Custom chat filter to combat Gold Spammers
I’m already seeing gold sellers mangling their own URLs. Which means that ANET is filtering the chat on the server end, and the gold sellers are bypassing it. For now, each time they come up with a new mangled form, ANET blocks it. Until the gold sellers have to mangle their URL so badly that the people stupid enough to buy from them (instead of via the gem store) are unable to work out the real URL.
Sorry, mucha, wouldn’t work. As SS notes, they’re already circumventing the primitive blocks Anet are using. I’m hoping that Anet are working their way towards what Codies did with LotRO, which was to wipe the spammers out entirely. I don’t know how they did it, but we went from spam to… no spam! I’ll criticise Turbine all ends up, but between them & Codies (who ran LotRO in the EU originally) they wiped the swine out entirely. I haven’t seen advert in-game for over 3 years.
If people blocked gold spammers, they wouldn’t be reported. Which means if the account(s) being used are hacked accounts, those accounts wouldn’t be sent back. Obviously there would still be people reporting, but I think this would encourage not reporting them in a way. Just report them as you see them.
And, as Snoring said, the URLs change slightly as they’re blocked… so it wouldn’t always work for long.