Spam in chat channels - Are you really bothered?

So I had a convo with a neighbour about the chatbox
he said that he honestly doesn't understand the fight against spamming at chat channel

and it hit me, I mean through all my matches in SC:BW or Diablo 2 I really wasn't pist that there was a spam bot because I had the ignore option... here is an image how Blizzard fights spam in SC2 beta
http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/pi...battlenet6.jpg
they fail in both ways: in delivering what we want and protecting us from the reason of all this

so honestly were you ever concerned bout spam in chat channels?

well spamming will always be here :D....and yes excesive spamming is annoying....but given that we get a sq command then it aint such a big prob

Are you asking if we bother spaming, or if we are bothered by spam? ( the question in the poll and the name of the thread are confusing)

Buty yeah i'm not realy bothered by spam.

yeah i dont give a ... all you have to do is go to your game right away, why stay looking at the chat box watching spam when you could be playing a game?

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Originally Posted by Perfecttear

Are you asking if we bother spaming, or if we are bothered by spam? ( the question in the poll and the name of the thread are confusing)

Buty yeah i'm not realy bothered by spam.

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if we are bothered by spam

When I get spammed by bots in SC1, it is pretty annoying at times. But there is always the ignore button as you said. Also, like others have said, just go straight to your game.

Sometimes they get annoying, but as you said in the poll options, there is always the ignore button...

------ 12 years after, in a galaxy very very near to you, Bnet 2.0 does not have chat channels, not to mention ignore functions or privacy.

Hello big brother, my life if yours, control me and sc**w me how ever you want.
We want our breakfast with whatever big brother tells us we want it.

Do you really like chat channels? - """some questions don't deserve answers"""
We need to be apologetic, mannered little puppies, because our mommy blizzard won't listen to us.

Maybe a slap in the face, a kick in the between legs will wake-up someone at Blizzard from their winter sleep, where they dreamed kittens, rainbows and ponies and bnet 2.0 being better even than rock.

No sir, we need to make it facebok, but do you know how easy it was - Community manager... Of course, you got few million dollars, facebook integration done in an instant.
Hey, but not only that, now you have no privacy, if you don't know facebook now you must know it, be friend with it, click the ads on it and make face-blizz money.

Hey give them a slack they ain't producing bread or cheese, they got ads.

Having they thrown out Hitler, now we must bay to Blizzard, pay for it and like it.
-you are going to go to facebook and love it
-you are going to pay for more maps storage and love it
-you are going to pay for cross-region play and love it
-you are going to pay for chat and love it
-you are going to have to live with stupid and non-functioning custom games, replays and profile screens and not only that but love it.

You thought EA was bad, hello ladies and gentlemen make room for activision-blizzard, the new prince of suck you dry.

This is a stupid thread.

Is spambotting detrimental to the overall quality of your product

y/n

If "y" then effort in removing it can only be construed as a good thing.

And I thought the account bound to the game was to avoid these kind of situation.

It's like in WoW, if there are characters spamming in game, Blizzard can easily track the account and bans it. The reason why there is alot of it even in WoW means that too many people get scammed, but hey, that's nothing about chat rooms. I even think chat rooms would be a better place to track down spammers rather than having to deal with the whispers while u play. If blizzard wants to break spamming, just perma ban all accounts that spam, nomatter the reason, even if the account has been stolen, u should have ur account stolen if u take care of it.

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Originally Posted by newcomplex

This is a stupid thread.

Is spambotting detrimental to the overall quality of your product

y/n

If "y" then effort in removing it can only be construed as a good thing.

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it isn't about the overall quality of the product, it is just about this issue nothing else
you seem to have diffrent opinions in every thread so I am lost in determing your overall position

1. As can be seen in the editorials, spam in channels was ONE of the reasons (not the only reason) they didn't like the old chat channels. They truly believe that "groups" can be a better chat channel system. Also, remember that chat channels are not in the game right now, don't imply they aren't coming. As much as it sucks, complaining about it will only make it come faster at the cost of speed of other features, so I hope that people are more aware of complaining for the sake of complaining.

2. Newcomplex said it perfect above... whether spam bugs you or not, I will not fault Blizzard for investigating ways to prevent it. In WoW the spam is rather intrusive and WILL get to me quite a few times. With the change of the industry, that's something I could see in B.net 2.0 and will be VERY bugged by it.

