PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

[Darkhound]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

Has anyone noticed if the gill sellers on your servres are gone, or are they still there?

[Taodyn]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

Most servers are reporting that the major gil selling teams are still active.

[Darkhound]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

Mmmmm then either this is hoax or... mmm i dont know what to think anymore. I just dont get it. The GMs also play this game, and I am sure that they know as well who the gill sellers are, why dont they just do something aobut it.

[Ellipses]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

A hoax? Wow. That is one dense, dense, dense tin foil hat you've got.

It's 250 accounts. As has been stated multiple times, that's 7-8 accounts per server. And it sounds like they were banning accounts for one very specific activity, probably not a very noticeable one, just like last time. The announcement didn't say they were banning all the painfully obvious gilsellers that people would actually notice are missing. It's probably a very specific gil-duping exploit or something that was kept much more hidden than the average fishbot.

[Murphie]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

Ellipses - Sadly even though it's been stated several times, I think most folks are skimming. :/

[TheGrandMom]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

Mmmmm then either this is hoax or... mmm i dont know what to think anymore. I just dont get it. The GMs also play this game, and I am sure that they know as well who the gill sellers are, why dont they just do something aobut it.

Well first off, they have to prove they are gil sellers. How would you go about doing that? There are many high lvl characters with massive amounts of gil from playing so long and there are also LS's with mules that have massive amounts of gil on them for the LS bank. So you can't just say to delete everyone with large amounts of gil. You also can't say to delete people who are camping NM's over and over. I've had friends that camp NM's like the thief knife for days on end or other NM's. Some for the drop, some to make gil. You also could say that people who are on 24/7 but while that might not be a common thing in our culture, it is in some Asian cultures. They have one character and 3 or more people play it in shifts to lvl it up or camp things. People in Korea are like this and HUGE into MMO's. So thats another factor you can't really go by.

It's just not quite as easy as some people think to do this and be fair. They don't have to be fair because it is their game and they could just go in and ban people willy nilly. But how well do you think that would go over when even a few innocents get caught in the crossfire?

I do think that the process they go by is FAR TOO SLOW. They have more abilities than we do to detect these people and 250 accounts spread over all of the servers is just asinine. The lump sum 250 sounds good but once you divide it by how many servers we have, then its just pathetic. If they did 250 accounts every 3 months then I would be more inclined to say {Good job!} but once a year....ya thats just a slap on the wrist. While I'm glad to see them gone, I'm not standing up and clapping because within 3 months they'll all be back.

[Taodyn]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

It was possible to take out their banks because they can collect and prove certain trade patterns. One character constantly receiving and sending out relatively large sums to random other players is going to set off some warning bells.

The individual farmers are harder to isolate as their patterns do not differ greatly from regular players farming for gil. Yes, they no doubt send gil to the bank characters, but that is not a strong enough pattern to defend a banning.

SE has to cover their bases. Basically, if they can't prove it in court, then they can't do it.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

nah they're arlready getting 20+ from us a month... they could use that to buy gil by themselves, create random char to recieve the gil and that's all information they'll ever need...

It's not just tracking by character name; there's IP address, credit card number, and even speech pattern. I suppose if they keep rotating the employees and shifting IP addresses (keep using different networks), the RMT's would have a harder time catching on who are the "spies".

Also, knowing the actual player base is out to get them would have more psychological effect on RMT's than the usual half-hearted pursuit from S-E, don't you think?



Involving the player base with enforcement of player rules is like community policing; more work to build relation and maintain trust, but also more benefits. ^_- Average-Joe is less likely to buy gil if Detective-Cat keeps babbling on the LS chat about how she nabbed x number of gil sellers today.

[little ninja]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

i dont know why everyone is so excited about this. 250 accounts over 32 servers is around 7.81 per server banned. thats even if anyone was even banned from your server. some may have more banned while others have none. 250 may sound incredible, but when you brake it down it is indeed pathethic, not to mention this is something that happens once a year, when in fact this should be every other month.

an while yes removing 781mil from each server is an impressive number. once again i as a single player in a few hours of crafting the worst i can pull in is 1mil. now imagine if i did this over a span of a day, what will it total 12mil at the least? 10 RMT doing the same thing can pull in 120mil at its worst. an how many do we have???

its another S.E band-aid.

recap 1 player in 2 hours = 1mil
1 player in 24 hours = 12mil
10 RMT in 24 hours = 120mil

[Moaku Hyena]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

Has anyone noticed if the gill sellers on your servres are gone, or are they still there?

Definitely. Still. Here.

