claim is wrong. Completely wrong. MMOs that aren't designed from the start to support RMT are most *definitely* affected by RMT activity...

And that's just the economy. Don't even get me started on the activities that go hand-in-hand with it... botting, hacking, spamming, attempts to hack/compromise accounts.. .and on and on... By speaking in defense/support of RMT, those are the activities you are also supporting. Good job.

Moreover, gold farmers usually make it easier for regular players to make money (flux, mats) At the moment they are necessary to most MMos economy.

If the game is set up from the start to support RMT - as in, item malls or sanctioned player-to-player transactions (gold, items, etc) then yes. Outside of that, you're wrong. Period.

But if you think otherwise, call up a MMO developer and tell them what you said here... use your "logic" on them and see if they agree. I'm assuming you buy your way through games, so make sure to give them your name and account info. Then tell them to track you as you complete an RMT transaction to "enjoy the game", so they can ban you. Then come back and tell us how that worked out.

The real issues is that some morons are flooding channels and using boting softwares. Those guys are ruining MMos.

The "morons" you refer to are bots set up by the RMT companies advertising the money you feel is perfectly peachy to buy per your first paragraph. If you support one, you support the other; they go hand-in-hand. Way to contradict yourself.

Originally posted by Tisiphone

 

---

Originally posted by Zarynterk
The REAL issues mmos have are those nasty channel flooding perpetrators, and the bots... not gold farmers at all, in any way... Thats like saying its not the drug dealers fault, its the addict. And you call them morons...

---

 

Curious, not debating. What do you classify bots as? They are obviously not player characters, nor will they ever be them. If they are not farming gold and items, what are they doing?

Well I'll put it to you this way... Not every glider in wow was a gold farmer right? Same thing here, while I do agree that some farming agents use bots, not all do... Some people use glider bots to level. All i was saying in my original post is that gold farmers arent going anywhere, and we all know that.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by luciusETRUR

Originally posted by Thunderballs

 

 

you are a bunch of whiny gits..

 

Log on ....block 3-4 spammers ....problem solved..

 

enjoy play

 

 

This would be a great argument.. if the blocklist was unlimited.

You know.. I remember I used to get as excited about people in this thread when NC would show some balls against the RMT in L2. I would defend them against others who said it was only temporary and not to get used to it. After a while, I realized the so-called "haters" were right.

To those all excited and declaring NCSoft victorious... Well... if you seriously think the RMT are just going to disappear or be significantly diminished from one round of bans... well... I hope you're not too disappointed. If you think this is some indication that NCSoft suddenly cares and is going to remain consistent in fighting it... again... I hope you're not too disappointed. 

I know the first reaction of some here is going to be to call me a troll... Only I'm not. Again, I was once ready to shout from the rooftops every time they did a banning in L2.. But after a while, you realize their actions are nothing but token efforts, usually done at very deliberate times... In L2 it's almost always been right around the release of a major update/expansion. They expect people to come back, or new players to check it out, and want them to get a good impression. So they do a banning, make some big statement about how they're combatting it, blah blah... Then a couple weeks later, it's right back to normal again, with the bot trains controlling catas and necros, people being spammed with RMT ads, etc. etc.

Who knows.. maybe I'm wrong this time and they really did get a clue. I'd like to think so because I have friends who play Aion. I bought an account and would like to play it, too. But I won't as long as RMT is running rampant in the game. So, I have a vested interest in NCSoft finally getting a clue and finally taking it seriously as well. I'm just not so willing to jump for joy at every announcement they make... I've heard it all before, too many times.

 

at least some one lives in the real world  you wont get rid of spamers  that easy .they will find a way they all ways do

I am glad to see that this has been tackled, at least for now, the real issue, imo, is the game itself. People would not feel the need to purchase gold or bot for levels if the game itself did not require all the moneysinks and increasingly larger level grind. Im not advocating instant level buttons and all that, so dont be rash and make that assumption, but easing off all the moneysinks and leveling requirements would help reduce the gold farming in the game. I think they should place more emphasis on abyss points and less on kinah and mob grinding. Just my two cents.

Cheers!

---

Originally posted by vmoped
I am glad to see that this has been tackled, at least for now, the real issue, imo, is the game itself. People would not feel the need to purchase gold or bot for levels if the game itself did not require all the moneysinks and increasingly larger level grind. Im not advocating instant level buttons and all that, so dont be rash and make that assumption, but easing off all the moneysinks and leveling requirements would help reduce the gold farming in the game. I think they should place more emphasis on abyss points and less on kinah and mob grinding. Just my two cents.
Cheers!

---

Interesting point. But that brings up the balance of risk, work, and reward. I think a lot of players have a tipping point when there's a big money sink (say, for argument, a mount) between buying gold and farming it. If the work involved is so great that the risk and underhandedness of buying gold is less of a concern, then they're more likely to buy the gold. However, tip it too much the other direction and it will never feel to players like they are accomplishing anything. People are at all shades of grey on the laziness scale, too.