3. REMEMBER, Battle.net 2.0 will include chat channels that COULD relate to other games than SC2, even if you don't have them. This means that spam will become an exponentially larger problem as you introduce games to the server such as WoW, D3 and their upcoming MMO. Finding a way of reducing spam is a very good thing.

As the picture shows Blizzard didn't prevent spammers to appear
so I don't get it at all and there is no system crackers can't crack...well except PS3

Edit: no I don't mind the edit :)

Here is an idea. You can only chat to people in your friends list, party, and to whispers. There are no rooms where you can see other player's names. Just like how it is in the beta. If Battle.net added in the option to have the "/f m" (i think it's /f m) meaning that you are talking to everybody in your buddy list, that would be nice. Blizzard didn't want the chat channels because i'm pretty sure that a lot of players sent complaints to Blizzard about it. You can add people from games to your buddy list if you ever want to talk to them. Having a chat channel is not needed even though the quiz bots are sometimes fun lol.

there is something like it being added, it's called "group channels"

Nah, Blizzard is just exaggerating...

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Originally Posted by spychi

As the picture shows Blizzard didn't prevent spammers to appear
so I don't get it at all and there is no system crackers can't crack...well except PS3

Edit: no I don't mind the edit :)

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This may be odd to ask, and not insulting, but when you say the term "stop the spammers" what do you mean?

From what you say you may have a different understanding of what Blizzard is talking about regarding chat spammers than what I think I perceive.

When you link an image of the custom chat channels, it almost looks like you're talking about duplicate game names. When I think of Blizzard talking about chat channels/spammers, I think about joining starcraft and be bombarded by 20 people repeating the same messages from "Join my clan" to "Come to this XXX website" to "My site has a scam but I won't tell you, come to this channel to find out!" and then when I leave that channel I get 4-5 whispers from bots telling me again to ensure I'm aware of their constant harrassment. Or the obligatory message in WoW every 2-3 minutes regarding buying gold from susanexpress.com, or dead gnomes on the ground in a pattern to show a website message.

Spam wasn't really that big of a deal in chat channels. All you had to do was squelch them, and even then there was an autokick for those who flooded the chat. If they made chat channels with the right features and controls, then spam would be even less of an issue than it was in the past.

Yes I hate spamming. As gifted said with WoW, Diablo III and SC II linked at some point in the future the spamming will get to an unbearable level. I'm sure most of the people who endlessly complain about the fact that it's old tech and how it's so easy to implement never considered that fact. Battle.net will evolve over time. Most of the denizens of the internet are impatient and unforgiving. I'm willing to wait and see what will actually transpire rather than jump at shadows over small inconveniences in the meantime.

That being said intelligent discourse that addresses concerns logically and in a way that doesn't seem like it was voiced by an autistic baboon go a lot farther than the standard "Blizzard hates it's fans and wants us to cry!".

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Originally Posted by spychi

it isn't about the overall quality of the product, it is just about this issue nothing else
you seem to have diffrent opinions in every thread so I am lost in determing your overall position

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I analyze every situation individually instead of taking an arbitrary position.

Anyway, sorry to be so inflammatory, the thread isn't stupid by itself, I just didn't like it because it seems to imply that if everyones ok with spam, then blizzard should just leave it alone and not try to improve.

Which isn't how good game design should work. If theirs a problem in a system, you should try to fix it, not just take it for a fact and accept the same flawed system. Don't gamers hate it when some other company do that? Reproduce the same thing year after year without an effort to improve?

I'm not personally bothered by spam because its a reality I've come to accept from twelve years of line gaming. That doesn't make spam any more acceptable, or the desire to rid it any less valid.

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Originally Posted by spychi

As the picture shows Blizzard didn't prevent spammers to appear
so I don't get it at all and there is no system crackers can't crack...well except PS3

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Nobody said they did, and nobody said the current system was good, or even acceptable. The current system is crap. But the desire to create a new system that is free of problems of the old system is commendable. And spam will always exist, but clearly there can be measures taken to reduce it.

