Sep
23

WAR: Bad habit made worse

24 Comments

If you’ve been playing WAR, then you’ve probably read and/or seen how Mythic is handling gold farmers in game. Essentially, a confirmation pop-up appears on your screen and notifies you that somebody has been banned. Go see John’s screenies, because they are quite cute….and they’re a bad idea.

Why are they a bad idea?
a) It’s a confirmation pop-up. Meaning that as a user, I have to acknowledge that somebody has been banned from the game by pressing ‘OK’ on the pop-up window. Honestly, as a player, I don’t care. Ban them? Yes. Notify me? No.
b) Now, instead of being spammed by gold sellers, I’m now going to be spammed by an intrusive UI window from Mythic.

Here’s a better idea. On the Warhammer Herald, but up a website called the “Kill List” and put down the names of all you banned. There you go. As a player, I’m not spammed by anybody and if I really want to know about who’s getting banned in game, then I can go out myself and find the information.

Mythic should disable that feature ASAP. It?s bad for the customer, bad UI design and it does nothing to solve the problem you?re trying to address. Love ya?but stop it.

D out.

Posted in Warhammer
24 Comments Posted by Darren

24 Responses to "WAR: Bad habit made worse"

  • Nezran says:
    September 23, 2008 at 11:31 am

    Mythic might just be doing the popups to get the point across right now. If no one knows about the kill list you mention they won’t go there. The popup insures that everyone playing understands that they could be banned too if they screw around. I agree that they should stop having them, but I think it makes good sense (common sense) to get the word out now.

  • Zubon says:
    September 23, 2008 at 11:54 am

    Guild folks have been having the problem that the ignore list does not work. Gold spam keeps coming through. Some turned off tells to stop it.

  • Thallian says:
    September 23, 2008 at 11:55 am

    I felt the same way. Cute but there’s always: good, better and best. This is defintely just good. Better is to have a wanted poster in game somewhere or something maybe :)

  • wilhelm2451 says:
    September 23, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    That was two pop-ups over a four hour period of time, the only two I saw last night. I get the feeling they are not announcing every ban, but just once in a while to let people know they are on the job. But feel free to go over to Mark’s blog and tell him to knock it off.

  • Nerrollus says:
    September 23, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Personally I think it’s find of funny … Yeah it would be annoying if they kept doing it, but once in awhile to let people know they’re not going to be screwing around with gold spammers. I doubt they’ll keep doing it for much longer, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

    Personally I’m hoping they put something in like what WoW and LoTRO has. Right click on their name and report them. I played for about 1.5 hours today and got like 12 /tells from gold spammers. If only I could send death beams through the internet … :(

  • wilhelm2451 says:
    September 23, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Yes, Nerrollus, I went looking for how to report gold spammers and came up short. Make it easy for me to do it and I’ll help fight the war!

  • pixiestyx says:
    September 23, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    I like it and its hardly intrusive, as willheim said 2 or so in 4 hours is hardly a chore to click it off, and yes this was during a keep seige and open rvr. I would guess that its more of Mythic sending a message to the gold sellers than entertaining us …. however amusing they are …. keep it up if you ask me

  • p@tsh@t says:
    September 23, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    How about tome unlocks for /reported and convicted goldsellers? No way to abuse that… ;)

    I agree this is good, but needs to be better. I’d like to see a [report gold seller] in chat with a zone wide shout for bans. I think people need to see and will appreciate the notification which would reinforce having the player base assist in reporting.

    Right now it takes way too much time to file a ticket for gold spamming.

  • wilhelm2451 says:
    September 23, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    Tome unlock for reporting gold spammers!

    I am so stealing that idea.

  • Ogrebears says:
    September 23, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    I have to agree that it a bad idea to have that as a pop up. If it showed in the text window by it self that be good. Or if it was text on the screen that after a few seconds disappeared, that would be good as well. And an options to turn it off if we don’t want to see it.

  • Pidge says:
    September 23, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    Couldn’t agree more with you.

    These notices and MJ’s personal blog post about hating gold sellers is Mythic’s way to let players know that they’re trying to look out for their customers.

    I’m sure they want to do it in a very visible way — not because that will deter gold sellers (it won’t) or to warn others from the same kind of bad behavior — but because they know there is very little they can do to prevent this advertising from happening. They want to be able to say “yes, we know you’re getting 4 tells an hour from gold sellers but, jeez, you can see we’re doing the best we can. Aren’t you getting msgs all the time that we’re banning them?”

