Weird bug that created a dupe!

1. I wanted to give a free Anni to DthWshxd
2. He created a game.
3. I joined his game.
4. I dropped the Anni on the floor.
5. DthWshxd was unable to pick up the Anni on the floor.
6. DthWshxd confirmed that he didn't already have an Anni that was preventing him from picking it up.
7. I picked up the Anni.
8. I successfully gave the Anni to DthWshxd using the trade window.
9. Later, I check that it's still in my inventory.
10. DthWshxd confirms that he did receive it.
11. The Anni appears to have been duped.

Did some weird network problems cause certain events to not register?

No idea, never saw that one (but you'd probably better both trash the Anni if you don't want to get a ban)

Necrarch wrote: 7 months ago

No idea, never saw that one (but you'd probably better both trash the Anni if you don't want to get a ban)

How is this detected and do you mean

Lance's BNET account will be banned?

Dunno what Blizz does, but better not to have the two Annis active at the same time, I don't know how they do that.

AFAIK all items have a unique ID. Even two

Ist runes have different IDs. When an item gets duplicated. Two items with the same ID exist. Now blizzard does a so called rust storm from time to time scanning for items with the same ID. Then all those items get deleted.

Are you sure this is not an

Annihilus with exactly the same parameters as the one you dropped? Asking because when I dealt with lots of identified annis before, I didn't notice at first at least three pairs of identical ones, and there were 6 or 7 of such pairs.

Has anyone tried to reproduce this issue yet?

Necrarch wrote: 7 months ago

No idea, never saw that one (but you'd probably better both trash the Anni if you don't want to get a ban)

I was giving it away anyway, so I'm not bothered if it poofs. But account banning? That's scary. Is there a way we can confirm that this might happen? If possession of a dupe is grounds for an account ban, then I think a LOT of people will be in trouble since anyone who trades from the major trade sites is more than likely to be in possession of one or more duped items.

bigbikefan wrote: 6 months ago

Are you sure this is not an

Annihilus with exactly the same parameters as the one you dropped? Asking because when I dealt with lots of identified annis before, I didn't notice at first at least three pairs of identical ones, and there were 6 or 7 of such pairs.

I do have some Annis with identical stats, but this wasn't one of them. All my Annis for trade are stored on a mule on a different account, and I had to specifically go and grab this one for DthWshxd.

Teebling wrote: 6 months ago

Has anyone tried to reproduce this issue yet?

I've literally traded hundreds of Annis and this is the first time it's happened and I have no idea how to reproduce it. I do notice that there have been more network problems than usual in the past few days though.

I don't know what Blizzard would do, but better safe than sorry, if it's not a 20/20, I'd advise to trash it away

In simplest and intentionally cryptic terms:
Yes, you may have accidentally duped your anni.
No, his post is not a reliable set of instructions on how to dupe stuff as it is missing the critical piece.
No, I won't fill in that piece and odds are Lanceor has no clue what that missing step is as it wasn't intentional or likely even noticed.
But yeah, it can happen by pure coincidence/accident.
Or he/you did indeed simply mistake a different anni for the same one.

Beyond that, owning a dupe generally isn't (or traditionally wasn't) grounds for being banned. If it were, something like 99.9% of the entire playerbase would've disappeared 20 years ago. Actively, intentionally and repeatedly duping however certainly is when caught.
Personally, I would chalk it up to pure coincidence and leave it at that, not worrying about it any further.

Though do feel free to check if both of you still each have a copy of it in a few days or so, seeing how there should be mechanisms preventing that. Assuming they didn't turn those off by now as well to shave more server cost off D2. :/

Schnorki wrote: 6 months ago

Though do feel free to check if both of you still each have a copy of it in a few days or so, seeing how there should be mechanisms preventing that. Assuming they didn't turn those off by now as well to shave more server cost off D2. :/

@Lanceor Please do update if the item does poof or not. I've been trading with reckless abandon in D2R assuming duping wasn't possible, but if duping is a real possibility I'll be trading with a bit more caution from now on

If there really is a confirmed dupe method in D2R, thank you for not sharing it Schnorki.

Knappogue wrote: 6 months ago

Schnorki wrote: 6 months ago

Though do feel free to check if both of you still each have a copy of it in a few days or so, seeing how there should be mechanisms preventing that. Assuming they didn't turn those off by now as well to shave more server cost off D2. :/

@Lanceor Please do update if the item does poof or not. I've been trading with reckless abandon in D2R assuming duping wasn't possible, but if duping is a real possibility I'll be trading with a bit more caution from now on

If there really is a confirmed dupe method in D2R, thank you for not sharing it Schnorki.

Well, there has been more than one since launch.
Afaik, methods that made their way into "public" domain have since been fixed (e.g. season stash) and there's none of those left so normal trading should be perfectly fine. Should...no guarantees...

