Mythic Entertainment GM and VP Mark Jacobs writes his feelings on gold sellers on his personal blog. Because of his disgust at gold sellers, he and his team have been banning these jerks like crazy since WAR launched.
I hate gold sellers/spammers. No, that#DY#s not strong enough, let me try again. I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING. Ah, that#DY#s better. Now, why do I hate them you may ask? I hate them for a number of reasons, most of which have been detailed in various interviews I#DY#ve done over the years. And now that they have taken their obnoxiousness to new levels with gold service spamming, I HATE GOLD SPAMMERS EVEN MORE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE. For years, lowlifes like IGE have told us, in defense of their behavior, that they a) are just providing a service; b) don#DY#t interfere with players enjoyment of the game. Well, I can#DY#t argue with (a), they are providing a service, just like maggots I suppose but I#DY#ve always argued that (b) is totally and complete BS. Now, those old arguments aside, I can#DY#t see how this new generation of pond scum (new and improved, with 25% more scummy action!) can argue that their constant spamming of chat channels doesn#DY#t interfere with players enjoyment of the game (I#DY#m waiting for the whole "Oh, you can always just turn off chat" argument). I hated seeing their messages when I played WoW or any other MMO and I#DY#ve been waiting for the day that WAR launched so I could have the absolute pleasure of instituting policies to make their lives more difficult so we could drive them out of WAR.
Since WAR launched we have been banning these jerks like crazy. As of Saturday Night, we had banned about 400 of them. My CSRs have a zero tolerance policy. We don#DY#t wait and let them stay in the game and ban them en-masse, my guys ban their useless, time-consuming butts right away. We have a strike team whose sole job it is to get these guys off our servers as quickly as possible. This weekend, we unveiled a new wrinkle in the fight against them, the public ban message. Players on our Phoenix Throne server have been treated to special messages when a gold seller/spammer is banned. I#DY#ve given them a wide leash to come up with creative messages to tell the entire community who has been banned and we keep it within the Warhammer universe.