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Originally Posted by Gifted

1. As can be seen in the editorials, spam in channels was ONE of the reasons (not the only reason) they didn't like the old chat channels. They truly believe that "groups" can be a better chat channel system. Also, remember that chat channels are not in the game right now, don't imply they aren't coming. As much as it sucks, complaining about it will only make it come faster at the cost of speed of other features, so I hope that people are more aware of complaining for the sake of complaining.

2. Newcomplex said it perfect above... whether spam bugs you or not, I will not fault Blizzard for investigating ways to prevent it. In WoW the spam is rather intrusive and WILL get to me quite a few times. With the change of the industry, that's something I could see in B.net 2.0 and will be VERY bugged by it.

3. REMEMBER, Battle.net 2.0 will include chat channels that COULD relate to other games than SC2, even if you don't have them. This means that spam will become an exponentially larger problem as you introduce games to the server such as WoW, D3 and their upcoming MMO. Finding a way of reducing spam is a very good thing.

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These pretty much sums it up. In addition I believe the traditional SPAM the average user encountered might be easy to deal with but sometimes this wasn't the case.

Some very talented but malicious people could load thousands of bots in a matter of minutes. Just with the loading, everyone is affected since the server capacity and overall performance will be either slightly or drastically reduced.

In the right hands (or evil hands) one could command all these bots to whisper a single user sometimes this translated into the targeted user losing battle.net connection. The player has 3 options

1) Manually ignoring the thousands of bots. Obviously not viable.
2) Use the /o igw command. Unfortunately only like 1% of battle.net is aware of this command.
3) Use the /dnd command.

The /dnd command as good as it is it stops all incoming unwanted private messages. This basically made the user unable to receive any whispers even from friends.

Furthermore, a channel could be filled up with spambots. This also presents other problems. Firstly the channel gets to the 40 limit cap making the channel full and useless and second can make any existing conversations within the channel not viable. For this reason we saw in WAR3 the /public /private commands which in my opinion were able to prevent all unauthorized people from entering the channel. However this makes the channel useless for new people as they would not be able to join the channel.

The issue of chat channels doesn't have a direct solution but I believe it is Blizzard's job to find one.

Like for instance only allowing accounts in a channel that have at least 10 wins. This might help reduce the problem.

"/o igw"? I guess I'm one of the 99% that doesn't know what that is. What does it do?

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Originally Posted by n00bonicPlague

"/o igw"? I guess I'm one of the 99% that doesn't know what that is. What does it do?

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Stands for "option ignorewhispers" (from non-friends)

Holy crap — that would've been useful. :D

Anyway, if they designed stuff right, things like whispers could become obsolete.

Don't really care for chat channels.

It's not so much that the spam was annoying (and it was) but clans abused the hell out of these - using bots as means to recruit, its unfair. Website also got advertised by bots and whatnot - probably one of the big reasons Blizzard doesn't want them to come back.

Then there were also people asking for certain custom maps, which is hardly necessary anymore in the new system.

So out of all the things that could come back in Bnet 2, chat channels are the most useless IMO, since they do more harm than good TBH.

I'd rather have you guys on my list than some random guy talking about his exploits or even bots asking me for a date in some chatroom.

On that note, I'll go ahead and post my facebook account somewhere around here when the time is come.

No I do not care at all about spam

I hate spam in every ways so yeah it REALLY bothers me. I also understand Blizzard decision: no chat channels = no need to hire moderators to watch over those channels consistently. Also, a game filled with spam affect greatly the reputation of the game. Maybe some people don't care about it but there will certainly always be a large group of individuals who can't stand it and no company wants to lose their costumers. See, this question is like asking '' do you mind having your room dirty?''. Well maybe you don't but I'm sure that you feel the need to clean it when one of your friend is coming over (and if not = you're a sad person).

To be honest, I really don't give a crap about the chat channels and I'm still trying to understand why people want them back so bad even with the promise of something possibly better (group/clan chat).

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Originally Posted by newcomplex

Nobody said they did, and nobody said the current system was good, or even acceptable. The current system is crap. But the desire to create a new system that is free of problems of the old system is commendable. And spam will always exist, but clearly there can be measures taken to reduce it.

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For the record Newcomplex, I pretty much agree to the portion of this post I didn't quote, so don't fret on that one buddy.