The Angle gang is still on Ramuh, alive and kicking.
Now that I've thought about it...
ONLY 7-8 accounts/ server?

Let's look at this from a broader perspective.

The group of Angles consists of 6 people. And they camp mobs. I've always seen them camp Ament(sp?) while in Kuftal Tunnel, XPing.
That's only six people.
Now, let's continue on. We have Mee Deggi that's camped by RMT hackers (who reportedly use packet sniffers), Santagaming and three others. That's 10.
Now we add other mobs. Gobbue farmers in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah average around 2~4.
The number is 12~14.
Now, let's not forget the Warp hacker, Nepharius in Rolanberry Fields. 13~15 so far.
Now, we also have RMTs doing sky/ gods/ sea. And they will need alliances. So we'll tack on 50.
63~65 RMTs.
Continuing on, we have fish botters. I'll give a rough estimate and say there are 50 more, brining the total to 113~115.
Paah the Gullcaller is camped by 2~3 RMTs, brining the total to 115~117.
Morion Worm (sp?) is also camped 24/7, and referring to a previous post, there are usually two. Now the total is 117~119. We also have guys who camp BCNMs for profit. I'll tack on 30 as an estimate, bringing the total to 147~149.
We have Linkshells of RMTers that camp HNMs too. So, I will tack on 60. 207~209.
Multiply that by 30 and you will see that 's well over 6000 RMTs in the game.

Looking at the exponential rate in the growth of RMTs on the server, We have ~5750+ (~201+) still running around. And those RMTs will return. Fast.

250 accounts aren't impressive anymore, aren't they?

[little ninja]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

Definitely. Still. Here.

The Angle gang is still on Ramuh, alive and kicking.
Now that I've thought about it...
ONLY 7-8 accounts/ server?

Let's look at this from a broader perspective.

The group of Angles consists of 6 people. And they camp mobs. I've always seen them camp Ament(sp?) while in Kuftal Tunnel, XPing.
That's only six people.
Now, let's continue on. We have Mee Deggi that's camped by RMT hackers (who reportedly use packet sniffers), Santagaming and three others. That's 10.
Now we add other mobs. Gobbue farmers in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah average around 2~4.
The number is 12~14.
Now, let's not forget the Warp hacker, Nepharius in Rolanberry Fields. 13~15 so far.
Now, we also have RMTs doing sky/ gods/ sea. And they will need alliances. So we'll tack on 50.
63~65 RMTs.
Continuing on, we have fish botters. I'll give a rough estimate and say there are 50 more, brining the total to 113~115.
Paah the Gullcaller is camped by 2~3 RMTs, brining the total to 115~117.
Morion Worm (sp?) is also camped 24/7, and referring to a previous post, there are usually two. Now the total is 117~119. We also have guys who camp BCNMs for profit. I'll tack on 30 as an estimate, bringing the total to 147~149.
We have Linkshells of RMTers that camp HNMs too. So, I will tack on 60. 207~209.
Multiply that by 30 and you will see that 's well over 6000 RMTs in the game.

Looking at the exponential rate in the growth of RMTs on the server, We have ~5750+ (~201+) still running around. And those RMTs will return. Fast.

250 accounts aren't impressive anymore, aren't they?

impressive, yet your numbers are still missing. there are usually 2-4 in pashlow, 2-4 in beadaux, 2-4 in shak maze, 1-3 in althea desert. 2-5 in SSG, 6-8 running around default tower, honestly if the zone has something farmable for decent money, there will be 1-6 RMT there. not to mention there are a bunch of hidden RMT crafting thru the days. an botting the guilds.

[Moaku Hyena]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

Gilsellers are in THOSE areas too? o_O
207~209 + 15~28 = 222 ~ 237 a server. Plus other areas. There may as well be 10k RMTs there. >.<;

On a side note...

NO ONE EXPs in Kuftal Tunnel anymore.
This is slowly becoming Lineage II.

[Aeni]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

impressive, yet your numbers are still missing. there are usually 2-4 in pashlow, 2-4 in beadaux, 2-4 in shak maze, 1-3 in althea desert. 2-5 in SSG, 6-8 running around default tower, honestly if the zone has something farmable for decent money, there will be 1-6 RMT there. not to mention there are a bunch of hidden RMT crafting thru the days. an botting the guilds.

There's at least 3 different RMT groups camping for Siren's Hair in SSG. Add in two or three "related" fishbotting groups in that zone alone.

