Friday, April 4

Taking matters into our own hands

Read yesterday's story? For those who didn't, now's your chance.....
Anyway, after our bank cleared out we put our hopes in the hands of the gamemasters but some people had a bit more time on their hands luckily.

First a set of crafted Epic Leggings was spotted on the Auction House, it was the only one and since it was frost resistance gear it was not very likely somebody would actually grind the mats and craft it for profit. One of the officers bought it and i showed "crafted by Guilies-name". Yep, this was our pants allright!
Now we knew the name of one of the AH toons this guy had at least. After that people started following that toon around in stealth while it did it's business in Stormwind, after a while a list of other toons was created as the guy traded others (targeting each other) and running back and forth between mail, AH and bank and relogging to other toons.. targetting someone of the freshly formed list. I wasn't part of this but one of the people who devoted his time to this told me he actually felt like a spy and got a sort of kick out of this.

After this the story becomes a bit vague.. either a GM contacted this toon aswell but two members also confronted him, threatening him with reporting and accountloss. Long story short: it worked!
It seemed it was a 14 year old kid who thought he was smart but he didn't realise the concequences, neither for others nor for himself. Suddenly the most important thing for him was to give us as much stuff back as still possible as some already had been sold, he was unbelieveable scared to get his account banned.
When i came online after work one of our members was already taking the stuff out of his hands and put as much as possible in the guildbank. I was the first officer online so i started helping with that so stuff could be dropped in the "officer-only" tab aswell.
To withness the stuff being transfered i got invited into the party with the scammer and that guildy which was quite weird, i was still quite pissed but i didn't want to start cursing at him as getting the stuff back was the most important thing at that point.
While time passed i actually began to develop a sort of symphaty for this guy, call it a case of Stockholm Syndrom perhaps. He was really scared and seemed to be quite sorry, even if it was because of his own situation. He was very polite and tried to be as helpfull as possible, even offering to grind for missing materials.
He requested a guildinvite on lowest level so he could appologize to our members and was willing to answer any question any of our members would have, instead of an invite i passed the message to our members... the chance the ammount of verbal abuse would make him slice his wrists seemed quite large.
Still think he should have his account locked but at least i can refrain from yelling at him as he tried his best to cooperate, for what it was worth.

The next two and a half hours i was checking lists i had made of the missing stuff, trying to check what was still missing. We did lose some stuff but he also gave us an ammount of gold to cover for that which might be about right. What we also did get was a shitload of other stuff that wasn't ours but from two other guilds he managed to scam.. we asked him to give everything to us so we could sort it with them, rather then leaving it in his hands.
Besides he had little clue of what he got out of which bank by then, apart from that the biggest heist was at ours.
The other guilds are going to send us lists to see what exactly they are missing and what we have received that can be theirs... likely some of their stuff has been sold or used aswell (some patterns learned and some gear equipped) but perhaps a GM can assist with the remaining missing stuff.

Most importantly we got our Hearts of Darkness back which we need for the next boss in the Black Temple so progress hasn't been delayed too much luckily. I feel like this is a happy ending, knowing the guy feels real bad and is scared as hell... not benefitting from our stuff but being in more trouble then before. Getting the stuff back from a GM while knowing someone out there is living in wealth didn't seem to be the right conclusion of this adventure.
I'm just happy i can leave (most of) the frustration and anger behind me now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I am happy this worked out well for you, but completely stunned that not only did you manage to catch the guy yourselves... he gave the stuff back?!

We had someone using his same scheme (impersonating various guild officer bank alts) on our server, and even when found out and confronted in the forums, he showed no remorse at all. As far as we could tell, he was never banned or reprimanded in any formal way by the Blizzard GMs either. He took a lot of abuse from guilds he scammed and other folks on the server, but he shrugged it off and said, "You should verify I am who I say I am on vent and this won't happen." As far as Blizz is concerned (again, from conversations in that thread), if a guild gives a guy access and he robs the bank, the guild is largely to blame (for their poor judgment) and so stuff won't be returned.

Anyway, congrats on figuring this out and getting your stuff back! I'd say you guys got pretty darn lucky. :)

Anonymous said...

I think you handled this very well. I commend your restraint and perspective. /salute
-eustashius
ner'zhul

Boozsha said...

I'm glad you guys were able to get most of your stuff back. I still think he should have his account banned for 6 months. Being that school will be out soon for the summer months, that should be plenty of punishment.