That 20-50 carpenter hack? heres how and then someFollow

Surely not?!?

It actually looks like it is alot worse than just this. Read through the BG thread linked in the OP. It seems the hackers can take any simple item (say 99 potions purchased from an NPC) turn them into any other item they like (say Allegan gold Pieces) and sell them right back.

Or, just tell the server to give them a billion gil - and it will!

I'm not very tech-y myself and would never try to figure out exactly how to work this, but if this is really the case it should be fixed pronto.

Edit: to fix my quote.

Edited, Oct 11th 2013 4:10pm by Canadensis

Hey JSON! I know that! Had to spend some quality time converting JSON strings into XML and vice versa in the 4th semester of my master's degree program.

I'm also smart enough not to use Lua and hack a JSON query to give my character six billion gil.

Feel like things would be far, far, far worse if this is truly the case. Isn't to say there isn't some shenanigans going on, but for something like item converting, I'd like to see a vid of a live server pulling it off.

I dont mean to sound the "Game over" sounds, but people (still) being able to give themselves and others any item, including AF2 and Allegan pieces, and 300 bilion gil if they so wanted to...

This alone seems like grounds for a full wipe, gil wipe or even a "See you all in 3.0 in a few years" from SE :/

despite what i posted above, i'm still not positive that this isn't an elaborate troll, but yes, if its real, it is bad medicine.

It's difficult to believe that something that blatant wouldn't show up in a log SOMEWHERE.

Unfortunately it might not be possible to fix the problem in any sort of reasonable timeframe. If, as I suspect, the client has most of the control in this game, then fixing the problem isn't as simple as patching a couple lines of code. It would involve an overhaul of the client-server relationship. Besides the fact that something on that scale takes a long time, SE may not have the infrastructure necessary to put MORE demand on their servers. We've already seen what happens when their servers are overloaded, and that's under current conditions.

Basically it sounds like they've gone from one extreme to the other. At 1.0's launch, the server was responsible for signing off on EVERYTHING, including menu navigation. It seems that now we've shifted to the other extreme where it does almost nothing to verify that what the client is telling it is legit.

It's possible to fix this, but I'm not sure it can be done in a reasonable amount of time on a live product. I honestly don't know what they should do from here, and I'm not sure they do either.

It's called diversifying your portfolio. Let's say the "UPDATE Account SET gil=999999999 WHERE pid=@me" technique gets cleaned out and all those assets are destroyed, you're still going to need a backup source of cash if you still want to keep selling gil. So then you turn to your teleporting mining bot army.

Still, the fact this has been discovered and reported on for weeks is damn depressing. Can this game even have a future if you can hack yourself anything you want (I've seen reports of Goobue mounts on fresh start servers, minions that aren't yet released in-game, insta-level 50, insta-full bank accounts) and not get punished?

I've read that they're deleting the threads as soon as they pop up, as though they've never heard of the Streisand Effect.

Don't y'all think that the game would be flooded with gil and practically ruined by now if this were 100% true? Many years ago when a hack screwed up the economy in ffxi, inflation took off extremely fast.

As of now I am still playing the game having the same fun I've had all along with no substantial difference in the economy since I started at release.

I'm sure there is some legitimacy to the alleged issue, but I suspect it isn't as game breaking as people are making out. It will get corrected and the game will continue on just fine. I suspect the vast majority of people playing would be a little scared to buy gil right now and most certainly not mess around with any hacks. Most people actually play to have fun, not to cheat. So no matter how much gil they create, it does them no good if everyone isn't buying it all up. This isn't their first rodeo, they can track the big money moving around and ban/remove it.

I love how people rate down people that know what they are talking about sometimes.

Couple of reasons they're deleting them:
- They don't want information on hacking the game on the main forum (totally justified).
- Leaving those threads on the main forum is akin to poking a hornet's nest (the Official Forum) with a big stick.

If people were trying to be actually useful by posting information about it on the main forum, thy'd simply file a bug report.

Edited, Oct 14th 2013 3:32am by blowfin

Well considering the game hasn't blown up and is still operational, and the economy hasn't been flooded with gil, I'm starting to think the whole JSON connection may not be 100% accurate.

Now is there an issue with botting? Yes, absolutely. We all see mining and farming bots, and this photo of the guy leveling to 50 in 2 minutes is another great example that the game is not perfect...

But I have to believe if it were THAT easy to do we'd have many more examples by now.