Viscous Horror and Tuskarr kite next to be Duped

[Yamum]

Bignasty, did you used to play on Blackrock?

[Yamum]

Apparently the "process" involves hoodwinking the TCG NPC in booty bay so it actually creates a pet off an invalid code. Blizzard can't "prove" the pet once it's been traded / learned / re-caged / traded because once it's re-caged it becomes a "legit" pet and it's impossible to track which pet came from an illegal code.

I always suspected some kind of keygen was involved. Do you have a source for this info?

[Yamum]

They should use a level 5

Making multiple level 5's takes time, and as we millionaires understand, time is money.

[Kring]

They should use a level 5

Making multiple level 5's takes time, and as we millionaires understand, time is money. ;)

That's what pet battles are for! :-)

[Slog]

WoW millionaires often use those lvl 1 bank alts

They should use a level 5, because at level 5 you'll be able to learn Engineering. And with Engineering, even at skill level 1, you can use the Engineering AH and bank which are right next to the guild bank and mailbox in your shrine. You don't have to move to reach all 4 things.

How did I never think of this? I use that engineering bank/AH/mailbox on my main constantly, but never thought of using it on an alt.

I use a level 1 orc for almost all of my auctions, because it was easy enough to park him in the Valley of Honor.

My food mule, stocked with engineering refrigerators (don't ask - I don't have a problem, I swear) is a monk that I leveled to 15 so that she can roll between the banker and the mailbox.

[Peanutty]

Some of my bank toons are partially leveled... the ones that aren't on my main realms had to be leveled because I couldn't afford to list auctions on the AH otherwise. But my primary bank toons, I have made every effort to keep at level 1 (I didn't lock XP gain, just been very careful about avoiding even exploration XP). There's no real reason for it, I've just always done that with my main bank toons.

That said if anyone is suspicious of them it's easy to tell at a glance that these are legitimate long term bank toons: they're wearing very expensive vanity gear plus BoP holiday gear. Not to say a duper or bot couldn't do the same, but would they bother keeping a level 1 around long enough to gather all those things?

[Bignasty]

Bignasty, did you used to play on Blackrock?

Yes I did, our whole guild moved to ED after the ratio H:A became a joke

[Yamum]

I remember you. You used to sell a lot of TCG stuff.

[Azrile]

Couple of points.

1. There is no honor among dupers - you saw this with the spectral cub. These guys are enemies of each other and will drive the price in the dirt in order to sell faster than their opponents. If there is a dupe involving the TCG NPC, then the dupers would be fighting among themselves to do it more and more. Some of you guys here talk like the ´dupers´ are a union and restrain themselves collectively. They won´t, and they don´t. They undercut each other all the way down to 0g

2. The spectral cub dupe was not related to the NPC in booty bay. If there was a dupe with the NPC in booty bay, then it wouldn´t be individual pets that suddenly become mass-duped. Why would they dupe a special cub that dropped in price to 30k, when they could use the same technicque to dupe ethereal traders. The spectral cub dupe involved manipulating a particular fight,which is why they were all lvl 6 ( the level you get after one pet battle).

3. People continue to misquote Blizzard regarding trial accounts. I did this for a long time too. Blizzard was not being ignorant to duping, what they were saying is that you can´t blame trial accounts. The people who dupe, do not use trial accounts to sell the duped items, they use hacked accounts. Blizzard was not saying duping doesn´t happen, they were just defending trial accounts as part of the problem.

[Azrile]

I play the AH as a secondary mini-game, and have to say that many of us who've accumulated a lot of in-game wealth actually do not use level 1 alts for any transactions.

Level 1 alts are a waste of potential crafting income. Even if I just throw transmute alchemy on a seldom-played alt, that's another Living Steel cooldown every day. But most importantly, level 1 alts tend to catch Blizzard's attention, and not in a good way. They are prone to being flagged for 'suspicious' activity and subsequently banned for allegedly exploiting the economy. Getting those bans lifted is a pain, and not guaranteed.

I don't care what title your level 1 has. If it's level 1, I view that character with suspicion, and I don't give it the benefit of the doubt...not so much because I think whatever that level 1 may be doing will 'ruin' the WoW economy (I suspect most of you here would buy a Viscous Horror from a level 1 that offered it for 20K gold, but that's another debate) but because I simply don't want to engage in transactions with anyone who may be flagged as suspicious by whatever Blizzard's warning flags are.

