The History of Scamming | Diablo 2 Scams 

Getting scammed in d2 as a child helped me not get scammed as an adult :)

It is worth mentioning that Coooley had to recreate all of these scamming situations in order to give us footage of them. Also I like how the end segment seemed like it was going to be an Ad for some password protection service, but nope it was just Coooley helping out his viewers. Awesome video as always.

I remember watching someone's corpse pop from getting killed (again) by another monster. Grabbed his stuff and gave it back to him in town.

Getting corpse popped, trade swapped and item spoofed was just another month in D2! It was so part of the game culture that I remember my friends just saying 'damn that sucks, oh well'

I remember asking people to move the item around before they trade it... to prove that it wasnt a spoof !

I still don’t trust ANYONE in ANY online game when trading because of D2 scams.

I got item spoofed once. Shit got so common for a while there. You had to ask every single person you traded with to move the items around to make sure they were real. And even then you had to check the item to make sure they didn't art switch!

I remember my little brother crying hard after getting scammed out of an SOJ Bro that was 15 years ago, I'll never forget it though, people in this game were ruthless 😂

Man, d2 trading was one the more formative experiences in my childhood. Learned how fucking awful people could be, then learned how awful I could be. What a time.

Had a guy trading Tal's armor back in the day for 1 SoJ .I must not have been paying attention and ended up with a Rattlecage.

Got caught only with the trade swap back in the day. D2 taught me a lot about how people are in real life in the end.

I had a Paladin buddy who I played with for maybe 2 years. We played almost daily, and one day I wanted help transferring some gear over to my new Paladin. After I had dropped the loot on the ground and swapped characters, he had picked up everything and blocked me. Taught me to NEVER trust anyone who wasn’t a real life friend that played Diablo.

Took me 3 months of hard work to finally get my first ever IK set, weeks later I heard about this enigma thing. One day someone offered me the archon plate version for IK armor and weapon, then he said brb need more room, I ended up with a white mage plate, cried myself to sleep.

Thanks for this, important topic going into D2R - but you forgot the most devastating scam :( - when your online friend of two-three years, with whom you have shared many adventures with, says that it would be great for you to reroll to 'x' class so you can crush noobs in PK better, only to rob you while transferring everything and unfriend you. The desire for gear really brought out the worst in people.

Oh boy this gave me flashbacks when internet cafes started popping

You forgot the biggest scam of all honestly. When a group of kids made multiple accounts with names sounding like company or admin names and asked for account information to prepare for the upcoming expansions. That scam alone started the whole "Do not share your password" message that blizzard started sending out.

Dude, I lost stuff in SINGLE player back in the days when you could only have one corpse. I used to always have lesser gear in my stash, for when I needed to trek out to retrieve my body.

I have sad memories of the Telekinesis scam, back when it could be used to pick up any item. Poor 10 year old me.

Cooley is so right about the passwords being compromised even just once, HAVE to replaced. Better yet use a password manager to generate a different password for every account.

The corpse pop..2 years go grinding gone in an instant. I felt my heart rip out of my chest.

my inventory was allways empty back in the day because sometimes when someone showed up to brag about how awsome their item was, they would click accept in trade when all their gear was there because they thought you wouldnt have room for all the items :D but little did they know... did that so many times :D

I remember the dupe scam. One of my friends showed me, when he wrote in chat ''who wanna learn to dupe say yy'' and then he whispered to ppl to create a game. In the game he asked the person to stand close to the exit of town and drope a epic item. Then hold ALT+F4 .. and like least 8 ppl fell for it.. It was nasty of him but daaaamn.. people learned to not be stupid from now on then

It wasn't really scamming, but you used to be able to turn most items on the ground into an iron golem, so you could grief people that way! Some people used to be annoying and drop a fancy/hard to find item on the ground just out of your reach over and over again and it was very satisfying to turn their special item into a golem!

