Well, I'm not one to typically make one of these posts but I figured this warranted at least something of this nature. Let's just get right to it.
Details/Events in order of occurrence:
A player by the name of Kores / Koress (Forum name Xqlusive) in the linkshell GravenShelf posted a thread yesterday asking to purchase some help with killing camping and killing Charby and receiving Joyeuse in exchange for 1.5 mil. (I would link the thread, but I'll get to why I can't further below. So here's a SS of it instead.)
I reply to the potential buyer via PM. He sends me his Discord Username/Tag: Kores#7070 Here are our only messages through the forums:
We move our discussion to Discord. Here is his Discord Username and #Tag for verification purposes. You can check the Discord handle he sent via forum PM to verify it's the same person:
And our entire discussion over Discord discussing prices, methods, and how the transaction will take place:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Those are the only messages I have before the camping/killing took place, some at the very end took place after obviously. Following this we camped Charby for somewhere in the ballpark of 3-4 hours. I got the claim, but we got two additional adds from repops and nearly wiped. Ended up recovering and everything was stable after that. We got the kill, Kores obtained the sword:
Throughout the fight we spoke a bit and shortly after the kill too. You can actually see him attempt to give himself plausible deniability during the fight still at the 20:12 time stamp in the second SS:
I warped out and started running to Bastok from Gustaberg OP. When I arrived they sent me a tell on their alt or mule - I'm not sure on which, so I replied asking for their POS only to find they had gone offline:
I send them the final Discord message at the top of this post, saying I will give them the benefit of the doubt and give them time to get back to me either in-game or Discord regarding the gil. Some time between 9 and 10:15 PM CST Kores deletes his own thread in the Buy/Sell section of the forums. That is the reason I can't link to it here. This was one of the very first things that came to my mind as a potential scenario after it happened, so I made sure to SS everything the moment he went offline - and as much as I could during/after the fight. Thankfully this person did not have the forethought to hide more evidence until nearly 3 hours after the fact.
Following the deletion of his own thread, Aray informs me over Discord that Kores just logged in, so I say "Hi":
After this, he reportedly ran into his MH with no red dot status and was offline again. At this point it's pretty undeniable there was malicious intent, so I knew I was going to make this post yesterday evening. Was just waiting to get off from work today to do so.
Bonus Excuse later in the evening while I was asleep:
MFW:
Let me preface this by saying I do not place the entirety of the blame on Kores for how this event unfolded. I clearly should have been less trusting than I was and likely will be in the future. We spoke pretty candidly and BS'd while we camped Charby together. They're in GravenShelf which seems to have a decent amount of players I have played with on a regular basis who are generally good people in my experience. This person came off as at least a little trustworthy based on that - enough for me to let my guard down - but I was obviously mistaken. In hindsight, him being unwilling to pay any amount up front was worth being suspicious over, but for a rare/ex item it's not like I would be losing anything other than time spent camping. I told Kores the same thing, but I'm not upset over the gil that was promised and never given. I'm more upset that this has caused me to re-evaluate my trust with strangers and to doubt my own ability to read people - something I generally consider myself pretty decent at. Yes even over an online video game lol.
1.5 - 1.9 mil honestly isn't that much for a lot of people myself included. However I know it definitely would be to many other players - players who might be less prepared or even more trusting than myself that this person could potentially take advantage of and swindle again in the future. I would like to avoid that and that is the main purpose of this thread. If this person chose to trash their own reputation over a Joyeuse of all things, then whatever. I don't expect them to try to defend themselves here, if they do I'm certain they will attempt to use the connection issue excuse again. I implore GravenShelf and any future linkshells/groups to re-evaluate their connection to this individual though, as they are not trustworthy.
TL;DR Kores/Koress of GravenShelf obtained a Joyeuse by nefarious means. Pretended to have connection issues immediately after it came to the point of trading for gil not once, but twice and for further proof deleted their thread in the Buy/Sell Forum just before they got online again - only to logoff immediately after I sent them a tell. I think it's pretty obvious what their intentions were at this point.
***FINAL EDIT April 30***
Conclusion:
