Free Guild Wars Account Offers

Hi all, lately, whenever I am cruising around in the game, especially in Lion's Arch, I have people PMing me in the game saying, "Hi, do you want a free Guild Wars account?".

Personally, I am not interested in additional accounts anyway - and if I were, it's only a couple bucks anyway - but more importantly, it's the "IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS".

I don't know what the scam is, but a scam it is, of that I am sure. I don't know how this scam aims to steal your existing account, but you can be sure there is no such thing as a free lunch. In so many words, enjoy your purchased account, and don't let the aparent benefit of this type of offer distract you from the obvious scam.

Just to make sure: IT'S A SCAM, SCAM, SCAM ...

Ofcourse someone could be giving away.....
....
....
No, its a scam

It's against the EULA as well, I thought....

I'm not sure if this is related, but can you "sell" Guild Halls?

I've seen people trying to do this...

You can basically sell your guild. You invite the seller, then make him guild leader. Basically the same thing.

Well, in the last MMORPG I played, some people would work on their characters for a bit, and then decide to give away their accounts to 'friends' or strangers.
After a while, the person who received the account would eventually forget that it wasn't theirs in the first place, and they'd work hard leveling and getting good equipment for it.

Then, the original person would suddenly use the account retrieval function, inputting their secret personal information, security question, yadda yadda, and it's theirs again.

Not really sure about the point of this in Guild Wars though.

haha unless i knew someone in real life i'd never trust this. It could be that the account recently got banned and they're trying to sucker you into it, they may be intending to try and keep access to it and steal your stuff (easily avoided by password changing I guess) or whatever.

Or it could even be a really, really nasty griefer who's giving up the game and plans to insult a lot of people, get screenshots, give it to someone and then get them banned for the insults.

If you knew someone in real life doing this however, I'd take it. You can always go round to their house and get revenge

oooh and the fact they're pm-ing you rather than just letting people say "ooh yeah gimme" just suggests to me even more that they have a nasty motive. But maybe I'm just very cynical.

Changing the password won't stop them from accessing the account if they are the original creater or the account, or have access to the e-mail address that was used to create the account. This is because at any point of time they can just go on and do a password retrieval to get whatever the current password is.. and thus be able to log into the account once again... and do whatever they want... and you can't stop them... and you have no rights as thats not your account anyways (as far as ANet is concerned).

This is why I would *NEVER* buy or take a second hand, ie used, account from anyone for Guild Wars (and any other online game which has password retrieval...). This is because there is no way to stop the original owner from doing a password retrieval and taking the account back...

Aslong non of the Guildwars items, property, etc is sold for money, it is not against the EULA. You can sell the account for money however [and for gold/free] and not be penalized. Though im not sure if you can sell accoutns with GW chars and items in it.

this is all a bit too weird for me... if people want accounts why don't they just buy them legally? and i don't think the nicest person i know would give a game like this away for free!!! w00 go Guildwars! **dances**

actually it is against the EULA now. Giving the account away for free *may* be able to get around the eula, but paying for it certainly is against it. Theres another thread popped up in the Q&A section (probably after seeing the same in-game advert) where some people have quoted from the EULA how it is illegal to sell accounts *looks for it*

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=80416

seems its illegal to do it even for free: