RMT Shouts

not sure about other servers but on siren this a HUGE problem 90% of shouts are gilsellers the other 10% of shouts are people telling them to STFU! and how do I black list them! my blist has about 150 people atm and only holds 200 what happens next? when it fills up this is getting silly SE needs to deal with the problem.

I have Shout filter....so I haven't see a single one yet.

If you really don't pay attention to shouts....i recommend to filter it.

You should spend less time inside the city gates. I barely have that issue. I have 14 people on my Black List and I'm one of the least sociable people you'll ever find.

Most of those are the one (yes, one) tell that I receive off RMT.

Also - what do you expect SE to do with it?

Ban a Lv1 RMT that shouts in the middle of Ul'dah, so it can be replaced with another? The best option is to actually let them shout - Blacklist them and ignore them, don't report them because then they get banned and you get another one replacing it. This means that you need yet another space on your blacklist.

Besides, a lot of this will possibly die down when the game is actually being paid for, unless they start offering free trials. FFXI did it right at first, needing a CD Key before you can get your free time limited the amount of money that could be made from RMT spam. Allowing free trials/playing without paying will cause mass creation of RMT accounts.

I've noticed most of these account have seemingly legit names. Meaning some of them might be hacked accounts. I feel bad for the real owners.

Moral of the story? Security Tokens = Friend.

Actually the character creator has an auto name feature. Wouldnt ignore the possibility of hacked accounts though.

If you ever learn the truth about how RMTs steal player account, you'd know that token is nearly useless, except generating more profit for se.

It's a known fact that RMT industry in China hire IT specialists and hack into servers to get account. That's why ppl got hack on ps2 or with a token, even if they're super careful with keylogger and phishing.

And se will never let players know if server compromised. It will only hurt themselves.

All you can do is pray and condemn the gil buyers, made rmt business this profitable.

Your an idiot. Use a token.

Can get a Free token on smart phones now so its free so long as you have a phone that isn't from like 10 years ago lol.

Lol token. As if players never get hacked with one.

Token cost money wasn't my point, not all account was hacked with keylogger was.

Just don't be stupid. If you are going to bot, make sure its a bot with a lot of reviews and users. If you are going to buy gil make sure its from a well known source. Don't use a PL service ever. Be wise about 3rd party applications as there are a lot for 14 already and if you don't know how to check them don't use them.

I know a couple of people that got hacked, I don't know any who didn't do one of the above.

Would you be able to share your sources for this? Personally, I certainly didn't know that Chinese RMT hired (likely expensive) hackers to break into a game server for maybe $2-300 worth of stuff.

It's sad that its called an industry. :/

The Chinese don't hire hackers, this is RMT we're talking about. They get keylogger programs and attach them to pictures, ads, etc. get a token or the token app, they are exploitable for 10-15 mins IIRC, but the RMT would have to find a way to disconnect you or else they'd likely just get 3102.

I don't know how it works on FFXIV...
But on FFXI.

With token means unlimited resets of your hacked account.
Without token it's one reset of your account.

Chinese work week 40
Avg hourly pay USD 0.8
$200 pays for a lot of work hours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

- Cost of hiring people to break into a server. Find out how much a Chinese hacker goes for. I bet it becomes a whole lot less.

That's completely beside the point anyway - I wanted sources on these supposed "known facts", I really don't care how much China pays people; or how much monetary worth a single account is.

2 sec of google I found this:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/21/breaking-blizzard-diablo-iii-player-accounts-hacked-items-and-gold-stolen/

This sort of ***happen more often than you think, just that you'd never know about it if only a few ppl got hacked. Just because your friends got hacked for doing stupid thing, doesn't mean every player got hacked are guilty.



I have to look for it, read about some info about RMT "industry" a few days ago. From what I've read, Chinese RMT "studio/workshop" are run like a company with at least 100+ computer per studio, they may have a full time specialist in house to write scripts/Trojan/hack into game server, find game exploits.

