Vindekarr Posted June 18, 2013 Share Posted June 18, 2013 One thing I keep hearing about in Guild Wars, with gamer friends at work and uni, and with increasing regularity on the net are "fake mmos" Bait adverts thrown around using screenshots or asset mockups from other studios, taken without permission, and then either spam-advertising EVERYWHERE, or flooding forums, site borders, and occasionally even in-game chats. So what do I mean fake MMO? I mean bait. A new "game" has just come out and you're supposed to have heard of it. It's supposedly got 10+ million subs, and normally some triple-A licence, for example I've been noticing one on a newspaper site I'm subscribed to recently using stolen Dawn Of War II assets claiming to be Dark Millenium-a game everyone knows was canceled as an MMO years ago. Hell, we even had one spamming on the Nexus last year. What I'm curious about, is just why this is happening on such a large scale all of a sudden; I see adverts for wartune/tyrion/dark imperium/gorga/about a hundred others getting spammed so often, and I've heard so many horrorstories about them, that I'm wondering if it's just a popular scam at the moment, taking advantage of Indy gaming's popularity, an anomaly caused by Chrome's targeted advertising, or something else altogether. The strangest and most annoying experience is watching spambots and payed spammers, spamming adverts for one MMO, within another. In '09 this happened on a large scale in Lord Of The Rings Online; a particular guild took it upon itself to spend hours spamming about SWTOR, but now this wartune crap's turning up all over the place on my GW server, and it's got me concerned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hector530 Posted June 18, 2013 Share Posted June 18, 2013 you mean the ads with almost naked elves and such? all the the ad spamming "mmos" are pay to win anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonewolfkai Posted June 18, 2013 Share Posted June 18, 2013 No, I think he means games that aren't really MMOs at all and are pretending to be MMOs to attract players, with sometimes scamming results as in just taking your credit card info to steal that and your identity. @Vindekarr, I think that's against EULA for GW2, I'd report anyone like that right away, at least for spamming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoofhearted4 Posted June 18, 2013 Share Posted June 18, 2013 one thing about Firefox, is it blocks all those side banners and whatnot. i do remember game banners all the time for games i have never heard of, but havent seen them in a few years since ive been using Firefox :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bben46 Posted June 18, 2013 Share Posted June 18, 2013 I block most ads - My guess is these are nothing more than scambait to get suckers to click. If there is no game there, but just a article about a supposed game with no download or pay option, then it is likely just a scam to get you to click so they get revenue from advertising. However, if they are asking for donations, or pay to play then it could very well be a bait to get your credit card info in order to bill you for something. One favorite recurring scam is the "For ONLY .99 cents". What they either don't bother to tell you - or hidden somewhere inconspicuous - is you just signed up for .99 cents a month to be automatically deducted from your credit card or phone account. And getting it removed can take months - if they will do it at all. If you get scammed by one of these - call your credit card company to get them removed. 99 cents a month doesn't sound like much, but if they get 5,000 suckers, (very easy to do) that makes them nearly $5,000 a month from that one scam - and they are probably running a dozen or more similar scams under different names. And many of the suckers will not even notice another .99 on a $100 phone bill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hector530 Posted June 18, 2013 Share Posted June 18, 2013 i use adblock too by i still see the ads on my phone. been viewing the fallout wikis, they're pretty common gaming wikis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennn Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 I click those hoping it leads to artwork of naked elf chicks, but they're SOL when it comes to getting my money or personal info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matortheeternal Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 ad block plus. The internet is now ad free. However, regarding the scams, I'd imagine it's just a new idea someone had that caught on in the "scamming" community. (assuming such a thing exists... o_O') Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordPariah Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 ad block plus. The internet is now ad free. However, regarding the scams, I'd imagine it's just a new idea someone had that caught on in the "scamming" community. (assuming such a thing exists... o_O')There is a community for everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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