Guild Wars 2

With much regret I have altered this post… I do not support these guys but will go with my suggestion…..

Is there a way you , Anet, could set up a platform like the free accounts have where if you are not friends with that player or account that they simply can not whisper you? This would cut down on a lot of the gold selling spam I get while enjoying my game.
I should not have to play on the “offline” mode to not get these whispers. It simply is not fun.

I do have a blocked list full of names and have reported every single one… This takes the fun from me enjoying this game.

Advertising, even when not meaning to, a gold selling site will probably get you in a bit of trouble here. Best to edit that stuff out and alter the subject of your post.

Also there probably isn’t much Anet can do to shut sites like that down. Many of them most likely run overseas in countries that don’t give a darn about such things and that is just a legal nightmare to even approach it. Even if shut down they will just start another one.

Just Trogdor, I suppose you are right about the wording…. Though I am not advertising anything that these sites are doing… I just had a lot of questions. Maybe it is hard for them to “shut it down” and may they will “just make new ones”, I suppose I am so super annoyed by all of these whispers…and no way of making it stop. I should not have to play “offline” to not receive these annoying whispers.

Maybe Anet could develop a system similar to the way free accounts work… where if you are not friends with that person you simply can not whisper them? This way you would then only get whispers from people on your friends list.

Badby Myself.4759:

How is it that this gold selling website is still up and running?

They can try to shut it down, but there’s no point, because they’ll just make a new one. The only way to fight them it to sell gold for less.

Block … Report and don’t advertise for them.

Badby Myself.4759:

Just Trogdor, I suppose you are right about the wording…. Though I am not advertising anything that these sites are doing… I just had a lot of questions. Maybe it is hard for them to “shut it down” and may they will “just make new ones”, I suppose I am so super annoyed by all of these whispers…and no way of making it stop. I should not have to play “offline” to not receive these annoying whispers.

Maybe Anet could develop a system similar to the way free accounts work… where if you are not friends with that person you simply can not whisper them? This way you would then only get whispers from people on your friends list.

By posting their name on this forum and the picture of the text you were sent, you are indeed advertising them to forum viewers even if you don’t mean to. “Hey here is a website that sells gold even though I hate it.” I guarantee if you don’t edit the name of the site out of every part of your post this thread will end up deleted and you might get a forum infraction. I’ve seen it happen many times.

I do agree on your last point though. I would like an option that would only allow people on my friends list to whisper me. Not people that followed me but only people I am mutual friends with. I also think there should be an option that allows players to accept or deny followers.

Gaile Gray.6029:

How do you suggest we “close down” a company in another country, on another continent? Yes, they have accounts. Some are purchased. Others are stolen, and they’re not stolen through a loophole in our systems, but through insecure practices on the part of the user or through a breach of another service where the user has used the same password. (Example: User has 123XYZ as their password on SomeMailProvider.com and uses the same on Guild Wars 2.)

This means:

• We cannot close down another company.
• We will not IP Block so that entire nations, regions, or continents are unable to join our game. (That would seem most likely to impact legitimate players, and the bad guys would use work-around.)
• We can help players who are hacked, and we can offer advice on how to best prevent it, but we cannot actively prevent individual account thefts because that’s simply outside our reach.

Which means that you should:

• Block them in chat.
• Submit a report (right click on their name in chat, left click to open the report window, then choose “gold seller” as the reason).
• Never buy gold from a third party and don’t accept it from those who do.

With your help, we can do our best to reduce the annoying chatter and, coupled with not supporting their business through spending, will have a significant impact on the company. Thanks for your help!

Thank you for responding…. I did alter my post with a suggestion, since yes shutting them down seems a bit far fetched. I don’t disagree at all with any of the aforementioned. They are blocked, they are reported, and I have never bought anything from them. But Maybe the option to just not get whispers from folks not on your friends list… not followers but Mutual Friends only can whisper you. It is already in place with the free to play accounts.

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

I wanna know who is stupid enough to support the gold sellers. Don’t they know that these sites are quite often directly connected to criminal organizations, including terrorism?

Gaile Gray.6029:

stale.9785:

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

Frankly, I would agree with those of you who feel that way, and I do see the value of that. I my line of work, it wouldn’t be the best thing. But for most players, yep, it’s something I believe could make a good QoL change.

But I wanted to ask a question: How would you build a friend list without whispers? Or maybe I’m more wondering how would you discuss adding someone, mutually, without whispers? Open chat?

