Curse

El Perma Shadow · Mar 07, 2010, 09:10 PM // 21:10

fail hackers for not even knowing how to spoof the email address

Anakita Snakecharm · Mar 08, 2010, 12:09 AM // 00:09

Yeah, this sort of e-mail should definitely send up red flags. I know, wishful thinking, but wow.

In my experience, what's described in the e-mail is nothing like a legitimate closed beta recruiting procedure anyway:

I've never heard of a legitimate beta test where the game development company approached a (not personally known, non-QA-professional, random stranger) potential tester directly and out of the blue via private e-mail, rather than posting a general announcement and inviting people to apply. Why waste effort contacting people who may not even be interested, with no way of being sure whether they've reached their quota, when they know they have a pool of people already eager?

I also think it would be unusual that you wouldn't be asked your system specs (and sometimes your previous testing experience) before being chosen, since part of the point is to see how the game runs on a variety of systems... which won't be efficiently accomplished via random mailings. This wouldn't matter later on for server stress tests when they just want to see how many people will fit, but that would be much closer to launch, not this early on.

Plus, particularly this early in the process, in a legitimate test, testers would almost certainly be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement before getting near a download, so the company has legal remedy if their trade secrets are blabbed all over the internet.

Plus being asked to disable your antivirus? Wow.

I really hope no one gets scammed by this, but it should be pretty obvious that such an offer is too good to be true. When/if GW2 is actually available for beta testing, there's no way it'll be this fly-by-night.

Thanks for the heads up!