Regarding this part though, while it's a noble stance (and agreeable) to take overall, I will admit that the way which Blizzard originally approached this issue doesn't make sense in terms of identifying the pros and the cons at this time. This definitely would probably make more sense if we knew how the group functionality would work, or even if they had a final direction they wanted to go with IDs.

What I'm trying to say (which is compatible with your view) is that in many cases you want to maximize pros and so far it looks like Blizzard is putting out more cons to this circumstance than pros.

I'm anxious to see the remainder of the solution we don't know yet... while at the same time concerned. Good posts none-the-less.

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To be honest, I really don't give a crap about the chat channels and I'm still trying to understand why people want them back so bad even with the promise of something possibly better (group/clan chat).

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I think it's more that:

1: They don't know about Blizzard's plans for group/clan chat.

2: They want it now regardless of the form.

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even if they had a final direction they wanted to go with IDs.

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Yeah, really. There's nothing anyone can do about any of these issues, chat or cross-realm play, until Blizzard figures out how they intend to handle uniquely identifying a person on a multi-million player system.

This is very different from MMOs, because in an MMO, each MMO server is an island. Each server may handle maybe 50,000 people tops. It's easy to allow unique IDs there; you can even have globally unique IDs using the server they play on + their unique name on that server. Kind of a "Vandros of the Ullios realm" thing.

Whereas in something like SC2, each individual region may potentially have millions of players. Do you want to really limit people to having a unique name among millions of people? Or do you want to have some way to allow name duplication? If you allow duplicates, how do you uniquely identify someone? And so on.

Until you iron that out, you can't have cross-realm play of any kind. And chat becomes an iffy proposition if you can't uniquely identify who you're talking to.

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Originally Posted by sandwich_bird

I hate spam in every ways so yeah it REALLY bothers me. I also understand Blizzard decision: no chat channels = no need to hire moderators to watch over those channels consistently. Also, a game filled with spam affect greatly the reputation of the game. Maybe some people don't care about it but there will certainly always be a large group of individuals who can't stand it and no company wants to lose their costumers. See, this question is like asking '' do you mind having your room dirty?''. Well maybe you don't but I'm sure that you feel the need to clean it when one of your friend is coming over (and if not = you're a sad person).

To be honest, I really don't give a crap about the chat channels and I'm still trying to understand why people want them back so bad even with the promise of something possibly better (group/clan chat).

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I think this is a point that many people forget. It's not just that spam is annoying. It costs Blizzard resources and reputation. Having more bots than there are active users is a huge waste of resources. They have to spend time policing the system, and fixing all the problems that spammers and hackers try to cause with the network. It's simply easier to maintain, and I think that's one of the main reasons why most other game developers like valve simply don't bother with open chatrooms anymore.
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LIVE SEX WEBSHOWS

Spamming doesn't bother me directly but if there's enough it can bog down the server I assume.

so now I see how people care about spam 25% of people think that this is an serious issue and think that the ignore button will not do the trick...lol
4% think that it's a fruitless war, while I agree with this to some degree voting for it I would be a hypocrite because there is the ignore button and even if it is annoying dealing with spam isn't that much of a hard work to do and at cost of removing the chat channels that is a really silly issue - 27% of people tend to think that way
and then we have the I don't give a .... (4 dots so there is a small number of what to put there...even ...well that would be...yeah i'll pass) that reached the popularity of 44% so far
I guess it sums it up
most of the community either doesn't care of finds easier ways to deal with spammers at chat channels

so Blizzard...why the %#@ bother, as there is the ignore button?

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Originally Posted by spychi

so now I see how people care about spam 25% of people think that this is an serious issue and think that the ignore button will not do the trick...lol
4% think that it's a fruitless war, while I agree with this to some degree voting for it I would be a hypocrite because there is the ignore button and even if it is annoying dealing with spam isn't that much of a hard work to do and at cost of removing the chat channels that is a really silly issue - 27% of people tend to think that way
and then we have the I don't give a .... (4 dots so there is a small number of what to put there...even ...well that would be...yeah i'll pass) that reached the popularity of 44% so far
I guess it sums it up
most of the community either doesn't care of finds easier ways to deal with spammers at chat channels

so Blizzard...why the %#@ bother, as there is the ignore button?