Blizzard has never acknowledged that duping exists, and they in fact deny it. So all any player can do is be clear about their own set of in-game ethical standards and try to protect themselves from situations that could result in the loss of gold or items, or which could result in a ban.

I have a bunch of level 1s.. sure, on your main server they are mostly useless. But if you want to make a ton of gold, put 4 lvl 1s on different servers and trade pets around. The prices of pets vary greatly on different servers. You can easily buy a raid drop pet on Illidian and sell it a few minutes later on a low population server for 5xs the amount. Once you get gold on 4 different servers it is easy to multiply it by doing pet circles.

[Arshadi]

I have a bunch of level 1s.. sure, on your main server they are mostly useless. But if you want to make a ton of gold, put 4 lvl 1s on different servers and trade pets around. The prices of pets vary greatly on different servers. You can easily buy a raid drop pet on Illidian and sell it a few minutes later on a low population server for 5xs the amount. Once you get gold on 4 different servers it is easy to multiply it by doing pet circles.

I do play the AH on other servers; the pet trade is certainly part of that. I still won't use level 1 characters to do it - but I don't want to derail the thread too much with the topic of how to conduct AH business.

As far as the OP's topic, I'll believe duped Viscous Horrors when I see them, but I'm doubting this will happen. In the meantime, new duping techniques will continue to pop up; none of them will ruin the game's economy. Some of them will require pet collectors to make personal ethical decisions about purchases, I suppose - though from what I've seen most people manage to work up a really good set of rationalizations about why they purchased a questionable item and how it's actually OK. I don't think folks should fret about it too much unless for some unknown reason you intend to buy possibly duped items in bulk =P

[Khorah]

My 2 coppers here..
But while I have not seen any non-TCG pets duped, there for a while there were a LOT of Crimson Deathchargers floating around Medivh for 20k, which was ~1/4 the previous selling price. So I have little doubt that the dupers have already figured out ways to dupe drops, but hadnt found a big enough seller to risk it. The items from the Heroic LK fight/Shadowmourne would easily be flagged since so few people actually finish that chain that it wouldnt be too difficult to track that stuff, especially since you dont "learn" those items like pets and mounts.

But thats just my guess.. /tinfoilhat

[Peanutty]

Yes, I remember the massive number of Deathchargers, and also Queen's Garnets in bulk within weeks of Dragon Soul opening up. So there's obviously ways to dupe in-game items though I don't know if those methods are still in place.

The Viscous Horror has to be a tempting target since the demand for them is still high. I admit I'm surprised it (and Tuskarr Kite) weren't targeted sooner.

[Maizing]

see all those lvl 1's in trade selling Spec Cubs, soul traders and Dragon kites, more often than not, these are farmers who work for the dupers.They dont care about getting caught they are on trial accs and as soon as they get the gold, it is given to a 2nd person on a different account, and they delete that toon, if you call them out and just ask when they are going to dupe XXXX pet they well outright tell you..
and for the record, Yes I reported

Problem with this theory... trial accounts cannot trade with anyone. You cannot give them gold or items, they cannot give you gold or items.

Now it is possible that the accounts to which you are referring have been hacked (that is what the "gold sellers" use), but they are definitely not trial accounts.

[Poofah]

You can easily buy a raid drop pet on Illidian and sell it a few minutes later on a low population server for 5xs the amount. Once you get gold on 4 different servers it is easy to multiply it by doing pet circles.

Can you be more specific about the second part of this circle? Certainly Illidan has far lower prices on these pets than my home server(s), but what pets do you use to send gold back to Illidan? Illidan seems to be cheaper across the board -- I've only sporadically been able to shuffle pets into Illidan gold because of this.

The spectral cub dupe involved manipulating a particular fight,which is why they were all lvl 6 ( the level you get after one pet battle).

This made it far easier to track the duped cubs, and distinguish them from the 'legit' ones. But realistically, the main thing we learned from the cub episode is that *there is no difference* between a duped caged pet and a legit caged pet (other than how you feel about it, I suppose). Bliz never took those lvl 6 cubs away and they function exactly like 'legit' cubs. Because of this, high-end pets are terrible investments, because once a duping wave hits, the damage to their scarcity is never undone. And Bliz has a terrible track record at preventing duping waves for high-end items in the first place, so there's no reason to think that any pet is safe.