But yeah, the actual no. of known instances of dupe sales/poofs has been fairly limited in D2:R from what I've seen. Mainly because back when blizz was still actually working on fixing stuff (i.e. 20 years ago), they added a boatload of different mechanisms to address the issue. Didn't exactly make things fun back then as it came too late for the bazillions of public dupes that hit before those mechanisms and then just screwed you out of everything you owned but they certainly (significantly) decreased the likelihood of you ending up trading for dupes from then on.

I wouldn't worry about it. Unless you're buying perfect rolls off farms selling 100 of them at a time of course.

You got me super-scared about items "poofing". What would happen in cases where you, for example, oblivion to duping received a duped rune then used the said rune to make a runeword, could your item poof out of existence after such a "server cleanup"? :O
I mean, I was using some external programs (in og/legacy D2) for quick character access/management before and I know for sure that in those programs you can actually see an ID of entire item and all it's parts (i.e. if you put a jewel inside an item you can see item's ID but also that specific jewel's ID as well)... However this only worked for offline characters, but nevertheless, Blizz must have same [and better] tools, right? Right? o_O

I definitely had people just give me like Bers and Jahs for free or for some random low level uniques (that are usually worth like a

Pul or

Lem). I kinda suspected those runes might have been either products of botting (which we had last year IIRC?) or they were somehow duped...

In any case, this stuff's scawy and I don't like it anymowe.

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

You got me super-scared about items "poofing". What would happen in cases where you, for example, oblivion to duping received a duped rune then used the said rune to make a runeword, could your item poof out of existence after such a "server cleanup"? :O
I mean, I was using some external programs (in og/legacy D2) for quick character access/management before and I know for sure that in those programs you can actually see an ID of entire item and all it's parts (i.e. if you put a jewel inside an item you can see item's ID but also that specific jewel's ID as well)... However this only worked for offline characters, but nevertheless, Blizz must have same [and better] tools, right? Right? o_O

I definitely had people just give me like Bers and Jahs for free or for some random low level uniques (that are usually worth like a

Pul or

Lem). I kinda suspected those runes might have been either products of botting (which we had last year IIRC?) or they were somehow duped...

In any case, this stuff's scawy and I don't like it anymowe.

Making a runeword with a duped rune won't poof the rune. Each item has a unique item identifier. However, making a runeword, takes the existing item IDs and creates a new one for the newly combined items. Well, that's how it was in LoD days, not sure if Blizzard employes the same mechanisms in D2R.

Knappogue wrote: 6 months ago

Making a runeword with a duped rune won't poof the rune. Each item has a unique item identifier. However, making a runeword, takes the existing item IDs and creates a new one for the newly combined items. Well, that's how it was in LoD days, not sure if Blizzard employes the same mechanisms in D2R.

Ah got it... So you are saying that their duplicate detecting system/tool only searches/scans for whole items and not each component they are made of? Good. It wouldn't be nice to not have a knowledge of a potential duped rune and then end up your whole new item (made from some such runes) just poofs into thin air after some time. I definitely remember that in

Atma you could inspect the rw and it had it's own hexa ID displayed but you could select any rune within it and it would still display their unique hexa IDs as well. Well, yeah, I hope they didn't change anything from original (I actually never played online in original D2 and well never had anything being deleted from offline chars). Thank you, kind sir!

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

Ah got it... So you are saying that their duplicate detecting system/tool only searches/scans for whole items and not each component they are made of?

No. It scans for all item identifiers, regardless of their location. IIRC this ONLY works when making runewords. This is due to how runewords are made. Making one is effectively creating a entirely new item, for bnet servers, and destroying the components in the same process. Rolling a runeword adds attributes that are not found in the pieces. That exact action is done in a different process than socketing 2 Bers in a COA, for example. If you had two duped Bers in your COA, and bnet did their scan. The Bers would poof because a new unique identifier was not created when socketing those runes. Adding 2 Bers to the COA did not create a new item in the eyes of bnet servers, and their existing identifiers were not destroyed.

Finally I understand it now. Thanks a lot for clarifying that for me.

TheDoo wrote: 6 months ago

Finally I understand it now. Thanks a lot for clarifying that for me.

Anytime dude

I'll hang on to that Anni to see if it poofs - if it does, I'll update you all. I've also messaged DthWshxd to let him know.

Maybe I'm lucky, but none of my high runes have disappeared yet. Long, long ago (D2:LoD 1.0x?), I do recall seeing someone uploading a picture of a completed runeword with one rune missing. They claimed that a rune disappeared after the runeword was made. I can't verify whether this really happened or not.

Lanceor wrote: 6 months ago

I'll hang on to that Anni to see if it poofs - if it does, I'll update you all. I've also messaged DthWshxd to let him know.

Maybe I'm lucky, but none of my high runes have disappeared yet. Long, long ago (D2:LoD 1.0x?), I do recall seeing someone uploading a picture of a completed runeword with one rune missing. They claimed that a rune disappeared after the runeword was made. I can't verify whether this really happened or not.

it would be easy to manipulate an image and make it look as though a rune were missing.