Is gold selling permitted now?

My, Pahanda. You've lost a bit of weight and fur. /giggle

Regardless, the observations above are absolutely spot-on. If you see these kinds of messages, please report them by right clicking on the offender and selecting 'Report Player'. This will let our staff know about the behavior and allow us to correct it as soon as possible. It will also temporarily place the entire account on a temporary ignore list, so that they don't pester you again until you log out/back in.

My, Pahanda. You've lost a bit of weight and fur. /giggle

Regardless, the observations above are absolutely spot-on. If you see these kinds of messages, please report them by right clicking on the offender and selecting 'Report Player'. This will let our staff know about the behavior and allow us to correct it as soon as possible. It will also temporarily place the entire account on a temporary ignore list, so that they don't pester you again until you log out/back in.

I don't mind telling you that whatever the mystery process is that you imply happens after reporting players, it doesn't work.

It just doesn't work. Everyone knows, including you.

Actually, I know that it does, in fact, work. But I can't provide details on how it does, as it's simply not information I'm allowed to discuss. Rather than making conjecture with no basis, it may be better to trust the insight someone employed by the company in question can provide. >^.~<

When are you going to fix the problem? If it's a priority, then there's been plenty of time.

There's a lot of things we do provide. Report Spam/Player didn't used to exist. Our policies regarding such sales and transaction have changed and evolved over time to become more effective. Even fundamental code in the game has been changed to combat various types of spam and gold sale advertisements. When was the last time you saw a bunch of floating bodies in Orgrimmar or Stormwind spelling out a website name?

As a whole, these changes usually happen internally with limited external communication, and the general public may never see the full results (though as the floating body advertisement example illustrates, you may see some of them). Players aren't privy to the information and statistics regarding these things. There's good reason for that, as explaining the effectiveness and what we did only enables those who intend to get around the rules to do it better and more quickly.

I don't mind telling you that whatever the mystery process is that you imply happens after reporting players, it doesn't work.

It just doesn't work. Everyone knows, including you.

Actually, I know that it does, in fact, work. But I can't provide details on how it does, as it's simply not information I'm allowed to discuss. Rather than making conjecture with no basis, it may be better to trust the insight someone employed by the company in question can provide. >^.~<

When are you going to fix the problem? If it's a priority, then there's been plenty of time.

There's a lot of things we do provide. Report Spam/Player didn't used to exist. Our policies regarding such sales and transaction have changed and evolved over time to become more effective. Even fundamental code in the game has been changed to combat various types of spam and gold sale advertisements. When was the last time you saw a bunch of floating bodies in Orgrimmar or Stormwind spelling out a website name?

As a whole, these changes usually happen internally with limited external communication, and the general public may never see the full results (though as the floating body advertisement example illustrates, you may see some of them). Players aren't privy to the information and statistics regarding these things. There's good reason for that, as explaining the effectiveness and what we did only enables those who intend to get around the rules to do it better and more quickly.

I beg to differ, people on our realm are constantly reported for gold selling and they still exist. How many days of reporting does it take before any action occurs? Because it's definitely more than a couple days of being reported. I know myself, my two roomates each report each and every single gold spammer via right-click "Report Player" and still nothing.

You seem to only be concentrating on the text I'm providing, because this clarification has been covered by other constructive posters in this thread.

To highlight:

09/14/2011 05:36 PMPosted by Crepe

Every single advertisement you see in game comes from a compromised account. And if people would stop purchasing illicit in game currency? We'd no longer get these advertisements. And our friends wouldn't lose their accounts to these people.

Yes. And those characters advertising gold are throw aways. As soon as they've spammed their ads, they're deleted and new characters on another compromised account, with the exact same name are created to spam even more ads.

Thus making folks think that nothing is being done because they're seeing the same character names over and over.

We can, and do, take action against accounts we find in violation of our terms. But so long as there continues to be a demand for an illicit service, and a profitable one at that, it will continue to exist. Any black market follows that philosophy, not just the gold selling one. You can continue to arrest and prosecute individuals who are guilty, but consider our situation in that many of the people who are "guilty" aren't even in control of their own accounts.

Even if we were to permanently ban accounts that were compromised (which is practice I'd deem less than epic customer service), that wouldn't stop the people who continue to steal and abuse these accounts. The way to stop this phenomenon is to continue to report and discourage any individuals you might know who do purchase gold, or power leveling services, or buy/trade/sell accounts. When that stops being a demand, there will stop being a supply, and a need to advertise that supply.

I beg to differ, people on our realm are constantly reported for gold selling and they still exist. How many days of reporting does it take before any action occurs? Because it's definitely more than a couple days of being reported. I know myself, my two roomates each report each and every single gold spammer via right-click "Report Player" and still nothing.

You seem to only be concentrating on the text I'm providing, because this clarification has been covered by other constructive posters in this thread.

To highlight:

09/14/2011 05:36 PMPosted by Crepe

Every single advertisement you see in game comes from a compromised account. And if people would stop purchasing illicit in game currency? We'd no longer get these advertisements. And our friends wouldn't lose their accounts to these people.

Yes. And those characters advertising gold are throw aways. As soon as they've spammed their ads, they're deleted and new characters on another compromised account, with the exact same name are created to spam even more ads.

Thus making folks think that nothing is being done because they're seeing the same character names over and over.

We can, and do, take action against accounts we find in violation of our terms. But so long as there continues to be a demand for an illicit service, and a profitable one at that, it will continue to exist. Any black market follows that philosophy, not just the gold selling one. You can continue to arrest and prosecute individuals who are guilty, but consider our situation in that many of the people who are "guilty" aren't even in control of their own accounts.

Even if we were to permanently ban accounts that were compromised (which is practice I'd deem less than epic customer service), that wouldn't stop the people who continue to steal and abuse these accounts. The way to stop this phenomenon is to continue to report and discourage any individuals you might know who do purchase gold, or power leveling services, or buy/trade/sell accounts. When that stops being a demand, there will stop being a supply, and a need to advertise that supply.

09/14/2011 09:47 PMPosted by Kiliens

If this is true then why has the OP been seeing the spam from this gold spammer in trade for the past several weeks?

Keep in mind the context of the whole thread. Reading a single response I've crafted off a blue tracker on a popular website might not provide you the entire picture of the conversation.

I have a sneaking suspicion similar questions may pop up in this thread, so let's spearhead that by recommending players review the entire thread first and leave a lock on this one.