The Dangers of Buying Plat and/or Power Leveling services

if you think its bad here go play Aion it is spam galore and bots/farmers run the whole game. it will take you like an hour to complete a simple quest because you have to fight the bots and farmers off. With the spam you cant see global chat because its is all gold spam. That is why I quit and came back here and I am happy with my choice. EQ2 is pretty solid and will remain that way.


Good job SOE...I have been playing EQ1 for like 8 years and EQ2 for almost 2.

great post... you only forgot to say plat sellers are the devil

Isn't there any way that SOE can find out who all the plat sellers or leveling services are and just ban them from the game? Maybe that's a noob question, I'm not sure, but I wouldn't think there were THAT many people selling plat or whatever. Actually, I'm wondering why there are any plat sellers at all. If you have a level 80 toon you can make your plat hand over fist just doing those shard dailies, the other Lavastorm dailies and the crafting dailies. Maybe I'm just missing something or don't understand.

Biggest way to stop the plat farmers is very simple, CUT OFF THE DEMAND! If you don't buy it they can't sell it! If they can't sell it then they will spend their time doing something else to make money and not bother with spamming us all the freggin time! So simply put, any of you out there who has bought plat are to blame for this problem. you wanna buy plat go to exchange server and buy it there. Problem solved. If your account gets hacked because you were dumb enough to buy plat from a farmer then I say SOE should return all the guild stuff and tell you too bad and make you start over as well as ban you for a period of time for breaking the EULA. I think it is too nice of SOE to take THEIR time and effort that could be better spent on other issues to deal with your stupidity.
and that's all I have to say about that!
-Avi

I think SOE has done a great job in limiting the problems with plat selling sites.
It was asked why they don't just ban all the people who practice this sort of thing..its simple, they are paying a subscription just like the rest of us. Thats money for SOE. As long as there are people that want instant gratification there will be a market for it.
Hell tbh it wouldn't surprise me if they were in on a cut of the profits from it, but at least with the measures they have put in to limit it its not much of a problem as it is in other games.

Like I posted last year, sharing account information is not such a good idea. Another risk occurred to me recently and since this thread has seen new life recently, I thought I'd throw in another two cents' worth.
Most folks have a "secret question" in case they lose their login/password, right? And a huge number of folks now have accounts on Facebook and other similar "personal interest" websites, true? Here's a scenario: Someone wants to hack your EQ2 account. They know who you are IRL and find you on Facebook. Does your "secret question" have its answer in the open on your Facebook page? Be careful of things like this.

This is in response to a "bringing law enforcement into the picture". First of all most of the plat sellers are not from the US. Therefore the FBI, and otehr federal law enforcement agencies have their hands tied. That said all they can really do is bring it up with interpol. If I had to guess it was probably put on the back burner unless a Major financal company got hacked or federal agency. I am sure that is some of the plat sellers are from the US they are being dealt with accordingly like most hackers would be.
Granted I am no expert on the matter, but I am a network security specialist; and will say this. To all you players out there that buy plat or act irresponsibly knock that crap off. it is only a matter of time til your actual computer gets hacked and your bank accounts cleaned out, or your parents. In closing i'll say again stop it, and use your computer properly, do not down load music, gamefiles from bit torrent, or other shady programs because you are just putting your own networks at risk. If you do continue to act as such you are keeping IT guys like my self employed. Be safe, be smart, and be careful when it comes to online dealings, and CHANGE your passwords frequently.

Yesterday there was a new player that sat in Gorowyn docks and sent me over 50 spam messages in three hours time. I asked the others I was grouped with and they all reported something similar.

It's great that I get the little [spam] Click to view link, but in my opinion, once a player sends 5 or more of these, it's auto-boot, auto-suspension time.

I logged off and back in two hours later to find the dude was still there.

Seriously, say all of us work. The system knows a spam message when it's sent. Now add a little hidden counter that when player sends x number of these, they get insta booted/suspended.

when i came back playing eq2 since dec 2009, i rarely see any spams, that one of reasons why i left last time, 2007 were the heaviest spams flooding the chats and in-game mails.
then 3 months later, some of eq2 wiki did have virus hidden in armor section pages, it made my computer misbehaving, and i was quickly forced to reformated, lost so many pictures and my 6 months of work on my Neverwinter Night 2, module.
by wiping my work just killed my project on NWN2 module, i gave up, and now staying clear of those eq2 wiki or eq2 wikia, doesnt matter, look same to me.
so i am stuck with less informations, walk-thru on quests, i dont trust eq2zam.
Sony need a safe officail website for players to get access on armor informations, quests and lore, and updated on what quests are broken rather than visiting other host sites that may have hidden viruses.
as these red named guys said, dont even go there or visit 3rd party sites, these are the criminals in my opinion, part of crime ring. it not just 1-person operation, there are group working behind trying to gain access to other players' accounts or finding bank networks, even seeking your parents or grandparents to exploit with scams.
these 3rd party site do have keylogger tracker and can find your emails.
plain and simple, just say NO!