I believe that other TCG pets have been duped, especially Soul-Trader, but it's much harder to prove because they're all lvl 1. The only evidence I have is that Soul-Traders have plummeted in price from ~225k in 5.0 to ~70k today, which is very similar to the Cub situation. Tuskarr Kite for example was ~90k in 5.0 and is still in that range, making large-scale duping seem less likely. But there's no reason to think it will stay that way -- Viscous and Tuskarr are the two highest-priced pets right now, which makes them the most attractive dupe targets.

[Tiggindy]

So ... dont presume a lvl 1 seller is some tail end of a bot scam.

I presume a level 1 is the tail end of a bot/dupe/scam when it's a human priest (not sure what the equivalent would be for horde side), selling "known" duped items (meaning items that are commonly duped, like the gems or the deathcharger, or the TCG pets), alternately selling items at well below vendor price (sandstone drake or components for it).

If the level 1 is selling different stuff, or selling at a "reasonable" price, chances are they aren't farmers.

[Kpb321]

You can easily buy a raid drop pet on Illidian and sell it a few minutes later on a low population server for 5xs the amount. Once you get gold on 4 different servers it is easy to multiply it by doing pet circles.

Can you be more specific about the second part of this circle? Certainly Illidan has far lower prices on these pets than my home server(s), but what pets do you use to send gold back to Illidan? Illidan seems to be cheaper across the board -- I've only sporadically been able to shuffle pets into Illidan gold because of this.

I think that would be a good topic for another thread but I'm not sure how many people will be willing to share their secrets. Personally, I've been trying to do this for the last couple months to help finish off my last few pets and have managed to move a fair amount of money to illidan horde (I'd guess between 150-200k at this point, Don't actually have that much from buying a couple pets I wanted and buying pets sell on other servers). I have had some cases where I'm actually able to buy low on another server and sell for a profit on illidan but that can be pretty hit and miss. Often times I'm settling for equal money but that's still okay because I can get a lot more on illidan for that same amount. Having a cash pile on other servers help ensure that you can take advantage of deals when you see them on those servers.

I've mostly moved money to illidan using the standard buy low sell high but don't forget about breeds. I've found that I can often find good deals on the desirable breeds when they show up on lower pop servers. A (s/s) death adder for ~500 on a lower pop server that can sell for ~2k on illidan. I've also gotten lucky and picked up two (p/s) Gillean ravens that made a nice profit for me on illidan. What I think really helps more is playing multiple medium to high pop servers that have decent pet activity but not massive and well known like illidan. I'm constantly buying something on one server and selling it on the other because one server has several listed driving the price down and the other has none. I might be taking the same pet back the other direction a week or two later but I can make profits quicker moving from one to the other than waiting for the market to recover on the same one. It also gives me options when something just doesn't seem to be selling or a bunch of unexpected competition pops up.

The one method of bringing money back to illidan I've always seen mentioned but never actually made use of is the Black Market AH. Trying to get the rare tcg pets on a low pop server for cheap to sell on illidan does seem like a workable idea but even my low pop home rp server seems to have enough competition for the BMAH that it is hard to win the pets unless you stay up until the auction closes and you end up paying enough that there is little or no profit in moving it to illidan. Personally, I've only won one good pet, a dragon kite recently, and I kept it because I wanted it for my collection and I did pay probably 5k more than I could have bought it for on illidan at that same point in time. It was worth buying off the BMAH because it's much easier to make back that 42k on my home server that it would be to get it on illidan.

[Poofah]

I think that would be a good topic for another thread

Probably true.

I've found that I can often find good deals on the desirable breeds when they show up on lower pop servers. A (s/s) death adder for ~500 on a lower pop server that can sell for ~2k on illidan. I've also gotten lucky and picked up two (p/s) Gillean ravens that made a nice profit for me on illidan.

Kind of what I suspected, and I do this too. I just get tired of scouring the AH for these kinds of deals, especially when you're moving back rather small amounts with each pet. I would much prefer a bigger-ticket item to move funds with, but I'm reluctant to use stuff like TCG pets for exactly the reasons raised in this thread.

[Avalee]

I always wondered; Why aren't TCG mounts being duped?

[Index]

I always wondered; Why aren't TCG mounts being duped?

I always suspected that there's a hidden "made by" tag attached to them, like there is with crafted mounts. I might, however, be wrong, but it would be a logical conclusion...