Perhaps eliminating the larger money sinks and moving to player actions/quests to acquire the desired items would be an idea. Then you only have to worry about powerleveling.

Remember in FFXI, riding was a quest acquired skill, and then in WoW it cost money?

I wonder how many people bought WoW gold in order to pay for their riding skill and mount.

Originally posted by Rohn

I'm sure the gold sellers are feverishing working on ways to bypass the new filters right now, but for the moment, the spam has been almost eliminated completely.

In almost 4 hours of playing, I saw one gold seller spam message get through, and that was in Chinese script.

Well, that is of course how things always works in any MMO but it is great to hear that they finally is taking this issue seriously.

It was in the last minute, this is an issue that can bleed subs.

Originally posted by haratu

Where there is demand there will be supply, no matter what NCsoft does. The solution that has been put up is temprary, but futile as the only true way of solving gold spammers is to stop buying. 

Some people just have not worked out that buying gold = spam... the weird thing is i have seem buyers complain about spam too.

There are ways to kill gold spammers in chat.

EQII has a very effective solution. I tend to see less than one piece of gold spam per month in that game, and that is by /tell.

There are plenty of RMT mmos out for gamers who don't enjoy the gaming part of games.  You can not play those games along with other like-minded players who don't want to play the game either. Using RMT in a game that supposedly doesn't want RMT is like being the fully abled ringer in a special olympics. Must be an awesome pride you feel.

Originally posted by glid

Well if you think that gold farmers destroy MMos economies you must be dumb. They are just making it easier for people who want to spend money instead of grinding a million mob. It's exactly like RL. Money makes a difference. Some people are working harder than you are and don't wanna grind to enjoy the game. What is the problem with it? Anyway,  you won't stop it.

How hard an individual works has very little to do with the amount of disposable income they have.The most demanding jobs I have have ever had were also the lowest paying.

That being said,  what you choose to reguard as a gind, some people choose to consider an integral part of the game. If I want something I go out and earn it. This applies equally to both RL and in-game, and never shall the two meet.

Originally posted by Tisiphone

 

 

Interesting point. But that brings up the balance of risk, work, and reward. I think a lot of players have a tipping point when there's a big money sink (say, for argument, a mount) between buying gold and farming it. If the work involved is so great that the risk and underhandedness of buying gold is less of a concern, then they're more likely to buy the gold. However, tip it too much the other direction and it will never feel to players like they are accomplishing anything. People are at all shades of grey on the laziness scale, too.

Perhaps eliminating the larger money sinks and moving to player actions/quests to acquire the desired items would be an idea. Then you only have to worry about powerleveling.

Remember in FFXI, riding was a quest acquired skill, and then in WoW it cost money?

I wonder how many people bought WoW gold in order to pay for their riding skill and mount.

It is an interesting question. If you get things too easy (like you do when you buy gold or cheat) you tend to tire faster of a game.

As I see it is the problem grinds and timesinks. the less of those (like the daily quests many game have), the less need for goldselling. But there is also a logical opposite, when money is worthless like in WAR you lose some of the motivation.

A script that keeps track of non guild transactions also would help, not to just auto ban people but when a character is getting and giving away a lot of cash to non guild members there is probably something fishy and the GMs can check things up.

I think however that the best way to keep goldsellers away is a great crafting system. When you don't have to grind forever to be able to craft a weapon and it is at least almost as good as the stuff other people is selling you have an alternative to use loads of gold.

Another thing is that youll need to change all your stuff too many times in a MMO. If a saxon had a chainmail in the old days he could use it for many years but in a MMO youll need at least 10 of them when you are leveling up because the old one gets useless fast. This is of course one of the regular moneysinks of MMOs but it is stupid, it would be better in that case to be forced to repair it more often instead. You don't see Aragorn changing word every chapter.

For mounts you should always have the alternative to actually capture and train your mount yourself. It shouldn't be easy of course but is a lot more fun than having to buy the frigging thing for loads of gold.

Money should matter in a MMO, more than it does in WAR but less than it does in Wow.

People are happy because this does effect their play on a daily basis. We actually notice the change and we praise it. The truth is NCSoft is probably just smart at where they allocate their resources. Instead of spending time banning gold spammers 24/7 they spend their time banning actual farming bots (which is the root of the problem) and work on a filtering system that works with the client on the side. True spam bots can change it up and we've seen that with the weird character spam that gets through every few hours but NCSoft's filter system probably has a way of automatically filtering messages of that variety. Therefore now NCSoft has to put very little effort into curbing that problem and can now put efforts towards curbing the bot problem (and believe me it's very small in comparison to L2).

Queues... CHECK

Goldspamming... CHECK

Goldfarmers... In Progress

But really it was the spam that was going to cause people to leave. Most bots are unnoticeable and at this point it's hard to tell if someone is a bot or not. I hear on European servers this issue is much different but I can only give my opinion based on my own server, the EST timezone Azphel server. I can always find the mobs I need to kill, there are bots here and there but they at least don't affect my gameplay. In Lineage 2 I frequently had to fight bots for leveling spots, raidbosses and the like.