What are the gold farmers up to now?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jun 21st 2007 at 6:31PM
My questions are soon answered, as later in the message, the spammer explains that the ***** stands for something else, which does turn it into a valid domain name. But I have to ask -- why are they doing this? It just makes it more difficult for their potential customers to figure out where to go, so I presume there must be a reason they'd do this. So, even though there's nothing official from Blizzard, I have to think that they're doing something that causes trouble for the spammers if they use their full domain name. Are they flagging people using known gold-selling domains in chat for further investigation? Since we haven't heard anything from Blizzard, we can't say for certain. But until we hear something, there's room for speculation.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Economy
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
khaosworks Jun 21st 2007 6:54PM
The game can filter out words, so the domain names are probably on that filter. For example, when discussing the recent lawsuit against a certain gold farming company, none of my tells in guildchat which used the company name were heard by others.
Baluki Jun 21st 2007 6:59PM
Yea, they must be filtering based on known domain names.
Blizz's spam-fighting techniques have certainly been effective. It used to be intolerable, and now I barely notice ANY spamming.
However, now I think the spammers have moved on to hijacking existing accounts to spam from. That's why you see so many keylogger sites on the forums now. If these crooked fucks would just use their ingenuity for good rather than evil, they'd probably make themselves rich.
I always accept the raid invites whenever I get them so I can spam my own macro. Mine explains that goldbuying isn't allowed, and that the spammers are probably just trying to steal their money or account, and then I explain some basic security concepts. Take that, Hfdaskkjfd! If that IS your real name...
Sylvina Jun 21st 2007 7:00PM
That filter makes it so hard for me to advertise my blog @ http://sealofblood.scvs4hire.com
Obviously because of the scvs4hire part, as it was taken by me in jest of the whole World of Starcraft announcement everyone was thinking (which turned out to be SC2)
Coherent Jun 21st 2007 7:12PM
The whole idea is to raise the cost of gold to such levels that nobody in their right mind would consider buying it. When gold is 100g/$10 it's expensive. When it's 100g/$35 it's insane.
Every time Blizzard takes concrete steps against the spammers, it hits them right in the wallet. When they decide the cost of doing business is too high, we'll have a spam-free WoW.
Lori Jun 21st 2007 7:16PM
The new reporting mechanism stopped the whispers very well. However, on Zangamarsh, I have been getting a lot of group invites that are more annoying than the psts. At first, I declined but it came back immediately. Then I just left it there and it eventually wen't away. Last night, though, I had a perpetual group invite pane on my screen as it went away and came back again very soon.
Now we need an automatic reporting mechanism for group invites that stops subsequent ones.
I have not had this happen on my main server, Khaz'goroth.
Aladek Jun 21st 2007 8:29PM
They should create a automatic reject invite unless you have received a tell from that person.
with the current tell blocking, and the fact that I cancel any group invite from someone who won't even say hi to me before inviting.
I got no worries...
Daveti Jun 22nd 2007 9:13AM
Blizz's own built-in spam protection + addons FTW
just go grab an addon that ignores... well... everything from level 1 characters (i ignore up to level 3 personally, sometimes they get clever)
I see so little spam anymore, and that makes me a glad panda
klink-o Jun 21st 2007 8:34PM
I haven't gotten any whispers until last night- I got about 4. But the weird thing is they were either blank or missing chunks of text. Either the farmer didn't know what he was doing or Blizz is up to something.
Huuge Jun 21st 2007 8:55PM
There are addons who block invites, easily downloaded from http://www.curse-gaming.com...
unfortunatly there are still those 10-day tryout cards witch you can buy in stores or get from new wow-boxes witch gives goldspammers at least one whole day to spam ppl on as many servers as they can before they get banned. There is no way to get rid of these more than to make blizzard stop selling and giving away those cards, becouse you cant do buissnies if you have to spend money on an account that gets banned within 24 hours...
new anti-keylogging -programs will come up soon since it has become such a problem with bank, creditcard and wow-passwords getting stolen by ppl who post fake sites witch makes you computer download trojans. They even make addon-packs on different sites and hides a trojan in it. some trojans are homemade and cannot be found by any virusprotection-system untill someone notice them, witch might take all from 1 hour to a week, depending on if ppl know what to look for.
its a creepy way to make money, but some ppl do anything to get easy money. watch out for fake porn-sites and wow-sites...
