Regarding hacks, bots and other nasties?

Heres one that caught me TOTALLY off guard and am unsure of what damage it is going to wreak. I was in post sear Ascalon, Amer Dis 1, selling some weapons ...some one pm'd asking to see them. We met (at the unforgivingly crowded) storage and opened a trade window. After seeing what I had to offer this "person" says, no thanks (real polite like) and then asks if I would liket to see some of -thier- stuff that I might be interested in. So we go ahead open another trade window and they bring up some items for me to view. One of which was this scroll , gold in color, that had attributes something the effect of "triple XP when fighting monsters for whole group"....with something else. I ask how much, they say 1.5 k...I say ok and its a done deal. I ask them how it works and they reply " you just have to double click on it." ok....im on my way.

I never did use it, however. Then I went over to Nolani to continue moving some weapons. During those transactions, I mention to some one that I Have this scroll of blah blah blah....they offer me 2500 for it....so I think...why not...

we open a trade window, and as i slide the scroll into place,.. this person changes their mind, sez noway...that is a hacked item.....off guard I say HUH?

they say if you notice that when you slid the item into the display window, for a split second you see a "cartoony" face?......i sez, yeah I seen that. they say thats how you can tell whether its real or not.....I was blown away cuz A) ive seen that happen before B) dont know if having these items in my inventory will make me succeptable to "hackers".....kinda wigged out about the whole thing. anyone have any ideas?

thanks guys/gals

That's a new one to me too.

Also, something I noticed last night: I was at Ironhammer going on an infusion run for my new tattoo and someone was spamming the channel with "**W/R LFG for Infusion***" and on each side of the text were these goldish silvery stars? That's the first time I've seen that. What is it? Is it something from the collector's edition or ... ???

uh...makes no sense to me. I'd say the guy was either a) paranoid or b) decided he didn't want it last minute/couldn't afford it and figured you'd get upset if he didn't come up with some bullshit excuse.

as far as I know there isn't a way as of yet to "hack items"....since your inventory isn't stored on your computer or his computer but on a central server location using ID codes I can't foresee a reasonable way to "hack" an item.

disclaimer: this is not to say there isn't a way...because there 100% is a way....I just think it'll be some time before we see these hacks hitting the community as they require an incredible amount of research/packet sniffing/debugging/testing.

Aniewel: that's IME text...since the game was programmed for a universal release...meaning the version you get is the same as the version the koreans etc get....IME had to be enabled in text boxes.

IME = Global Input Methods Editors...they allow you to input characters that you see in languages like Korean and Japanese using a standard 101 key US keyboard

isnt that just ascii... but that part with the cartoony face baffles me.

With the inherant balance items seems to have (the best aren't really a huge amount greater than average...), would it even be worth the effort? Probably someone will just to do it, but still.

Those who played the BWE will recall the "Under Construction" cartoony guy... he is a default picture for an item that has no other icon. What is most likely happening is that when the other person drags the item on, your computer either streams the icon, or has to bring it up from your hard drive, and depending on your system, either one can cause a split-second delay, which could cause the under construction guy to display before the proper icon can be composited over it.

Just my guess.

Very unlikely that there are any 'hacked' items...everything is server based.

THATS THE GUY!!!!....he looks like Super Mario or Wario or one of those guys....that makes me feel a little better....and by the way the person still bought the scroll but at 1/5 of what he/she originally offered....so im out 1k ...oh well....lesson learned....I was most concerned with haveing my PC hacked with a key logger or some other such nasty....I dont download bots or purchase ebay crap or anything like that so in that regard , that was my main concerns....and to warn you guys of a possible threat,,,,thanx all so very much.

I absolutely agree with Mr kecky here. either you had the item at the time when they indroduced it to the game but hadn't applied a picture to it, or you had an incredible lag spike where it couldn't even load the picture correctly instantly.
But on a more important matter.. what's with those wierd symbols people are starting to use in chat channels.. like an above person said, he say wierd stars(not asterisks). but i've also seen people use triangles! honest to god triangles.. are these the wierd symbls that happen when you press alt 829 etc in microsoft word..? jus curious.

so he was basically a scammer trying to get you to sell him something for 1/10th what it's worth....

