Neverwinter Bans Players for Scamming

Huntgate might be behind us (although we still haven’t fully gotten over its negative impacts), but there’s other stuff you can get banned for. Like scamming other players! At least that’s what an exchange from the customer service suggests that a player posted on our Discord.

First of all it’s quite funny that the Game Master threatens the recipient with “further action on this account” when it is apparently already perma-banned. Lesson: Don’t blindly use templates! More than that though, some might be surprised to see the reason (“violation”) that led to the perma. It states “Openly Admitting to Scamming Other Players”. We’re not sure what the “scam” was and why “openly admitting” plays a role here. Bragging about stuff like this certainly isn’t too smart, but it shouldn’t be a decisive factor.

Scamming by the way is indeed sanctioned by the official Terms of Service in Section 15.2j:

[su_quote]Without limiting the foregoing, in addition to the User Content rules set forth in Section 16, you agree not to […] engage in any actions that defraud or attempt to defraud, scam or cheat others out of any items that have been earned through authorized game play.[/su_quote]

Have Legit Auction House High-Rollers Been Hit?

What is and isn’t scamming is obviously subject to interpretation, as anything in the ToS. You can certainly debate over some stuff that’s happening on the Auction House. Players for example try to post items in a way that others may accidentally buy them for much over their value when bulk-buying certain categories. Sometimes also outdated or worthless items are posted for millions and advertised as must-have stuff. While that’s annoying, it’s the first time we hear someone getting banned for “scamming”.

More than that, some players insist that some legit Auction House high-rollers have been hit as well. Those people basically execute a “buy low, sell high” strategy and sometimes control categories or the entire market by mass-buying out certain items only to repost them for much more. That can hardly be labeled scamming, it’s just economics. For now it’s just vague rumors, but some players already brought up their theories of the devs trying to specifically target the long-term player base since Huntgate.

It might be too early to go there yet, but we will of course keep you guys posted with any new developments! In the meantime, don’t get caught (or brag about) scamming others. Because you could lose your account in the process!


What’s your take on this topic? Should scammers get banned? Share your thoughts and experience on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit our message board!

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26 thoughts on “Neverwinter Bans Players for Scamming

  • November 16, 2018 at 7:53 am
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    GOOD!

    Why not get the cunt who gave you that notification and ask what he was bragging about and what he did? Maybe it was 200 Blackdagger Gold for 5 million AD? Or the old “I’ll upgrade it for you with my BtA Coal Ward”?

    I cannot fault this decision at all. Scammers and cheats SHOULD be banned. I didn’t agree on all the Perma-Bans for the glitched Chult Hunts. As most people hate to not play, 5 days and a “fine” of ill-gotten AD would have been enough, and the loss of 5 VIP keys. But there have been a lot of people recently advertising for a guild so they can dump their professions junk for the marks and leave, but they go straight to the Vaults, see they cannot take anything, then leave. And never go near the Mimic. FAILED SCAMMER.

    Another guy was asking for millions of AD, even though we cannot direct trade. His reply was to buy him the masterwork weapons and he’d swap me for some Legendary mount he had that he “couldn’t sell” on the AH. I could already buy the mount myself, so WTF? FAILED SCAMMER.

    And, of course, the Long Con where some of my friends were ripped off by a guild member (not my guild) they trusted who then put them on Ignore. He’d built up friendship and trust over many, many months, then BLAM. They would lend each other high level enchants to try out. he was kicked form the guild and zerg channels, now he’s going round trying to start a new 17k Channel. I refused to even borrow an Unparalleled Enchant from one friend, as I didn’t want to encourage the guy to trust people with that sort of stuff.

    “No, please, try it, it works so good. I trust you” when we dualed Kessels. Sure, he CAN trust ME, but I felt really uncomfortable and told him never to trust people with really valuable stuff like that. There are only three people in NW I would trust like that and we’ve known each other for ten years.

    Ban the lot of them.

    😡

  • November 16, 2018 at 11:12 am
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    The openly admitting is probably more of stating it was an indefensible action. If they hadn’t then they could have argued it was a mistake or I didn’t know which could have warranted a softer punishment because intent couldn’t be confirmed. In this scenario intent is clearly defined. Think about it as going from a involuntary manslaughter to first degree murder. Both are punishable but the punishments are vastly different. By admitting intent they lost their opportunity to be found guilty of a lesser crime and I’m imaging Navi wrote it that way to make it clear that intent matters.

  • November 16, 2018 at 12:53 pm
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    I wish there was more info here.
    1. What idiot tells support staff that they tried to scam someone. :BlobThinking:
    2. Second half of the article: Neverwinter devs are going after long-term players? … I thought working the AH was a legitimate way to make AD. … maybe this means we should avoid being long-term players? :BlobThinking:
    In fact, I usually post junk on the AH for huge amounts just as a way to store items. Usually transmutes because they don’t stack and take up lots of storage space.

  • November 16, 2018 at 2:50 pm
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    The only scamming I see in game are guild bank thieves. There is a scam going right now where people will pm you asking for a guild invite to donate to a coffer with space left in it. They get the invite and go straight for the guild bank to try and empty it, then leave guild and rinse repeat.

    There was a guild theft I heard about the other day. I guess that could count as a scam. Someone hacked the leader of a PC guild called Outlaws kicked all the officers and then changed the guild name and moved it to a new alliance.

  • November 16, 2018 at 3:10 pm
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    I wouldn’t call hacking a guild a scam though. Scam is an intentional redirect to net personal game. It requires some level of consent from the target. Hacking an account is one directional. If that event was a scam it would involve some level of convincing a r7 to share their account password.

    There are lots of scams in game, reneging on a deal, bait and switching items, are examples. Working the AH is not a scam and I seriously doubt cryptic would care about that since its a net drain on the economy via the AH tax.

    If i had to guess the scam that it was the “i’ll use my bound coal ward” scam outlined by Contractions of Fate above, borrowing and stealing enchants, guild robbing, or bait and switch trading. For example there was someone yesterday asking to trade x for y. Where y (i believe it was diamonds) is significantly rarer and would require someone to buy it off the AH to get it (at least for most people). You buy his alt accounts posted diamonds and then he doesn’t do the deal. He wins your stuff with some overpriced RP that you didn’t want to start with.

  • November 16, 2018 at 11:43 pm
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    Stop being so butthurt nwo uncensored. “Scamming by the way is indeed sanctioned by the official Terms of Service” seriously. You are part of the problem. I hope you suffer 10 fold more.

    • November 17, 2018 at 2:02 pm
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      Let’s say we’re in the mood of trolling trolls. What “problem” are we part of? Reporting game-related news that we feel are worth posting? Help us out!

  • November 17, 2018 at 12:19 am
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    Well there are ways that working the auction house i would say is trying to scam someone. I get a price for an item is the price but when people try to sneak an item into some other items price bracket in hopes a person is not looking close enough a would say that they are trying to scam… Like when ues 1st came out there was a few players that would post a umop at the lowest cost for a ues. Pretty dirty trick to pull and over charge of 700,000 ad more than its value. Keep in mind its a new item some players are color blind and or have a language barrier that might cause them to slip up and buy what they thought was what they wanted only to find out after they was played.

  • November 17, 2018 at 12:42 am
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    Once I was “scammed” in the same way. It was during early MOD 12 when I got back to the game and was not well updated on things. I got a Magus from Tong (around 3,5/4kk at the time), I wanted to trade it to don’t waste AH commissions so I was in PE trading channel asking to trade for I think a tran.Fey.
    At some point a guy, say BOB, asked me to trade magus for malabog blade, I said I want only the Fey.. I check on AH and see the Malabog blade listed for 5-6kk from different accounts and I actually was clueless of the real value.
    After a bit another guy, say TOM, was spamming “WTT my T. Fey” and I told him i wanted that ? He answered he wanted a Malabog blade for it. You start to understand?
    I pmed them both to do a double trade so I would trade magus—>malabog blade—->T.fey and they said: ok.

