Gold Sellers are getting even creepier.

[Tupac Shakur]

 

I wonder what happened?

[ThePrelate]

It's Blade and Soul 2: Invasion of Bots :D

[Nattia]

hahaha i've seen this today, I was like, they are trying so hard to bypass spam filters.

[Tupac Shakur]

LMAO yeah

[FloreSurana]

Yeah, while I'm waiting for party members, I like to read those creepy messages. xD

[Shadzar]

The other day the gold selling bots were offering sex slaves in Arena lobby chat. There are over 200 registered accounts with each of the gold selling bots names if you check F2 in game and search for them by name you can see the list of all the characters associated with each bot. and 200 accounts each with 8 characters means 1600 RMT bots to report and block and the block limit is only 200 and the spammer limit is only 200. so 400 of 1600 can be blocked.

 

We just have to suffer until NCWest does what MANY other company with an internet presence has done in NA/EU and block the IP addresses of Korea, Russia, China from being able to even connect to the servers. It also has been found to prevent 80% or more of the spam floods in forums, which has been rampant lately here for BnS as well. Sorry for Russia playing on EU, but Korea and China have their own servers, what real need to then need to be on EU or NA ones?

[SinKissed]

I would love to know why my level 4 that has MAYBE 10 minutes of play time is already getting spammed by bots friend requests :( 

[JoannaRamira]

Everyday there are at least 4 bot request at my destro..

 

and faction chat got spammed too. it won't be long until my blocklist got filled.

[Caolite]

4 hours ago, Shadzar said:

The other day the gold selling bots were offering sex slaves in Arena lobby chat. There are over 200 registered accounts with each of the gold selling bots names if you check F2 in game and search for them by name you can see the list of all the characters associated with each bot. and 200 accounts each with 8 characters means 1600 RMT bots to report and block and the block limit is only 200 and the spammer limit is only 200. so 400 of 1600 can be blocked.

 

We just have to suffer until NCWest does what MANY other company with an internet presence has done in NA/EU and block the IP addresses of Korea, Russia, China from being able to even connect to the servers. It also has been found to prevent 80% or more of the spam floods in forums, which has been rampant lately here for BnS as well. Sorry for Russia playing on EU, but Korea and China have their own servers, what real need to then need to be on EU or NA ones?

Wouldn't they just use an American or European VPN? This doesn't look like a solution at all. And they don't need low ping for what they do either.

[DirectorTseng]

3 hours ago, SinKissed said:

I would love to know why my level 4 that has MAYBE 10 minutes of play time is already getting spammed by bots friend requests :( 

It's because one of the key components of any bot program is a map, with that map it shows all the players in the area and they will lock onto you instantly and with the right scripting friend request you with in seconds of you even logging in. They do the same thing in L2, only it's whispers, in game mail, shout's, general chat.. you name it.

[Shadzar]

36 minutes ago, Caolite said:

Wouldn't they just use an American or European VPN? This doesn't look like a solution at all. And they don't need low ping for what they do either.

It doesnt seem they even need the GUI in order to spam people with friends requests because you can do some things outside the game like look up players one Korean site with the "bopae" soul shield sets (are they really called bopae?) as people put links to their character of ncsoft in their signature on a few of them. So likely they aren't even getting into NA server, just the main database or usernames or something.

 

i mean there is a thread in announcements about "Increase in Account Compromises" which means they could be connecting from anywhere really. At least for the forums blocking those IP ranges does a lot, because it takes effort to bypass a country wide IP address ban that probably isnt worth it. At least it worked for a few forums i worked on that got targeted by bots.

 

If it could remove 2% from the NA/EU serves of these bots at least then that would be a lot compared ot how many of these bot account their are, and we jsut don't have enough room in ur spam lists to block them all as new ones are made. and it doesnt even help where the friending is considered because if you are online or offline they can stil send you friend request, that is why 2 things need to really be done.

 

make the block/spam list ascii format text (if it isnt already) so that people can copy paste from game directly to it

 

and make blocking a character/account block ALL actions such as sending friend requests.

 

the problem is the ones in the game are still in the game and new ones are appearing daily. if the accounts associated with them were terminated, then they would be able to initiate new methods to prevent so many more from being added. What befuddles me most is at $5 per character how is it many of the accounts have 8 characters on their account? 

 

i really dont know except a more secure network, and maybe NCWest should be in charge and understand how to code the game so THEY can take measures that work within NA/EU laws to stop this because it could be built into the game for all we know. that is why windows and such keep fixing "exploits" because they leave code in that can be used to mess things up because lazy programmers is all you find today in many area.

 

 

But this is getting a bit off topic, so what can they do? i dont know except hire people to sit in the area where it happens (all dungeon lobbies, the F8 lobby, arena lobby, and every region in the world) on all servers that can just sit there and suspend or ban accounts that are spamming RMT related things and these RMT websites.

 

I honestly think they are understaffed right now and mostly playing on the server their character is and struggling to level or upgrade gear like everyone else unless they have admin privileges to twink their own character (what fun would the game be if you did though), or are on test servers of new content and only can remove the ones seen when they have time to play, not when they are in the office (?) doing dev planning, translations, coordinating with the ADR for VOs, or policing the forums of the bots that appear on it, or collecting the MAJOR bugs people are finding as well as complaints related to the differences in playstyles of East v West in games.

 

From the last stream they are working on it, but cant say anything obviously because that would be like telling the thief where you hide your jewelry so they know how to rob you. It ain't easy that is for sure, so all i know is more man-power policing in game that can remove them as they are seen.

 

We can't really come up with a solution because we don't know what power NCWest has over the game being development of our language versions and tweaks to our regions that some get applied to other regions a well. Might not even be an admin login that can suspend or ban accounts where a live person can do it and it is only a script, and that could be why bots are only cleaned when the game goes down for routine maintenance? These are jsut things we will never know and hope it gets better and those very often reported ones will someday be removed cause again ofline or online, in your blocklist or not, they keep sending friend requests. So the best case scenario being able to block friend requests from users is needed at the very least.

[Shadzar]

WAIT! I just checked a screenshot and think I have realized a problem. the friend lists is an account trying to fiend another account, your blocklist and spam lists blocks CHARACTERS. That is why the blocklist doesnt stop the friend request because you have NO idea what character is sending it. so the blocklist being changed to block account names might make it work so it blocks whispers, friend requests, and all the other spam as well. Then these bots wont be able to just delete and make new characters to send friend requests, because you will have blocked the entire account, then it wil mean they have to make new accounts each time to try to send the requests!

 

Had a screenshot cause i remember someone a real person sending me a friend request and i forgot who they were cause it was on cross server and it showed the account name not character name,  and they told me after the dungeon it was them. so that is the problem, blocklist doesnt block accounts only 1 character, while friendlist tries to friend an account with your account. blocklist just needs to block accounts by name just like friend list adds friends by account name so you are friends with all their characters and can also BLOCK all of a spammers characters on that account with the block/spam list.

 

I bet the report spammer button also only reports a characters name, when it needs to report an acount holders name so that it will be able to wipe more spammers at once by being able to ban the acounts of the spammers and having a list to check the account name for its characters is as easy as in game F2 menu.

[Caolite]

That's right, silly of them making it this way... Or maybe there was a reason block isn't accountwide but I can't think of any.