Tales of Pirates Scammers

Tales of Pirates: Beware of Scammers

One of the the things that make up any MMORPG is the role that scammers play in the game. Anyone that has been scammed out of their hard earned loot can see the value of preventing scamming, it can cause players to quit in frustration. To help combat scamming, gaming publisher IGG has released some information on its pirate themed MMO, Tales of Pirates, that explains some safe practice tips and what to look out for.

It is nice to see that IGG is giving advise rather than handing out ban hammers. I agree that scamming sucks, and game publishers need to at least make an attempt at preventing it, but the truth is that a good player controled economy has to have it for ecomomic and political balance. Too many players cry out that players should be banned by the game publisher for stealing a sword but honestly, its the player community that needs to deal with it.

Anyways, one of the first things players will do when they start a new game is look for a guild, scammers often use this to their advantage. One of the oldest tricks in the scamming 101 book is the name game, this is where a scammer will mispell the name of a well known player or guild and catch people off guard that do not pay attention to the exact spelling. For example, if a character has a capital letter “O” in their name, a scammer will use a zero in its place, giving them a name that is difficult to spot as a fake.

Once their scam is in place, the scammer seeks out players with good items and gear who don’t belong to one of the better guilds. When they have identified a potential victim, they will send a private message inviting the player to join their guild, but only if they will first visit a URL set up to look like an IGG or TOP site. Once at the site, they are asked to enter their ToP account and password, which the scammers use to access the victim’s account and steal their in-game wealth and gear. “Phishing” scams such as this are avoidable if players use common sense and avoid visiting suspect URLs. Official IGG and ToP sites will include igg.com or top.igg.com at the root of the URL.

Some less subtle scammers will simply ask a potential victim to lend them a weapon before they invite them to the powerful guild “to prove you aren’t a scammer.” Again, players can protect themselves by exercising caution. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Players are advised to check the ToP forum regularly, particularly their server’s forum, where other players will often report attempted scams to the community. In the fight against scammers, knowledge is power.

Visit the forum at http://forum.top.igg.com to keep up with the latest scam warnings.

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