Agent Insights Ep 04: Flash Trading

What's up everyone! It's me again with another episode of Agent Insights. In this episode, I'll be talking about an older scamming method that was common in the older days of AJ, but not so much now. The name of this scam is "Flash Trading".

Long ago, Flash trading started out as a game where jammers traded their itens quickly without looking at what they were receiving. Well, if you factor out scamming and assume that everyone trades items of equal value, then it would make a good party game. That, I believe, was its original purpose

Back in the old days of AJ, the trading system was different. There was no "trade confirmation" screen - once the sender starts the trade, there is no turning back. As soon as the recipient got a trade request, they can either accept or reject the request. The sender can only cancel the request before the recipient hits accept. As soon as the recipient hits "accept", the trade is complete.

Scammers decided to use that party game to scam. They would pretend to flash trade like anyone else, but suddenly, and most likely, randomly, switch the good items they were trading with bad items. If the scammed do not realise that the scammer actually changed their item, then they would accept the scammer's bad item for a good item they had on trade.

Today, the trading system has been improved, but this doesn't fully stop the possibility of flash trading. Today, there is an extra step in the sender's part to confirm the trade after the recipient hits accept. If the sender is the one who sent bad stuff, then this doesn't fully block all flash trading. However, what it does is to give the recipient a little more time to react.

Avoiding flash trade scams is relatively simple. If you see people advertising for a flash trade, simply don't participate. Also, be sure to carefully look at the item that the sender wants to trade you. That would give you enough time to think if the trade is worth it.

That's all from me now, until next time.

-Dew

Random Saturday Ep 13: Mind Blowing Update

Hey all, Blue here with the 100th Post! Woo!! So, today I'm going to be talking about Animal Jam's claim of a "mind blowing update" coming up, that they mentioned in their live stream about a week ago.

So, as most of you will know, Animal Jam has been called dying for a while. One of the reasons this is happening because of the low quality of the recent updates, with no new dens or proper animals besides re patterned ones like the falcon and deer.

 

However, AJHQ acknowledged that their updates hadn't been the best in 2018, but they said 2019 will be full of surprises. there are many guesses as to what new features AJHQ might add, and here are some of my favorites.

1. Pet adventures! This is one I heard of on Shopking's video, and I honestly thing it would be quite cool to play as your pet in an exclusive adventure.

2. The ostrich! Animal Jam showed it before as a possible chance, so why don't they release it now?

3. Trade features! These are some I came up with myself. what if you could find someones user and send them a trade even if they are offline, and then they can check a trading center for their offers!

4. Pets should be able to be gifted! Like, who doesn't want that feature?

5. You can trade your animals, dens, gems and diamonds! That would be awesome! There would be so many more possibilities...

6. You can sort your buddies. Often you make a really good friend or play with people for an adventure, and you want to remember their user and not just as a random buddy. What if you could put them into a "good friends" group or a "great Adventurer" group? that would be so helpful!

And that's all for today's Random Saturday and 100th post! Blue, over and out.

Agent Insights Ep 03: Avoiding Hackers

Hey all, Jade here! In today's Agent Insights, I wanted to talk about a topic that's a little less known than how to avoid typical scammers- avoiding hackers!

True hackers are people who get into accounts that don't belong to them through a various number of methods. They may or may not delete or take items, but it is more common than not for them to mess around and sabotage your things. False hackers are people who threaten to hack in order to get rare items, but don't actually have the means to do it. False hacking is a less-known method of scamming.

This post is kind of long, so I'm putting the rest of it under the cut. Click read more to continue reading!

Random Saturday Ep 12: Eagles in PW

What's up everyone, it's me again with the next episode of Random Saturdays. Today, I'll be talking about the recent introduction of Eagles in AJPW. Let's go!

So recently, AJHQ decided to release Eagles, the first flying animal, into the world of AJPW. When they became available, I bought one for a test flight.

After taking my eagle out for a flight, I could tell that it isn't exactly the same as in AJ. In the main lands of Jamaa, the Eagle does soar above other animals on the ground. However, in rooms like dens and parties, the Eagle appears to be 'grounded' like any other animal. It doesn't seem like the Eagle can fly over even the lowest of ostacles!

If you want a pet to fly with your Eagle, you have to pair your Eagle with a pet that can fly. Honeybees, doves and phantoms are just a few examples of pets that can fly with your Eagle.

One interesting thing that I've noticed about the Eagle is that it can sit on all sorts of high places. It can sit on the roof of Jam Mart Clothing, on the roof of the Conservation Museum and even the peak of Mount Shiveer! There are so many 'hidden' spots that an Eagle can sit on, I can't list them all.

When Eagles were first introduced into AJ, they got an exclusive adventure, The Forgotten Desert. As of this post, the Eagles in AJPW haven't gotten anything remotely exclusive yet, which might be a good sign for AJPW. I remember I wrote about the member non-member gap in AJ and PW in a previous post. Perhaps this is PW's style to give those with Eagles a new experience, while ensuring that those without Eagles don't miss out too much.

Well, that's all from me today, until next time.
-Dew

Monthly Update - December

Whats up everyone, here we have the monthly update for December. This update's gonna be a short one since we're still trying to stabilise stuffs in the society, and not much has happened. Let's go!

First of all, welcome to 2019 everyone! 2018 has been a blast with ups and downs, and highs and lows. Here's to a good year of 2019!

So, since Is left, we've been trying our best to keep the society running. We've been doing our best to stick to the schedule we've come up with to keep the posts rollin' in.

Also, we like to welcome the newest member of the society, Omega Blue! Welcome to the team!

Currently, we still are alternating Agent's Insights and Random Saturdays due to the lack of manpower. If you think you've got what it takes to join the society, go ahead and fill in that form in Joining and we'll review it. With more members, we'd be able to post more frequently.

That's all to this post, till next time!

-Dew

Random Saturday Ep 11: Happy Jamaalidays

Hey everyone, welcome back to another installment of Random Saturdays! Since we are in the final lap of the Jamaaliday season, I thought today's Random Saturday should be about the Jamaalidays. Without further ado, let's go!

For those of you new to Animal Jam or Play Wild, the Jamaalidays is a special season in Jamaa celebrated throughout the month of December. The Jamaalidays parallels Christmas, which is also celebrated in December. During this season, the whole of Jamaa becomes decked out in Christmas decorations. You can find presents, Christmas Lights and Snowmen all around Jamaa! In AJ, there is the seasonal adventure Jamaaliday Rescue, which is a maze adventure like twists and turns.

There also is a month-long gift calendar throughout the month of December. Every day, a new gift can be claimed from the guft calendar. Some of these gifts are really good, like diamonds in AJ or Sapphires in PW. A Jamaaliday Spiked Collar was also given out on one of the days in PW, and that was really cool too!

Throughout the season, Jamaaliday themed den items and clothing will be sold in stores. While Jam Mart Clothing is a common store to visit, why not check out the Shiveer Shoppe? After all, it is the shop in the Hot Cocoa Hut in Mount Shiveer.

Last but not least, why not hang out with your buddies? The Jamaalidays is a season of celebration. Spend some good time with your buddies and have fun!

There are a few days left to the end of the Jamaalidays, so truly, enjoy the great season! Happy Jamaalidays to you all!

-Dew

Agent Insights Ep 02: Trust Trading Scams

Hey everyone, Jade here with the newest episode of Agent Insights! Today, we'll be discussing one of the most common kinds of scams- trust trading. 

Trust trading, also known as trusting, is when you trade another user some of your good items for something bad, then they trade back the good items. For example: animaljammer1 trades a Spiked Collar for animaljammer2's Necklace. Then, animaljammer1 puts the Necklace on their trade list, and animaljammer2 trades back.

This may sound like just a fun game, but it can easily be twisted into more than this. How do you know you can trust the other person? What if they don't trade your item(s) back? The answers to these questions are very unclear. 

Because this method is relatively simple, it is often used for "giveaways" by scammers. Usually, the scammer will tell everyone that the giveaway is "trust" and that the best trade will win. Though they may trade some items back throughout the contest, in the end, they don't trade back at least one Jammer's items, and lock everyone out of their den, effectively scamming those items.

There are, of course, some tricks that scammers may play with this method to make it seem more believable. For example, they might tell everyone that accepting the trust trade is not required. However, they will often follow this up with either saying that unaccepted trades are worth less than accepted trades (which puts users who don't accept at a disadvantage in the giveaway) or that the final trade from the user who wins must be accepted in order to get the items.

Overall, there are much easier ways to do giveaways than trust trading. For example, the user giving away items could give everyone numbers, then use a random number generator, then give the items to whoever had the numbers given by the generator. Trust trading just isn't the way to go, even if the host is trustworthy- The giveaway rules don't even make sense! Why should the person with the rarest items be given more, instead of someone with less rares gaining them??

Moral of the story: Don't trust strangers on the Internet! You don't really know them, even if you think you do. Plus, better safe than sorry.

Random Saturday Ep 10: Evolution of Adventures

Adventures have been part of the game for quite a while now, with the first one coming out in mid-2013. They’ve changed quite a bit over the years. Below, I’ve tracked some of the changes in them over time.

Increasing Scale

Each consecutive adventure has increased in size, scale, and importance to the storyline. We’ve gone from saving small bunny burrows to taking down the Phantom Fortress. I think they might have reached the scale limit, though, with the newer adventures either being smaller or spinning off into different plotlines. We know they’ll never actually get rid of Phantoms in the adventures (unless a new enemy is introduced), because then you couldn’t make more adventures, but they will seemingly get closer. Eventually we’ll probably increase in scale enough to get to the Phantom Factory or the Phantom HQ or the Phantom Intergalactic Space Station (actually that would be cool).

Graphics

The graphics style has changed noticeably throughout the adventures. Mainly it evolved to/rotates between what I’ll call Traditional and Shiny. Adventures started off traditional. Everything looked very natural. There weren’t a whole lot of shiny machinery items, a lot of it was plants and old buildings and tree houses and things of that nature. 

As we moved on into the Phantom Fortress, Badlands and other such adventures/places, things got a lot shinier, mostly due to the style of phantom machinery. Den items from shiny and traditional adventures tend to look out of place next to each other. They’ve reverted back to traditional for Trials of Zios and beyond, though. I think traditional looks better in general, since it mixes with more other items/dens.

Mechanics

A lot of different mechanics and items have been added over the years. You started out with chomper plants, watering and plugs, and then added boomseeds, crystals, different phantom types (kings, engineers, heavy phantoms, etc.), paintseeds, snares, and a whole slew of other things. 

Nerfing

Lots of adventures got nerfed as time went on. The Normal Mode versions got shortened, had obstacles removed, and generally got easier as time went on. The Hard Mode versions stayed the same, resulting in some pretty big difficulty differences.

There we go, Random Saturday Episode 10 is complete. Bye!