    Of course after my first trade they both disappeared and I got to know from a player that was a common known scam, ok my bad. After 3 min from the trade look at that(!!!) a new shiny magus on the AH, what are the chances XD I pmed, say SCAMMY, asking him where did he took the magus, of course he said on tong run. My suspect started building while times was passing by.. I sent a ticket explaining everything. 2 days later another player was spamming chult map saying that SCAMMY did the same with him listing on AH another old stuff with multiple accounts (around 10) and took his lures this way. We both said it was better to just try to get some revenge and see if he gets banned.

    End of story is: I never saw him again online
    RIP B.C.W., ehm SCAMMY

  • November 17, 2018 at 4:15 am
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    While developers are the ones to blame for every bad decision this game has been through, treating scammers with intolerance is only good. I dont wanna play a game knowing that scammers are lurking in every corner trying to scam anyone. And NO, playing the AH is NOT economics, how dumb you have to be to think that? Who wrote this article anyway? Get over the broom stick, rly.

  • November 17, 2018 at 6:33 am
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    Ofcourse playing the AH is not scamming. If people voluntarily trade items at a transparent and mutually agreed on price, how is that not the AH WAI? Regardless if said items fluctuate in price?

  • November 17, 2018 at 8:15 am
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    don’t you know that someone making a bad decision is always someone else fault. Its clearly cryptic responsibility to protect us from ourselves. why doesn’t my mount have seatbelts? where are my airbags? why doesn’t the stronghold have fire alarms?

  • November 17, 2018 at 10:26 am
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    In this game playing the AH is scamming, cause there wasnt ANY protection or regulation or monitoring AS IS in real life. So it is scamming, despite being a game, its unacceptable. Its been going on for YEARS, people shamelesly robbing out others either out of ignorance, being noobs or whatever. This doesnt make you smart, it makes you a scam, a worse person and someone i DONT WANT to share my time ingame. But cryptic made so many, oh god SO FKIN MANY fucked up mistakes year by year that scammers were the least of NWO problems.

    • November 17, 2018 at 2:04 pm
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      No offense, but you seem to be just angry and it feels like you’ve found something you can rage on. Which is absolutely fine, but your assessment is still wrong.

  • November 17, 2018 at 12:54 pm
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    “protection” and “regulation” only leads to cronyism, that is real life. Adults don’t need bumper rails to survive.

    Time to put on your big boy pants and make informed decisions.

    buying low and selling high on the auction house is not scamming. that’s business and it comes with an accepted risk by the practitioner. As long as no entities bail them out for making bad decisions they are entitled to the rewards of their investment.

    • November 17, 2018 at 2:03 pm
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      This

  • November 17, 2018 at 3:52 pm
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    It was SuperStevenShu that got banned. Who here got scammed by him? Raise your hand.

    • November 19, 2018 at 7:09 am
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      SuperStevenShu? That was the account that got banned? I still see him in my alliance. I don’t interact with him but I think he goes by the name of trashtalkwontsaveyou in caps. Is their a link to the story?

  • November 18, 2018 at 1:18 am
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    Funny how the ones playing the AH choose to ignore the fact that the real life exchanges are indeed regulated. Does “monopolization” and “abuse of a dominant position” ring a bell to you, guys? Even US have laws against those.

    • November 18, 2018 at 7:44 am
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      But that is not scamming, The G. And PWE is a Chinese game company, not the US Federal Government.

      It’s exploiting and manipulating the market, and sometimes creating a monopoly and utilising demand. It may even be a rip off, or gouging, but it’s not a scam.

      A scam is a deliberate and dishonest attempt to cheat someone by interacting with them in-game and fooling or tricking them to participate in some scheme which rips them off.

      Seeing two items on the AH at 536k and 12 at 59k, buying all those for 59k and re-posting them at 532k is not a scam. It’s a person with more in-game wealth than YOU utilising their in-game wealth and their knowledge of the in-game systems wisely.

      But mostly it’s just being richer and cleverer than YOU. If you had the AD pool and market knowledge, you’d do it yourself.

