Aion VS Spam
Posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 and filed under Game News.
Aion released a patch silently this morning thats targeting a few minor bugs currently existing in the game. One of the biggest problems that can be seen in the game currently is the massive amount of in-game spam that is prevalent from the moment you create your character until you sign out.
The new patch will limit any character under level five from sending whispers, similar to general chat which also maintains this restriction.
While this is a step in the right direction, I have to say I’m not super impressed with this solution and am surprised that this kind of problem wasn’t anticipated pre-launch. That might be confusing for some of you, considering I am a “gold seller”, but truth be told that’s just not how we roll around here. We are all gamers, we play the same games you guys do and have to deal with many of the same in-game issues that you do (except for currency, haha!).
So far, as far as I can tell, this has had very little to zero effect. I still find myself getting whispers 2-3 times per minute and even if you use /anon you will still see tons of spam on the LFG and other channels.
Considering it takes about 30 minutes to reach level 5 this really won’t be very much of a limitation. A majority of spamming is done through Trial Accounts, which then raises the question, why not implement a system where Trial accounts can’t whisper anyone they aren’t befriended with? Or a privacy setting in the users account page that enables similar functionality on an opt-in basis.
While it is nice that they are actually recognizing there is a problem with spam in game, I just don’t think they have made a big enough leap yet on really curbing this practice.