ZD: no...those alt codes are ASCII(American Standard Code for Information Interchange)...what's being used is IME..I explained it a bit more in an above post. If you'd like Microsoft has an extensive knowledge base regarding IME at their website.

That somewhat interests me. so how do i get these IMEs... and whats the commands to use them

Now - not that I'm in ANY way endorsing the use of hacking - I'm 110% against it, but it would be worth the effort. Imagine an inventory full of unid'd Superior Vigors? Or having multiple 5:1 Vampiric Storm Bows of +30 Fortitude? You'd practically have infinite funds to do whatever you please.

edit - dunno why i quoted that

When things had the under construction icon, you could still mouse over and get the description.

this item had a full description......so basicly, i was ripped...no prob....i try to be careful but you know....some times we get bested....

I once heard a wise Capt. say to one of his LTS....'it is possible to make no mistakes, and still lose'....

Actually I am quite certain that only your account information, your player STATE (as in where you are, what missions etc) and your current gold count are on the master server database. Items are actually files in your gw folder. Go look.

Something's up.

I most definately will take a look....

*goes to write an inventory hack*

had the same thing I think
found a mursaat hammer showed someone in my guild he said all he could see was under construction pic which was strange because I could see it as a hammer
think you were scammed by the one you sold it to told you rubbish

Really? That lone dat file holds your inv? Eh... even is someone hacked that, im sure they have an inventory checking scan right as you log on that sees if there were any changes. And yes, im against hackers too.

but how would you know ...how could you ID a 'hack' file....im pretty puter savy but this one may be out of my league.

I would do it by having the servers hold some random characters from different parts of the file (like the xxx char is a 5) and just compare them. If you hacked it would be very risky because if you xchanged 1 of those characters it wouldn't work.

This was thought up in like 30 seconds so feel free to tell me how it won't work.

Even if u did hack seriously whats the benefit? If I could hack I dont need 20 5:1 vamp strings cuz I can hack the item I need and dont need to get money first to buy my item. (Only profit is for eBay sellers)
Ppl that hack in games (more then just normal cheats and hex editiors) are stupid, why buy a game and then mess it up? Where is the fun?

Anyway there are lots of ways the get loads of gold without hacking, u just need to find it :-)

Considering it does occasional database maintenence, I'm guessing there's a cyclic redundancy check or two calculated. You can start changing bits around if you want, but I'd have a few spare accounts to do this on, not your main one with 1000 hours and everything unlocked... once or twice is a glitch, but active memstate alteration kinda always looks like, well, active memstate alteration. That would suck to have your main account banned. And since DX net connects are proxy-friendly, I'd bounce them if I were you. Sniffing and packet deconstruction is one thing. You'd just be begging for it. If you're serious about this... can I have your etco before you get banned?

Aniewiel, it's Unicode. Speaking of bans, want to go back to that ПΣСЯΟΜΛΝСΣЯ thread and watch who gets themselves banned next? Unicode IME - this is Greek & Russian chars and display fine in GW. Sadly it's becoming more popular so expect silly amounts of psuedo-ASCII art abuse coming soon. (Hey roleplayers!! The Runic set is Unicode #16A0 - #16F0!! Only speak in rune!)

i got mine!

I think he had just seen that item for the very first time. Either that or the merchants are selling the 'hacked' item. The very first time I saw a scroll like that was after the merchants that sold them were put in the game. After THAT incident it never did it for that item ever again.

What HE saw was simply a placeholder image for that item. The image would have persisted based on his connection speed till the proper image was in place.

So this is just another flag thrown up in the air for nothing. The guy that claims it was a hacked item does'nt know shit and should'nt be making claims like that.

In Droknar's Forge at the scroll trader, he had those goofy under construction icons to for scrolls when I took a look at his wares. So yeah, doubt its a hacked item.