Here’s a bit of a confession for what happened to me yesterday…

I had gathered most of the mats for the crafted gun Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer and I was just looking for someone to make it. It’s a material-heavy gun, requiring in total several stacks of fel iron ore, adamantite ore, khorium ore, eternium ore, and 12 primal air and primal fire.

I got several offers for the crafting, and since it requires a primal nether they ranged from 150-200 g. I also got an offer for 50 g.

50 g seemed too cheap, so I was suspicious right there. When I /who the person, I saw it was only a level 68. Now that should have told me to run, not walk, away from the deal.

However, I’m a pretty trusting person and I’ve had a lot of stuff crafted and enchanted without problems. One time I even used my alt to trade a lot of mats and gold to a crafter (probably worth 1000 g in all) and then logged on my main to finalize the deal, only to discover I had forgotten the name of the crafter (didn’t have him on friend’s list either) and had to ask in the trade channel for him to whisper me. He could have easily taken my mats, but guess what? He whispered me and we made the deal and I got my stuff. And most people are like that. Most people. Especially, in my mind, level 70s who have invested a lot of time and reputation in their character.

But this guy was the exception. And I guess I was a bit too eager to get the gun, to do the proper research on him…

Long story short, I traded him all mats except the primal airs, after which he proudly yelled (in Ironforge) "I scammed again" and rode off.

Sadly, it’s not against the rules of the game to scam other players, and Blizzard will do nothing.

While it sucks that such players exist, it’s up to us to avoid them. Here’s how:

• Ask for referrals. Demand the crafter shows something with their name on it that they have crafted with that profession.
• If your server has a forum or website, look for a list of crafters for the item you want made.
• Look on your realm’s forum on worldofwarcraft.com or wow-europe.com for scam reports. Chances are a scammer is a repeat offender. (If I had just done this I would have found other people’s stories on how they were scammed by the same person.) Put known scammers on your ignore list.
• Ask them to link the ability, not just the finished item, and ask them to link you the mats. Verify that they are correct.
• When in doubt, stay out.
• If possible, have them craft something small before something big. For example, if you’re dealing with a leatherworker and you’re bringing knothide leather when the item requires heavy knothide leather, have the LW make heavy knothide leather out of some of your mats and trade them back to you.
• Check the level of the person you’re dealing with. Don’t expect a low level character to craft epics, like my friend who traded all mats for an epic to a level 37 scammer…

Luckily, my character is not poor, so I can still afford the gun. It just saddens me that there are people out there who obviously enjoy scamming others.

So be careful.