New scam/vandalism for Perma Pre Characters

Do you have a Perma Pre character? If so, you MUST read this thread posted over in Sardelac Sanitarium!! I'm linking it here in Riverside because I think more folks will see it here and Arena Net absolutely must do something to stop this exploit.

For those of you who don't feel like linking over and reading the thread here's the gist of it in a nutshell:

Some lowlife scumbags think it's a funny joke to drag Perma Pre characters out of Pre-Searing against their will thus ruining hours upon hours of hard work towards building a high level Pre character and LDoA candidate. This is accomplished by partnering up with the victim under the pretense of needing help with the Adventure with an Ally quest or the Northlands quest. Once the victim groups with the scumbag, he immediately talks to Tydus and activates the mission thus dragging along the victim before they can react.

Arenanet needs to stop this exploit pronto!!!! They can add a longer mission countdown timer or make it so both party members must confirm the mission start or some other fix.

In the meantime, here are a few ideas for protecting your perma-pre.

1. Never partner with anyone. (Hey, abstinence is always the best protection)
2. Don't take a 2nd profession. You can't start the mission without one.
3. If you do need to partner with someone. Make sure they are standing near the Ascalon gate exit when you join them and warp outta town quickly. If they make any moves towards Tydus, leave and start warning others in town!!!

I sincerely hope Gaile or Andrew reads this and acts quickly to close this exploit. Personally, I don't have a pre character, but I feel for the victims of this nasty joke.

Thanks for the heads up.

For people who are working on "Legendary Defender" (probably the most likely victims of this, as they need a partner to get beyond the gate and hunt charr), should not take a secondary profession.

But from now on I'll keep an eye out of where my "partner" is.

Bastards!

This must be fixed. Now.

And I thought the heartless idiots of this game couldn't be any more stupid.

Thats.... *rated R content*

Seriously, that has got to be the worst thing I have ever heard of on any online game. I may not like WoW, but if something like that happened in the WoW community, that idiot would be blacklisted from every guild, event, ect. Hed have to make another character.

I know I dont have any real say, but that should be a banning offense. That is a direct attack against a player who has put in alot of time and effort (anywhere from 50-150 hours) to get what they wanted. If you see someone do this, report em'. Anet can't afford to have some of their most dedicated players driven off by idiots.

This is old news, long before the LDoA title ever got thought up. All you have to do is log off or change districts to stop the timer.

or, when you add someone to your party, simply see where they are on the map. If they're close to Tydus, leave

Maybe, but before LDoA, it wouldn't be a big deal. Just level up in ascalon, post. But if you have dedicated a ton of hours to do something, then you need to have a better way to fix it.

Timer? What timer? From what I'm hearing from the Pre people, the timer is 1 or 2 seconds. Think you can change districts or log off before it hits zero? If the timer is longer, then please post the time it actually is.

Despite if the timers long enough or not, it's still ridiculous and rude that people would even try to attempt this. A lot of time and work goes into an LDoA character and I would be disappointed if I left having not completed it because some arsehole decides to pull a prank.

This really isnt anything old because just recently I talked to the guy and he said his goal was 100 presearing characters pulled. So yeah Anet needs to hurry up and perma ban this guy or change the way people go to post.

I agree, this is a new low. The lengths that some people will go to in order to cause grief to other players is astounding.

I think the easiest way to stop this would be just to make the Academy quest require solo entry.

Just don't party up with someone you don't know who's NEAR Tydus. Duh. This doesn't need to be "fixed"..... it needs to be acknowledged that all scams are performed on people that aren't paying attention. If you're not near the guy then you can leave if the "scammer" heads toward him. Think people. Don't be suckers.

KANE

Kane if you checked the thread about this in the sardelac you would know this guy *was* spoofing names of well known community members. Which means he probably tricked a few people that way.

HAHAHA wow ppl are just now doing it? i did this multiple times like 4 months ago and ppl are JUST now doing it, little late >.> i did it b4 it was cool >.> but i was a bit better than them in that i gave them 10K after it was over.

I read that thread last night, then when i logged on a mate told me it had happened to him! He joined a party then turned to talk to his wife, looked back and he was out of pre! He was lv10

Thanks for the heads up.

sure iw ill be very carful now.

This is not something that can be "fixed". But it is greatly concerning, and thanks for bringing it to our attention.

This is probably the worst thing in the game griefers could ruin, and that it's so simple is scary, if you don't know what to look out for.

A simple fix would be to make the timer have a minimum of 10-15seconds countdown, leaving plenty of time to log out/switch districts.

This has become a major issue in pre as there are a number of very well known players in there that are highly respected for their helpfulness and the in-game staus they have obtained. People are spoofing their names, changing a letter here or there for the simple devious joy of wrecking someones efforts.

Yes, you can avoid it by not taking a secondary profession or standing by the portal and insisting that the person be standing next to you before you team up with them. But many people going for the LDOA title chose to pick up a secondary profession for the extra skills you can get and are therefore at risk to falling prey to this scam. From level 11-16 you need to go through the portal to kill charr. And from level 16-20 you need to death level if you want that title.

I am avoiding it by death leveling spiders and striders (slow I know) but it is much safer and as my character is lvl 18 I am not even going to risk Charr death leveling because of these clowns. Some in the community have a code they use for legitimate gate openers, but this has probably been exploited as well.

Anet could simply change the timer to 30 seconds or so or possibly make it so both parties confirm that they want to go to post-searing.

It's happened to my ele in pre (lvl 13, second profession)
Edit: Clarify: I was invited but didn't fall for it. Lucky for the warning on presearing.com

I remember one guy that was at it for a whole night. Spending hours to make new characters, complete primary quests and drag people out of pre for fun? Someone needs a life. Even more than the LDoA guys (soon to be me )