      And it carries risks. Next time you look, there may be 25 of those items priced at 59k and less. I know someone who did this and he was mighty miffed. Some people just do not check prices before they post, and go by what the AH suggests. Some people just post things for a rip-off price. No one is tricked into paying it.

      If you do not like the price, do not pay it. Maybe you cannot control your “Impulse Buy” urges? I waited a couple of years for Lostmauth’s Horn to drop from 3 million to a 20-30k, and to complete my Xvim set..

      An Auction House SCAM would be the old Malabog Blades trick, and two people in cahoots for the Bait and Switch. Or at least two accounts.

      An Auction House SCAM would be the “buy me these weapons and I’ll trade you this Legendary Mount” and then disappearing.

      And so on.

      I would not do what sumplkrum does, though.

      1) 5-day storage and Mail Box Returns is not what the AH is for. They could call it an exploit at any moment

      2) some Neverwinter FOOOOOL! might actually buy it! One could be accused of scamming, as well as losing something we wanted to keep.

      3) one could be confused with buying AD from a 3rd party via the old “Portable Altar for 3 million AD” trick.

      4) don’t be so cheap, buy some Bank Slots!

      🙂

      • November 19, 2018 at 7:13 am
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        Just to add to what Contractions was saying about playing the market as a legitimate way of slowly making AD, several months ago the Soul sight Sigil was practically free in the AH due to the lockbox at the time. Now prices have stabilized green ones are around 18k. Its not scamming if you buy low and sell high. Its supply and demand. It can work both ways. I held on to my stack of blood rubies thinking it might go up due to siege nerf and they instead plummeted due to re-rolls.

      • November 25, 2018 at 12:49 am
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        I was addresing the anti protection comment. My comment wasn’t meant to imply that power abuse is scamming and I’m not sure how it ended that way. The point was that even the most free of the markets is regulated in a certain degree.

        Also, the monopolization doesn’t have to happen on all the market items, one item is enough. Sure, scamming and abuse of a dominant position (which you conveniently choose to ignore) are different matters, done by people with different profiles. Still, they are all regulated in real life.
        A completely unregulated market would fall out of balance rather soon than later.

        Now that I think about it, it seems much easier to avoid scamming than power abuse, IMNSHO.

        What’s actually resembling the real life is the fact that the rich want less protection and the poor want more.

    • November 18, 2018 at 2:39 pm
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      its very rare and near impossible to create a monopoly in a free market, especially not an abusive one.

      In terms of this game, I’m not even sure you can have a monopoly. The closest thing to a monopoly in the game (outside of cryptic) is when a bug creates favor to a select few that prevents others from competing in the marketplace. Kind of what happened in module 12. But for the most part there aren’t monopolies outside cryptic.

      Yes real life exchanges are regulated but real life is also not a free market. You say “even” the US, however the US is far from having the freest markets in the world. It certainly isn’t in the top ten.

    • November 19, 2018 at 6:08 am
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      Meh WTF, it’s not like you NEED that ring or whatever in order to survive. If you like it relative the price, buy it, if not then don’t.

  • November 18, 2018 at 6:04 pm
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    Scamming should have consequences, leading to a ban and a return of assets to the scammed person.

    What I imagine is the most common form of scamming is likely crafting. They bring the mats, pay a fee (maybe) and the “crafter” just never give back anything.

    Other forms are “I want to test this enchant first”. Prompt the other player to give the enchant for testing purpose when the other person has no purpose of giving it back.

    Shaddy deals on the AH aren’t scams.

  • November 19, 2018 at 12:37 pm
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    even the trading crafting mats for a crafter to return of equipment is really not in the purview of cryptic and is exempt from oversight since it is in effect a black market. Would a crafter not fulfilling the deal be morally correct, no. But it should be legally correct. The person trading the mats are knowingly adding risk to their transaction in hopes of a better price in the exchange.

    The AH is effectively the legal form of trade and provides some level of “government” protection and with it comes VAT that covers the added administrative expense. Similarly the zen market is a legal form of trade and as such you’d expect the prices from these sources to be higher to offset the reduction in risk (otherwise everyone would just get their stuff through these cryptic governed systems.

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