This is so nostalgic. I was only like 9 or 10 years old when i started playing this; but I got popped in the blood moor on my first ever character. Being so young I was pretty bad at the game and generally naive. My character was a werebear. After a couple months of playing I was in the 80s and my best item was The Cranium Basher. (this item was donated to me by a wealthy player btw lols) I took pride in that item though, admiring it and smiling, (though by later patches it was a throwaway item). Anyway, I got popped in the blood moor and my cranium basher was stolen. I remember crying. But I stuck around and a couple years later I was established. Never fell for a another scam after that. Met plenty of good friends online but D2 was pretty cutthroat back then and no one was to be trusted. Unless you got lucky and became friends with a botting sugar daddy. Had one of those =P Another time, I remember being in a pub trades game, and see someone else get drop hacked in front of the 8 of us LOL definitely got a free item or 2. Guy comes back in on his naked character "WTF". This wasn't really a scam, but another thing I "saw" :) was in those lvl 1 name perm games. Usually it's just a bunch of 1s afking. But if you were actually in game but not moving, occasionally a lazy MFer comes in (that 80+ hammerdin or sorc) to use the game to quickly mule without waiting for a private perm game. Lots of times they were just muling to a lvl 1, so town was the easiest place to transfer (if they used a WP there was a good chance it was Cold Plains). Just watch which way they run and then run there right after they log. =P

I got scammed once in the years I played D2. I found my first stone of Jordan, and tried trading it for a shako. Got the ol peasant cap with a green gem in it instead. I remember i was so damn sad. It took a ton of farming to find that damn ring. I still get irritated thinking of it. Lol

I fell for the "wisper your account and password to find out your position on the ladder" scam or something along those lines.

The first scam I fell for was someone pretending to be my close friend. We shared each other's account details to help each other mule all the time. I'm not sure how this guy figured it out but he pretended to be my close friend saying he was "locked out of his account" and if I could remind him of my account details so he could log on later to transfer some starter gear to begin again. Stupid me gave it to him right away, not even considering it wasn't actually him. Next day I log on to find my account stripped clean and mad as hell at my actual friend who was on who the scammer impersonated and he had no clue wtf I was so upset at him over, lol. I figured it out pretty quickly and started over, just to fall for the item drop scam. Luckily I was quick on the draw though and unplugged my computer after only 1 or 2 items got dropped. 😅

Although /dnd scam was "low brow", it was still devastating. They had access to your whole account and could change the password. If the game you were in had somewhat permed, they could log out of their account, log into yours, pick a character and go into that same game. Then just drop all your loot, log out of your account, log back in to theirs, get into the same game, pick up all your stuffs. Rinse and repeat for every character. Makes for a very sad day for the other person if they aren't quick enough or don't know how to get their account back. -Source...me having it happen to me when I was young and naive :(

Got scammed by the drop hack. Sent drop hack to others. Got also scammed by the corpse popping (I was playing waay before any patches addressed that) The good old days)

Dope video, thought you were going to do a plug for virus software at the end haha, but nope your just being a good neighbour, good on ya!

The advice at the end... The fact that it's not a sponsored product ad is amazing. Great work and I really enjoyed this video.

I was scammed and became a scammer myself to recoup. On certain entrance set ups (not with a bridge) for A1 you could use your trap sin to lay down inferno traps. They basically look invisible or like a rock if put into the right spot. Mostly the fence would cover them up. It's the whole join my clan if u do a trust drop. U go outside the camp and do it first, proving there's no way u can get around the fence in time to pick up gear. Have the other player go outside camp and do it. Go hostile. Boom dead. Grab their gear

I remember ALL of theses SCAMS, hence why I always play SOLO 99% of the time.. Just not worth the hassles, unfortunately! Great Video… 🇺🇸

Now this is the content I subscribed for coooley keep it up dawg

Awesome video Cooley, I’d like to add one more. A friend of mine (and I dabbled a bit too) used to ask for torch trades when you still had to drop trade, always asking for runes or some form of currency. He would stack his inventory with R/W charms and get into position before they see how fast he was, then pop burst of speed. Both players drop items, he waits till other person is half way around the wall, pick his up then run around and snag theirs before they can. Only worked 40% of the time probably: I’m sure others were doing this though.

I used to do the Wirts Leg scam. I gave it to Charsi quest and it gained some yellow properties, but the name instead of yellow was red. Then said to people on A1 that if you wear that leg you became invisible. Then infront of them became invisible (by simply clicking on Warriv and going to Act 2). The red leg was tradeable so people paid a lot for that stupid leg which "made you invisible". Damn now I feel bad I did that.

So many scams, I had forgotten a few of these :D UAP is also a big one Great video, almost at 10K subs !!

I love how you made the DND "password" the name of the audio you were using. I legit tried to log in cause I thought it was something you hid for us to find.

amazing video like always!!! love your channel!

I still remember getting scammed for my Shako. "hurry i gotta go click trade"....as item pops in and out of trade.

