Chat messages with item links are now censored too?

[TharbadThief]

There seems to be a bug or a new feature, where chat messages are not reaching other players, if they include linked items.

Below is a fellowship 'discussion' between 2 of my characters, Slashina & Wilbumar, both on Premium accounts (Wilbumar is former VIP). Not only the item links are censored, but those whole messages are not sent. It also applies to all chat channels and most items. Things linked from craft panel are allowed, so are some skirmish camp items. Also, I have seen people linking crafted stuff, and one rare drop gear piece from Western Shore set.

Do these restrictions depend on account type? Or items in question? Planetary movements? Is there a new chat filter being tested? I noticed this starting yesterday evening -- earlier yesterday I could send item link messages on chat and got replies on them. After that, nothing. It seems to affect many other people too.

So, if you have wondered why people have not reacted to your Trade messages, task item inquiries, gear advice requests etc, it might be that your messages haven't been seen at all.




EDIT: /say channel seems to accept all messages. Fellowship, Trade, and World chats do not.

[mosselyn]

My kinmates and I discovered this today, as well. I can tell you that it is not dependent on account type. Or at least, not on being F2P. Two of us had lifetime accounts and one a sub, none of us could link anything in kinchat that could be seen by others.

[Catburg]

Same here, wonder what that is all about?

[thinx]

Same here, wonder what that is all about?

Either wordlists or some filter learning that went in the wrong direction.

[elzeqq]

Can confirm this is broken, linking items in kin chat is censored aswell on raid chat, nice update lmao

[Macroscian]

You can link items in a /tell
You can link items in /say
You can not link any items in fellow, in kin, in glff or other userchats and not in /wd /trade /regional

Those lines of chat simply disappear

You can link items from the item plugin, whatsthename compendium? to /wd and /trade and I assume any other chat channel

[Milii]

This needs fixed right away. It not only is having a negative effect on the economy and trade but it is also anti-social as people often compare or recommend items with links to aide in answering questions, etc.
You guys are attempting to micromanage chat and this is always a bad thing.

[Int]

Linking items in chat must be against the community guidelines.

[Selfserving_Greed]

Linking items in chat must be against the community guidelines.

They're just called that in name: in reality it's only used as an excuse by SSG to censor and ban people for speaking their mind.

[TharbadThief]

This needs fixed right away. It not only is having a negative effect on the economy and trade but it is also anti-social as people often compare or recommend items with links to aide in answering questions, etc.
*snip*

I agree. A feature that has been in the game since ... well, (I think) at least for the 7.5 years I've been playing, is suddenly disabled. IMO, this is one of the bigger bugs -- if it is a bug -- we've seen in years.

Sure, even for us normal players it's easy to get around once you know the bug exists, but one of the nasty things about this is, that the messages look perfectly normal to the message sender, making him/her unable to know the post will not be visible at all.

And obviously this doesn't help in the fight against gold sellers in any way; during the time I logged both of those aforementioned characters in, and took the pics etc, I had to report 3 gold spammers... who didn't use item links in their walls of text.

[greatgimli]

This could be SSG's way of combatting gold-sellers...

[Int]

This could be SSG's way of combatting gold-sellers...

That's a good theory, however that wouldn't make any sense to me. A gold spammer can simply type in the name of the item. The items they sell are things everyone interested in them already knows about.



However, maybe they put in a level you need to reach to link items. If that's the case (I'm not in game), then I suspect you're right.

[Bohdb]

Hmmm this would explian why I could not give away a bunch of items for cosmetics or sell a couple things earlier

[Cordovan]

This is a bug we are looking into.

[Grapold]

This is a bug we are looking into.

So ATM the top 3 posts on the Dev Tracker are basically saying the same.

Are they going to be fixed in tomorrows update? or are we likely looking at yet another downtime for bug fixes next week?

[maartena]

This is a bug we are looking into.

My guess: In order to link an item, the actual message that is being sent from the client doesn't look like what we see, but contains a little background code in order to make it a link...... and that background code now contains a word filtered by the Profanity Filter!

[Macroscian]

Sadly it wasn't the chat filter in any way we can notice (meaning the hotfix did not make items linkable again). Maybe it's due to some other part of this problem, of course, or maybe it's some separate thing.

[Inkling]

My guess: In order to link an item, the actual message that is being sent from the client doesn't look like what we see, but contains a little background code in order to make it a link......

Yup, here's what Anorien Athelas Essence looks like behind the scenes:

<ExamineItemInstance:ItemIn fo:????????Ÿ????????????????? ???????????????????????Œ????? ?????????????????????????????? ???>[Anórien Athelas Essence]<\ExamineItemInstance>

Nothing that looks like profanity is encoded in there, but who knows what all's in the new mandatory filter atm.

Edit: Welp, guess the the forums can't display most of those characters. What's rendering here as question marks are mostly letters with accents. Here's Gold Dye, which doesn't use special characters:

<Examine:IIDDID:0x030A00001 257BF6F:0x70004861>[Gold Dye]<\Examine>

[Ferathyr]

This could be SSG's way of combatting gold-sellers...

How? Gold sellers that are the only group that have not been shafted by this "update" to the automatic censor.

[Palenen]

I find this filter change quite hilarious to all the things that have happened because of it.

All they had to do was give us a simple word filter, such as the loot filter, and we the players could block out anything.

[Mar-Evayave]

Yup, here's what Anorien Athelas Essence looks like behind the scenes:

Nothing that looks like profanity is encoded in there, but who knows what all's in the new mandatory filter atm.

Edit: Welp, guess the the forums can't display most of those characters. What's rendering here as question marks are mostly letters with accents. Here's Gold Dye, which doesn't use special characters:

It is more likely that it is following some form of the naming code that disallows too much gibberish in a row. Though I don't see why that would make any difference in the chat, because I'd be willing to bet the raw code is not censored if you type that in.

[Milii]

Yup, here's what Anorien Athelas Essence looks like behind the scenes:

Nothing that looks like profanity is encoded in there, but who knows what all's in the new mandatory filter atm.

Edit: Welp, guess the the forums can't display most of those characters. What's rendering here as question marks are mostly letters with accents. Here's Gold Dye, which doesn't use special characters:

This is very good information for the Bug Chasers. For those that do not know the "accented letters' are using the Extended ASCII Code which is also often seen in compiled code.
I sure hope they fix this fast. It is really important in giving stuff away and selling stuff to have the linking to work correctly
.

[Cordovan]

We have now made a change that should resolve the issue where chat messages with item links were being improperly censored.

[Milii]

Whoot! You guys are like this guy: