The screenshot you see here (click it for a larger version) represents the first two seconds of global chat when I logged into my poor abandoned Asmodian priest yesterday in an attempt to finally ascend him past level 10.
The wall of gold spam that hit me as soon as I signed in was the most unbelievable sight I've ever seen in any Western MMOG post-World of Warcraft. That section was all I could fit on one screen, it scrolled well past that for thirty seconds before I was finally quick enough to block the entirety of the spammers. Though NCSoft has made changes to the way /general and private whispers work to discourage spamming, clearly this has only had the effect of pushing it to other channels.
Part of what makes this particular spam not just annoying but offensive is the behavior of the spammers themselves. In World of Warcraft or Warhammer I'll see a message or two in a public channel, which is irritating, but then it goes away. In Aion so far, it's not simply one message, but spammers repeatedly mashing the same cut-and-paste text in an effort to simply make the channel impossible to use. It's probably not a stretch to suggest this is a reaction to attempts to block their access to the players, but certainly being obnoxious isn't the best way to act if your business model is based around illicit activity in the first place.
Combating spam is always a cat and mouse affair, and usually whatever efforts are made to restrict them hurt legitimate players more in the collateral, but hopefully NCSoft comes up with something and fast. This is the first time I've had to leave a global channel because of spam and not Chuck Norris jokes.
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Lewis Luminos
7 Oct 2009 · 4:57 AM Lewis Luminos[quote this]
Ugh thats bad. One of the nicer things about Runes of Magic is the low level of gold spam, lower even than WoW. Mainly I think it's because it's possible to buy gold (in a roundabout way) via official channels so people don't really need to buy it on the black market. Similar to why there's very little in the way of black market for L$.