Guild Wars 2

cant the staff team track the PVPBANK Address or something and IP block the frigging gold sellers for good? or something seriously this is getting incredibly anoying im being harrassed by a minimum of 6 bots a day and it started this past 4-5 days no matter what map i am in so im guessing the kittens must be targetting players from the forums or something .

The team does the best they can with gold sellers, just report the gold sellers and they will get dealt with usually quickly. There is no simple solution to it.

Haven’t had a bot talk to me in months, and got none of those on my block list.
I also post quite frequent on this forum so I doubt that’s it.

I rarely get messaged by gold sellers either. I have noticed they tend to message me when I’m in the PvP area or just left it though.

The bots are back and they’re going to rip you o-off,
Hey-la, hey-la the bots are back!

Ya know, I just don’t understand why someone would want to do business or buy something from someone that basically ADVERTISES that they steal/hack accounts.

“Ya, here’s my email address, what could possibly go wrong?”

Astral Projections.7320:

I rarely get messaged by gold sellers either. I have noticed they tend to message me when I’m in the PvP area or just left it though.

or in town

Rezzet.3614:

cant the staff team track the PVPBANK Address or something and IP block the frigging gold sellers for good?

Because it’s trivial to change your IP to any country you want. Block one range and they’ll just hop to another, it’s impossible to deny them access for any meaningful period of time and all you’ll wind up doing is harming legitimate customers who live overseas.

Southern.8973:

Ya know, I just don’t understand why someone would want to do business or buy something from someone that basically ADVERTISES that they steal/hack accounts.

“Ya, here’s my email address, what could possibly go wrong?”

Greed and stupidity. Never underestimate them.

When ever the game goes on sale, botters buy more accounts. The game was on sale for $10 not too long ago, so I’m sure lots of bot accounts were purchased. Just block and report, and soon you will be free of bot messages…until the next sale.

You say that like the bots can’t simply slip out through a VPN or even a free service like ToR to get their sales pitch across. IP bans don’t do anything now adays and it’s not Anets fault.

The only real way to stop people from being hacked and the gold sellers from spamming their adverts, is to ban the accounts who also purchase the gold, which is very easy to track down. However; it can sometimes take small amount of time to review logs on the server, so response time to other customers may become longer.

And then somehow to and make it so the purchase of digital stolen goods becomes a crime and you can then legally take action against those involved and make it so they are fined.

This then results in a lot of children having their Internet access removed, once their parents are issues with a court hearing date in regards to their child’s activities on the Interwebs or you have a unemployed/employed/student person that has to sell their computer to pay for the court fees due to their lack of common sense.

Vepo.4208:

And then somehow to and make it so the purchase of digital stolen goods becomes a crime and you can then legally take action against those involved and make it so they are fined.

There is no actual theft going on because everything is the property of ANet – it doesn’t matter if the virtual goods is on your character or someone else’s, it’s still on ANet’s servers. It’s ANet’s property and remains in ANet’s possession, thus you can’t make a case for the trafficking of stolen goods without first convincing a judge that ANet’s property is actually your property. This isn’t without precedence, but the only case I’m aware of is in Japan where a Chinese student was deported for “virtual robbery” because he was PKing people and taking their equipment to sell; as amusing as seeing a PK get their comeuppance, it’s actually quite scary when you think about it.

You can, however, make a good case for invasion of privacy, where the scammers are appropriating victims’ identifies for personal gain. The problem with such an approach (which your idea also would suffer from) is that it requires the victim to take legal action, but most (if not all) people would rather rage about it and/or quit the game than put forth the effort.

it almost feels like they took my game id and have locked it to their database or something because i am whispered even when i am chilling at home instance or quest instance and hence why this became such an annoying issue

They were never gone.

One theory. They might have an extended friend’s list based off the Leaderboards so they can get Display names of people who play often. Then if they have game messages enabled, that will tell them when someone on the their friend’s list logs on so they can go down the list of people and message them.

I was botted a few days back as I logged in the Grove. 3 consecutive messages, unique names. Reported.
They tend to be around the Bank and TP, much like I used to get the messages while I hung around the Xunlai Chests in Guild Wars.
They don’t seem to be in places that require more creative means, such as the Airship, Royal Terrace, WvW or Crafting stations.
Destroying Lion’s Arch has spread them thin.
Sure they are still around, but they don’t have a one stop location to advertise. All the racial cities hare alive with players, as well as 3 spots in Lion’s Arch.
Can’t wait to see how Guild Halls effects them.

Don’t just /report, /block too. I’ve only seen 2 bots since the sale, one pm, one map chat. Blocked both, and haven’t seen more, since. Granted, the block list gets long with nonsensical display names, but I digress. In fact, I’ve taken to blocking first, then reporting. They are much farther and fewer between these days, but they never really left.

Mojo Gris Gris.5941:

Don’t just /report, /block too. I’ve only seen 2 bots since the sale, one pm, one map chat. Blocked both, and haven’t seen more, since. Granted, the block list gets long with nonsensical display names, but I digress. In fact, I’ve taken to blocking first, then reporting. They are much farther and fewer between these days, but they never really left.

This. My blocklist is full of gxjfitbc and other random names.

Travis the Terrible.4739:

Mojo Gris Gris.5941:

Don’t just /report, /block too. I’ve only seen 2 bots since the sale, one pm, one map chat. Blocked both, and haven’t seen more, since. Granted, the block list gets long with nonsensical display names, but I digress. In fact, I’ve taken to blocking first, then reporting. They are much farther and fewer between these days, but they never really left.

This. My blocklist is full of gxjfitbc and other random names.

I delete after about 2 days. By that time they have been banned and not coming back, so it keeps my block list from getting too large if I clean it out.

Vepo.4208:

The only real way to stop people from being hacked and the gold sellers from spamming their adverts, is to ban the accounts who also purchase the gold, which is very easy to track down. However; it can sometimes take small amount of time to review logs on the server, so response time to other customers may become longer.

And then somehow to and make it so the purchase of digital stolen goods becomes a crime and you can then legally take action against those involved and make it so they are fined.

This then results in a lot of children having their Internet access removed, once their parents are issues with a court hearing date in regards to their child’s activities on the Interwebs or you have a unemployed/employed/student person that has to sell their computer to pay for the court fees due to their lack of common sense.

SE perma-ban’s sellers and buyers of gil in FFXI and FFXIV. About once a month they post the number of accounts they banned. It’s in the hundreds every time. It’s a good deterrent for the players, we do have fewer now buying than we did a few years ago. But it hasn’t stopped it. And the rmt’s just create new accounts. FFXI has almost no rmt activity these days, since the release of FFXIV:ARR, but they come in droves in FFXIV.

Banning both sides engaging in rmt activity helps, but there is never going to be a 100% effective way to end it.