One of the oldest and most easily used scams in World of Warcraft is that of the powerleveling scam. Since the game first arrived, and years before in other MMORPGs, players have paid or employed other players to level up their accounts for them. Because it traditionally takes dozens of hours to level up your character to the highest ranks in the game, many people don’t have the time. However, they still want to enjoy the game and keep up with their friends, and thus they pay someone else to help them. However, because it is against the ToS to do so, many “levelers” are actually scammers, taking advantage of the situation and stealing accounts and gold. The most important thing you can do to avoid a power leveling scam is to simple never request power leveling services to start with. Level up your own account and if you absolutely must use someone else, make sure it’s a close friend or family member who you can trust. For those that do not, the experience often ends in disappointment and anger. Most power leveling scammers will offer their services for free or extremely cheap to ensure someone takes the bait. Their offer will consist of a plea to let them help you as they cannot afford to play the game so they are willing to level your account for free so they can enjoy your game time. This is a common ploy and too many people fall for it. The end result is usually instant in that the scammer will, as soon as they receive your password, change it and drain your account before using to perform other scams and leaving it for dead. The scam relies almost entirely upon your trust of random strangers. Often they will falsely inflate their forum ratings by posting advice and asking for reputation boosts so they seem reliable. However, unless you know the person, you should never give away your information, no matter how tempting the offer might be. Other people might make it seem even a bit more legitimate by using the classic COD scam to fool you into giving over your gold and account information. Using an alternate character and making up an excuse of some kind about why they are online at all, the scammer will offer something amazing like a level 50-70 guide that they found for a very low price. They will gather hundreds of level 50+ characters to their friends list from forums and spam them with a letter (that’s been sent from another character) offering a great deal on the product. By using the COD function, you will pay for the letter and receive something that sends you to a dead website or useless advice stolen from an article database. You’ll have paid for nothing and they will delete their character before you have a chance to catch them.

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