    WoW has had years to try to block this kind of activity but with little success. Even after a ton of changes and improvements to their spam reporting system, it still goes on in chat (and even with piles of dead toons in ciities spelling out gold seller’s websites). As long as there is money to be made, there will be gold sellers out there.

    So, while the banning notices are cute, but I agree they don’t really do much and may turn into just another kind of spam. We all know gold selllers are using throw-away accts, so server-wide notices certainly aren’t calling anyone out and there’s no value to players trying to keep track of who was banned.

    I’m fine with the messages. Just flash them on the sceen or throw them in the general chat and let me ignore them if I want.

    Where they really could improve things would be a better spam reporting option. It’s too many steps in WAR. As much as I dislike gold selling spam, I’m not inclined to spend a lot of time reporting a gold seller’s disposable acct. Blizz streamlined it down to right-click, report spam. In WoW, I report it every time I see it because it’s fast and easy and doesn’t disrupt my gameplay.

    (And while they’re at it, maybe they could please, please add things like a right-click context menu for chat for common actions and the ability to link items. It is such as pain to try and describe an item to someone else compared to simply linking it. Just saying…)

  • sid67 says:
    September 23, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    I don’t mind the notices, I just don’t like how I have to click OK. It should be less intrusive (like the available group popups). Also — don’t do it for each spammer, let us know when a bunch have been banned. The annoyance is just shifted from getting the spam to getting the message telling us they banned the spam. Ugh.

  • Thallian says:
    September 23, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    yeah definitely needs an option to turn it off

  • Grimjakk says:
    September 23, 2008 at 5:07 pm

    I want to see them swinging on the gibbet in Altdorf’s market square. Hell, send out mail to anyone who reported that character so they know when to attend the hanging. ;)

  • Nerrollus says:
    September 23, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    Best idea ever p@tsh@t!!

  • Casualties of WAR Kicks Destruction’s Ass « Ardwulf’s Lair says:
    September 24, 2008 at 7:04 am

    [...] couple HERE. This is a wonderful thing, and the in-character announcements are very amusing, but as Darren points out, having the announcements be popup boxes in their own right is kind of intrusive. If I?m loafing [...]

  • Relmstein says:
    September 24, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    How many times has Blizzard released a statement saying they banned 45,000 gold sellers this month and players are like “Yeah, right”? The popup window is a humorous way of showing that they are working to prevent the problem. I think a better way to show messages would be to use the loading and character selection screens. Kind of like how Blizzard displays tool tips and EQ1 presented in-game jokes.

  • Moonwynde says:
    September 24, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    Personally, I’d like to see them create NPC’s in market square in Altdorf that are in the stocks for the accused spammers, maybe even hangings the like. :)

  • WAR and RMT | FlashMMORPG.com says:
    September 25, 2008 at 1:13 am

    [...] w­in­do­w­s­ to­ the o­ther­ pla­yer­s i­sn­’t­ l­i­ked b­y­ every­o­n­e. A­n­d I cer­ta­in­ly­ ca­n­’t [...]

  • nerrollus says:
    September 25, 2008 at 1:13 am

    This morning while playing I got 4 gold spam tells inside of 30 minutes. I reported them all, but still haven’t even got that generic email saying they accepted my CSR report. When I checked before I came to work tonight my reports were all still open … :(

    I still vote for some type of WoW/LoTRO reporting system. Right now it’s such a hassle to stop what you’re doing, find a safe stop, create a CSR report, and then put them on ignore.

  • yunk says:
    September 25, 2008 at 7:49 am

    I though it was just temporary, I can’t imagine them doing this for years, every day there’d be popups. But I thought it was more of a PR move for them: “hey we’re new and need to get your trust so we’re telling you when we ban RMT” I imagine it will go away after awhile.

  • Oakstout says:
    September 25, 2008 at 8:14 am

    Not sure if this was mentioned but there is a tome unlock for putting people on your ignore list. The ignore list seems to be working for me, but when they keep loggin in with different character names it will only slow them down not stop them.

  • wilhelm2451 says:
    September 25, 2008 at 1:58 pm

    Agreed Oakstout. As I said somewhere else… don’t recall where at the moment… I never get a spam tell from the same name twice. But an ignore unlock, now I bet that comes with a title I want.

  • The Failure of the Surge? « The Ancient Gaming Noob says:
    September 30, 2008 at 11:57 am

    [...] was a bit of griping about the sever-wide pop-ups to announce gold spammers being banned, and some people were a bit [...]

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