Web site fraud and World of Warcraft (long ass rant)

The BBQ Pit
1

This rant will be meaningless to anyone who hasn’t played World of Warcraft. If you haven’t played, might as well turn back now. :stuck_out_tongue:

A guild mate of mine got burned this week. He was trying out (for the first time) one of those honor leveling services at this web site. They claim to be able to get something between 7,500 and 14,000 honor in a 24 hour period…for $21.00. Thats a ridiculously low amount of money for the potential gain…should have sent up warning flags to my friend, but it didn’t. He checked out the site…its supported by Paypal and others, and SEEMS legit.

Anyway, he bought the 24 hour service just to check it out. First time he’s ever done it, but the honor grind in WoW these days is horrendous and we are ALL looking for ways to get enough honor to actually buy some stuff (I’m SO pissed at Blizzard for this new system, especially in light of their intention to drop the prices of everything once the expansion comes out…but thats another rant for another day :stuck_out_tongue: ).

Anyway, my friend has really bad luck…as I said, this is the first time he’s every bought such a service…and of course its all a fraud (please spread the word far and wide about this site if you can so no one else gets burned). Basically yesterday one of our guild mates called my friend up and informed him that not only was his character NOT in a Battle Ground (BG), but was in fact seemingly farming gold in one of the lower level dungeons (Mauridon). My friend got on the web site where they have a real time chat and asked what the hell was going on…and got the run around (they wanted screen shots of his charcter there where it wasn’t supposed to be). After getting shafted by the online chat for about an hour he finally wised up and re-took control of his account (they had changed his password of course).

Not only had the company NOT done what they advertised (i.e. taken his character to the BG’s and gotten him some or any honor)…they had completely stripped his account bare except for his hunter…which they had stripped bare of everything that wasn’t used to farm gold! Taking about fucking a guy over in as many ways as you can! The analogy I used was…it would be like going to a mechanic with your car and paying him for some repairs…only to find out that the mechanic had first used your car to mule some drugs about and then stripped it. Oh, and then happily refunded your money for the repairs he never did of course!

For thats all my friend got back…a refund from the vendor for the services not rendered and a close out from Paypal saying the issue was resolved!

Now, I know some of you reading this are thinking…its a frickin game! Get real! And you are right…it IS only a frickin game. However, we are talking about things of value here…the stuff they sold was worth real money obviously…thats why they did what they did. Not only is it real money…its a lot of time and effort my friend has now lost.

It seems my friend has no real recourse. He’s sent protests to the vendor. He’s sent a fraud alert to Paypal…thus far he’s gotten zip back. I doubt there is any legal recourse either. So…my rant. Its both to let off steam and to try and blacklist these fucks to as wide an audiance as I can. As I don’t want my friend to have his account banned, I can’t post this on Blizzards forum…he still has some hope of getting back at least some of his stuff (though THEY haven’t gotten back to him either thus far). You guys however ARE my biggest forum as this is the only message board outside of my guilds board that I use anymore.

So…my friend was an idiot. However, these guys were REAL fuckwads.

-XT

2

I haven’t played WoW, but I know full well how frickin’ boring the grind in MMOs can be. So I do sympathize, but…c’mon. He gave his account password to a completely unknown person.

I’m sorry your friend got burned, but to be perfectly honest, anyone who would willingly turn over their account to a stranger deserves what they get. Phishing and scamming is par for the course online, and it’s even worse in MMO communities. It’s a good thing there wasn’t anything critical on the account (if WoW is like other recent MMOs I played, they’ll have blanked his CC info in Account Details if he used one).

But…damn, man. That’s like being surprised the 14-year-old girl on IRC who wants to meet you is really a FBI agent. :smack:

3

True enough. I’ve only used online services for gold and items in the past, and never anything big enough to be really burned if they were frauds…which none of them ever were. Several members of our guild HAVE used leveling services to level up characters in the past…and none of them ever got burned before either. The real irony is that this is the FIRST time he’s ever done this…and of course, he got completely raped.

The thing that he is so confused about is all the services (like Paypal) that support this obviously false company. When he checked them out, they LOOK complete legit. Its not like those fly by night guys who send you in game emails saying they will sell you 100 gold for $10…it LOOKS on the up and up.

But no doubt, you are right…my friend was an idiot. MY rant however is to spread the word about these fucks to as many folks as I can so that it doesn’t happen to any of them…and hopefully fucks with these assholes revenue stream a bit.

-XT

4

It sounds to me that he was trying to cheat and then got double crossed. You should earn your shit the hard way.

5

Yeah, what you said. I’m sorry, but “legit” and “leveling services” just don’t go together.

6

Oh, I see we got some blame the victim crap going here again. What crap. For your information, the people who deserve what they get are the ripoff artists, if what they get is a nice long prison term. The vic may have been foolish, but last I heard, opportunity to treat someone like crap isn’t justification for doing so.

You’re no better than those morons who go around saying it’s OK to rape women because they’re dressed sexy and “She was asking for it.”

7

No, when things like “leveling services” are specifically against the TOS of the game and can, if you’re caught, cause your account to be suspended and possibly banned, then “he got what he deserved” is about as close to truth as you can get. He was cheating! He was looking for eazeemode and found out the hard way that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I have no sympathy. He cheated. He got cheated. Sounds like karmic balance to me.

8

:dubious:

Right, because giving your account password to someone you don’t know (for the purposes of exploiting a game, I might add) is exactly like getting raped because you dressed sexy.

You’re a fucking moron.

9

No, it’s more like saying you shouldn’t try to buy stolen property and then bitch when the seller holds you up instead.

10

Ha, I pop in the Pit between attempts on Rag and what’s this? A rant about someone getting screwed for cheating.