It would be nice if there were an official quest help site that didn't have advertisements. Those virus containing advertisements are a pain.

Katz wrote:

For EQ2i, simply log in and you shouldn't see more ads. For any of them, use Firefox with AdBlock Plus and you see almost no ads. Add a script blocker and you can stop just about anything.

Its a easy fix. SOE already sells all kinds of junk like house items, pets, cloaks etc via sony gold so why not just sell plat as well. 100 plat = ? sony gold
If they did that they would accomplish 2 things. They would make more money and Players would have a safe secure place to buy plat and it would put the plat farmers out of business.

can't the names of the account owners that are selling it. this includes the business that is making the money off the players be given to groups like the BBB?
I know that some of the scammers are overseas. but they are causing trouble for a company that is using servers based here in America. thus they are violating American laws that deal with theft.
currently last time I heard. there is a bill that is to deal with scammers and credit card theft. as in online theft. I do believe if it goes thru. that the plat scammers are eligible to be prosecuted under this law.

in those cases. the owner will just delete the char and created a new one.
what needs to be done. is to go after the accounts the scammers use to cut them off. as well as find out the cpu addresses of these folks. and stop them there.
since you need to cut it off at the source. not just the head(character). but at the body. kill the company that is doing this. and you kill the thefts at the source.
problem is. is that some of these companies are operating at times several "front" companies at once. what is needed then. is to worm them out of hiding. and since all digital actions are a paper trail a mile wide. even spoofs have a paper trail that can be followed to the source. just takes a bit of work to do so
and since SoE's games besides being owned by the Japanese. they have a base here in America. which then makes anyone that deals with the game. under the various laws that deal with thefts like what is going on.

Elialia@Oasis wrote:

I think you mean tcp/ip address of them not the cpu address.
would not work unless the end user pays for a dedicated ip address, to cirumnavigate a tcp/ip block all the user has to do is two simple commands
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
if their machine utilizes a routable DHCP address, if they use a modem / router, just power it off for about 30 minutes and power it back on, it will obtain a new ip address, block bypassed
Now anotehr fault for blocking - providers utilze blocks of addresses that they deal out via dhcp to end user's equipment, block the ip, the end user resets gets a new one - next person that gets it if by chance they play the game they are blocked. Block at the range of ips and you block everyone on that provider that plays.
If they utilize a smal block of dedicated IP's it is just as easy as picking up the phone and asking the provider to give you another block of ip's, per monthly cost is minimal to the end user - the cost of doing business
This is not a solution at all, as far as legal processing goes - the laws that take precedence are country of origin, not county of location

deleted due to realizing the post date said 2008.

Wouldn't it be more secure to offer password key protection similar to what's offered in paypal and another unamed MMO?

I have only seen one mmo handle gold buying, power leveling services/botting correctly and that was FFXI. Banning the sellers of these services does not work you have to ban the buyers as if there are no buyers there would be no sellers. In FFXI there was not warring, or temp ban if you got caught doing something that they viewed as cheating you where banned forever! I wish EQ2 would take this kind of stance on cheating, I mean EQ2 has a station exchange server, so if ppl want to buy things they can go to that server, so there is no reason for them to cheat in this game, and if they do they should be banned FOREVER and this issue would be fixed real quick. I know I SOE will never do this but hey one can dream.

Couple things that have changed within the time since this post was started, and even since the last post I read.

1. They are now offering key-fob secure login devices. Announced 7-7-11 at Fan Faire.
2. Sony was hacked in April 2011 and personal information was accessed.
3. Something not mentioned in the original post that should have been: Keep your OS and software up to date with all available patches. This will prevent known (fixed) security vulnerabilities from being an open invitation on your PC.

Be careful out there, it's a jungle.

GekkodaWhite wrote:

An alternate solution to this was offered a few years back.
If someone is caught buying items on a non-exchange server they should have all their toons forcibly moved to the exchange enabled server with transfer rules in place and then have the account disabled to create new toons on any server but exchange.