WoW Gold Facts

Last week, a tearful EGF reader (or at least she was in my mind’s eye) reported the scam antics of Power-level.net , and I warn you folks this is as grim as they come.

“The reason I wrote this letter is because last year December I purchased 2,000 Gold from a company call Power-level.net and then I got scammed,” wrote in Sakuraki in an e-mail last week. “They didn’t deliver any gold. After 3 days purchasing, still no Gold.”

So like the typical scammed customer who wants to cut her losses early, Sakuraki abandoned her claim, thinking “it’s only a few dollars” anyway. Plus she’d already lost the auction bid and wouldn’t have further use for the Gold.

But then Power-level.net wasn’t finished screwing around with her. “I didn’t really care anymore, just until recently they sent me a ‘Promotion’ email about WoW Gold. This time they really pissed me off.”

This led Sakuraki to confront the scammer-spammers via live chat, and to salvage her undelivered and unrefunded Gold. The heated exchange that ensued can be summarized in a despicable four-line dialogue:

Sakuraki: Where’s the Gold I’ve been waiting for six months? Surely you have it by now!
Power-level.net: You’re talking crazy, girl. We delivered it to you. *snicker*
Sakuraki: No. I have proof you never delivered or gave a refund. You’re all liars!
Power-level.net: Uh-huh. Go open a Paypal dispute or charge back then. Buh-bye. LOL.
*End of chat*

This reveals the classic M.O. of scammers to feign deliveries when not a single copper was sent to the paying customer.

Don’t worry Sakuraki, you will be avenged. By my calculations, this post will easily reach the first Google search page of anyone looking for reviews about Power-level.net. Your story of woe will save hundreds of other gamers from dealing with these shameless Chinese criminals. And if it doesn’t, there’s dozens of scam alerts just like mine already filed in ComplaintsBoard.com, Yahoo! Answers and other review sites.

So chin up. Move on. Be more vigilant. They might have cut you off, but you still have the last LOL.

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With more Rift players receiving fake e-mails that try to pass themselves off as official customer service correspondence, Rift community manager James Nichols stepped in to nip the confusion in the butt.

He advised players who receive game-related e-mails to check the URL links before clicking on them. Only three URL links are acceptable:

• riftgame.com (homepage of the MMO game)
• trionworlds.com (homepage of the developer)
• trionworlds.custhelp.com (a repository of customer support

Any other link may lead to phishing websites, and should be a red flag that the sender is malicious. He warned against scammers who try to imitate these official URLs with cleverly named links in order to get their account information.

“If there is anything between riftgame, trionworlds, or trionworlds.custhelp and the .com domain DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK!” advised Mr. Nichols. For clarity, the links below are designed to fool an unsuspecting player:

• riftgame.SCAMSITE.com
• trionworlds.SCAMSITE.com
• trionworlds.custhelp.SCAMSITE.com

Extreme caution should be observed when clicking e-mail links, even those that appear to be legitimate. As an example, Trion Worlds cited one valid e-mail it recently sent out, which advised players that their accounts had been suspended pending investigations on possible account break-ins.

(Click image to enlarge)

If you’ve received the e-mail like the one above, then feel free to click on the link to get assistance on getting the suspension lifted. You’ll notice that the link carries the acceptable trionworlds.custhelp.com domain.

A great lesson here is that seeing a “riftgame” or “trionworlds” phrase is never enough. Always make sure that no stray words are included in the domain URL that will tell you whether a link is legit or not.

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What happens when you offer free epics in an e-mail without mentioning that said epics are actually Bind on Pickup? You get this unashamedly bait-and-switch spam mail from our favorite late-delivering ViVoGame.com , a Chinese gold seller who seems to eschew logic for fast cash.

Let’s take a look at their latest attempt at fraud, shall we?

I’m not particularly familiar with false advertising laws in their homeland China, but if ViVoGame were to perpetrate this ludicrous sham in, say, a US department store, it would get shut down faster than they could say “Wait, we no mean you harm!”

ViVoGame suggests that by clicking on their e-mail links, which in turn lead to their gold selling website, you will be able to acquire seven of the new Firelands epics. But a quick check at Wowhead will show that everything from the Eye of Purification to the Shatterskull Bonecrusher can only be obtained through actual raiding.

I know what some of you are thinking: Who’s foolish enough to fall for this lame trick? What does buying WoW Gold have to do with earning end-game weapons?

Well, there are plenty of kids who lose all intellectual capacity at the sight of epics. For all we know, they’ll be clamoring their parents to shop at ViVoGame, thinking that it will make them the brand new owners of raid-quality weapons. Ka-ching profits for another Chinese spammer.

So shame on you ViVoGame– try truth in advertising for once. Or if you can’t, because your WoW Gold is overpriced and deliveries are plain undependable, just stay the hell away from the kids!

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Trion Worlds may have a hit game on its hands, but it’s also inherited the parasite known to all successful MMOs – Chinese spambots.

With the launch of its new Patch 1.3, RIFT is seeing a record number of spammers not seen since its debut three months ago. And it’s driving regular players to the brink of stark raving madness.

Forum poster ChaosInc for example, thinks Plat selling is getting RIDICULOUS . Despite efforts to filter their noxious offers, he said spammers are evolving. *cue End of the World music*

“Every other day the spammers change their messages to add spaces, reorganize letters and now they are even using special characters to form "1337" messages to advertise. (i.e. .c () |\/|)”

And should the filters and GMs ban the offending toons, they just create new low-level criers via the free trial account process. To solve this, players suggest tougher restrictions on trial users like those found in WoW. Recently, Blizzard imposed communication and trading limits to Starter Edition players so they can’t be used for spamming.

But Rift software engineer Brian Morin thinks trial accounts aren’t the problem. “There are sufficient counter-measures in place to make trial accounts pretty much worthless for spamming. Most of the spammers are stolen or otherwise ill gotten accounts.”

Which points us to the real problem at hand: The growing number of phished/hacked/stolen accounts? Like a broken record, I’m here to remind you dear player that keep your game passwords unique (never use the same one for your forum registrations) and to learn how to spot phishing e-mails without opening them.

When we deprive Chinese spammers of stolen accounts and lessen the virtual middlemen polluting our chat with Plat offers. Be responsible and let’s starve these stubborn bastards.

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