Never let it be said that I can’t evolve!
Before, when I would get a tell from a game stranger filled with gibberish, I’d respond, somewhat impatiently, with a “wtf?”
Just because I don’t understand doesn’t mean it’s gibberish! It could be a foreign language, eloquently written even!
Witness:
I can be sensitive to other cultures, even gibberish.
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.
In hindsight, it would have served the Alliance greater good if we had told him, “Yes, go Horde. Please.”
Oh sure, some might say the less Undead priests running around melting faces the better, but I’m willing to bet level 60 will be a loooooong way off.
You just can’t buy the kind of entertainment that’s freely available in General Chat on the weekends.