How much money will you spend on a virtual item just to achieve “absolute power”?

I try to visit Khan Online Philippines’ official board everyday to check what’s happening in the community. Khan Online’s community is composed of very loyal Khanatics that has stayed on with the game since open beta. In my visit, I would click on “View New Posts” and start my browsing from there. Every time I go through that list of new posts, a thread or topic from the marketplace forum will always grab my attention and those are threads that sell in-game accounts and/or items for real life cash (PHP).

One time, I saw a thread at the marketplace forum with a title that says something like “selling a level 140 set for Mickos”. A mobile phone number was posted and out of curiosity I sent a text message to the seller offering 1,500 PHP for it. The almost instant reply kind of surprised me. I was not expecting the vendor to reply immediately. The price given to me was 6,000 PHP for the set. I was surprised at the amount. I never realized that an “armor set” in Khan Online would cost that much.

I tried contacting a few other vendors of in-game items through texting but I never received a reply. Well, I did receive one reply but he said he was buying not selling.

What I did is just out of curiosity. A lot of these offers were being posted on the marketplace forum everyday and since I don’t know how much these items are worth in real cash (PHP), as an experiment, I decided to send a text message to one vendor to find out and find out I did.
Who would have thought that a virtual item or in this case an “armor set” in Khan Online Philippines would cost or worth that much? I thought that it would only cost a few pesos but I was wrong and I believe that players are buying these items because if not then these type of trading would have died a long time ago.

Almost everyday, you will see at least 1 of these illegal offers posted at the marketplace forum. Although the moderators are quick in closing illegal trade threads and banning forum accounts yet it doesn’t seems to discourage these players from posting these kinds of offers. Forum account banning is not enough to neither discourage nor stop these black-market/illegal traders from posting their offers because they’ll just create new forum accounts and continue on posting until their items are sold. Sad but true!

Black-market trading of virtual/in-game items isn’t new. In fact, there are many websites that deal with this type of trading and it is present in almost all MMOs specially the more popular ones like WOW, Everquest, Lineage, Guild Wars, etc. In Philippine published games, I’ve seen it everywhere not only in Khan Online. It’s big business.

Fortunately, game publishers like Netgames highly discourage black-market/illegal trading. The risk of being scammed is very high and since it is conducted outside of the game publisher’s server, the game publisher can do nothing to protect you. If something goes wrong and you lose both your money and game account then you alone will take the consequences of your action.

The question now is, “How much are you willing to pay to achieve absolute power? 6,000 PHP? 10,000 PHP?” For me, achieving absolute power in Khan Online or in any other game for that matter shouldn’t cost you more than what you are normally spending for the game. In my humble opinion, items acquired through hunting while partying with friends have more value than items bought from illegal means, besides, these are virtual items which will eventually be replaced by newer items once new game updates arrive.

I guess it all boils down to whatever makes a particular gamer/player happy. If achieving power in an online game by black-market trading makes them happy then who am I to stop them? It’s their money. They can do whatever they want with it but always be very, very careful when engaging in these kinds of transactions. There are hundreds of scammers out there who will not have second thoughts of stealing from you and like what was stated above the game publisher won’t and can’t help you if something goes terribly wrong.

Khan Online has the tag line “Absolute Power”. How you attain that so called “absolute power” is all up to you but I am strongly encouraging every Khanatics to achieve “absolute power” through legal means. Shortcuts through black-market/illegal trading might get you there faster but after that what’s next? Nothing, just waiting for the next new items to purchase. The joy of getting there through hard work and through partying with friends is much more fulfilling and for true hardcore Khanatics, is the only path to “absolute power”!

Hello Khanatics, I’m still hearing a lot about this speed hack thing. I’m quite sure that Khan’s client can detect speed hack but still I decided to test it again. This time I used a different speed hack program. The last one I used was SpeederXP and it expired already and I don’t want to crack it so, this time for my test I will use a new speed hack software. So let’s begin the experiment:

Speed hack software used: Speed Gear
Game client to test: Khan Online Philippines

Test 1: I loaded up Khan and once I was inside the game. I loaded up Speed Gear (SG). I then set SG to 10750, whoa, my character moves like a blur but seconds later I was booted out by the server. Test 1 confirms that Khan can detect speed hacks.

Test 2: I loaded up SG first and I kept the 10750 setting. Next, I loaded Khan but it froze.

Test 3: I loaded up Khan first and then SG but something stranged happened, no matter how I set SG (low or high) the speed remained the same. I closed both programs but my system froze. Remember, use speed hacks at your own risk. In this test, it greatly affected my computer.

Test 4: For the next test, I installed Khan and SG in another computer since I don’t want to further punished my main computer.

After the installation, I loaded up Khan and set the resolution to 800×600, set it to window mode and used 16 bit graphics. I loaded up SG and set it to 10500. Again, I was moving extraordinarily fast but again it was detected and I ws booted off the server.

Test 5: I set SG to 10300 and it was detected. I then set it to 10250, it is still fast and it took Khan clients a few minutes to detect it.

Test 6: I set SG to 10200 and Khan did not detect it. The speed is not fast but it’s above normal. Hey, any form of increase in speed, whether big or small, is still an advantage.

Test 7: I looked at SG’s setting and it seems that you can set predefined speed. So, in this this I set the number 1 key to 10100 (almost normal), number 2 key to 10200 (above normal), the number 3 key to 10300 (which is fast) and the number 0 key to 10000 (normal).

Here is what I found, by switching from fast to normal or normal to fast you can fool the client and speed hack will not be detected. The trick here is not to leave your setting to fast. If you do Khan will detect it and disconnect you, so switch immediately to normal once you have killed your target!

In my test, I did not use any other programs except the two. I also did not alter the programs nor did I crack or use any forms of hexing. The programs (Khan client and SG) were used as they were without modifications.

My test confirms that Khan can indeed detect speed hack but with a little tirck, it can be fooled. My suggestion is that the developers increase the sensitivity of their anti-speed hack system or just don’t allow certain programs to load together with Khan Online’s game client.

If there are other tricks then I’m sorry to say I’m not aware of any except the one I found with my test. You are free to conduct your own test but again I caution everyone about using speed hack programs and the effect it has on your computer. This is based on my own personal experience in using SG but SG and other speed hacking programs are legitimate softwares. They are not cheat, they are used to speed up slow computers, especially old computers, but they can become a cheat when used, especially in online games, to gain an unfair advantage against other online gamers and they are not endorsed by game publishers thus by using speed hack programs you are violating the “Use of Third Party Program Rule”.

I hope that the game publisher finds my test useful in their efforts to eliminate and free Khan of these exploit.

Thank you very much!