Addressing gold spam in Aion
by Brooke Pilley 
Oct 7th 2009 at 5:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, News items
After playing Aion for any length of time, one might think the 'Looking for Group' channel is actually a 'Looking for Gold" channel. Don't worry, it's a common mistake. Since a few days after launch, players have been bombarded with gold spam in the game's various chat channels from general to group to trade and even to personal tell (whisper). Notably absent from Lance Stites' first State of the Game address last week, English Community Representative Ayase just put out an announcement about gold spam and NCsoft's efforts to eliminate it from Aion.According to Ayase, game masters are working around the clock to identify and ban gold spammers. Players can also block spammers on an individual basis, which does work but is only a bandaid solution. It doesn't seem like NCsoft has this problem under control just yet, which isn't necessarily a testament to poor effort but to persistent and pesky spammers. The developers are working on new tools and processes to ban the spammers more effectively, but until then our chat channels will likely be flooded with spam. You see, the economy is a strong gameplay element in Aion, and where there's a buck to be made, weasels and sharks will prey.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
xslipperyx said on 5:14PM 10-07-2009
While the gold spammers in this game make me want to gouge my eyes out, the rest of the channels are almost as annoying with all the WoW talk, trolls & crud that plague every other game out there. My resolution to the annoyance was to create my own tab that just showed game info, system info, legion & group chat.\
Things will improve, just wish it was sooner rather than later!
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Pingles said on 5:20PM 10-07-2009
Aye, starting areas always make you yearn for the quiet solitude of the zones for upper level players.
Then you get to those upper level zones and it's so quiet that you miss the starter idiot spam.
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David McGraw said on 5:33PM 10-07-2009
It's not like this is the first MMO, let alone release of Aion. They should have had systems in place before the launch. There is no reason we should be blocking 15 to 20 gold spammers every time we log in. It's 2009. Gold spam is nothing new. Their effort is noted and it's costing them players.
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Innocente said on 5:37PM 10-07-2009
Actually, I think it IS a testament to the VERY poor effort put into this aspect of the game. It is not like spamming gold in chat channels is anything new, or unexpected. This whole 'ban-the-spammers' thing NEVER works. The only way to deal with it effectively is to filter out their messages before they make it to the players. Very easy to do; it is the same technology used to filter out unwanted language.
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Kamokazi said on 6:06PM 10-08-2009
Yeah, filters are the solution. Completely foolproof!
Also, fvc|< you @$$h0le!
PeterD said on 5:41PM 10-07-2009
[tinfoil hat]
It is pretty baffling that there were absolutely no gold spam safeguards in the game at launch. One might almost suspect it was intentional, since without a free trial each gold spammer equals a box sale and possible subscription.
[/tinfoil hat]
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Kalex said on 5:43PM 10-07-2009
Why should they try and stop it? It's working as intended if you ask me, people are buying it!
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Leshrac said on 5:53PM 10-07-2009
Any new gaming session of Aion is spent going /anon, then squirreling out the gold sellers in the /lfg channel and "blocking" them. This typically takes up my first 5-10 minutes of game time before I am even able to start playing the game.....which really sucks. I pug A LOT and I rely on the /lfg channel to find my groups. I am in a very large Legion but I always seem to be unable to find a group within our ranks.
I'm really enjoying the game, the grind is a bit more pronounced then what I had hoped for. But the combat is so much fun it makes the grind a little less tedious.
A few things I would really love to see fixed -
- gold spamming
- botting
- need before greed dice rolls
- remove Legion limitations on sizes, we currently have 3 Legions to accommodate all of our players
- the allowance of UI mods; cooldown countdown timers, better targeting, etc
The WoW talk doesn't bother me, what bothers me is the 14 yr old MMO elitists that attack them, even though they wouldn't know what an MMO was if there was no WoW. The attackers are the same people that wet their pants over WoW 4 years ago. 80% of the player population cut their MMO teeth on WoW, yet now they're all too cool for it. Just ignore them, they've only played WoW so that is their only frame of reference in measuring Aion.
As crazy as it sounds I like keeping the /general chat up, it gives me an idea of what the community is like, which atm is juvenile and venomous, but at least you know who you're gaming with to some degree.
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Nadril said on 7:19PM 10-07-2009
You need three legions for all your members, and you can't find a group in it? The legion size is capped on purpose, otherwise a legion would just roll in with 500 players and easily do the most damage to take over a fortress.
Utakata said on 5:58PM 10-07-2009
Meanwhile back in WoW...we are still waiting word when Blizz will rename the Trade chat channel officially the Murloc Anal channel.
