Diablo 3 spam

[Sicklyboy]

I just filed an angry support ticket to Blizzard. The gold farming spam in Diablo 3 is getting unbelievably out of hand.

Spoiler

Ever since the patch that started having the game auto-connect to General chat, gold farming advertisements have been unbelievable. I've been quietly reporting each and every single bot that comes on and starts spamming my chat log, but I can't stay quiet about it any longer. The game has been out for three weeks, and these damn gold farmers are already advertising more than they are on WoW. WoW, in the two and a half years I played (starting shortly after TBC released and ending shortly before Cata, for a time frame) was NEVER this bad. "Just leave General" isn't an answer to this problem, either, as some players in game have said - This is a public chat channel, not an advertisement line. I came online to PLAY Diablo, not read about how I can have my account PLed in 20 minutes, my computer keylogged, and my BNet account banned for $140 USD or buy 50m G for $43.99 from some farmer. If I wanted advertisements, I would start filling out the surveys at the end of every "How to hack in WoW!" Youtube video and giving them my primary email address.

If I might make two suggestions on how to handle the issue:

1) Restrict General to paid accounts - Make General read-only to any account that is running a guest/trial pass of Diablo 3. This way, people are much less likely to drop $60 many many times on accounts that are likely to be banned right away, rather than just get a trial pass off of someone on the internet and spam everyone's game.

2) Spam filter - I come from a programming background; I know it's a pain in the ass, but I also know it's possible. Perhaps have a Social option to filter out messages that are "Potentially Spam". Yeah, this could trigger a false positive on legitimate messages, but it could be constantly adapting (based on user reports even) to spam messages.

Nothing is a perfect solution, but anything is better than logging in to nothing but advertisements.

Regards,
Your aggravated customer,
Nick "Sicklyboy" Riddle



Image titled "I love playing Diablo 3 - Attack of the Spammers.jpg"

Edit - for what it's worth, I'm not "sickly" in any way; perfectly healthy individual. Just a pseudonym I've picked up over the years (starting with Maplestory, and it stuck lol)

 

[MelodieOctavia]

Yep, I havn't played D3 in the last few days exactly for this reason.

 

[Wabsta]

Blizzard simply doesn't seem to care. Look at WoW it's even worse there. What's even more anoying is that level 1 characters with names like "asldjhakljhfaf" keep sending players private messages in addition to posting the spam in general channels..
Luckily in WoW there are addons that block private messages from level 1 characters though, helps a lot.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Wabsta - like I said in my ticket, in the time frame I had played, spam was NEVER that bad (and without addons to block it, to boot). Yes, there was spam. But it was much more infrequent than this. I suppose it could be attributed to the fact that WoW has what, over 40 US realms, but D3 runs on (what I am assuming to be) unidentified, random servers - more popular realms likely had more spam, but in D3, on these random servers, the farmers get dumped wherever.

I hope they reply. I REALLY, really hope they do.

 

[Hells Malice]

/leave

problem solved. General chat sucks regardless of gold spammers, and they exist in every MMO ever so get used to them.
EDIT:er, MMO and online multiplayer RPG games.

 

[Rydian]

On the above point, I saw MMOAA spam all the time in Mabinogi.

 

[Sicklyboy]

/leave

problem solved. General chat sucks regardless of gold spammers, and they exist in every MMO ever so get used to them.
EDIT:er, MMO and online multiplayer RPG games.

/leave, and spammers are still there. I don't see them, but they're still there.

What if I want to talk to others in General though? What if I don't want to /leave 1 every time I log in?

It's a bandage, not a solution.

 

[Hells Malice]

/leave

problem solved. General chat sucks regardless of gold spammers, and they exist in every MMO ever so get used to them.
EDIT:er, MMO and online multiplayer RPG games.

/leave, and spammers are still there. I don't see them, but they're still there.

What if I want to talk to others in General though? What if I don't want to /leave 1 every time I log in?

It's a bandage, not a solution.

They'll always be there, welcome to online gaming with an economy. They're like a plague and they ALWAYS find ways bypass spam prevention tactics.

You don't want to talk to others in General. They're morons.

