EVE General Discussion

It is simply up to you to protect yourself, EVE is not going to hold your hand for you as other games do.

Thats what I am talking about.
The downward spiral of virtues, honor and social responsibility.

The point which the scammed are despised and look down upon as the scraps of the universe and the scammers are praised for their crafty tactics and their cunning.

So don't be stupid and inept, learn to spot shady dealings and the ridicule will be someone elses domain.

Morality is for those who want others to think for them
TL 2012

Kind of hard to differentiate when there are those who are genuinely kind of virtuous , auctioning researched BPO to newbies and lesser well off people. I got my Naga and Noctis BPO 50 mil below market price that way.
While there are those who put on the same disguise , but instead chose to go for the road of the scammers.
Without any indicators ,consequences and punishments, and with most of them being alts and trade toons which they'll destroy once a successful scam is done. Its an incredibly favorable environment for scammers.

there is nothing wrong with scamming.
the only problems are Spam from scammers.

A scammer needs to advertise. Spot the scammer and block. He will have no more effect on you.

not exactly.
You can go around that by contacting 3rd party ETC code sellers.
use the credit card to buy loads of them.
After you've redeemed it , contact Visa and claim your kid used it and void the transaction.
The 3rd party seller can't ask for the codes back, suing you will cost more than what they lost,and they can't contact CCP , as they'll get sued .
Markee Dragon from YouTube has shared quite a bit of real world scamming tactics he has came across in his enterprising days.

I was actually hanging out in Jita today and saw you chatting in local. You're right, scammers and the like are tolerated and even sung as the heroes in EVE, but that's just the game and people that play it. Don't expect anyone to shun them for it or even understand you point of view. Myself being the rare exception.

The ones you want to watch out for are Margin Trading scams. They're not so obvious up front, but rely on a game mechanic that effectively makes them invisible without closer inspection. Usually pretty obvious when you look at the buy orders for the item and see they are generally higher than the contract value. Also, there are usually a lot of sell orders for about the same value as the contract plus a bit.

What happens is you buy the contract and try to sell to the buy orders and the buyers wallet comes up empty, cancelling the order and you are left with what is usually worthless junk or something that might be deemed collectible, but is actually not of interest to anybody unless it's for a much lower price.

Price history can help, but the good ones have that taken care of with a developed price history going back months usually. Makes the contract look like a sweet deal, and you end up paying off all their sell order and trade related taxes, the original purchase cost of the item, plus potentially hundreds of millions to billions of ISK, depending on the contract and its contents.


Don't get scammed. There are 50:1 odds that any contract you look at is a scam in Jita local, and pretty good odds they are elsewhere. If you're looking for something, check the Contracts interface for the item or the market, check buy orders and sell orders, and look at price history.

Watch for deals that look too good, because they probably are the opposite. Nobody in EVE actually sells stuff well below cost or current market value. I do, and maybe a few others from time to time when we're looking to just flog something, but otherwise it doesn't really happen. Even the markets in the middle of nowhere are heavily worked if they see any activity.

Side note: I find it funny that people equate morality to having someone else think for you. Morality is something you have. It's a personal thing, and different for everybody, even if they only have a shred of it. Nobody thinks for people with morality; they do it for themselves.

While I don't know too much about contracts and many market tricks or whatever there might be, it sounds to me as if there are scams you can't recognize as such. It could be just a really good deal, or a scam.

If that's the case I think it should be changed. People paying attention should be able to avoid all scams.

If I misunderstood the OP and the scams that were talked about would've been avoidable by taking a good look and applying common sense, all is fine, imo.

Obviously you need the lesson more then me, or do you think Plex drop in 0.0 npc deadspace?