World of Warcraft scam question

[Pix]

Among the stupid spam that I've been seeing more of lately I've gotten a couple or so from a "Blizzard Entertainment" (or so it claims) threatening to shut down my [non-existent] World of Warcraft account unless I click on their "secure" link and provide my account name, password, first & last name, and secret question & answer. My question is what is this goal here? I mean it's just a game, right? Can they somehow divert payments to WoW to themselves (and does it really cost that much to play to be worth stealing)? Or can they use this info somehow to steal further personal info (like credit card or social security numbers)? And wouldn't many of the gullible fools who fall for this be kids (and thus not likely to have much worth stealing)?

Skimming wikipedia I did come across this claim: "Security researcher group Symantec released a report stating that a compromised World of Warcraft account was worth US$10 on the black market, compared to US$6 to US$12 for a compromised computer (correct as of March 2007)." I read more but didn't understand it and the footnotes either went to dead links or sites that have been updated since they were last posted and thus not available. Does this mean people are selling other people's accounts? If so, why would people buy it? That is to say, how much does WoW charge that people would rather buy a black market account?

I also read about virtual property, is this what's being looted? Or are they trying to sell more accomplished accounts to new players? If so, can you explain how this works to me?

I don't have any such account (nor have I ever played a MMORPG in my life) so I'm asking strictly out of curiosity. I have only a vague idea what WoW even is based solely on ads I've seen for it and a brief skim of wikipedia.

[Zet]

I was once a very dedicated WoW player and frankly, some of my friends have sold they're accounts for many thousands of SeKr. There is good money IF you manage to sell it, I've tried my self to sell mine but have not manage although its so vast. The autumn of 2010 did I almost lost my account several times just because of this, exactly this in fact, scam mail proclaiming to be Blizzard. I got around 5-6 emails ONLY due to this fact only as they tend to get they're fingers on email addresses and I had to have atleast 1 email where the real blizzard could mail me in and was sure that they were them. They were gone for months, gold, charters, items were lost, if blizzard would not have been so helpful to give all my stuff back I would literally have nothing left except a charter named "Brgdasdhdasdm" filled with spam scam macros for them to sell they're stolen goods. MANY, and I mean EXTREMELY MANY WoW players are actually willing to buy WoW currency for real money so they could spend they're own time doing other stuff like work or fun things. Luckily they can not sell gear to players only to vendors, vendors give little amount of money but still enough for them to take. Sadly to many, like I was, takes this game to seriously. Mmorpg games tend to be ratter addicting, like a drug, you don't see your self as an addict, but once you stop playing it, you will see that you spend all your time playing the game, and when not dreaming about it. In High school I was pretty neutral due to the fact I rarely spoke to anyone except those who played the game, but I neither was a "Nerd" or "Geek". To be honest the scam mail seemed very real, there is only a slight difference but many noobs, kids as adults would not see the difference. So they believe in it and sign the info in there and Snatch the account is taken, and by the time they manage to access the account everything is gone, and all the money and stuff they looted is being transfered through many accounts so its pretty hard to track where it has gone so the only thing blizzard can do is to give all the gear back. So the scammers have the gold (WoW currency) and noone knows how and so they sell it to desperate persons. here is a link. http://www.sse-games.com/wow-gold-produc...mAodQT8Fwg Note that 1000 gold IS NOTHING these days, and that the price for gold has lowered a lot but its still profitable as they barely make any expenses.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

In China, or Tawain or some similar place, there are shops where all they do is 'farm' in WOW with accounts just to make gold to sell illegally on WOW.

I played WOW for a short period of time, back when the upper limit of levels was 60, just until level 7 came around.

Back then (and I understand eve more so now) it was a lot of grinding - this means going after the same creatures over and over and over and over again just to get the best high level equipment and stuff.

That game, and many others, are psychologically set up to be addictive and to keep a player paying month after month, not with great content, but with a hook, a gamble - Another one is Facebook's Farm-ville - where you are willing to click hundreds of times for some little 'reward'.

These games are designed to feed off human nature, They are purposefully addictive, using the same methods gambling games use to 'hook' its paying player. Just enough reward to keep you thinking you are about to get a big pay off, but not really presenting that big pay off for all. You are hooked, you willingly throw extraordinary time and energy and in many cases money into the game. The house wins all the time.

It is so addictive that other con artists have found ways to feed off it, such as the WOW gold trade which is illegal (according to the game rules) but is done nonetheless and is highly lucrative for those who can pay a dozen men a few pennies a day to farm on WOW and sell stuff for WOW money making 'gold' to sell to Western Players who are more than willing to throw tens, hundreds even thousands of real dollars into the game.

Those accounts that have stuff - if any hacker can get into your account and sell off that stuff they can make a tidy real profit. Even the characters - higher level characters are 'worth' real money in the right hands.

Phishing sites are not new, and that is what that spam mail is doing. Its getting you to sign in via a false site to get your data so they can hack your account and either sell off the character piece by piece, or the whole thing.

WOW is a bad game - while it starts of nice, and has great potential, it ends up being no better than a seedy casino where gambling addicts can get their jollies.

[Thibideau]

When it comes to any MMO you have 2 groups of people that grief the player base.

Scammers/Hackers, who for the most part try to trick people into giving their private information and do it for fun just to take what someone else has worked for. A lot of time they include emails and messages pretending to be the company who owns the game, asking for password and user name. Once they're in your account, they log into your characters and begin stripping them(Kind of like a car getting stripped for parts).

Gold farmers, who are usually living in a 3rd world country or in a prison somewhere getting payed to farm MMO money so they can in turn sell it for real money. They will spend hours doing the same repetative task in the game, which usually disrupts the player base's ability to play. Think of them like the telemarketers of the MMO world. It's a crappy job but in some cases it's probably the only means on actual income these people have.

That being said, no company would ever ask anyone for the personal info. They already have it, so if anyone asks for it, they're lying. They also sell security keys for fairly cheap, which generate a random number to punch in prior to logging into the game giving people and extra wall of security.

MMORPG's can be fun, but they can be a huge time sink. I stopped playing WoW years ago because I was sick of all the grinding. I still miss the people I used to play with from time to time but I seldom miss the game itself.

[Zet]

Same here, although I got some connection with some of my former old playmates but its very few

[Genersis]

I played it for roughly a month. Got to level Twenty-something.
I took a step back, and realised i'd spent a large amount of time accomplishing VERY little.
I came to the conclusion that i should probably never touch the game EVER again:redface:.

I knew of these kind of scams.
Never seen one first hand mind.