RogueJedi86 Jun 21st 2007 9:21PM
I always accept the raid invites, and then sit there, telling everyone who gets invited to Report Spam when the bot does it. Sabotage. Lately I've seen them in Stormwind, they just stand in the middle of the Trade District spamming in /say. I again, get everyone to Report them, and then I'll put them on /follow, and send them a bunch of group invites, to see if they'll accept.
Have you noticed all the pervy spambots are ALWAYS level 1 human FEMALE warriors?
Arras Jun 21st 2007 9:24PM
disguising urls with *'s or other characters is a fairly common spamming ploy
Blizzard probably employs several filters that picks up on urls in all chat channels and displaying it outright makes it hard for the filters to pick it up
Meno Jun 21st 2007 9:39PM
It is strange, they now chat with you when delivering. Very strange, they also have you send a message COD to get the cash.
Sylythn Jun 21st 2007 10:15PM
I'd like to see a change to the group invites so that we see the screenname of who's inviting you. That way we can ignore it if it's not someone we know, and if it keeps coming back up, mark it as spam.
Parasol Jun 21st 2007 10:20PM
@11
Ya, blizzard will red flag when someone from some account just send you a large amount of money or even small chunks of money when you never interacted with them. So spaming in /whispers is a bypass they do to prevent the two accounts (sender and receiver), so that blizzard takes them as friends or whatever.
G Jun 21st 2007 10:22PM
Maybe it's just me, but I purposely accept those group invites for the express pleasure of reporting the spammer. For Azeroth!
Mythor Jun 21st 2007 11:11PM
I read this via the RSS feed... and got an ad for a gold trading company bundled in. Oh the irony. :P
Hory Jun 22nd 2007 9:09AM
When invited to one of their raids (only works if the farmer is in town and when playing a hunter), try going to war with cenarion hold then misdirecting the Cenarion Emmissary to them, great fun.
Adaroit Jun 23rd 2007 12:23PM
16 is brilliant! Why didn't I ever think of that? Seriously, that is a freaking awesome idea. This way you get that toon killed everytime. Man, I once spent an hour trying to get a bot killed on my lock when I could have easily logged on to my hunter and trained a bunch of mobs on it. I did manage to get it killed by fearing the mobs it was fighting into other mobs and since the bot kept following the original mob it would encounter other mobs. It finally had more mobs on it than it could handle and died.
I felt happy.
Duerma Jun 22nd 2007 10:56AM
@12 - er, the default UI does tell you who's inviting you to the group. Are you using an addon that changes that?
Anyway, the *** in the domain name serves a couple purposes. First off, peons4hire is getting sued by blizzard because so many people reported that domain specifically, so the *** protects them. Secondly, someone who actually inquires as to what the *** stand for is much more likely to be a potential customer.
ben1778 Jun 22nd 2007 10:36AM
I've been really happy with the reduction in gold spam. I also often join the groups that i'm invited to and spam my own macro about the purchase of gold being against the TOS, blah blah. Hopefully some little kid gets nervous and changes his mind NOT to buy gold.
I get more upset at the people who buy the gold than I do at the farmers. Some asian kid is paid to do something less awful than he was doing before ONLY BECAUSE there is a market for the gold.
I think more pressure, as in social pressure, should be put on people who purchase the gold, including public ridicule.
I would totally purchase fruit from Cro Threadstrong's mortal enemy to pelt a convicted "goldbuyer"'s charater stuck in the Stockades of Shame (to be invented) in the middle of Shatt. People would be free to emote all over the shamed goldbuyer. Hell we could get a raidgroup together to shame someone 40-man style.