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how about Bobby Kottick the money sucker.
You'll pay $10 per-month in order to have "spam free chat"
Welcome to the "PREMIUM FEATURES", we care about our customers - in translation: we care to suck our customers money dry, thanks for being a sucker.

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Until you iron that out, you can't have cross-realm play of any kind. And chat becomes an iffy proposition if you can't uniquely identify who you're talking to.

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How come we can't have it just like SC1? You can have a unique ID on each realm?

Personally, I don't think it takes much originality to make a unique ID. What's the big deal here? Are we really making such a fuss over unique IDs? Is Blizzard really feeling sorry for the 50 000 other unoriginal folks who want to jack Batman? Seriously, it's first come first serve. Deal with it.

It should be Unique ID.Unique Identifier. There is 1 unique identifier for all realms while you can have 1 unique ID for each realm. Blizzard is really making stupid problems out of thin air here. Why do they care so much about making sure everyone gets the ID they want? It's so stupid. Get original, or take the ID that you know is popular first. Otherwise, too bad. No one ever made a big fuss about not getting the ID they wanted. All name spoofers were ever used for in SC1 was to impersonate other people. I don't see why we should have 50 of the same name, with only an identifier to identify who they are when half the damn time people are "X.X" like Gradius.Gradius.

And why don't we simplify the real life friends thing? I always thought it would be amazingly simple just to have the identifier HIDDEN from the public so that (going with my suggestion for IDs above) you add the identifier to become RL friends while your playing ID is for regular friends. Not that hard people.

You can't make everyone happy. Just by compromising so many things so that other people can have a name they want, you've made other people unhappy.

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Originally Posted by SlickR

how about Bobby Kottick the money sucker.
You'll pay $10 per-month in order to have "spam free chat"
Welcome to the "PREMIUM FEATURES", we care about our customers - in translation: we care to suck our customers money dry, thanks for being a sucker.

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people fear that such thing would happen, then I would do the same thing
RAAAAAAAAGE till no end
there is no place for premium features in Battle.net, so if Blizz will go that low then I think that the whole community will be split in half...or most of fans would dislike the idea

I just hope that we (as a whole community) won't fail as it was with Modern Warfare 2, I was really pisted back then and anyone who claimed that he won't buy the game was a traitor in my eyes and a douchebag sheep
Blizzard adds what was mentioned in the SC:L article, fine I will buy it
Blizzard adds those features but for extra $$, not a dime, in fact at every gaming party in Europe they will have to watch out for me
Blizzard does not add those features at all, same thing

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there is no place for premium features in Battle.net, so if Blizz will go that low then I think that the whole community will be split in half...or most of fans would dislike the idea

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I couldn't care less about premium features as long as they're nothing important. Want to see your world ranking? $2 = fail.

Want to buy this decal? Whatever.

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Originally Posted by Pandonetho

I couldn't care less about premium features as long as they're nothing important. Want to see your world ranking? $2 = fail.

Want to buy this decal? Whatever.

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yes, same thing I was thinking, but even premium decals would show how Blizzard is greedy, oh wait Collector's Edition... so I guess that shit like that will be in the network

When was the last time you guys went into a spam channel? Even if you were to ignore button all 64419 of the bots. There would be 941494894 by tomorrow.

I think Blizzard should just allow for private channels where certain people can't join. Say, I set an allow list that lets people in, or they have to be on my friends list, or they have to message me first. Something like that. I couldn't possibly care less about public chat channels as long as there's private chat channels a few specific topic channels.

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Originally Posted by spychi

yes, same thing I was thinking, but even premium decals would show how Blizzard is greedy, oh wait Collector's Edition... so I guess that shit like that will be in the network

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Too. Much. Rage.

Collector's Items are really common among video games. Blizzard didn't invent the idea. Even if you're obsessed with StarCraft II and must buy the game, no one is forcing you to buy the CE.

As far as we know they are adding private channels, but in the form of groups and clans. Honestly, it could work out perfectly fine if they did it right. In fact, I wouldn't really miss public chat channels if groups and clans were done right. But here's the thing — we don't know what Blizzard is doing, so how can we possibly know if they are doing it right? They need to talk to us ffs.