Worried about duplicates, wondering is this still happening?

[Diamonddave]

So I'm playing after a four year hiatus, enjoying the new pet battle system, collecting pets, watching the AH and having fun with leveling my pets.

Well today, I'm reading forums, checking out things about pets, and I come across some things about duping, and I'm scared now. I guess back in 4.x.x there was issues where items were getting duped like crazy and it still occurred through 5.x and now I'm wondering if this is still happening.

I bought a rare TCG pet from someone who was putting out WTS tells in SW as I was passing through and I thought this is one I'm not likely to get on my own since I don't buy the TCG packs and the price on e-Bay was way too high for my wallet, and I thought in game gold seems pretty easy to earn now (granted I don't have hundreds of thousands of gold but I earned 8k one day with some easy cloth farming) so I'll buy it and the price seemed in line with two other auctions on the AH. One was 14k/23k, and the other was 17k/21k and I paid 16k for a trade.

I'm reading how Blizzard is trying to crack down on these items, and some posts say they will refund you the gold if it was an AH transaction but I'm so worried that because I did a trade they won't refund my gold should the item turn out to be fake.

I'm sorry I haven't searched hard enough on this subject probably but does anyone out there have any good information on whether this has been fixed and I can feel more confident in my purchase. I would really hate to lose this pet because I've wanted one for a really long time but didn't want to justify spending hundreds of dollars on trading cards I would never use, and now that I have the pet I don't want to lose it :'(

[Dolz]

Personally I never buy from the shills in trade. They frequently list several hard to get pets and/or mounts at the same time which makes me very suspicious. If you wait they will show in in the AH where you have some protection.

[Graven]

Exactly that. When I'm looking for a rare pet and I see some guy in trade trying to shift 3 of them as a package deal, it just screams "dodgy" to me.

Saying that, I think you bought it in good faith. I'd be rather surprised if Blizz bothered to come after you - if anything you'd think they'd be more interested in the sellers than the buyers.

[Diamonddave]

Problem is they go after the buyers because we are the ones giving the gold and I'm sure they care more about the gold exchanging than the item because they can just delete the item. The gold if he was a scammer, hacker, or a gold seller I'm sure changed hands twenty times within minutes of my giving it to them

The economy has scaled so horribly since vanilla where we have to pay hundreds of thousands of gold for epics, I just have to imagine there is no end to this plight and within 5 years I would no doubt have to pay millions of gold for epics, and blizzard will still hound the little guys over the few gold we have and how we use it :'(

I'll keep my hopes up that should it come to the point that a GM whispers me one day I pray I can convince them I had no idea about this stuff.

It did seem dodgy to me that such an expensive pet on ebay would be so relatively inexpensive (there's two on the AH today at 28k+ from different name sellers not that it means anything and could be the same account) and the price this guy was offering it at was inline with the other two people's auctions. I just took a risk negotiating with him and now that I know about what has happened in the past I'll be more cautious and use the AH but for all I know this could be a legit pet.

I'm just surprised there are any being sold in the AH. I guess either the cards have made their way to the people looking to make in game gold, or the duping problem has become more wide spread and the effects are going to last a while. time will tell.


I just feel bad that I'm in this situation because I'm usually super cautious from buying in trade and try to make sure I chat the people up before any trade purchases to get a sense of their English skills. This pet however blinded me and I was like OMG I MUST HAV ITZ!!!

[Kpb321]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I haven't seen any reports here of anyone having their pets taken away by GMs. As far as duping goes. Yes it has happened and pretty much all the pets that used to be "rare" and expensive are actually pretty common and cheap relatively speaking. At this point you pretty much have to assume that odds are that any pet you didn't see drop your self or enter the code for yourself is likely a dupe that was created at some point. The quantities of these pets pretty much dictate that. I don't think there is currently any duping happening or I suspect we'd see a flood of the new valuable pets that are still at least somewhat rare and we haven't.

[Quintessence]

"Duped" pets are indistinguishable from "non-duped" pets. There's nothing that sets them apart from legitimately obtained pets, other than the seller of said "duped" pet.

That being said, if you purchase a possibly duped pet from the AH, you are likely safe from Blizzard taking action against your account. There's no guarantee that Blizzard won't recall the pet from your collection, but I haven't heard any reports of this happening in this type of situation.

Acquiring a pet through a trade from trade chat is not as safe. If Blizzard determines that a seller is actually a compromised account or otherwise, they can track the chat-logs of the person and see what they sold and who they interacted with. If they take action against the person who sold the pet to you, it is possible that they will recall all items sold by him/her. BUT (and that's a large but) I don't think it happens very often, at least not in the case of pets.

The general rule of thumb is that buying pets from the AH is much safer than purchasing directly from a seller in Trade Chat.

Whether or not you want to avoid potentially duped pets in the future, is up to you. If a deal looks too good to be true, then you have every right to pass on it. Some collectors take a strong stance against duped pets, which is understandable. Others have less issue with them, and consider all pets from the AH fair game.

As Kpb321 said, don't worry about it too much. You purchased the pet in good faith, and there's nothing in its coding that makes the pet any different from any other pet.

[Diamonddave]

Thanks everyone for your replies

I would imagine as Kpb321 stated the problem is they are already out there and there's no way of knowing what will happen for certain, I just feel reassured when my fellow community members make me feel warm and fuzzy

The deal wasn't too good to be true I'd say but then again I never thought I would ever see this pet in the AH or in trade. But three at once on the same realm for sale I would say I should have been more cautious but I went like this:

cat heart eyes.png (46.19KiB)Viewed 5091 times

and was instantly in "gather all my gold from all my toons" mode, I never scurried to give away all my gold so quickly ever before haha.

In the past I would have assumed anyone who actually had a Spectral Tiger Cub card would either ebay it or equip and keep it. Now I have it and hopefully I never have to give it up

[Colar]

Let's not forget the pets may have been obtained by other way like in LFD that tank or heal gets as reward. So those may end up very cheap because they want to sell it fast.

Do try to stick it in AH only because I do know certain duped mount like ruby panther can't be sold on AH due to glitches. I don't know of a pet that gets glitched to not sellable on AH but AH is safe.

[Abashera]

Welome back to the game.

Don't forget to check your Black Market AH for rare TGC pets.

[Badpathing]

I recently bought a couple of the Reign of Fire boosters and got some pets/mounts legit. I think I still have a Dragonkite, which is 100% redeemed by me. I am not particularly worried about getting 'max cash' for it, so I can sell it or trade it for whatever is the going rate. just let me know.

I think I might also have a Soul Trader that is actually unscratched as well.

[Diamonddave]

Welome back to the game.

Don't forget to check your Black Market AH for rare TGC pets.

I thought the Black Market AH closed down (I only have MoP, haven't yet upgraded to WoD)

[Blixtiya]

it moved to Nagrand, Ring of blood.