How not to get scammed this wintersday!

Its old news but its good to bring up since many people are new or forgot.

Some scammers are operating in Kamadan, Lion's Arch, Eye of the North and Temple of the Ages. The con is to pass off special presents quest items as wintersday gifts since they share the same icon. So keep alert when buying wintersday gifts.

Here is an example


Thanks

I think that's why called them 'special' pressents. Technically theyre only doing something wrong if they didnt state what the pressent was..
I'm not justifying their actions at all and woulda reported the person myself
..also im not sure you can just post their name up here and say this kinda thing, theycould get some abuse. Thanks for the heads up

...ofcourse obvious fact aswell, frozen ectos aren't real globs of ectoplasm used for FoW armor. Though i think anyone that states this are probably not tryin to scam and just trolling

just a message of awareness and a good one, especially for new players to keep their eyes open on trades

Scamming is just a form of darwinism. Warning people is pointless, all people need to do is engage their brain. As that aint happening any time just sit and lol at people who see something and go 'WOW thats an amazing deal, its as tho its too good to be true... then 5 minutes later they learn why if it seems too good to be true, it IS too good to be true!'

Forwarned is forarmed, they say, and I think it's better that these potential scams are brought to light occasionally
For example in this case a newbie may not know Special Presents exist, so would not know to be on guard

Other wintersday scams include trying to convince people that they can get normal Globs of Ectoplasm out of Frozen Globs of Ectoplasm. Can't be done

what the hell is a special present?

special presents are quest items use them to obtain simple rewards in a couple of wintersday quests. you cannot open them and to my knowledge the quests are not repeatable.

On a side note I like to open the trade with scammers and place my offer. Submit the offer but never hit accept. then see how much of the guys time u can waste before he hits cancel trade. I once had 20 ecto sitting in the trade window for 30 mins while i went afk. Got back to a lot of angry whispers. lol

Thanks for the heads up!

Those should have had a different icon.

Indeed, but changing the icon will delay dervish update..derp

Nah kidding, just pay attention to the items being offered!

While its great that you want to alert potential victims, making this thread may have in fact alerted more potential scammers of the scam's existence.

I'm a nice guy, and even I thought for half a second "Hey!..."

yeah this is very true. The kinds of people that would fall for something like this probably arent the people who roam these forums.

You're not a nice guy if you even slightly entertain the thought of scamming someone - -.

Also nothing original about this scam. You would think the artists at Anet could have gone just that extra step of reskinning or changing a colour on the art or something.

Thanks for the info and report. There are still a lot of people out there who try this crap, simply because there are still a lot of people who fall for it.

while changing the icon would be useful there are plenty of items in GW that share icons. Scammers will always try to scam. I wouldn't mind seeing something like the customization alert in the trade window for quest items.

Example: You place a dedicated mini, armor piece, or customized weapon in the trade window and an alert pops up to the other end stating which items are customized. Use this same principle and apply it to quest items, have a pop up alert you that you are trading for a quest item and ask if you actually want to proceed.

Now that would be nice in my opinion.

^I traded my armor to my friend today so that she could dye it pink and when she traded it back to me I got a message saying that the items I was about to receive are customized do you wish to proceed and I just hit yes. But as for dedicated minis and stuff etc I agree a notification would be helpful.

Back on topic: Thanks for posting this, I didn't know that there was another object with te same icon as wintersday gifts and I've bought plenty of the gifts already. After a while you kinda just look at the item and assume that it's what you think it is so now I will make extra sure to check the text

you get a warning like that for dedicated mini's as well

and yeah I didn't know about this scam either, I just was looking at the icons. Thanks for the heads up.

If you report these scammers, they will get suspended.

While I agree that it's careless to become victim to such a scam and that we should all be vigilant during trades, it does not excuse the scammer for doing what he's doing.

I also have to note the developers' laziness for using the same icons for multiple things. Even a change of icon colour would be a simple and effective way of making unique icons without much hassle.