/sigh
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Myria said on 6:18PM 10-07-2009
Two mods -- Badboy and Badboy_CCleaner -- put an end to that kind of thing.
Or, at least, put an end to you having to see it.
bvandyke03 said on 6:26PM 10-07-2009
While the spam is admittedly overwhelming, and indeed NCSoft should have had even better protections built in by now (they have level requirement to use General chat, which just pushed the spammers into other channels), I don't know why people are making such a ridiculous issue out of it. Even after you block the spammers, you gotta listen to everyone whining about the spamming. Just use the block and move on and have faith that the issue will be addressed to the best of NCSoft's ability as we go forward.
Maybe
"This typically takes up my first 5-10 minutes of game time before I am even able to start playing the game.....which really sucks"
is true of some servers, but I'm on Siel, Yustiel and Kaisinel and I have yet to need to block more than 4 or 5 (usually 2 or 3) any time I log in.
I guess I'm enjoying the game (and the effort it requires...call it "grind" if you will, I don't) enough that it's a small price to pay. Especially given that I have faith that a better solution than the "block-bandaid" will be implemented eventually.
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MrBounce said on 6:59PM 10-07-2009
Even WoW still has in-game Gold spam / Power leveling advertisements show up, so it's really just the spammers being creative.
Then again, it is kind of excessive for Aion, I was having a conversation with a friend through whisper and for every line I was typing to them, I was receiving an extra message for Gold...
Plus Aion was an Asian MMO first, where Gold spam is almost a way of life (Lineage 2 is crazy).
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nekoali said on 7:02PM 10-07-2009
Maybe they have made some small attempts to start to fight against the gold spam, but what I had seen up until I canceled my account was useless, and I haven't heard anything new since. It's nice that they are finally acknowledging that it is a problem, but their handling of it up until this point has been absurd and absolutely pathetic. The only way I could play the game was to either ignore or turn off the channels, rendering them useless. It's hard to get a group when you can't see anything on the LFG channels but spam and people being idiots. And /block did not stop you from seeing channel spam, it just stopped you from getting whispers from someone. So it was nearly useless.
The fact is, the game is good, and I enjoy playing the game. I didn't enjoy dealing with the gold spam and immature attitudes exhibited by people on the channels and forums. (Yes, I know this is the internet, but this has been the single worst experience I've seen in any game.) In the end, I couldn't stand it anymore and it lead to me canceling my account within a few weeks of it opening. Nothing wrong with the game itself, just with the people I had to deal with, and the fact that NCsoft had no plans in place to deal with an entirely predictable and big problem, and is moving at glacial speeds to correct the problem has driven me away. Maybe I'll revisit in two or three months and see if they've actually done anything about the problem. Until then, I'm enjoying my much stress-reduced Aionless existance.
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Nadril said on 7:21PM 10-07-2009
Do keep blocking spammers though guys. NCSoft stated today (Well Ayase did) that the block button has a built in report function as well.
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Scones said on 9:33PM 10-07-2009
The main thing is that NCsoft is trying. Blizzard makes little comments about the issue and gives the block button. What this is saying is be patient. They are working and just hold the fort till NCSoft finds a solution.
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Leshrac said on 9:36PM 10-07-2009
Well, we have a lot of different timezones represented - Aussie being the largest contingent, when I'm logging off for the night they are logging in in the morning.
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Ravven said on 1:38AM 10-08-2009
They're not being honest about "game masters are working around the clock to identify and ban gold spammers", you know. On my server (Spatalos EU) the same goldspammers have been happily ruining every channel since the game launched, unmolested in the slightest.
All it would take is for a GM to log into each server for a couple of minutes, pick the names out of the rolling wall of goldspam that is every single channel, and ban those account. Move onto the next server, rinse and repeat.
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RogueJedi86 said on 1:59AM 10-08-2009
Wait, didn't this game launch in Korea well before it launched in America? If so, why didn't NCSoft develop a method to deal with the gold spammers back during the time between Korean and North American launch? Surely it's not that gold spammers are only an American server thing. Otherwise I imagine the gold spam would've been an issue in the Korean version of the game too. And yet they're only just now getting around to dealing with the gold spammers?
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Cyspeth said on 3:40AM 10-08-2009
The gold spam in Aion is the worst I've seen in a MMO at launch. AOC/WAR/CO had nothing as bad.
Whats super strange is it really doesn't seem like the Gold Farmers are actually looking for business. With the Phishing and the constant spam it often feels more like the game is under assault from Gold Farmers. Probably some of the worst attempts to gain customers I've ever seen, since supposedly Gold Farmers want to sell gold I just don't get it.
Glad to see NCSoft is doing something about it now to wait and see if it improves.
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