If you don't want to /leave every time, then that's what you should suggest to Blizzard. Not being auto-joined into General.

 

[Foxi4]

NCSoft fixed those problems by introducing a "ballgag" function - anyone posting the same message over and over is clearly a bot and thus his shouts are muted for a period of time. If the offense repeats, it may lead to banning the individual.

Yes, that's a hint, Blizzard.

 

[Ryupower]

i just exit the chat ,
i do NOT like the auto-join chat

i would like a option in the Setting menu
for
Join Chat on login

 

[Hells Malice]

NCSoft fixed those problems by introducing a "ballgag" function - anyone posting the same message over and over is clearly a bot and thus his shouts are muted for a period of time. If the offense repeats, it may lead to banning the individual.

Yes, that's a hint, Blizzard.

Does it have to be the SAME message? Because spambots often just change the lines in their messages to be slightly different to not trip a feature like that.
Then if they set it to trip if you type a certain amount of messages per second or per minute, they just tune their spam to be just below that limit. Ragnarok had a filter like that. Since it can't be TOO restrictive or people complain.

 

[Foxi4]

Does it have to be the SAME message? Because spambots often just change the lines in their messages to be slightly different to not trip a feature like that.
Then if they set it to trip if you type a certain amount of messages per second or per minute, they just tune their spam to be just below that limit. Ragnarok had a filter like that. Since it can't be TOO restrictive or people complain.

In Lineage 2, It's a mix of both - you have a certain amount of messages per minute you can send and their content cannot be the same. They can't exactly filter the content.

The limit is low enough not to bother you with messages like this TOO much, but high enough to have normal conversations. Besides, Team Speak/Ventrillo/Skype, anyone?

 

[Gahars]

Honestly, I'm just impressed that they managed to mobilize so quickly.

 

[thegame07]

I wish Diablo allowed ui addons/mods then we would have a "bad boy" addon that blocks spam messages automatic like on wow. I just leave the General channel.

 

[Taleweaver]

i just exit the chat ,
i do NOT like the auto-join chat

i would like a option in the Setting menu
for
Join Chat on login

This.

Just WTF is it with that automatic chat to begin with? Even without all the spamming that'll allow me not to go out to quest for things (which just happens to be the main reason I bought the game), it just breaks the mood. There you are, by yourself, fighting hordes of bad guys in dungeons...and all of the sudden a conversation in bad English about buying/selling stuff ensures.

Jeez...if they at least restrict the automatic public chat to the non-fighting zones, it'd make SOME sense. But I doubt anyone wants to start chatting in the middle of a huge pile of baddies.

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

i just exit the chat ,
i do NOT like the auto-join chat

i would like a option in the Setting menu
for
Join Chat on login

This, definitely.

It is an unnecessary inconvenience to leave the chat every time I start Diablo 3. I hope they release a similar option on future updates.

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

Well, at least it's not Ragnarok Online, where I hear that even in private servers you can't escape from the "LOOKING TO TRADE" and "WANT TO BUY" messages that pop up every five seconds where it's always the same person looking to trade 99 of the useless most common item for 1 of the rarest weapons in the game, or people wanting to buy an item that cannot be sold because once you pick it up it's bound to your account or something.

You can't escape it by leaving global chat, either, because it's in every channel all the time.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

/leave

problem solved. General chat sucks regardless of gold spammers, and they exist in every MMO ever so get used to them.
EDIT:er, MMO and online multiplayer RPG games.

I'm not a D3 player but from my experience with MMOs in general I rarely listen to the general chat.

 

[Hells Malice]

Well, at least it's not Ragnarok Online, where I hear that even in private servers you can't escape from the "LOOKING TO TRADE" and "WANT TO BUY" messages that pop up every five seconds where it's always the same person looking to trade 99 of the useless most common item for 1 of the rarest weapons in the game, or people wanting to buy an item that cannot be sold because once you pick it up it's bound to your account or something.

You can't escape it by leaving global chat, either, because it's in every channel all the time.

RO has gold spammers in town on official servers.
Private servers have optional trade channels/trade announcements, and i've never once seen the first example you used (and I assume the second to be an MMO-general term since RO has no soul bound items at all).