- There is a new scam surrounding World of Warcraft’s Battle Pets
- Scammers try to purchase Battle Pets at suboptimal prices
- They take advantage of players’ lack of knowledge of the game mechanic to buy the Pets well under market value
World of Warcraft players who own Battle Pets should be aware of other random players who would want to buy their pets for sub-market prices.
New Battle Pets Scam Has the Community Miffed
The WoW community is famous for being helpful towards newer players, often assisting them in finding items across the vast world inside the Blizzard MMO. Of course, just like in real life, there are those who want to take advantage of other people’s generosity and gullibility. This is the case this holiday season when players are warning others about rogue traders in the game asking about taking Battle Pets off their hands for very low prices.
To explain, Battle Pets are something like pokemon, in the sense that they can be used in World of Warcraft to battle others and ultimately collect them. Some players choose to collect these for their own collections, while others sell them for profit in the in-game market, with some of them being sold for more than half a million gold.
Players not knowing what they have on their hands is where the nefarious traders come in.
Players Raise the Alarm on Scammers
On December 20 a Reddit user by the name of Rhalasong posted to the WoW subreddit page an interaction they had with one of these scammers. “CHECK YOUR BATTLEPETS’ VALUE BEFORE SELLING,” they warned. “This person was whispering anyone with rare pets claiming they were to complete their collection, then IMMEDIATELY went to trade to try and flip them.”
The Redditor posted a screenshot of his chat with the scammer, the latter wanting to buy as many Battle Pets as possible from Rhalasong for just 5 000 gold.
The post got much attention and other players soon shared similar experiences. “This happened to me too, I figured almost immediately someone was trying to scam me,” one said. Another responded, explaining that most players have no idea what their Battle Pets are worth since most people don’t interact with the system, and this makes it easier for scammers to dictate low prices.
“Even if I don’t know the price of something, you bet I’m looking it up before making any sort of deal,” warned another commenter. For reference, even a Lanticorn Spawnling alone could cost 20,000 to 25,000 Gold, meaning that the seller would be scammed out of a hefty profit in the transaction. Cases like this show that one should always double-check the price of things, regardless of they're IRL or in a game.