I knew this question was going to come up and I have prepared a response:
1. Say Chat
2. Map Chat
3. Team/Squad Chat (PvP and WvW)
4. Guild Chat
5. Party Chat (like when looking for group for people for Fractals/Dungeons)
Many of the friends on my list were met this way. It is just as easy in all of these chats to simply say “Hey I have added you to my friends list if you ever want to hang out or do things.”
99.99% of the time if someone whispers me and I don’t know them my first response is …..“Do I know you?”
However there are many ways to build a friends list and having the “Mutual Friend” option would alleviate a lot of the unwanted whispers.

Gaile Gray.6029:

But I wanted to ask a question: How would you build a friend list without whispers? Or maybe I’m more wondering how would you discuss adding someone, mutually, without whispers? Open chat?

/say or /party or /squad or /guild, etc. “Hey player (name here) I enjoyed hanging out with you in game doing X. Want to be friends?” Then sends friend request. Player (name here) can then accept or decline. I don’t think I have ever been a mutual friend with someone that randomly whispered me. I’ve had a fair amount of players follow me and whisper me when I’m online that I never spent much time in game with with such things as ,“What are you up to today? Why don’t you respond? Hey, you there?”

At the very least I should be able to remove people from my follower list. I’d like some control over that. Also I have noticed when trying to gift things to my friends from the gem store people on my followers list that I am not mutual friends with show up and that clutters things up trying to find the person I meant to gift.

Anyway it would be an awesome QOL upgrade option. “Accept all whispers” or “Accept whispers from only mutual friends.” Let the players decide how they want to handle it.

stale.9785:

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

I would be strongly against this idea. In fact, it would have prevented me to have a lot of people in my friend list.

Gaile Gray.6029:

stale.9785:

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

Frankly, I would agree with those of you who feel that way, and I do see the value of that. In my line of work, it wouldn’t be the best thing. But for most players, yep, it’s something I believe could make a good QoL change.

But I wanted to ask a question: How would you build a friend list without whispers? Or maybe I’m more wondering how would you discuss adding someone, mutually, without whispers? Open chat?

It would have to be an on/off toggle “Ignore whispers from non-friends” setting, you could turn it off when in a group, chatting with guildies or otherwise in situations where you might expect a private message from a legit source. But no matter what you’re still missing out on some random bits of pleasant conversation by using it. I’ve gotten occasional comments like “I like your character’s name,” or “nice outfit,” via whisper from strangers, I’d rather be open to that and put up with the occasional spammer.

The main obstacles are how to instruct players about its use and purpose, I rarely get these kinds of spams while others seem to be bombarded with every login. Many players will probably be confused by the setting and may forget to turn it on or off. The other concern is how many players would actually find it useful, I know that making changes to a program this complex is a difficult thing that can spawn many bugs, so if 99.5% of the players are going to ignore the setting anyway, there isn’t much incentive to put it into the game.

I don’t mess with the chat settings often, is there a way to move whispers to their own tab so that you can still see if someone whispers you but it won’t always be thrust into your face? That could be a better solution if you find them annoying.

Bandini.6185:

stale.9785:

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

I would be strongly against this idea. In fact, it would have prevented me to have a lot of people in my friend list.

What if it was an option to turn it on or off? Would you be cool with that? For example when you are in LA or the PvP Heart of the Mists where it is well known gold sellers hit players with whispers the worst you could choose only whispers from mutual friends and turn it off when you leave those areas. Or leave it off all the time if you have no problem with random whispers. It seems like an on/off option is a win for everyone.

stale.9785:

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

Meh. I find that when asking for help in a map with a very active map chat, several players will choose to whisper you with help/guidance because it stands out more instead of being the same color. There are definitely advantages to not needing to be a mutual friend to whisper someone

OriOri.8724:

stale.9785:

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

Meh. I find that when asking for help in a map with a very active map chat, several players will choose to whisper you with help/guidance because it stands out more instead of being the same color. There are definitely advantages to not needing to be a mutual friend to whisper someone

Again it could be an on/off option. That way players that don’t mind whispers from any and everyone including gold spammers have the that option. For those of us that don’t care for random whispers we can turn it on. It could be set to off by default and then players that don’t want whisper spam from non-friends can turn it on.

tolunart.2095:

I don’t mess with the chat settings often, is there a way to move whispers to their own tab so that you can still see if someone whispers you but it won’t always be thrust into your face? That could be a better solution if you find them annoying.

