SpamSentry is by no means a "magic fix". In fact, if used in its raw state can be quite awful. I was considering this mod when a guildie (Kaganfindel) mentioned on our forums that ...

"SpamSentry ... monitors chat for keywords, and blocks or reports based on those keywords. ... I was "not sent any solicitation whispers last night, but SpamSentry did populate its automatic report list (for) someone who was advertising game items for game money in /trade."

If more and more people use this mod incorrectly, in effect "it will generate a greater workload for Blizzard's GM staff, possibly causing innocent users to be banned because the filter is set off by keywords that aren't necessarily indicative of third party solicitation."

In short ... a set and forget add on is not the answer.

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2 things:
1) How about preventing joining a general channel that's a zone you aren't in? I'm pretty sure the lvl 1 gold seller is not in Molten Core.
2) How about a spam filter? I'm pretty sure the url that I keep getting mail & whisper spam could be blocked pretty easily.

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1) I like the idea of only +5 (or whatever) level characters being able to whisper. If you're a noob you probably won't have anyone to /w to until then anyway - if you're not, you know. other ways of communicating. All this stuff is automated, so much like a CAPTCHA (ask wikipedia), when you remove the possibility of automation, it will cut down on it.

2) I really like the add-on that auto-reports, because it makes Blizzard's problem Blizzard's problem again - if everyone reported it every time, they'd get tired of the reports and take more drastic action.

@35 - increasing gold dropped or given out would simply inflate the whole economy - the game is balanced in many different ways. that's somewhat of an ignorant idea.

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@42 - "If more and more people use this mod incorrectly, in effect "it will generate a greater workload for Blizzard's GM staff, possibly causing innocent users to be banned because the filter is set off by keywords that aren't necessarily indicative of third party solicitation.""

good...that's what i think...create a greater workload for the GMs to deal with. that'll get them REALLY motivated to fix it when it becomes an annoyance to THEM.

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meh, the whispers don't bother me. As a druid I get random "come tank XXX" "can you heal XXX" whispers all the time anyways.

What does get annoying is the mail spam. I always get my hopes up thinking something from the ah sold.

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@35: Blizzard doesn't set the prices, players do.

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Spam sentry may not be perfect, but since you can PICK AND CHOOSE which messages to report or not block, then you're in control. I, like an earlier poster, check my log of blocked messages at the end of my session so as not to be bothered by GMs while I'm in the middle of something just to hear them say, "we'll look into it, anything else?" and if there is something that should not have been blocked, I take it out and then report all of the others. I'm much happier not getting 15 /w a night harassing me, or 15 lines of txt in a row on /trade when I'm in a city. MUCH happier.

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Whats the big deal? Just ignore it and move on.... sigh, do people need to complain about everything? Some text on your screen is not the end of the world.

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How about a "Click this box if you don't want to recieve whispers from anyone under level 10" option? Fixed. Those of you who like helpie lowbies can, and everyone else can make the farmers stfu.

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Highly irritating yes, but not their fault. They found a way to make money i mean RL money. Why is it not their fault? well the only reason they do it is because there are people around that actually buy pay for those services, lazy people who prefer cheating over a honest WoW experience. Solution: "ban4life" for "Ebayers". that way there is no more money to be made and the spam will end eventually

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How about a system that prevent spamming using the reputation of the player, all player gain few rep with their faction when they turn in their first quest, so it would make sense in the Lore, "since you gained some reputation, you can now send whisper and use the mailbox". No need to be another rank of rep... just having 250 points from the first quest of the game involves that a player is actually playing the game.

I find it harsh to prevent tell from low level :P

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I really do agree that something needs to be done about the spam. There's a few things I can think of right off hand, I really like the idea of either eliminating or restricting the trial accounts more, but also I think that trial accounts should only be generated by another player (associated with a real key) and if that trial key generates spam, the parent key should be investigated.

That being said, I group with two good friends on a regular basis, and we are always on vent. One of us will be frustrated and start reading off the message, then the other two join in on reading it. We are all getting quite sick of these, though.

Powerleveling leads to an abundance of useless players in the high levels, and gold buying just cheapens the game. There was a time where I would have disagreed with the idea that gold buying was bad, but since farmers cause such headaches for other players, I have since changed my position.

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I do believe the armory has made it easier to get a user list of the entire realm. I have played since very close to release and I have been getting more spasm than ever.

I bet a *nix guru could fill in the details, but I bet the armory could be used in this manner.

wget [ww.wowArmory.com] | grep [character name/realm meta tags] > listToSpam

Its always been possible to use /who but now a complete list can be generated without being logged into the game.

Just a theory, I’m no expert in this area. I would defiantly value an expert’s opinion on this theory.

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@53 mewyn

Trials can be purchased for $2 at Bestbuy, Walmart and I'm sure many other places. Sometimes there is no parent key to ban :o( $2 is peanuts for these gold sellers, obviously the market is big enough and there are enough cheaters for this to continue on.

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Although, now that I read your post in more depth and realize I am an idiot, I see your point now. lol

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Ever since the Armory appeared, I've been getting hit with spam every 30 minutes, doesn't matter what server I'm on. Pre-Armory it was once a day, sometimes twice.

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@51

An interesting idea. Go after the buyers. I hear it's worked wonders on the War on Drugs campaign. :P

But seriously, it's easier to catch spammers who send 50 tells in 5 seconds to 50 different players than it is tracking players' web habits for www.wowgoldcheep.com and the like. When something like that pops up, start banning credit cards.

I mean, c'mon. Hoxfix a little damage control, mmkay?

Disable tells to players who are not your guildies and don't have you on their friendslist until you hit level 10. I know I said 5 before but having the exceptions for guildies and friends makes it perfect. ...better ban them from general chat as well for thesame duration or just a bit lower when they start wandering to new areas and have more complex quests. ...but of course, most of the help people seem to need simply requires reading the fucking quest text or talking to a guard but I digress....

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@47

Players set the prices of mounts, do they? Players set the vendor prices, do they?

Yes, they set the AH prices, but if that's where you're buying your epics, then you probably endorse the gold trade.

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Yes, the spam bothers me. 90% of the time not so much, but when you're trying to follow a warning in general about something in the area (where a named is, etc.) and give info to party or guild - and then you get multiple spams that bump the chat - a major pain. Yes, I could fix chat windows, etc. etc. - but the thing is these are an imposition. It would bother me less if it were in general - but I don't get huge amounts of tells on all my characters. And frankly I spend a good chunk of my day dealing with email spam, culling through it all to get to the real work. So why should I want to deal with this in a game I play to relax and escape a bit? I get the fact that this doesn't bother many of you - great. It's just that more and more these things are coming in by the hour, and on every character. And I don't have incredibly high characters either.

While I really like the idea of the addon it seems that I would have to spend much time monitoring that to make sure it was working correctly. And I've worked in customer relations for a large web company before so I hate the idea of creating more work for the GMs. So I'm going to keep my ire focused on the hunter bots and keep politely whispering other hunters, letting them know that if they'd name their pets and try a little harder not to run into trees than I wouldn't think they were bots.

Oh and is it the kind of thing that would make me play less? After bumping into two hunter bots in an area and then getting spam tells? Yeah. It makes the game less fun for me, and there are other games than Wow on my computer.

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Link to the restrictions for trial accounts:

http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowbilling/?id=abl01925p

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