You know what? Fuck your friend. Fuck him for supporting the scammers, the spammers, the cheats, the people who send me in-game mail and tells about their “Cheapest Gold EVaR!!” and who raise the value of anything good via inflation. Fuck the people who put up stacks of Runecloth for 99gold just to see if someone will bid by accident.

It’s a game. Play it. Don’t cheat.

I’m sorry, but since the latest patch, the PVP rewards are easy to get. You don’t like PVPing? Don’t get the rewards then! They’re not mandatory and World of Warcraft is mercifully low on the boring-but-required grinding.

I’d feel bad for this guy if he wasn’t destructive to the in-game economy and cheating his way ahead of honest players. If you want to cheat, get a single-player game with cheat codes and live it up.

Yes, those people who scammed him are scum, but you play with fire and you get burned. I don’t feel too bad for the guy who tries to steal and gets stolen from.

11

All true…you pays your money and you takes your chances. I’m not looking for sympathy for my friend here…just trying to alert others to a real bunch of fucking preditors out there. Most leveling services (at least the ones guys in my guild have used in the past) seem pretty legit for the record. And as I said, I’ve bough gold from time to time myself (when I wanted an epic mount and didn’t feel like waiting 2 months to grind the gold for one)…and THEY were legit (least I never got ripped this way). He should have known the risks (in his defense, he’s only 20 years old and a lot of guildies have talked about leveling services in the past so I think he had a skewed impression of how safe these things are).

At any rate, you guys are absolutely right…he was a fool, a moron. But…he DID still get raped, and my whole point here is just to let others know…don’t use that web site and spread the word.

-XT

12

Well FUCK YOU ASSWIPE! I wasn’t LOOKING for sympathy here…just getting the word out. Christ you guys are real assholes sometimes.

-XT

13

Sorry. The cheaters are the assholes (and, admittedly, the scammers who fucked your friend). Frankly, most of the players I know wouldn’t be vulnerable to this because they don’t cheat. And may I note, as well, that your friend, had he actually been hacked, could (though with more than a couple of hoops to jump through) get his account restored. But, because of the way this happened, he’s genuinely fucked. He can’t ask for a restore on the account because he can’t actually tell the GM what happened, because if he did he’d be banned.

Gosh, what a Catch-22! If only there had been some way not to have fallen into this trap at all!

14

He’s fucked…no doubt. And again (for the 3rd or 4th time) I completely agree…he screwed himself. And all because he tried something that IS obviously a cheat. I blasted him about it this morning, and he’s probably done with WoW at this point (there is no real recovery from something like this except to re-roll…or hope for guild handouts to re-equip his characters with some crap gear to farm new stuff).

At any rate, I’ve said my piece…DON’T USE THAT WEB SITE IF YOU ARE THINKING OF TRYING SOMETHING STUPID LIKE THIS! As others in this thread have said…the best thing is not to use anything like this at all…and NEVER give anyone your account creds. Not even your wife, GF, boyfriend or SO! Don’t even tell your fucking DOG your account creds!

:stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

15

I’m not going to run down the victim here, who really didn’t deserve to be treated that way, but I do remember a bit of wisdom I heard: “You can’t con an honest man.” A scam like that does require the mark’s participation in dishonesty.

By the way, I’ve never played WOW, and I understood the rant just fine. I think. IAD was in on it the whole time, right?

16

I know players that have bought these kinds of services before, and I feel pretty confident in saying that warnings would have little effect. They don’t think things like this could happen to them. And for them, the risk is worth the work they won’t have to do if they’re not caught.

I’m sorry your friend got ripped off. But he broke two of my cardinal rules about MMOs by giving his password out and supporting RMT. It sucks that everything he invested in his characters is lost, but he put it on the line when he tried to cheat.

17

I agree. I’ve never played WoW, but EQ and EQ2 have the same problems.

Losing his account would suck. Believe me, I understand that. I’ve spent hundreds, maybe thousands of hours in this type of game. I’ve camped rare spawn mobs for epic gear. I’ve helped friends do the same. I’ve lead raids at all levels…guild, alliance, and open (shudder).

Buying coin or leveling services is cheating. It ruins the game several ways…the farmers monopolize content, the people that buy high level toons often play poorly, the server economy goes to hell. Here, a guy tried to cheat, and he got burned. Karana smiles.

18

Could someone tell me who’s being cheated here, other than the vic himself?

19

:rolleyes:

Let me see if I understand it:

Okay, so it appears that rather than play legitimately, and work his way through the levels, like everyone else, the “vic” paid someone to somehow hack or cheat his way into a higher status in said game, so he didn’t have to play by the rules. Doing so is prohibited by the terms of service of the company who makes said game (I’m guessing that if he’s caught, they’ll terminate his account).

Why is it somehow acceptable for this guy to cheat, Evil Captor?

20

No…you don’t actually understand. This guy leveled 3 characters to 60 (and had several other alts)…all legit. He decided for the first time to TRY a service that would basically play his character for him in the PvP battle grounds for one day…and lost everything. Its definitely not a good thing he TRIED to do…but you guys are going batshit over board here. I know people who have paid folks to level their characters from level 1 to 60…THOSE folks are more in the category of scorn being heaped here.

Was my friend stupid? Certainly. Did he try and cheat? Yup. And most likely (because of some personal issues he’s having that won’t let him play much for the next month…about the time the expansion will be out) he probably would have used it more if it had worked out. He really wants his epic gear before the expansion and just doesn’t have the time to play as much as he had hoped. Well…now he can’t play at all because he’s totally fucked.

And you guys (and to a lesser degree myself) can feel all smug and superior to him now. WTG! :stuck_out_tongue:

-XT