I dont think its possible. I remember once that you could know if your contact was away or idle, changing a setting with a resource editor. And that was because there were two same-names objects called Away. One was for away status and other was for Idle
That way, you could know if the contact was really away for status or Idle.
It could there be a way to change the offline status to Appear offline. That way it would show "Appearing offline" instead of "offline"
Please dont flame me. im a nice guy. i know this is impossible
.. but oh well.. it was what came to my mind! lol.! Peace!