New bots or scammers in craglorn

eso_lags

Heres your warning. And maybe its not new, idk, but i havent seen this for all that long. Maybe a month or so. Personally im not huge into trading so the bots dont concern me as much as others. However i dont think they're good for the game. This might not even be a bot but if not its something similar.

So a low level character runs up to me. This isnt the first time, actually it happens a lot in craglorn. All they say is please help me, or some one line whisper. They will invite you to a trade and offer some random materials that might have taken them 5 minutes to farm. Maybe work like 3-5k in a trader if you took your time to sell it at top dollar.. They will keep saying please help me (or whatever) and the price (like 10k)... And whenever you ask them anything or try to talk to them they just repeat the same thing. I suspect its someone who doesn't speak english or some kind of bot.

Do not help these people. The dead giveaway are the names. Something like "Hibob332244" with a character name like "yyhdte"... This is not a low level that needs help. This is a bot or a bot like scammer. They arent asking for a handout, they're offering materials they farmed quick. Materials that they could sell for half the price on a trader or have some nice person give them double the money for it because that nice person might feel bad for a low lv and maybe we can use the materials. Like i said, this has happened to me many times in craglorn but after seeing it 3 times tonight i kind of put some things together. Doubtful its breaking tos but its a *** thing to do. I like helping new players but this is just obvious and stupid.

Salvas_Aren

Lol. Reminds me of that guy who whisped me *I'm a poor boy from Pakistan, a decent player would help me.*

Thank goodness they introduced the free horse, so many of these beggars are gone.

SanguineMyBrother

I've had this happen a couple times. I mudball them and run away.

marcng

''I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go
A little high, little low
Anyway the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me, to me''

BWS2K

Botting is against the TOS. Verify them, report them and include screenshots in a follow-up if possible, and move on:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/433585/best-way-to-report-bots-and-related/p1

yiasemi

marcng wrote: »

''I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go
A little high, little low
Anyway the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me, to me''

And HiBob adopts the diva persona and sings back
Oh yes I'm the great pretender (ooh ooh)
Pretending I'm doing well (ooh ooh)
My need is such I pretend too much
I'm lonely but no one can tell

MLGProPlayer

Salvas_Aren wrote: »

Lol. Reminds me of that guy who whisped me *I'm a poor boy from Pakistan, a decent player would help me.*

Thank goodness they introduced the free horse, so many of these beggars are gone.

Zone chat in starter cities used to be flooded with "pls halp need 10k for horse pls ty pls".

phileunderx2

Do not respond to them in anyway. They will soon leave you and go bother someone else.

Armatesz

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Salvas_Aren wrote: »

Lol. Reminds me of that guy who whisped me *I'm a poor boy from Pakistan, a decent player would help me.*

Thank goodness they introduced the free horse, so many of these beggars are gone.

Zone chat in starter cities used to be flooded with "pls halp need 10k for horse pls ty pls".

Ugh I remember those horse ones... people still do it now and then though.

Merlin13KAGL

Just linger in the trade window for a bit, adding and taking away items.

The time lost from your life will save someone else. Consider it a public service.

On a side note, I actually did have someone legit offer some good stuff in trade for gold. I was surprised it turned out to be legit. Only happened once though.

JamieAubrey

I'd send them 10k worms

weedgenius

I made a thread about this back in July and someone else linked one they made as well.

Hippie4927

JamieAubrey wrote: »

I'd send them 10k worms

@JamieAubrey If you have 10k worms to give away, toss them my way, please!

Jayman1000

Interesting. I have never experienced this (EU server on PC). I don't really see the point of such lowly scams. The time invested cant be worth the small amounts of gold they may cheat people out of? They could easily simply farm that amount? Why scam for such meager results? I guess some noob scammers may try it?

Jayman1000

JamieAubrey wrote: »

I'd send them 10k worms

Worms are still valuable, those 10K worms would be worth 180K. at least on eu server

Trinity_Is_My_Name

Well my experience has been a bit different and not exactly like what happened to the OP but I do want to share it with everyone.

I was in Stormhaven at the Wayrest wayshrine when I saw in zone chat someone asking for 10K to buy a mount. They said they were new to the game and appreciated any help received. So I mailed the player 10K and said "Welcome to ESO" in my mail.

About a half hour later I get a mail from this player with 300K Gold attached. Yes, 300K. The title of the mail was something like "Thank you for your kindness".

I've helped a few over the years in similar ways always mailing something to them but never meeting and trading.

Starlock

Hey, it's better than some guy who randomly whispered "give me money $%Z&*$" during one of the free play weekends on XBOX recently. I told them that while I'm usually happy to help out new players, an attitude like that earned them my ignore list (and being reported, but I didn't tell them that... lol).

Thanks for the tip, though, I'll keep an eye out for this.

Salvas_Aren

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Salvas_Aren wrote: »

Lol. Reminds me of that guy who whisped me *I'm a poor boy from Pakistan, a decent player would help me.*

Thank goodness they introduced the free horse, so many of these beggars are gone.

