How can I turn off the bot spam messages?

Question

Diablo 2's multiplayer has been a wasteland of spam messages for years—bots who enter, post long, green, gigantic messages, and leave. I've asked several party members about how to stop this and they said I can only try to squelch them from the party menu if I'm fast. Is there truly no other way? How have power users dealt with this nuisance for years?

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Is there any way to stop all incoming messages, like a kill switch? If not, is there any way to at least minimize the message area's size so it only takes up a fraction of the screen? Is there any way to block these users from entering? (Perhaps blocking new users or just any new party members even before the party limit? Will that even matter?) Is the idea to play on private with people found in other games, just to avoid the spam? What else can I do to avoid these messages?

Asked by sean

Answer

The other answers are helpful and deserve upvotes for making the bot experience better, but there's a direct solution for turning off the bots: the /ignorepersist ignorelist.

In the final D2 patch (1.13d), you can filter out common bot phrases by making a list of such phrases with /filtermsg <phrase>

After filtering your first phrase, an "ignorelist" file shows in your D2 file directory, where you can just append a dump of common bot phrases (they're long, so I'll link out: list, list).

This feature is toggled with the /ignorepersist command.¹

I'll add screenshots later tonight.

Answered by sean

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