Blizzard fights ingame spam (and the addon meant to stop it)
by Mike Schramm 
May 8th 2007 at 2:15PM
If you've been using an addon like Spam Sentry to quickly and easily report ingame gold whisperers, it turns out Blizzard might not be completely happy with you.You'd think Blue might be happy players were helping them get gold spammers out of their game, but apparently Spam Sentry isn't actually helping... at least in the way Blizzard wants it to. Blue poster Kaone says, in a thread repeatedly linked to by Coreiel, that reports need to be submitted as soon as possible (Spam Sentry collects gold spammers, and then either lets you report them when you click to do so, or all in one go at the end of the day-- apparently more players have been going for the easier option). Addons, Blizzard says, aren't cutting it, because they aren't hearing about the spam quickly enough to catch the accounts while they're logged on.
Which is kind of understandable. But what's not understandable is that Blizzard is going to remove the ability of addons to create a GM ticket as of the next patch. So as of 2.1, we can pretty much say goodbye to Spam Sentry in its current form.
The good news is that Slouken (the addon CM, if there is one) promises that Blizzard is working on a "much easier-to-use method" of reporting gold spammers in 2.1. However, as we all learned from the LFG system, what Blizzard thinks is easier doesn't always match with what the players want to use. And my guess is that if Blizzard is getting "spammed" with Spam Sentry warnings now, their system will be a lot more full when everyone has access to a quick-reporting ability. It seems like a better plan to help Spam Sentry fix itself by building functionality into the addon system, rather than remove that functionality for a tool that players aren't familiar with.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Sylvina May 8th 2007 2:22PM
http://www.SCVs4hire.com
Gold spam got you down? Be prepared for the peons parody webpage!
Areis May 8th 2007 2:24PM
Yeah right. Blizzard will probably "fix" it by not allowing people to report spam in a usable form anymore. Spam reports are probably just a nuisance to them, and they have to waste time by managing those reports. I use spamsentry, and swear by it. I *always* report spam the instant I receive it, only to get a canned response about 1 or 2 hours later from a GM that is permanently offline. If it takes them an hour to get back to me (not that they have to get back to me, mind you) how the hell are they going to catch these guys?
James May 8th 2007 2:28PM
You correctly identified the problem with LFG tool, as there is nothing wrong with the tool in its current form. The problem is the unwillingness of people to USE the tool. I can't believe that at 6pm on a Pacific Server there are like 2 people "looking for group". Maybe a default ON to LFG unless you're in a group, or you need to mute any LFG tells every 1/2 hour, etc.
I just hope they have some good improvements coming in the patch...
Astros May 8th 2007 2:28PM
There is a simple way blizzard could fix this problem for everyone....
Give us an option to to ignore all players under lvl 10,20,30,etc.
Problem solved.
Jeff May 8th 2007 2:28PM
Little of topic, but illegal stuff anyways :
Since yesterday, I saw 3 hunters in Tanaris (each at a random placE) which were controlled by an A.I. They farmed endlessly, and they were geared with Leather level 15, at level 44... I contacted a GM to report third party software "à la WoWglider". Its weird that 2 hours later, the robot was still there... Im beginning to wonder if these are Blizzard own stuff hehe... Cause I thought they took Automated farming more seriously than that. I'm gonna check tonight. If you want to see the robot profile on armory, its MATHNA on Maghteridon realm.
Mcdie May 8th 2007 2:30PM
Blizzard is full of crap. I tried spam sentry and reported several accounts immediately upon receiving gold whispers. Almost a week later those same accounts are still there whenever I login. Blizzard obviously just doesn't want to be bothered and realize that as soon as they delete one of these trial accounts a new one will be created.
marnok May 8th 2007 2:31PM
They could also limit the number of alt accounts you can make to 1 per day.
marnok May 8th 2007 2:33PM
SpamSentry will still work fine without the report feature.
I don't even use the report feature, because I know blizzard will do nothing about the individual spammers. It's pointless and amounts to no more than spamming blizzard yourself with meaningless messages about who spammed you.
Just turn the thing on and forget about it. I have, and it it works great. I could care less if they turn off the "report" feature.
Drain May 8th 2007 8:10PM
I agree the whisper filter based on level is the best option. Even if it was level 3 it would drastically decrease spam.
It's getting to the point were I don't even want to play anymore.
Jerros May 8th 2007 2:41PM
Well there are multiple issues with how blizzard wants things to be reported.
1) You can only have 1 open ticket at a time. If I report a spammer every time I recieve spam I will not be able to do it again until blizzard gets around to answering my ticket.
2) The response time on tickets simply isn't fast enough to catch these guys anyway. I was doing a instance run around 7pm last night and recieved a gold sale message which I immediately reported, when I loged off at midnight the ticket was still open.
Now I understand that it's difficult to catch people when they are offline on an account they'll never use again, but spam sentry reports the website that those spamers are advertising, can't blizzard target the company/website doing this type of thing rather than the individuals themselves? I gaurentee if those individuals weren't getting paid to advertise we would be seeing alot less gold spam.
Todd May 8th 2007 2:42PM
Blizzard won't solve this. Its too big of a problem and they are ill-equipped.
The best option that the community has is to perform all-volunteer DDOS attacks on the servers owned by the gold sellers (most of which are offshore). I think it would be child's play to get 10-15k playerse to DL a client that spends downtime (like SETI at home) sending the spam back.
This will shut down their servers. Shut down the servers, shut down the service.
Jeff May 8th 2007 2:50PM
Personally I never reported Gold spamming, and dunno why we should report it : Its like calling your Internet service provider and the cops everytime you get spam mail in your inbox... Its just not logical, they dont have the manpower to track them all... Those ticket just make the real important ticket take longer to check for the GM.
Last time I asked a GM, they responded within 15 minutes, So maybe the long wait time someone mentionned is surely because they just want your to abandon it, of course they will never say it.
Reporting is for serious stuff IMO, and some whisper from a chinese gold seller isnt too rough on my nerves... Sure its gotten worse, but Its like internet spam, after all, WoW is on the Internet... You cant control the Internet, its just too much of a "Jungle"... :)
jfernald May 8th 2007 3:04PM
#11. It becomes a serious problem when I recieve anywhere between 3-5 gold reseller tells per hour from different people which obscure important directions being given on raids, in groups, or in guild chat.
Sure you can toss them on ignore but they simply log out, create a new character and send you a tell 10 min later. And if you don't toss them on ignore you'll recieve the same tell 50x in a row.
The gold spam has elevated itself beyond just annoying it's become harassment.
Quoi May 8th 2007 3:36PM
I agree with 11, however, something NEEDS to be done. During peak hours, the tells come roughly every five minutes on my server, and we are one of the smaller ones.
Bootsanator May 8th 2007 3:09PM
I just got spamsentry myself: the first two tickets i opened with it i had a conversation with the GM, but since then i've gotten automated responses, which is exactly what i want anyway. I don't care enough to have a conversation about it, just catch the bastards.
Jeff May 8th 2007 3:08PM
@Jfernald
I Entirely agree, but it seems all that reporting isn't going nowhere. Best you can do is to put Whisper in another Chat box, and only display group/raid/bg/chat...
jess May 8th 2007 3:20PM
I report mine right away but yeah sometimes the response time is anywhere from 10 minutes to hours later.
Also one time I used spam sentry to report someone's name since it was jibberish and that kind of crap annoys me and the Gm thought I was refering to spam. He didn't even read the stupid ticket!
Kirkburn May 8th 2007 3:17PM
See http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=63167579&sid=1&pageNo=23
It looks like "Report Spam" will be added as a option on the drop down list for players (like whisper, invite, etc).
Gotta love the cynicism about "omg, the LFG tool broken" (which it isn't), and continual crying about "how Blizzard is ruining everything", or idiot conspiracies ...
Pingmeister May 8th 2007 3:17PM
How about:
- Right click name of sender
- Select Report as Spam
That seems like it would be easy for Blizzard to do.
Flit May 8th 2007 3:23PM
Just have a nice little shift-control-click option, where if you do so in the text window on someones name, it asks "do you really want to report this person for sending spam messages?".
If a person gets reported more than 3 times in under 5-10 minutes, bam! Banhammer hits them without a GM having to do anything.
To Shift-control-click on someones name, it would have to be a whisper, to prevent abuse of the new system, and to keep ligitimite whispers from banning players.
This system would require some tweaking, (like to keep from banning people who are just looking for tanks or healers and are whispering everyone in a zone, lets say), but it would help.