Guild Wars 2

I would like to hear from people about procedures and verification steps you take to try to lessen the amounts of enemy spies (either directly in-game {which is impossible}, or in TS channels).

Since you can not stop in-game spying, it is helpful just understanding that there are spies. For example, if you announce over map chat that you have a Mesmer hiding in Bay, expect a sweep of Bay.

TS is better than map chat if you have admins putting effort into verifying that a player is not just on your server, but actually participating, but even if you have a loose screening process, at least you can see who is in channel to guage your level of trust.

Best practice for the Mesmer in Bay scenario is to whisper a Commander directly to see if he/she is interested in taking advantage of the wall hop.

If you want some real fun “spying”, find someone from your opposing server publicly twitching their Zerg. This is fair game in my book.

Just because someone is on TS and active, doesn’t mean they aren’t a spy. In fact, that’s the best way to spy, because the rest of the people on that TS drop their guard. In games like EVE Online, where spying is part of the game, no amount of vetting can prevent it. You just have to play with one more layer of meta in mind.

At the beginning of a season, or after a mass exodus of players leave our server we require everyone on TS be re-verified.

A player must ask in map chat to be verified by a moderator. If we suspect a player of Teamspeak spying we will ask that the player put an X in map chat, if they do not they are booted from the TS server.

I play on SBI by the way, we have a very active community teamspeak server.

Black Frog.9274:

Just because someone is on TS and active, doesn’t mean they aren’t a spy. In fact, that’s the best way to spy, because the rest of the people on that TS drop their guard. In games like EVE Online, where spying is part of the game, no amount of vetting can prevent it. You just have to play with one more layer of meta in mind.

True, I guess it depends how you typically use TS. On ET we typically use Guild channels, so it is easy to spot a poser, and we have another means for commanders/guild-leads to share info.

Or, if you know you have a spy in TS, you can issue commands in /say or /guild and other commands in TS.

Also, there’s an inherent delay between when your side hears a command and when it’s relayed to the other side. Take advantage of it and you won’t have a spy in your TS.

On JQ, the folks who verify add a users anet name (your name on these forums) in the description field before they verify. To get verified, you need to be actually on the borderland with the person verifying.

That way, if we suspect someone may be a spy, we can quickly add them as a friend and see where they’re at. This also prevents people from trying to pose as someone they are not. It’s not foolproof, and you will always have spies, but this extra step works for us.

Really, it seems when people get salty about ‘spies’, especially in T1, it’s just that these people have been playing against us for years, and can read our movements without having to spy.

Every 4-6 months you wipe the TS permissions log, and let the verifiers know they need to double check by having people asking for permissions ask for them in a /m or /t on a WvW map.

With so few people actually using TS these days there’s nothing to be spied on. But there’s a verification procedure where community reps are supposed to ensure the person verified is on the server. Hardly watertight but there’s little to be gained by spying, so it doesn’t need to be.

We handle it by never actually having a plan and by streaming into fight single file – nothing of reportable value to be found in our TS!

We make all spies go on a date with me.

On ET, like Darius said earlier, we have guild channels within our TeamSpeak where folks generally know each other so there is a bit of self-policing going on. That’s not to say, we don’t also have general WvW channels as well, but we’re still a small enough community where almost all of us know each other. If we see someone we don’t recognize, we generally chat with them, welcome them to the server, and get to know them better. It helps to make new players feel welcomed and also serves to vet some of the possible craziness and/or people who don’t belong.

But before you can even get into our TeamSpeak, there is a verification process. For example, I must physically see your character in WvW before I will give you TS access. Once you are approved, you’re given a tag, usually a guild tag, that grants you the actual access to the TeamSpeak. This has helped us in the past because, for example, if the guild [GLD] were to transfer from the server, we would simply delete that guild from the TS and all access by anyone who had that tag would be revoked.

But at the end of the day, nothing is foolproof. It’s kind of like locks on people’s front doors. Locks just keep honest people honest. If someone wants into your house bad enough, no amount of locks will keep them out.

Fuzzion.2504:

We make all spies go on a date with me.

Topcheekie Scaramouch … always gots to be Startin’ Somethin’

… thundahhhhh!!!

I don’t even understand why these topics exist. There is nothing you can do to avoid or go around it completely, and thus why there is no penalty if it is confirmed to be happening.