We got eye campers. NM campers. We even got Abjuration campers (Bid sold to the person who can cough up 50 mil on my server - yes, they camp the King HNMs as well and do Sky and are in Sea)

Hades alone has around 200-300 RMT players logging in every day. It's estimated that IGE clears millions of dollars in gil trading a month. That's just IGE. We got EU and JP RMT companies too, you know. There's a JP RMT company that will trade items for gil (For example, a Byakko's Haidate for in-game gil) which they then can go to a company like IGE and turn the gil into $$$ and I'm willing to be those same JP gil buyers are tapping companies like IGE for the gil to get the in-game items in the first place.

$25 million may seem a lot for a 4 month period, but considering that there might be around $250 million every month in RMT transactions just from this game alone, it is indeed a drop in the bucket. You may have put out of business "illegitimate" RMTers being turned in by their RMT bretheren (Competition is stiff in any kind of business environment) and 90% of the RMT business are still playing the game....

[Beegum]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

I can't imagine this kind of loss not being considered and ordinary opporating expense for a company. We are talking about medium sized companies trading in millions of dollars of "fake money." Highly developed and ussually highly educated players. The very existence of a so-called gil-bank points to an incredible prosperity to where, instead of making ANOTHER account to store gil they have decided that it is time to keep overhead down. They are reasonably insured and they have other resources spread out. The bank has a bulls-eye on it. An account with 1 billion gil is 62% full. It is probably very rare for any actual player to have this much gil, unless part of a LS, and even then. That is not to say an ancient player doesn't have this much worth...

Moving on. Consider IGE and other gil sellers as intelligent bussinesses. First, they have a niche trade. The majority of players do not like them or use their services. Also, if they overwhelm the server they ruin the game for players, and their gil loses value. So, they create a "drag" on the money pipeline, both by purchasing gil and botting things to sell for gil.

You start out by learning the game and keeping up with the research sites and maybe buying a little gil. Then you begin creating accounts and bots. Probably for gil you'de need coffer/chest bots in whatever zone was no aggro. By logging on to various bots over the course of a half hour - repeat, you could collect thousands and thousands of gil. NM drops of gil would be OK and the only point of collecting items at the early stages would be to sell them for as much gil as possible or to keep, because you know that the more gil that is "available" in the game the more they will be worth.

So, now you are buying and selling gil. Your only competition is from other gil sellers so market trend sets the price. To keep risk small you want to get the most possible money for each trade even if you sacrifice volume somewhat. You don't really want to appear to be a big player in the economy or the players will sense the drag on the economy, and become bored. Market competition forces prices down, so you have to increase trade volumes and lower prices...

Now you have and need enormous amounts of gil and are trading constantly. You have sophisticated bots and people overseeing several bots at a time. You are purchasing gil from people who you must do bussiness with even though they create a noticable drag on the economy (NM campers).

You are doing well, so well in fact that it makes sense to create a gil bank. But how?

You have low profile crafter accounts. Probably only one crafter per account, and in almost continuous use. You camp the AH and sell the only stack, the last stack, or in volume, with multiple sales mules. You "clean" your money by laundering it in the AH, either by selling for a ridiculously low or high price to another of your accounts. You bot everything you can that isn't obvious, and occasionally things that are.

When prosperous, You have low gil trader accounts with just a few million gil that do bussiness with other risky gil bank accounts. All the while with seemingly clean money as much as possible. You must protect your bots and above all your crafter accounts (which likely just seem like stupidly lowly profitable crafters).

Then someone comes and takes your gil...what do you do...

Well you planned for this, you play on "sleeping" existing accounts and continue bussiness using smaller banks and other gil reserves which are more spread out. Launder money faster. But most of all, you sell real assets. You sell your demon arrowheads, gold ingots, platinum ingots, etc. You sell the cabinets/commodes that they where in. You sell things at crazy low prices like element staffs/rings/earings. You don't appear to have missed a beat...

Remeber, these traders grew up with game, they are a part of the economey. So, how many of those arrows and items you buy are giving them gil? Just how much gil worth of items could you cram onto an item mule account (bet its more than 1billion gil)....

And a note to gil purchasers...some of the gil you purchase is probably going to go straight back to where it came from...now thats pretty efficient, don't you think?

[Ayrlie]

Re: PoL Site Updated- RMT Countermeasures

on remora, SE really hit that server hard. the yughott fish bot crew is gone, along with one of the known SSG botting groups. an entire RMT linkshell (one that most had BST jobs and COP access) that did a lot of farming inside Boyahda and Attoahwa is gone (the only gilseller BSTs that remain is Wz- crew, and two others that never equip linkshells).

other gilsellers have since rushed into SSG and Temple of Ugg. to replace those botting groups, and there are 2 new groups of gilsellers leveling up jobs.