Guild Wars 2

I know everyone gets the mails… and are annoyed by them, but this is more of a ‘how do they know when were on’ question.

1- You have to approve friends, I have not approved anyone that I don’t personally know or have talked to (so hacked accounts would be one way, but this isnt the case).

2- There is no /who all, a command familiar to us mmo veterans as giving a list of who is on a local map. At least not that I’ve found.

3- Map chat has been mentioned, that players who chat in it are targets… what about those of us who don’t use map chat then?

Yet, without fail…when I first log in the game, on my main or an alt, without fail a few seconds later I end up with 1 or 2 special mails from these banes on our game.

So…how do they get their lists of who’s just logged in, or are currently logged in?

You forgot about them simply running around and looking at players, or one of their bots caught your name when you did talk in mapchat.

Maybe they employ children on 10p per hour to compose lists of all the character names they see in the game.

Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t there enough info on this page for them to send you an in game mail?

there is a website that will pay you ingame gold for lists of names
not sure how you stop it reporting does nothing

Kirha.3256:

Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t there enough info on this page for them to send you an in game mail?

The game mail is character specific. But yes this forum is a popular way that should be on the list, by using game accounts themselves.

I’m more interested in how they are individual characters to target.

The game mail is account specific when it’s from other players.

It’s only character specific when you’re getting thank you messages from renown heart NPCs and invitations to dungeons from story NPCs.

Here is what they should do. Bring back the basic trade system so you can just Trade directly player to player like in Guild Wars 1. Then place a price on mail like 50 Coppers to 1 silver to send a message. This way it combats bots cause they have to run out of currency eventually, and we still are able to send and trade items with other players with the use of the trade post.

The mail system I do not like the idea of it costing but small price to pay to combat bots.

I have no idea where they get the names from because I rarely talk in map chat and if you see a bot near you it’s usually pretty obvious. Not to mention, when I get in-game spam mail my guildies often get it at the same time, even if they’re somewhere else.

Renegadeimp.8439:

You forgot about them simply running around and looking at players, or one of their bots caught your name when you did talk in mapchat.

I doubt they’re running around the world and sending individual mail to people they see pass by. They probably have a much more efficient method of finding names and sending lots of mail out quickly. Otherwise it’d be a waste of their time and they wouldn’t do it.

Just don’t ever enter the initial areas, major cities, the mists, WvW or talk in map chat and you’ll be fine. :p

mnwolfboy.9348:

Here is what they should do. Bring back the basic trade system so you can just Trade directly player to player like in Guild Wars 1. Then place a price on mail like 50 Coppers to 1 silver to send a message. This way it combats bots cause they have to run out of currency eventually, and we still are able to send and trade items with other players with the use of the trade post.

The mail system I do not like the idea of it costing but small price to pay to combat bots.

I fear it would not help. The goldsellers are offering 10 G lots for sale. They can afford postage fees, no prob. It would hurt only those players trying to genuinely save up coin for something important, not those machine thingies.

More effective could be limiting the amount of letters one can send in an hour.

As to how they know, I presume they see you running past or your name in the chat. I’ve never (yet) had a message waiting for me when I log on. They always come a few minutes after entering a new zone.

FYI I’m almost positive I’ve had a message waiting for me on login at least once

mnwolfboy.9348:

Here is what they should do. Bring back the basic trade system so you can just Trade directly player to player like in Guild Wars 1. Then place a price on mail like 50 Coppers to 1 silver to send a message. This way it combats bots cause they have to run out of currency eventually, and we still are able to send and trade items with other players with the use of the trade post.

The mail system I do not like the idea of it costing but small price to pay to combat bots.

All trading directly does is make it easier for them to make a profit off of you once they hack your account and harder to track back to the original account. At least this way all they can do is Vendor or TP….

You don’t need to approve friends. People can add you without you knowing it – that’s what the “Follow” tab is for.

As for the other two items, the only possible explanation is that their name-farming script encountered you walking in-game one way or another. For example, my experience is, I get a new mail when I login the next day only after I visit LA or any major city. If I stay away from those areas, I don’t get spam mails.

No, they do not know you are online. We can send mails to people even if they are offline.

Given a recent experience of mine with getting an RMT mail, I think it absolutely has to be account specific. I deleted a character to try out another class. I gave this character a name I hadn’t yet used on any other and went into the game with him. He had a gold seller mail waiting for him the instant he first appeared in the game world. The only way I can see this is if the mail was sent to the account rather than the character because the character didn’t exist in the game world until that instant.

The game is rife with them and it’s getting worse. Log in, at least 7 mails from them and several of them spamming chat for hours on end.
I expected better from you a-net, seems they have slipped through your net in large numbers, get it sorted!

THe problem is the ANet display name. As long as you know it, you’ll know the rest.

For example, I can send you mail by adding you in my friend list: Thaelyn.2840. Wait for you to go online, then I’ll see your current active character. List that down. Send you mail.

If I am not mistaken, we don’t even need character names. We can send mail just by using our ANet Display Name.

And guess where best they can farm that? The official forums and nowhere else.

No matter how many gold-seller accounts ANet bans, they will never stop. These guys are from rich companies with money to waste. They’ll buy new accounts for as long as they want. Did you notice how the spam mails and /map spam skyrocketed after ANet resumed digital and retail sales worldwide?

Also, ANet needs to change the forum system. Our ANet Display Name should stay hidden, not like what we have now. This includes our Friends list. I shouldn’t be able to see your Display Name unless you add me back.

I can add any character in-game, and I can already see their Display Name. And vice versa. “Followers” should not be able to see that information.

Eventually, ANet have to hire 50 people minimum, dedicated to catching and banning gold-spammers in /map. Then hire another 50 to process spam reports.

These gold-spammers are here to stay. The best way is to ¹ hire 100 people dedicated to it; and ² make our display name hidden in the forums; and ³ don’t let “Followers” see our display name – not even our guildmates.

It’s hard to stop a massive multi-billion dollar industry from worming into your game. There are some MMOs where gold bots are just a way of life, to the point where gold buying isn’t immediately frowned upon by the majority of the population. We can report them, but ultimately it’s up to A-net to weed them out and do their best to counter them.

The issue with the mail spam is that it’s filling up inboxes, since we can only have 10 messages there. I logged in today to find my inbox full of gold spam – which meant I missed receiving letters from actual players.