The corpse recovery element wasn’t stupid. It was a unique way to add real penalty to death, increasing tension. Carried over from diablo 1 for a reason; It got the adrenalin pumping a bit in scary situations. At least it didn’t leave all your items scattered on the ground like in D1

Great content bro and love the positive message at the end. Look forward to seeing Diablo 2 resurrected content.

Geeat video! Well done. Most of them I knew, but the 'force trade' hack was new to me.

Bro your channel and vids are awesome! great content dude

The dupe hack was something from Diablo 1, where ppl could actually dupe gold and gear. Scammers pulled that over to D2 and would try to convince ppl it actually worked in D2 as well but when you dropped your item they were using an auto loot bot to steal it

This game gave me trust issues. That does not change the fact that I love it to death!

Good video with some surprisingly good advice at the end.

awesome video, very compelling stuff i never had this type of deep knowledge of when i was playing. interesting how the hacking/scamming scene will turn out in d2r.

You forgot about ground drop bug at act 1 (Akara) and act 2 (tawern), when You're allowed to catch items through the wall :D

you should do one on the old TPPK methods, like over the years. i remember when assassins could cast traps outside town and hostile you. boom act 5 hardcore char dead. That's probably the mildest TPPK... I'm sure alot of us lost hardcore chars to TPPKers

awesome work man, as always. chapeau!

What an amazing video. That account recovery scam is just…left me speechless.

I went to a link to "vote" for a guy in exchange for trangs gloves. It took over my character made me run around throwing my gear on the ground. I am not bitter you are bitter.

so happy to see my comment about the DND scam made it into part 2.

I remember the scam in the act 2 town where someone would try to do some sort of "trust" buildup. They'd have you stand in a very specific location, then they'd stand nearby but "out of range" of you. They say something like, "Here, I'll drop something big to prove you can trust me." and would drop something. Then it would be "your" turn to prove your trust. You'd be asked to drop a big item, too. However, due to where you were standing, the item would actually drop far AWAY from you on the wrong side of a wall...right at the feet of the scammer.

That password advice was eye opening, thank you

Best one I've seen done in game was getting a player to drop gear out side of town, we're the scammer couldn't reach it by clicking. But they were able to get their powerful mercenary to be outside the wall and once you drop it on the ground. The mercenary kills the player and scammer runs over and picks up gear

I remember using a horrible geared character to "scam" a drop hacker :D He got so mad :)

The exploding body scam was the first online scam that ever got me. I had a very well built lvl 74 sorc and lost everything...

You definitely forgot the good old "grandchildren scam". I once got scammed by someone who started like this: "hey, guess who's here ...!". 14 yr old me guessed one of my friend's name and (what a coincidence!) the first (or second?) guess was right. He then proceeded by asking me to join a game, showed me his "old amazon he found on this old account" and asking me, if I could drop him some of my items, just to test...

We can say that being scammed in D2, is a Rite of Passage 😏 pun intended.

Cooley sounding like Herb "Protect yourself at all times" Dean

I truly admire you deep, years long knowledge of the Diablo 2 scene!

Loving your content man. You do such a great job and seem like a genuinely smart and good dude.

This is the shit I've been waiting for. Sick work bruh

I remember seeing that "I'm gonna send you something, It'll be the file we talked about" crap all the time in the early 2000s and never knew what it was but just figured it was something sketchy The biggest thing I ever fell for was accepting trade for a plain old flail when I thought I was getting a near perfect Hoto

Dude I lived through the era of scams, passing every experience of these down to my homie, nostalgia ftw, I miss these days

I once thought I was using a map hack but it threw out all of my items, my exile shield, my enigma, hoa. Everything. That’s when I stopped playing.

I don't miss those days at all. What I do miss is the wicked LAN parties we had... : )

the ONLY time I got scammed once was in runescape....someone "trimmed my armor" for me...fml....still hurts decades later

D2 as a child gave me real world life experience, involving scammers, and the depths people are willing to go to get what they want. Quite the lesson for a child to learn, but it made me painfully aware of what the world could be like at an early age... Not that I didn't know that already in a lot of ways, but yeah. I'll also mention that I was more of a victim of a hack vs a scam. I went to log on one day, and my password was changed. Account recovery didn't work. I remember that walk to school... 💀

I know some big scams happened few times 15 years ago about rushing and levelling services: after the service was done, the rusher remained in the selection character screen until the owner of the account completely equipped the new character. The rusher waited for the owner to log out and he could select the character and use it even if the account password has been changed!

