"Greetings my child," the old blind seer whispered as he threw a weed into his fire. "Since the inception of the very first MUD, the basis of MMORPGs, scams have been a plague upon the land. Like in Diablo 2, some little punk stole my l33t Arch-Angel's staff!"

Though a little odd, the seer is correct! Scams have played a large part in all MMORPGs since their creation. They can cause more sadness than being attacked in the back. So, to prevent this, we hope to make you aware of the many possible scams so they will not affect you.

No matter what game it is, this same exact scam happens in every single game around. Some people have even tricked others into letting them kill them for the dupe to work! Duping is the ability to clone an item illegally. We understand that the temptation is enough to drive one crazy. A grief player (a player who wishes to cause grief among other players) will tell you to give them one of your best items so they can "dupe" it. When this happens, they either log off, kill you, or run away. If someone wants to dupe something for you, just say no. Star Wars Galaxies looks to be an extremely dynamic game. By that, we mean that if a duping bug does occur, the Star Wars Galaxies Live Team will fix it within a few days of its discovery. Keep in mind that being involved in a duping exploit/scam, even if not directly doing the actual duping, might be grounds for immediate and permanent banning from all Sony Online games. This is a scam/exploit to avoid at all costs if you care about your account.

Let's face it, in every economy, there are bad trades. Trading an enchanted firesword for a broken dagger is a bad trade. The best way to avoid these in Star Wars Galaxies is to learn prices. Where can you find out the average price for an item? Why right here at SWG Stratics (once the game is live of course)! If you have a high enough connection speed and computer, keep your web browser open to us and compare prices! We'll do everything in our power to keep our pages up with the current prices for an item. Consult friends if possible about trades you wish to make, perhaps they have a better grasp of the items than you do!

This is probably the most practiced scam within all online games. Players will often email you or act as an Sony/Verant/LucasArts employee or Sony/Verant/LucasArts representative (both in-game and out-of-game). There are a few rules you can follow to avoid this. If you are being emailed, make sure you are sending the email to an @verant.com, @soe.sony.com or a @lucasarts.com address. If it is an in-game avatar, say NO. Sony/Verant/LucasArts is not going to use Avatars to make announcements, it's just to hard to cover so many people. And do not fall for scams which ask you to give your Star Wars Galaxies account name to win a prize! The KEY thing to remember is that official Sony/Verant/LucasArts representatives will NEVER EVER ask you for your account name via e-mail, on a website (except official secure sites), or in-game. Remember, they have this information on file and will never have a need for you to supply this to them. If you get a request like this, make sure to alert all community sites and Sony/Verant/LucasArts so that word can get out about the scam.

Often a player of lower level will give you a sad story saying they were murdered or scammed or something similar and are looking for pity goods. Now this may be the case, but sometimes they just want some stuff. There is no sure-fire way to ensure they are telling the truth, but you never know. If you want to be a nice person, go ahead, but just be aware of the fact that they may be lying.

This one is very simple. Don't use a commonly used password. Also, as was discussed earlier, never ever give anyone your account name so that this can even become an option for a scammer to try out. For a "more secure" password, try using a series of upper and lower case letters combined with numbers, that don't spell out a specific word.

A knock-off of the free trip players is the "Pay Now" players. If you want them to guide you, they want you to pay them now! Just say, "No!"  The very best way to pay for a guide is to pay half now, and half later. This works both ways. So if after the trip, the person who you guided runs away and won't pay, you still get half your money. Also if the guide decides to kill you for the fun of it, you still have half your money!

Carriers are frequent in MMORPGs. Carriers are players who you pay to deliver an item to another player. The pay half now, half on delivery once again shows its face. This ensures the carrier gets some money if you scam him and tells him that he will not get all his money if he scams you.

Recently, there have been some programs being advertised in and out of game throughout the community. Some of these programs are cheater programs that violate the End User License Agreement, but there are also some that report to perform feats of magic such as reduce lag. We know of at least two of these programs to be Trojan Horses that are “keystroke loggers”. Keystroke loggers are programs that “spy” on your computers keyboards to steal information. These are malicious third party programs that might even lead to identity theft.

Just as a community reminder, please do not use or install 3rd party programs onto your computer that claim to enhance the game. 3rd party applications are a violation of the End User License Agreement and we have banned people for using programs that violate the EULA and will continue to do so.

We encourage you not to install anything on your computer that does not come from a trusted source. Please be very careful when choosing and installing programs onto your computer.