There is! You can create an extra tab, click its little down-arrow, and empty every tick box except Whispers. Name the tab “Whispers” (or whatever you want to call it). Then click off Whispers in your other tabs. Now every pm will go to that tab and the tab name will turn red if there is new text in it.

Supposedly. I’ve had issues with tabs not going red, or getting stuck on red. But as a rule, this system works as long as you are able to click over to the red tab to see what’s there while it’s still relevant. I know I got people mad at me once because I was in Map chat after finding events and as I don’t have Say toggled on in Map (or why bother separating them anyway?) I didn’t notice that I was killing something they needed alive.

Though if you’re prone to receiving urgent act-now whispers, likely you won’t be stashing them off in their own tab anyway

I dont think its worth it to turn whispers to friends only for a few gold spammers. More hassle than gain.

Gaile Gray.6029:

stale.9785:

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

Frankly, I would agree with those of you who feel that way, and I do see the value of that. In my line of work, it wouldn’t be the best thing. But for most players, yep, it’s something I believe could make a good QoL change.

But I wanted to ask a question: How would you build a friend list without whispers? Or maybe I’m more wondering how would you discuss adding someone, mutually, without whispers? Open chat?

There’s party chat.

I like the idea but not for gold sellers, sick of people in WvW and PvP whispering me because I have cheese build or no skill or what ever that needs to be said just because they lost/won.

Malediktus.3740:

I dont think its worth it to turn whispers to friends only for a few gold spammers. More hassle than gain.

It’s called an option. On/Off. Win/Win for everyone that either does not mind whispers for random people and gold spammers and on for people that only want whispers from friends.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Malediktus.3740:

I dont think its worth it to turn whispers to friends only for a few gold spammers. More hassle than gain.

It’s called an option. On/Off. Win/Win for everyone that either does not mind whispers for random people and gold spammers and on for people that only want whispers from friends.

It’s probably not “win-win” as much as people think. Changes like this have repercussions beyond that of dealing with spam. It affects the ability of new players to meet veterans and of veterans to engage each other. It’s not necessarily “bad”, it’s just not “neutral” in how the community grows and evolves.

There are all sorts of examples of people asking (sometimes demanding) changes from ANet, only to find that many people are annoyed with the results afterward, sometimes even the same people.

I think it’s hard to predict the value of something like this.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Malediktus.3740:

I dont think its worth it to turn whispers to friends only for a few gold spammers. More hassle than gain.

It’s called an option. On/Off. Win/Win for everyone that either does not mind whispers for random people and gold spammers and on for people that only want whispers from friends.

It’s probably not “win-win” as much as people think. Changes like this have repercussions beyond that of dealing with spam. It affects the ability of new players to meet veterans and of veterans to engage each other. It’s not necessarily “bad”, it’s just not “neutral” in how the community grows and evolves.

There are all sorts of examples of people asking (sometimes demanding) changes from ANet, only to find that many people are annoyed with the results afterward, sometimes even the same people.

I think it’s hard to predict the value of something like this.

Well if those veterans don’t want to be bothered by whispers from new players or other veterans it probably does not matter much if they can or can’t receive those whispers as they probably won’t answer anyway.

Again, I think it should be a player driven option. Want to receive whispers from anyone then select that option. If not then select that option. I don’t see how this would harm anyone as players that choose to only receive whispers from friends most likely would not respond to whispers from random people anyway. So yes the option is a win for people that don ‘t want whispers from people they are not mutual friends with and a win for those that don’t care who whispers them.

Having more chat control options benefits everyone from the people that don’t care who whispers them to the people that want to control who whispers them. So yes an on/off option in my opinion would be a benefit to all players so they could choose what they prefer.

Again as another example, LA and The Heart of the Mists are well known places for gold sell spam. Hey, maybe I don’t mind whispers from real players but in LA or The Heart of the Mists if the spam is out of hand I can turn off whispers from people that are not my friends. Then turn it back on as I go to other maps. Hey OPTIONS. How awesome would that be to let players decide who they want whispers from?

The key word once again is option. Not required for everyone to turn off whispers from people that are not friends but an option. Options are good. Very good.