Zone chat in starter cities used to be flooded with "pls halp need 10k for horse pls ty pls".

Yeah, but if you get a *halp me* whisp ... well, good thing this has ended.

JamieAubrey

Hippie4927 wrote: »

JamieAubrey wrote: »

I'd send them 10k worms

@JamieAubrey If you have 10k worms to give away, toss them my way, please!

Sadly I only have 2000

weedgenius

Jayman1000 wrote: »

JamieAubrey wrote: »

I'd send them 10k worms

Worms are still valuable, those 10K worms would be worth 180K. at least on eu server

Worms are about 8k a stack on PS4 NA. So, 10k worms = 50 stacks, at 8k a stack = 400k gold.

TheDarkShadow

One time I saw a guy playing lute in Vivec and asking for food. I'm not sure if he just roleplay or something but he act very well and the scene entertained me so I mail him 5k and a tiny piece of Rough Bread (furniture item). I mean... if you asking for gold at least make people happy first.

eso_lags

Ya I'm aware of the 10k mount scams. Literally the oldest trick in the scammers handbook. But no these people are different because, like i said, they will not reply to you except with the same generic responses. At least thats usually how it goes. And they have some random character name to go with it. And they offer you a trade of random goods from nodes. Its just odd.. Thats why it seems more like a bot than a beggar. If i run into one of them again ill put some screenshots up. Of course no naming and shaming, just a friendly trade invite, conversation, and then rejection.

Runs

It's been over 10 years but it sounds like the "Plox geif gold" open trade window stuff that was going on in WoW back then.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Salvas_Aren wrote: »

Lol. Reminds me of that guy who whisped me *I'm a poor boy from Pakistan, a decent player would help me.*

Thank goodness they introduced the free horse, so many of these beggars are gone.

Zone chat in starter cities used to be flooded with "pls halp need 10k for horse pls ty pls".

Had someone in one of my guilds ask for 10k to buy a mount once. I opened up roster, checked, then said "Dude, you have over 300 cp" Never heard that guy talk in guild chat again.

BWS2K

The interesting thing is that I reported 4 bots last night but I'm curious if they'll last the entire weekend. Last weekend was bad, all week they were dropping the same day as the reports, but we're back to weekend again...

Edit: A quick lap showed that they're still around. Perhaps we need to organize some Weekend Warriors...

weedgenius

BWS2K wrote: »

The interesting thing is that I reported 4 bots last night but I'm curious if they'll last the entire weekend. Last weekend was bad, all week they were dropping the same day as the reports, but we're back to weekend again...

Edit: A quick lap showed that they're still around. Perhaps we need to organize some Weekend Warriors...

I reported every single bot in a huge bot farm last weekend. Just for the heck of it I checked out the spot this weekend and the SAME EXACT bots were there, PLUS MORE!!

BWS2K

Hmm. So that's the tricky part then, it would appear. Weekend reports don't seem to get checked until Monday. The only way to make that change, says I, is fill up ZOS's inbox with bot reports over the weekend (no more than one per day each but let others in the zone know, I think) and hope that they'll start dispatching Saturday Night Kicks, lol

Gronk

Gronk asks; Will bots accept duel request automatically?

Tandor

itzTJ wrote: »

Ya I'm aware of the 10k mount scams. Literally the oldest trick in the scammers handbook. But no these people are different because, like i said, they will not reply to you except with the same generic responses. At least thats usually how it goes. And they have some random character name to go with it. And they offer you a trade of random goods from nodes. Its just odd.. Thats why it seems more like a bot than a beggar. If i run into one of them again ill put some screenshots up. Of course no naming and shaming, just a friendly trade invite, conversation, and then rejection.

Hardly a scam if they ask you for money and you give it to them.

A scam would be if they offered you something in return for the money and you didn't receive it.

As for the kind of behaviour you report in the original post, I've never seen it on the PC EU server. Although I don't have the default Zone chat enabled, I do have Zone English, say and tell enabled and never see any scamming or botting there. I rarely see any bot activity at all but then I don't frequent the popular grinding locations which probably helps.

itzTJ wrote: »

Do not help these people. The dead giveaway are the names. Something like "Hibob332244" with a character name like "yyhdte"... This is not a low level that needs help. This is a bot or a bot like scammer. T

You mean a name like "itzTj ?

zaria

Gronk wrote: »

Gronk asks; Will bots accept duel request automatically?

If they are a bit smart they turn it off.
Its an good idea anyway unless you enjoy dueling, had a few cases there I accepted an duel thinking it was an dungeon finder invite, that came during the duel and crashed the client.
More fun was the time I made an trial healer setup for sorcerer was using innocent players in rawl for key layout and rotation training while waiting for invite. Some challenged me to duel, I accepted as I thought it was the trial invite.
I only had wall of lighting and lighning flood as offensive on bar but lots of heal, shields and buffs, so I could hardly hurt him and he could not kill me. he ran off