Spam in chat channels - Are you really bothered?

[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.

[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

[xco0olyx]

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.

[spychi]

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

[Dark-Slayer]

Nah, Blizzard is just exaggerating...

[Gifted]

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

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.

[n00bonicPlague]

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.

[SinsWage]

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!".

[newcomplex]

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

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.

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

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.

[Genopath]

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.

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.