I played an MMO many years ago that had an option to block posts that had key phrases in them with a command something like (/suppress phrase GoldSpam.BS) it wasn’t perfect but I wonder if a similar solution would be possible; albeit broader and less client side.

JustTrogdor.7892:

The key word once again is option. Not required for everyone to turn off whispers from people that are not friends but an option. Options are good. Very good.

The keyword is “unintended consequences”. There are other ramifications to offering the option to shutting down unsolicited chat and we can’t predict how that will play out. As I said, there have been all sorts of other things we’ve asked for — and received — and not all have been universally successful.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

JustTrogdor.7892:

The key word once again is option. Not required for everyone to turn off whispers from people that are not friends but an option. Options are good. Very good.

The keyword is “unintended consequences”. There are other ramifications to offering the option to shutting down unsolicited chat and we can’t predict how that will play out. As I said, there have been all sorts of other things we’ve asked for — and received — and not all have been universally successful.

But what are those ramifications? Player A decides to opt out of whispers from everyone aside from those they are friends with. Why? Because they are not interested in talking to others off their friends list. How does that affect other players because Player A would choose to ignore unsolicited whispers anyway. I’m not sure what you are on about with things people asked for not being successful. Of course that happens. IMO more options are always successful. No one is forcing anyone to use it as it would be an option.

Gaile Gray.6029:

stale.9785:

I do like the idea of not receiving whispers from people who aren’t mutual friends. That is a worthy suggestion, in and of itself, regardless of the gold selling scum.

Frankly, I would agree with those of you who feel that way, and I do see the value of that. In my line of work, it wouldn’t be the best thing. But for most players, yep, it’s something I believe could make a good QoL change.

But I wanted to ask a question: How would you build a friend list without whispers? Or maybe I’m more wondering how would you discuss adding someone, mutually, without whispers? Open chat?

A) it should be an option to block whispers.
B) 90% or more of the friends I have in game I met via party/squad/guild chat.

If people block all non-friends from whispering them, how am I supposed to compliment their fashion, skill in PvP, or answer questions they’re asking?

In the meantime, could you perhaps make it so that after I’ve reported someone, they’ll automatically be added to the block list? If I report someone for selling gold, it’s pretty much a 99% guarantee I got whispered and I don’t want to receive any whispers after that. But after I’ve blocked the person, I just can’t always be bothered to make more clicks in order to report him, because I’m in the middle of a PvP game for example and I definitely don’t want some window to pop up in the middle of my screen after I’ve blocked the person anyways.

Gaile Gray.6029:

snip…

• Never buy gold from a third party and don’t accept it from those who do.

With your help, we can do our best to reduce the annoying chatter and, coupled with not supporting their business through spending, will have a significant impact on the company. Thanks for your help!

just a quick question here, how do we determine if someone is sending us gold that was purchased from a gold sellers site? its not like we have a transactional history showing where his/her money came from. Of course we could just ask them… and they could just lie about it and say it wasn’t from a site? I do JP ports and AB map commands often, and regularly get tips for it. Does this mean that my account is in Jeopardy if someone sends me a tip with gold bought from a site?

An acquaintance of mine had similar experience – he received around 300 gold from a friend of his as a gift. Arena Net believed that this gold originated from a gold seller, so the gold just got removed from his account with no restrictions applied to the account itself. So no, your account is not in jeopardy, the gold will just be removed.

Okay, obviously I know never to buy gold from a gold seller…. but is it still okay to send them troll responses back before report/blocking them?

Most of the time, I just go through the motions quietly… but if I’m getting spammed a lot, I do like to reply to their “sales pitch” with cynical or completely off-the-wall comment. For instance, my usual one is “I don’t have money, but I’ll gladly meet you for some ERP so you can show me the Juggernaut *wink*wink*”

I know there’s a good chance that they may never see that reply or even know what language I’m replying in…. but if there’s even a slim chance I can disturb them and make them regret pestering me….. I enjoy taking it.

Chris Cleary.8017:

There are active internal discussions pertain to issues that could impact RMT spam. We are always attempting to make the experience for our players better. Suggestions like a client side chat filter or a friend only whisper option only tackle the surface of the problem as players would have to enable those options. By doing so, they would become less social with the rest of the community and that’s not what GW2 is about. I understand that may be what some want, but I’d rather spend developer time fixing the core issues than adding surface filters.

I have to disagree with what I have put in bold here.

