Common scams

This article is a list of well known scams. Be aware of them!

Adventuring Scams
These are scams in which players trick other players in certain explorable areas of the game either to gain more loot or off-load some cost onto them. It is most common for non-combat professions will be used for this. Monks are the most common, as they usually remain at the back of the group and can easily run back to grab items. Often players that do this will suddenly disregard their duties and go running for items.

Getting Used in Missions
An emerging scam is to use players wanting to do missions to farm certain areas of these missions. In high level areas, there are certain creatures that players can farm for certain loot. Examples include Jade Armors for Mursaat Hammers or White Mantle for runes. Typically, the farmer cannot get to the desired area on his own, and going with henchmen only lessens his/her chances of getting good loot. So, they join a party doing the mission and then all of a sudden, they just run off and leave the party once they get to their farming point, often jeopardizing the party's chances of successfully completing the mission. There is very little that can be done to predict or prevent such trickery from happening. If you are determined to weed out these scammers, you can keep an eye on the skills they use at the beginning, as many of them have a build that is designed specifically for farming. If you see them using skills that wouldn't help your group or that seem more appropriate for solo farming, they may try to ditch you later. Of course, you cannot be suspicious of everyone. It is best to simply use good judgement on who you group with. Keep in mind that not all missions have "farm" areas.

Drop Stealing
The items that killed monsters drop are automatically assigned to one player, no other player can pick them up. Therefore, you cannot steal drops in Guild Wars. However, the drop assignment will be removed after five minutes.

Sometimes a player will wait until a valuable item drops, then he requests a short break. After the break, the assignment for this item will be gone, and he will try to pick it up. If a valuable item drops for you and you cannot pick it up until its assignment is cleared, inform the other group members to leave this item for you.

If high value item drops are assigned to you it is often best to pick them up as soon as possible. It has been known for a team to leave a party member deceased whilst the assignment is cleared, the living members are then free to pick up the item. This is a highly unfair practice but alas, nothing can be done about it, just be wary of your team.

The Realms of the Gods Entry Fee
In order to gain access to the Realms of the Gods (the Fissure of Woe and the Underworld), a member in the party must pay the avatar of the respective god 1000 gold. This is either done by one member who volunteers to pay for everyone, or the party leader will ask each member to pay up 125 gold to him which divides the cost on all members.

Be careful of the following scams in this situation:
 * If you pay and then ask for others to pay you after entry, there is nothing to force them to pay up. If you are keen about being paid up, then collect money before entry.
 * Some party leaders will ask party members they deem as newbies to pay an extra bit in private chat.
 * Some party members will try to trick new players by telling them that each member has to go pay 1000 gold to the avatar individually.

The Bandits of the Underworld
Beware of small farming teams in the Underworld. These are teams made up of 2-3 members that go farming in this very difficult area based on certain builds (Invincible Monk and Spiteful Spirit necromancers for example). Some times these teams will resort to scams to increase their profit margin. Some of their scams include:
 * Since the "Invinci-monk" is the key to the success of the team, he will ask the new member to pay for the team. But as soon as the party goes in, the monk (usually with another cohort) will lure a group of the fearsome Bladed Aatxes to the new member and have him killed. Then they refuse to resurrect this dead member. The dead member is "used" to pay the entry fee and then discarded. Although this is possible to do, the 55 monk will require other team mates to deal the damage otherwise the 55 monk will be tanking for hours, which has smaller profit gain!
 * Sometimes these bandits will not discard a member right away, instead they will use his skills until a Glob of Ectoplasm is dropped for this member. Then the monk will again lure monsters toward the new member, get him killed, refuse to resurrect him, and take the Ecto after the player leaves angrily or several minutes have passed and the Ecto is available for all.
 * In a 2-man SS-55 build. Beware of monks who try to hijack the run after the Aatxe are killed. The easiest way to tell this is if the 55 monk has Zealot's Fire and Shield of Judgment (instead of Spell Breaker). These are offensive skills that enable the 55 monk to kill the Smite Crawlers, but are very slow in killing the Aatxe. Typically, the 55 monk will tank as usual until the last group of Aatxe before the Smite Crawlers and then rush in and leave the SS necromancer stuck behind the Aatxe. When going with one of them, an SS necro can tell right away by the fact that they will not use Spell Breaker when facing the Dying Nightmares. A safeguard against this scam is to only pay the 500 gold share of the entry fee once inside the UW and Spell Breaker is used. Unfortunately, honest 55 monks will find this request odd if not shady.

Impersonation Scams
Impersonation scams are scams in which the scammers act as ArenaNet staff. NOTE: ArenaNet staff will never ask you for your username/password or demand free items. So if you do get asked for one of these and they claim to be a staff member, just ignore them. You should also report anyone impersonating ArenaNet staff to ArenaNet. Also note that on the rare occasion that ArenaNet staff are in game, their chat text appears in a special color in the conversation window, usually green or purple.

Username/Password Requests
ArenaNet will never ask for your username and password - not through e-mail, not through a whisper, never. Therefore, do not respond to any requests for your password or username and try to report them if possible.

Sigil Status
This is targeted at EverQuest players, who needed to have GMs approve their guild creation in a chat room. In this game, all guild management is taken care of in-game, so the scam has no basis in fact. Essentially, a scammer will say that, to get a Celestial Sigil, you must pay a GM gold, and he will transfer the status onto you, allowing you to buy a Guild Hall. This is untrue: Sigils can only be purchased from other players or the Sigil Trader, or earned in the Hall of Heroes.

Duplicate Item Scams
Some people claim to be able to duplicate items. One method is a monk using the Unyielding Aura Elite Skill which resurrects a dead ally as long as they maintain the enchantment. They will ask you to go out side into a combat area with them and get yourself killed. They will then resurrect you with Unyielding Aura and proceed to walk a fair distance away to make you feel that when you drop your item to be duplicated they won't scam you by picking it up and leaving. Once you drop your item, they stop maintaining Unyielding Aura leaving you to watch as they come and take your dropped item.

Gold Chest Scams
An unopened chest can contain gold or purple items, but once opened, it will produce the same color for everyone. Scammers who don't want to risk wasting a key opening a "purple chest" will drop a gold item next to the chest and say, "Hey, a gold chest!" and wait for someone else to open it. Once that person opens it, if a gold item pops out, the scammer knows it's safe to use his own key. Remember that the game notes when someone drops an item, so this scam is relatively easy to spot.

Other Scams
Some "scams" aren't even part of the game, and some not only threaten your privacy, but also break the law.

Downloadable "Hacks"
While it's not really a scam, it is definitely something to watch out for. Lately, some players have been advertising about hacks on a certain site (URL not given here), claiming them to be fully malware-free and 100% working. Using a virus scanner, you find them to contain a trojan, which could allow an outsider to take control over your computer, or log your keypresses to find out your passwords. Not only to Guild Wars, but also to anything else you sign on. If you see someone advertising about hacks, Do not download anything from their specified page, but contact ArenaNet support and report the person in question, stating when it occured and who.

If you find a helpful tool you would like to use, always scan it with a virus scanner or online scanner before executing. If you fail to do this, you jeopardize not only your account, but also your privacy. Even if your virus scanner gives a clean report, you should remain suspicious and try to take steps to mitigate damage, such as running the tool as a different user or on a different computer or operating system, if possible.

Hoaxes

 * Terror Shield