Dealing with the Idiots of Online Gaming: Aion Edition

Dealing with the idiots of online gaming: Aion edition By Aeskor Aeskor is a games enthusiast with a strong opinion. He has previously worked as a freelance games journalist writing articles, opinion pieces and reviews for various sites. He's unafraid to write what he thinks about the ever-changing world and culture of gaming, scaring each and every reader with his piercing wit and hopeful entertaining you along the way.

Idiot 1: The Spammer

It's not in every MMO you play that you have to scroll up through walls of spam just to see what your guild mates are saying.

One of Aion's main problems at the moment is its clogged chat servers, full of gold farmers, shamelessly advertising precious Kinah in exchange for real money. Yes, that 'gold', the currency that funds our adventures. They will even go to the lengths of sending you in game mail, complete with complimentary potions, advertising their services.

Now, the general consensus in the MMO community I know is: 'Work hard, earn your money legitimately, and play the game properly.' I, for one, support this ideology completely.

Click here for full image

Those players that indulge in this RMT (Real Money Transfer) business are not truly playing the game, in my opinion. You work hard, you win, right?

Well, it seems to be, lately: you have a big enough balance to pay for in game gold, you get ahead of the curb, surpassing the players that are actually putting in the hard work and want to be the best legitimately.

Call it cheating, call it a natural evolutionary step in the MMO business, call it whatever you want, there's still the problem of the in-game advertising disrupting the game for other players.

In a game where striving for the best means efficiency, it is a huge inconvenience to have to scroll through layers and layers of ugly, gold-farmer spam just to organise yourself. Even those playing casually are not going to have a very fun time at all simply asking questions, looking for groups or requesting help.

This is huge risk in terms of maintaining an acceptable level of professionalism within and around the game itself.

Word-of-mouth is a powerful tool, and with constant complaints within the MMO world­­ like: 'Aion is just full of spam and bots, it's practically unplayable', NCSoft risks losing a large number of potential customers, not to mention the existing players that walk away because of the problems.

Click here for full image

Dealing with it

There are limited ways at the moment to deal with spammers.

The most efficient method you can use to deal with these spammers immediately is setting yourself aside some time before you start adventuring and blocking every user that spams in chat. Sure, it may work but the spammers will be back the next day and the day after with different names. Hell, sometimes they've seemingly (to put it in relative terms) 'respawned' even if you only log off for a few minutes!

Should we really be expected as gamers and as paying customers to have to moderate for ourselves? It cuts into playtime that could be used to actually, oh, I don't know, play the game!

Click here for full image

Sometimes it gets to the point where the screen is constantly filled with 'smileys' or emoticons and seeing even a sentence from a real player is a chore. It is unneeded and honestly unacceptable.

The good news is, NCSoft have begun to crack down on the spammers, swinging the banhammer around and kicking these disrupters out of chat.

Click here for full image