I have seen this system in place in another MMO that I used to play and it worked perfectly fine. That game has been going for 15 years now and the same system is still in place I believe. In that game people were ALWAYS talking and being social.

Now don’t get me wrong I am not a snob and do not just want to play solo and be unsociable. In fact in this other game I DID have the filter set to friends only but that did not make me any less social. In that game there was no “map chat” but people spoke a lot more through the “say” channel and there was always a lot of talk and social situations going on. I guess that was helped a lot by the fact that there were more gathering places in that game or hubs such as banks etc.

But still, in my time in that game on and off for 15 years I was probably one of the more social people and probably had added hundreds of players to my friends list during that time and got to know a lot of them personally. In fact one such good friend from that game plays here in GW2 with me now.

Add to this the design of GW2 which is a LOT more social friendly than that other game (shared loot/kills, no competing for resources/kills, reviving each other etc) and you really can’t lose that social aspect of the game. In fact if such a filter was in place some of us would be spending less time blocking/reporting all the time. Which would stop us being interrupted from our conversations with friends, guild members and random people in map chat or say channel that it could actualy help us to stay more social. Crazy idea but it just might work!

Now to reply to a question that Gaile had – how do you add friends to your friends list if you have the chat filter on? That’s simple, you chat with people in map chat or local channels when helping each other and such. Once you find such people that you think are helpful enough you or they can then ask to add to friends. In fact that’s pretty much how it already works for people who I help and vice versa anyway so not much difference there. And again – this is how that worked in this other game – people ask each other to add to friend’s lists.

Edit – Also I just remembered we have in game mail in this game. This is something that other game does not have. So if we chose to turn our whispers to say “friends Only” this may not stop people from sending us mail if they really do have to contact us. But then I guess you could say, “people will just mail you their spam instead”. I guess so but at least that is not as blatant and in your face as a whisper. We would at least have some control over it and deal with that when we wish to. There could always be a second option to filter mails as well tho too of course.

Sartharina.3542:

If people block all non-friends from whispering them, how am I supposed to compliment their fashion, skill in PvP, or answer questions they’re asking?

Compliment their fashion – I guess they must be in the same area as you for you to see them – use say. If they have moved on send them mail.

Skill in PvP – See Above.

Answer questions – If they are asking in map chat, do the same. If in your local area ditto. If you need to send them something you want private or not for other peoples ears – Mail.

There is only one way to stop them and that’s by having all GW2 players stop buying gold from third parties..

Chris Cleary.8017:

There are active internal discussions pertain to issues that could impact RMT spam. We are always attempting to make the experience for our players better. Suggestions like a client side chat filter or a friend only whisper option only tackle the surface of the problem as players would have to enable those options. By doing so, they would become less social with the rest of the community and that’s not what GW2 is about. I understand that may be what some want, but I’d rather spend developer time fixing the core issues than adding surface filters.

A system like party chat.

2 way verification system from another perspective.

A Scenario:
Someone called “The Lone Ranger” tries to party you for a chat, you just saw them playing the game or know them through WvW or what have not, the fact is you recognize the name and have the choice to accept the chat/whisper.
Now “dfghjkkjhvfghjkjhgf” tries to add you for a chat, will you accept it?

which is a lot better than our current system:
The Lone Ranger: Did you kill Shadow Behemoth yet?
sdfghjkjhgfggggjkkjhgf: W W W . ############# . C O M buy lots of kitten with lots of discounts for low price guarentee best blah blah
sdfghhhhhgfdfghjkkjhgf: W W W . ############# . C O M buy lots of kitten with lots of discounts for low price guarentee best blah blah
sdfghjkjhgfdfghjkkjhgf: W W W . ############# . C O M buy lots of kitten with lots of discounts for low price guarentee best blah blah
Oddball: Nah not yet
sdfghjkjhgfdlllljhgf: W W W . ############# . C O M buy lots of kitten with lots of discounts for low price guarentee best blah blah
sdfghjkjhgfdfghjkkjhgf: W W W . ############# . C O M buy lots of kitten with lots of discounts for low price guarentee best blah blah
sdssssgfdfghjkkjhgf: W W W . ############# . C O M buy lots of kitten with lots of discounts for low price guarentee best blah blah

I get you don’t want people to be unsocial, but going “offline” is sometimes the best choice, and playing offline is no communication to your actual guild friends unless you’re in a party with them already, a party of 5/xxx guild members.

