[Imeka]

What happened: (Scroll down to Resolution if just looking for the way this will work.)

I made a new char yesterday around 10pm my time. (HST, PST-3, GMT-10) and was at the newbie zone when I saw a level 1 char with some weird name but not a botter name like ffddfsfadfs whatever. Selling the increased hp recovery potions for 15m each. (150m total) at the starting area by the first flight master. I alt tabbed and did a few things, came back like 5 minutes and the shops quantity went from 10 to 2 within my 5 minutes of being gone.

I watched 2 chars that were level 40ish with those names you see botting in belushlan like smartboy or something like that teleport in, go to the shop, then teleport out. I checked shop and quantity was down to 1 after the bot visited the shop and left. Then another level 40 zoned in quickly and bought out the shop and zoned back ou. (This happened in like 2 minutes.)

The shop then opened up with bandages for sale for 15m each. (It had like 20 of em)

I watched lots of bots ranging from levels 35ish to 44ish in a short period of about 5 minutes slowly buy that shop closed. (Mother fker thats 15mx20 = 300m and prior shop with 150m. That level 1 char had upwards of 450m.)

The shop character logged shortly after (level 1 character)

Another shop character with a similar name came there and opened up his shop selling the same thing. increased hp recovery potions for a LARGE ammount of kinah each and then after those all sold out, the bandages for a large sum as well. (level 1)

It was kind of weird the 2nd bank that was collecting from the bots closed his shop early before the bandages sold out, then shortly a level 1 char with something like soopshy came and opened a shop selling only 1 of her hp restore increasing drinks for 3m. The 2nd shop that closed early approached that shop and it closed from him buying her pot for 3m.

The 2nd shop logged out leaving only the soopshy char left standing there. Like 3 minutes go by then someone with a name like gladamere or something like that teleported in and I am guessing accidently put a space in his typing so I could see him type *space*/w soopshy "I am here where are you?"

He approached the char that sold the pot for 3m and I assumed that they traded the kinah. He then did the emote of nod. (I assume telling that char thank you since it does the nod emote for some reason.) and teleported away.

My guess is that was a gold buyer

All of this happened within around a 15ish minute time frame. My estimate is that was upward of 450m kinah transferred from their bots to their banks, and a purchase of 3m kinah I am guessing.

After those transactions I didn't see any of them come back to the spot for like 10 minutes. So I went on my merry way to finish leveling my scout to become a ranger.



Resolution:
1. Scan the system logs for the consumable items you start the game with that were sold via personal shop. The natural hp recovery drink and the bandages.

2. Sort by ammount of kinah each sold for, keep all accounts that sold more than 1 of them for 100k or more each.

3. Sort that list by level. I guarantee you that 99.99% of them are not daevas yet.

4. You have now found their banks.

5. Begin mass "Blanket Banning" the trail leading to and from the "banks".



Types of characters affected by this scan:

- "Banks" : Non Daeva level 1 chars.
*Opens personal shop in the starting area's first teleporter selling items you start the game with for large ammounts of kinah, purchased by higher level "Bots"

- "Bots" : Many different characters ranging between 35~44 all have no guild and no title with "Bot Like Names"
*Teleports into starting location and purchases starting items from "Banks" for large quantities of Kinah.

- "Sellers" : A character which only holds enough kinah to complete the transaction.
*Kinah is transferred in the same way as the "bots" transfer to the "banks"

- "Buyers" : A character which interacts with the "Seller" type character via Trade for a specific ammount.



This assumes your transaction history logs are not messed up like the old company I worked for's were. In that game, if you deleted the character you did all the illegal activity with, it was deleted from the log history to save the company space in log recording. Then only the recent ones checked will be caught.

If NCSoft is smart like I hope they are, they have a complete history of all names and activity for a character on an account even if the character is deleted and the name being used by another account.

Please apply "Blanket Bombing" to all of the types above.

-end

[Fellshadow]

Huh, thats pretty interesting...

[OG_Ninja]

so...now that we know this is going on....

I wonder if it's illegal to post a character up that looks like a bot and post up a shop there. I'm not a bot but if I do this and effectively steal their money does that mean I'm bannable?

[pyrocrazy]

Imeka said:

If NCSoft is smart like I hope they are

-end

Your hopes have failed you, NCSoft is one of the most stupid companies out there.

[Ishy]

Fellshadow said:

Huh, thats pretty interesting...

Indeed, nice detective work :)

[Kayin]

OG_Ninja said:

so...now that we know this is going on....

I wonder if it's illegal to post a character up that looks like a bot and post up a shop there. I'm not a bot but if I do this and effectively steal their money does that mean I'm bannable?

Winner!

Well, until NCSoft finds out.

[OG_Ninja]

Seems like a pretty slick way to strike back at them. lol.

They steal from our economy. We put it back. Like Robin Hood.

[transrelativity]

OG_Ninja said:

so...now that we know this is going on....

