Clamping down on server spam

Mogster

Mogster

This an issue most of us have encountered, my stance is that it is never acceptable to do this. It happens in such a prolific manner, I feel that it's rather difficult to tackle. Although, I'm inclined to start a Wall of Shame somewhere.

Take this for example:

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We are (currently) a Development shard, and do not particularly merit being spammed (Although, thanks to them for extra view, I guess lol) I know the general consensus by many players/staff/owners is that spamming will be ignored, but still it's an annoyance that I feel is at least worth naming and shaming the culprits.

Will it ever end it? No. But for the purposes of collecting an archive of those disreputable enough to stoop to this measure, I feel it's worth doing. A spare time hobby, if you will. :p
 
Yeah, I don't want to bring a muck-raking fest to ServUO. Although, I am tempted to see if StopSpammingOurUOFreeshards.com is available. lol
 
I find it rather amusing that 90% of the people that are doing this are usually advertising for a pre-T2A...I'd say that means there are thousands of pre-T2A shards or just a handful of people changing usernames and spamming for the same few servers.

The other thing I look at too is: These people must realize the shard they are trying to steal the thunder from by spamming the posts are way better than the pre-T2A shard they are spamming about. If your shard is in such bad shape that you can't get any players, you might consider switching to post-T2A ;)
 
This has a problem for so long, it never stops and the worst part is, these people really believe it might help them :) Spamming forums along with bots-logging on server's to spam their server, plus if you have public chat and pms-they take the time to do this also. Our player's would be so annoyed with this they would recall to the start area so they could kill them to shut them up, then of course the big IP Hammer ban would show.
 
I've only had to deal with this once. I think I was creative. Before the banning we made it so he couldn't talk, had a few players line up and res kill the noob a few times then the hammer. But now that I see Milva's post I see it wasn't as creative as I had thought :(
 
Id set a Healer up, freeze and squelch the spammer, set to a troll body, rename them to.. well something appropriate, and let the players rez kill it awhile.
 
Yeah, as convenient as it is.. its really an exploit waiting to happen. What would be awesome is, not a web based account creation, but a Server application that can handle account creation.. that would run on the same machine the ServUO server runs on, and is linked to. !!
 
I d0n't know much about programming but on the shard i'm on we use a scripted Captcha system to handle AFK resource gathering/crafting. Maybe inserting a captcha type system immediately after the Account Creation process is completed. Have them transported to a secure area, prior to moving them into the general world, then give them say three chances to do a simple captcha. If they fail to do this simply boot the player, notate the AccountName/IP used, and delete the account. Maybe something like this would help mitigate these types of accounts.
 
add an language filter to the translation coding where you cant use any url or other combinations like www. w w w. etc you can cover pretty much anything regarding an url thats how ive made it and it has worked so far :) remember system and speech is 2 diffrent things.
 
regarding forums just have it set so you have to give the permission to post. doing it auto with captcha is easy but in the end you lose out on the control of who is who and what they post.
 
I dislike spamming other shards/forums and have always encouraged folks not to do it. Alas, we can't control what people do, but we've always made it a point not to recognize the players who boast about spamming other shards for players with approval.

I always delete forum spam and warn the user that it won't be tolerated. Most of the accounts are throw aways and I never hear from them again, but the fact of the matter still remains.
 
Funny.. We been at our shard in one way or another for 12+ years (ya Ive said it few times) and I would bet that only a few people here and even less on RunUO could even tell you what our shard's name is..

Maybe I need to start spamming it some to even things out :D
 
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