Of course this is spare time side project stuff, " but I’d rather spend developer time fixing the core issues than adding surface filters." –
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug in which downed players could appear to continue moving.

Awsome

Silas Eorth.7348:

Okay, obviously I know never to buy gold from a gold seller…. but is it still okay to send them troll responses back before report/blocking them?

Most of the time, I just go through the motions quietly… but if I’m getting spammed a lot, I do like to reply to their “sales pitch” with cynical or completely off-the-wall comment. For instance, my usual one is “I don’t have money, but I’ll gladly meet you for some ERP so you can show me the Juggernaut *wink*wink*”

I know there’s a good chance that they may never see that reply or even know what language I’m replying in…. but if there’s even a slim chance I can disturb them and make them regret pestering me….. I enjoy taking it.

No, sometimes I have to report people from friendlist or guild. Does not mean I want to automtically block them. I will leave it to Anet to handle punishing them.

Chris Cleary.8017:

…By doing so, they would become less social with the rest of the community and that’s not what GW2 is about….

have to disagree, Chris. my time in this game is spent 90% invisible because I just can’t stand the gold seller whisper spam. I get so sick of the whisper/block/report process over and over, that I just go invisible.

this means that right now, most of the time I only chat in map/party/say chat. I don’t particularly like that. I like talking with guildies/friends/etc, but the whisper spam gets too much, and knowing it’ll still be there when I go back to ‘online’, gives me no desire to even select that option.

I don’t see how an option to choose who can whisper me will make me less social. it would, in fact, make me more social, seeing as with that option, I would actually talk to my friends instead of being invisible.

Arent you overreacting? I am #2 on a visible leaderboard (so my account name is easy to grab) and even on bad days I hardly get 20 goldseller whispers, often none at all. Hardly worth making a fuss about it compared to what you experience in other MMOs.

I agree with OP. Those gold sellers deserve to rot in H.E double hockey sticks

Chris Cleary.8017:

Suggestions like a client side chat filter or a friend only whisper option only tackle the surface of the problem as players would have to enable those options. By doing so, they would become less social with the rest of the community and that’s not what GW2 is about..

I have to disagree with this. It should be my choice on how social I want to be. If I don’t want whispers from people that are not my mutual friends it should be my choice. It isn’t like I’m going to suddenly be more social with players outside my friends list just because I don’t have that option. I just ignore the whispers and if they get annoying I end up blocking them anyway.

It’s like the good old days when people still used phone books. A person could choose to have their phone number unlisted. This in no way has an affect on those that don’t care if their number is public and who calls them. It is a benefit to those that don’t want people they don’t know calling them.

Allowing players to decide how they want to interact with the rest of the community is a bonus. Like I said in earlier posts the option should be turned off by default. That way everyone from the start is in your more social world. Those that want a bit more privacy can turn it on.

The topics discussed here are not just about gold sellers but also about more privacy options.

JaddynnStarr.5201:

Gaile Gray.6029:

snip…

• Never buy gold from a third party and don’t accept it from those who do.

With your help, we can do our best to reduce the annoying chatter and, coupled with not supporting their business through spending, will have a significant impact on the company. Thanks for your help!

just a quick question here, how do we determine if someone is sending us gold that was purchased from a gold sellers site? its not like we have a transactional history showing where his/her money came from. Of course we could just ask them… and they could just lie about it and say it wasn’t from a site? I do JP ports and AB map commands often, and regularly get tips for it. Does this mean that my account is in Jeopardy if someone sends me a tip with gold bought from a site?

You would be surprised how many people are friends with players who they know cheat in a variety of ways. Its sad really – cheating would be cut down immensely if the cheaters knew it would cost them friends.

Most gold sellers got links in their whispers or map chats? Can you implement a filter like on youtube for the comments under videos with links or certain phrases like “selling gold” “cheap price” etc. Also let people add links posted ingame to that filter. If lets say like 100 people added that link to the filter, the person that postet that link will get automatically checked and banned by the support. All future links posted by people on that “black list” (the links) will be banned or checked automatically. Also small variants like “l i d g s a w s.gold.com” with just spaces, will automatically be reported by the system as well. With some weeks passing by, major gold selling sites wont be able to sell their gold anymore and future sites will be shut down, cause if their link is once in the system, people sending it will get banned and the posting of that link isnt possible as well. It just some sort of “swearword filter”. Or better, why dont use that system and if you want to write a website name or things like “buy gold” etc. you just cant send that message.