I wonder if it's illegal to post a character up that looks like a bot and post up a shop there. I'm not a bot but if I do this and effectively steal their money does that mean I'm bannable?

The professional gold farmers/botters aren't going to make the mistake of giving their money to the wrong person.

[KB503]

That is interesting. I have also wondered if they are using the ING mail system since you can attach items and kinah to letters.

[OG_Ninja]

transrelativity said:

The professional gold farmers/botters aren't going to make the mistake of giving their money to the wrong person.

You never know man. They may screw up and wouldn't that be lucky?

[Gravitas]

Nice find but if NCsoft was smart they would have noticed this long before you did.
You'd think they have some kind of "anti-bot task force" that should have found out about these things months ago in the korean version but I'm starting to believe that they just don't give a damn.

[Corpus]

dude, you should have immidietly made a level 1 char went over there and put up the hp drinks for the same amount they were. steal directly from the gold sellers. it would have been awesome, and you would have been rich, hehe.

[Aleste]

Excellent observation, if you only had it on Fraps. I guess i,l check some of the shops at starting Zones.

[kitsunegirl]

How to scam the gold-spammers! Set up your shop near a spammer bank and set up a shop with a hugely priced set of bandages.

All you have to do is make sure your name is very close to theres.

[EmeraldArcana]

Yep, that's how money is moved in these games. In the World of Warcraft, they banned large transactions of gold in trades, and then banned large transactions of gold through the mail to try to combat this kind of stuff, making the auction house the only viable method of moving large sums of money in a short period of time. Of course, the auction house takes a % cut of your money, making gold farmers over there need to farm more gold.

Guessing also that a lot of money is moved through the Broker as well, since listing fees are cheap.

Quote

How to scam the gold-spammers! Set up your shop near a spammer bank and set up a shop with a hugely priced set of bandages.

This was a popular scam all across games where you need to "buy things out", you put something super-expensive next to something super cheap and hope people make a mistake and misclick.

[deathcalls]

Why is people being pi$soff so much buy gold buyer? Cause you can't afford it? I just get really anoyed by gold spammer which took the whole general chat channel (not to include Source forum). I don't give a Nerk if someone have a billion dollars. You guy should give it a rest and B**ch about the gold spam on the chat channel instead because everyone can live without being rich. No mmo developer can bypass gold selling/buying. First people need to be focusing on the massive gold spammers on genral chat that took the fun out of "chatting" then worried about every other cr@p later.

[Gravitas]

deathcalls said:

Why is people being pi$soff so much buy gold buyer? Cause you can't afford it? I just get really anoyed by gold spammer which took the whole general chat channel (not to include Source forum). I don't give a Nerk if someone have a billion dollars. You guy should give it a rest and B**ch about the gold spam on the chat channel instead because everyone can live without being rich. No mmo developer can bypass gold selling/buying. First people need to be focusing on the massive gold spammers on genral chat that took the fun out of "chatting" then worried about every other cr@p later.

so how much kinah did you buy?

[Vodalus]

deathcalls said:

Why is people being pi$soff so much buy gold buyer? Cause you can't afford it? I just get really anoyed by gold spammer which took the whole general chat channel (not to include Source forum). I don't give a Nerk if someone have a billion dollars. You guy should give it a rest and B**ch about the gold spam on the chat channel instead because everyone can live without being rich. No mmo developer can bypass gold selling/buying. First people need to be focusing on the massive gold spammers on genral chat that took the fun out of "chatting" then worried about every other cr@p later.

You do realize that the only reason they are there and spamming is because people buy what they are advertising in the chat spam, right? Without buyers, there is no gold seller or their spam. Period.

[Imeka]

Thanks im actually going to try and see if they do this every night at this time. (lowest server population usually.) If they are then im going to fraps and screenshot the crap out of it.

And no I didn't want to give them any indication that I was smarter than a rock. I wanted to see what they were up to. So I didn't put up a shop selling the same thing.

What you dont realize is to them even 1m = what last spam i saw was 15 dollars? (Well in actuality its 15 dollars and complete access to all of your passwords and credit card information to fraud you in the very near future.)

Anyways, 15 dollars in china = What an employee in china makes in like 3 days.

I am sure a mistake like that results in 20 lashes or something lol. I am positive that they will never make that mistake. Didn't want to blow my cover watching their whole organized operation that took what 20 mins? Its quite impressive organization, i am sure they are used to interferences such as that and have protocol on how to deal with situations like that.

Ill bet if I opened my mouth all the chars I saw would have been deleted 5 minutes later and all the kinah transferred to another account on another channel, etc.

[kitsunegirl]

EmeraldArcana said:

This was a popular scam all across games where you need to "buy things out", you put something super-expensive next to something super cheap and hope people make a mistake and misclick.

Quite popular on Warcrack... they had to put in a confirmation window... people still whined that they were getting robbed.

I think it would be funny if they did get scammed by some player doing this. It would serve them right for gold-farming.