Game scamming is almost as old as the medium itself. And when I say “almost”, I mean the first scam was probably pulled off only a few hours after the First Game Ever went live.

Similarly, every single game enhancement, advancement and new feature has been shortly followed by its related scam … think back to the first time you could link items in chat so others could see the stats (scam), game email (scam), offline vendors and sales (scam) … virtually every time you interact with another human in an online game, there are either dozens of safeguards built into the interaction to protect you from your own dumb ass or there’s a scam waiting to happen.

You already know all of that, though.

As new safeguards are implemented to protect our dumb asses, the scammers get more aggressive and, sometimes, more clever. I love that about them. To be honest, I mostly protect my own dumb ass by interacting with as few humans online as possible, but that’s another issue.

Anyhow, World of Warcraft has this COD system built into the game email. I’m sure it was only a matter of hours before the game phishers started trolling for hapless victims using this feature, which, by the way, is very handy between guildmates, trusted game friends and even your own alternate characters.

So, this week, I received in my main character’s mailbox a phishing attempt, captured below:

If I was drunk off my ass, I might have clicked the mail and accepted it, even though I don’t know the sender and I certainly wouldn’t want junkass chainmail boots. Well. That, and my main doesn’t have 200 gold right now. I siphon off gold periodically to my level 20 paladin so I can do some Auction House shopping while waiting on corpse recoveries in the big boy instances.

Yes, yes! I multitask!

I wasn’t so sober, however, that I wasn’t furious at the obvious scam attempt and wasted took the time to petition his thieving ass. Now here’s the something new.

I barely had time to check the Crack House for epic bargains (I have no money, but I have a lot of hope!), when I got a reply to my petition. I do not lie. Minutes later, I got a response.

Giving credit where it’s due, damn, I am impressed. Maybe nothing would ever be done about it, I don’t know. Doesn’t really matter to me as something MIGHT be done.

Now that’s two times I’ve spoken with a real, live Blizzard Game Master or a carefully coded simulated GMbot: one time I reported the fucking boats were fucking down yet a-fucking-gain (abridged response: ya, we know) and this time.

My mother was right. I am special.