IBaIRraCuIDa.5896:

Most gold sellers got links in their whispers or map chats? Can you implement a filter like on youtube for the comments under videos with links or certain phrases like “selling gold” “cheap price” etc. Also let people add links posted ingame to that filter. If lets say like 100 people added that link to the filter, the person that postet that link will get automatically checked and banned by the support. All future links posted by people on that “black list” (the links) will be banned or checked automatically. Also small variants like “l i d g s a w s.gold.com” with just spaces, will automatically be reported by the system as well. With some weeks passing by, major gold selling sites wont be able to sell their gold anymore and future sites will be shut down, cause if their link is once in the system, people sending it will get banned and the posting of that link isnt possible as well. It just some sort of “swearword filter”. Or better, why dont use that system and if you want to write a website name or things like “buy gold” etc. you just cant send that message.

They would learn to get around such a filter unfortunately. Instead of things like the filtered word “buy gold at scamsite.com” they would just change it to something like “b*u*y* g@ld at goldsellsite name” So it would be an endless process to keep filtering out those words and phrases.

Silas Eorth.7348:

Okay, obviously I know never to buy gold from a gold seller…. but is it still okay to send them troll responses back before report/blocking them?

I know there’s a good chance that they may never see that reply or even know what language I’m replying in…. but if there’s even a slim chance I can disturb them and make them regret pestering me….. I enjoy taking it.

The problem with this is now they whisper you from an “offline” state so you cant even troll them back!

Chris Cleary.8017:

There are active internal discussions pertain to issues that could impact RMT spam. We are always attempting to make the experience for our players better. Suggestions like a client side chat filter or a friend only whisper option only tackle the surface of the problem as players would have to enable those options. By doing so, they would become less social with the rest of the community and that’s not what GW2 is about. I understand that may be what some want, but I’d rather spend developer time fixing the core issues than adding surface filters.

My communication with the open game world has never been an issue! Talking with other players via many forms of chatting methods was how I built my friends list. Certainly NOT through whispers. I have been playing Guild Wars since GW1! You speak of fixing core issues…that is another subject… My request is to give me the option to not be whispered by joe blow from timbuktwo about shineys I don’t want! I enjoy playing this game…this is the ONLY game that I play in my free time. I certainly do not want to play it in an “offline” state nor should I have to just to avoid being scam spammed.

My solution is an option already set in place with the free to play accounts… they cant whisper anyone not mutual friends with so ….. How do they communicate and build a friends list? They simply use the map/say/party chat….BOOM!

Wow I overlooked that some people go into “offline” mode. I have not needed to yet. But thank you guys for bringing that up, so it reinforces what I said earlier. Dealing with this spam the ways we do now (very limited) can actually makes us less sociable atm.

Another small example is when you are chatting with friends through guild chat, or whispers or even strangers in map or say. Then bang you are hit with an unwanted whisper, be that gold selling or just from someone you don’t know it does not matter. It interrupts your current conversation.

Yes if its gold selling you can quickly block/report and continue on. But how many times do you have to do this since you seem to be on these people’s “lists” before you get fed up with it as they are jumping through all their accounts to bombard you with these messages?

If not gold selling there can also be other annoying messages. As mentioned from someone else above. Bad eggs in PvP can message you for whatever reason and they do. It could be you were on their team and lost and you seem to be the person they are blaming. It could be you were on the other team and beat them good. It does not mater the reason these unwanted messages can and do come. Again yes we can block and move on. But some people have multi accounts or then get all their friends to spam/annoy you.

These are just a couple of examples. They interrupt your desired social interactions with people and can actually put you in a state of mind where you don’t even want to communicate with anyone because of the toxicity or annoyance. Heck in same cases you might be so bothered you take it out on those you are conversing with beforehand. I have seen that happen in other games before lol. Not funny but it happens, after all we are all only human.

TLDR

It’s not just about gold selling it’s also about basic privacy and how we personally choose to be social with other players.

The current whisper system is one of the biggest ways people can still grief other players, so really why is that not being looked at more seriously?

If everyone who has ever received a spam whisper from gold sellers noticed, everyone of them seems to have 17 AP. I can’t think of one that I’ve seen that ever had more than that in the last 4 years. Maybe there is a way to restrict whispers based on something like that.