Granted I was a kid and quite a trusting one at that, I still feel stupid for falling for these. Town teleport check Corpse pop check Trojan drophack check

Coolest dude around 🤙🏽💯... Despite all the scams and dupes This game will always be number one. I just download it after like 10 years just to be reminded that everything in it next to perfect: Music, story, combat and hot key system. I already bought two copies of classic and resurrected as well. True masterpiece💯💯💯

Oh man, the memories. I remember when I was playing very regularly over a decade ago I would do my own sort of scam by hopping into "Park" or "Mule Park" kinda games filled with all the level 1 characters idling to make it through the "character expires in 10 days" tag that new characters had if they weren't played enough. I'd bring a level 1 character myself to pose as one of these idle players knowing that transferring items from one character to another was only possible via other players or dropping your items on the ground in a game and rejoining that game with the character they wanted the items transferred to. I would keep tabs on the high level or mule characters that presumably had GG gear that they were about to transfer and take note on the direction they went after joining the game so I could get a general idea on where they might be dropping their items to transfer. Once they left, I would B-line in the same direction they initially went to see if I could nab the items on the ground before the player returns with his other character to get them back. I stole a LOT of stuff that way including (but not limited to) an ENTIRE hammerdin build, high runes, charms, and runewords. Man was I little shit back then, lol

That DnD scam was devastating early on.

We all got scammed at least once.

They got me one time, asked for my password (for joining a clan) and I gave it. I was able to reset the password, so after a week or so I did. When I got back in my own account, the 'hacker' actually build a few characters, even got some neat equipment. So in a way, the helped me

Nice video man as always 🤘

Nice vid. Btw is Coooley's job related to programming?

Dude. I love your content. D2 is the greatest game ever made and your videos are *chef's kiss*. I sent a "maphack" to a naive dude through MSN messenger and it was a keylogger, I raided his entire account. I was like 14 at the time and I STILL feel bad. I try to make up for it by hooking people up, rushes etc. The young me was such an asshole.

I got scammed for an anni with the town teleport thing he talked about. I never knew how he did it till now lol. Sad times

Great content. Didn't know most of these, including "nopickup"

Omg, I knew about the basic scams, but I had no idea there were so many different scams, and also complex ones. I would most definitely fall for a couple of these if someone tried them on me back in the days.

Alt+f4 clone items baby!

All the best scams never required 3rd party programs imo. Trying to get someones gear just by tricking them was a huge part of why some people played this game everyday. D2 is one of a kind and its about time someone started telling the actual story. Love it!

Gotta say I was a sucker for the Lowbrow once... Made a game "T4 TalRasha" ... Showed me Tals Chest and exited trade screen, young me wasn't paying attention and ended up receiving a gothic plate with an amethyst in it D:

MY MAN You dropping some knowledge this time

Once Someone sold me a 200ed eth Zaka with a PUL RUNE in it. He said someone just socket it in but I could remove it with hel so no issue there. Except for the Zaka beeing 170 ed. I bought it and then realized what happened. The player left and I later sold the Zaka for Profit doing the same thing xD Legend says that the Zaka is still around beeing tradet to the next victim.

I feel like an asshole for scamming people with p emerald war hats or shakos in the past

Thanks for the video I still remember getting dropped hacked and losing my stone and Jordan‘s like it was yesterday.

I remember getting scammed by the trade swap one. I was devastated for like a good hour. Learned an important lesson that day.

Not really a scam but I loved guessing passwords for private xfer games like qq1///1 or hijacking a JSP trade, got rich many times from that lmao

Ahhh the memories 😭

Devistatingly good video!! Subscribed. Brings back the mems.

Great video. Also, 6:50: partially equippeded.

They got me with the first corpse popping method you showed with the 16 killings, equip, one more kill. It did happen to people that way, but you did have to be naieve and trust them.

I remember when someone scammed me with the ol' switcharoo fake tal's armor. I was mad af but then I later scammed someone with a fake enigma I was happy af. All is fair in love and war 🤣

Very accurate, drop hack and corpse popping happened to me back in .09. Also love that you said pk and not pvp, what is was called back then.

awesome video and so true, I remember years ago i traded an ist rune for a shako. Needless to say i didnt look at the shako in trade and it ended up being a cap with an emrald in it lol!