I called it industry because it's more profitable and a lot more organized than most of ppl could imagine.

Edit: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/video-game-hell-132013, guess not just private studio!

The first article you linked to doesn't say anything about China's booming RMT hacking industry.

For what other purpose you'd hack into game server and steal account, other than RMT? Sure, it doesn't say anything about China, but if you're gonna steal a video game account, 99.99999% of the reason is to make money.


Edit: Another link subtly implying Chinese gold farming companies do this all the time:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/World-ofWarcraft-Aura-of-Gold-MMORPG-Insta-kill-exploit,18219.html

"It's not like I added 20000000 gold to everyone's inventory, and broke the economy; but look at the big Chinese gold seller companies, who are doing this every day."

MMORPG game server exploit always exist, it's not always 100% safe.

That article shows nothing about your claim that RMT companies hire Hackers or Programmers - all it says is "prisoners are forced to play games for RMT".

its absolutely terrible here on Ragnarok lol. I can't imagine what its like on a more prominent NA or JP server

The three starter cities are intolerable with the nonstop streaming bot shouts (literally no break in the shouts, they just spam endlessly non stop filling up your log in seconds). Luckily I'm very rarely in any of the three starter cities anyway and when I do pay a visit to any of them I make sure to keep the visit as brief as possible.

Honestly, the shouts shouting back at the RMT shouts are worse than the RMTs.
My blist is filling up due to those people more so than the RMTs themselves.

While those are certainly annoying those people eventually shut up anyway when they realize the RMT are never gonna care what they say cause its a bot spamming the shout, not a person. The bot on the otherhand is non stop 24/7 until they get suspended and then replaced with another bot. Blacklisting any of these people is a waste of time. Only thing you can do is avoid the starter cities and wait for SE to start charging for subscriptions. Hopefully the prospect of having to pay all these subscription costs for each mule the RMT have to make to replace the one that got banned will somewhat curb this nonsense.

Never mattered in XI, they just immediately remade them. What I'm wondering is, why exactly couldn't SE just put it in the ToS agreement (if it isn't already) that selling in-game currency and/or accounts will result in legal action, and when they are caught, bring some sort of charges and have the RMT site shut down? Or why not make a way to IP ban?

Yeah but they have never shouted in FFXI with this staggering amount of frequency in the three or four years I played it. You would see FC shouts but they didn't shout with such frequency as to completely overwhelm your log with their advertisements in a matter of seconds not minutes. You could literally ask a question in shout in FF14 and by the time anyone responds (if they are even able to catch the question in shout in the 2 seconds its up on their screen b4 the rmt shouts overwrite it) there will have been like 20+ lines of rmt advertisement in the few seconds it took to respond. Granted the shout feature is obviously not intended for this but you could actually hold a conversation with people via shout in XI even with the fell cleavers shouting. This is absolutely not the case in the starter cities of FF14 the rmt shouts are so dense.

Chances are when your blacklist hits 200, the majority of the RMTs on that list will no longer have an existing account. At least I would hope they get banned not long after spamming that ***. So you're probably safe to clear most of the list so you can keep adding new RMTs.

Another hacker claimed that bigger Chinese gold farm company do hack game servers very often. It's already a secret many ppl(that worked in industry at least) know already. The post I read was from someone working in industry talking about game companies dealing with RMT using exploits.

Also another link about RMT and cybercrime, implying RMTs do more than just farm gold mindlessly in game:

http://www.hacksurfer.com/amplifications/208-cybercrime-in-the-gaming-industry-from-gold-farming-to-gold-mining-to-real-gold-and-beyond

What law(s) would you charge them with and what are you going to do if they're not from Japan? It's simpler and cheaper for SE to just ban them and have them buy another copy of the game, plus its a win-win for SE anyway. Unless of course YOU plan to go door-to-door Jay and Silent Bob style and take down these RMT yourself.

Also, IP bans are really easy to get around.