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Case law has spoken.

Here's a good one. People tried to work around copyright law by saying things like "we don't provide infringing content, we just provide a data-sharing service" and got slapped down. Also, people said "this is fair use because we are just sharing our copies with our friends, not selling them." and got slapped down.

Here is a surprising familiar example, from 6 years ago, when blizzard won this same case for this same reason.

Here is an earlier instance of the same thing, but this time emulating battle.net for private games of starcraft and diablo. Same result too: the technical workaround didn't actually work around the law.

The attempt to evade law through technical workarounds is much older than computers. For example, people try to gain citizenship status by marrying a citizen, only to learn (the hard way) about shame marriages, and how the government can and will split you up and deport your spouse, and slap you with a conviction on top of it.

Or the fun trick of escaping student loans by transferring the debt over to credit cards, and then declaring bankruptcy. This is fraud and it will land you right in jail.

The justice system has seen every scheme you can think of, including every with-computers "not technically illegal" scheme you can think of, and have slapped the grifters down for it every time. When you try to pit your technical cleverness against the government's lawyers, expect a beat-down.

Also....the present article is just another case to add to the above list.

Am I the only one who finds this game to be boring, even by its demo videos? Fancy graphics and physics engine aside, it is essentially Lots Of Zombies + MASSIVE DAMAGE. In essence: Lame.

No more lame than a D1 or D2 video? Maybe this isn't your kind of game then. Note that a crappy quality gameplay video won't show the intricaties of character builds though and optimizing item usage for a character role you thought up in your classroom. ;-)

The stuff leading up the gargantuan websites like these:
http://strategy.diabloii.net/

That's what I think made especially Diablo II so much fun. The skilled players could think up their own limits in which items to use, and so on. Not to mention hardcore mode which I assume will be in Diablo III.

It DOES have this feature. How could you miss it?

They have both 'open' and 'closed' servers. The 'open' servers accept characters stored on your computer, and have no protection from hacked saves, but they are good for playing with friends who you know aren't cheating.

On 'closed' servers, your characters are created on their server and can only be played online.

I haven't read many strategy guides lately, maybe 10 or so in total, and I definitely haven't read any in the last couple years in either a seperate book version or print Computer Game magazine feature.

I've been disillusioned to them since I read the Diablo II strategy guide and like many I had read before it seemed to be a series of common sense suggestions, and a rehashing of in-game help & manual information. More importantly, it often suggested strategies, character builds, and skill combinations that were bad. The most annoying is information which is out of date or incorrect!

At least now I can go to gamefaqs or gaming websites if I want mediocre strategies and single-player walkthroughs (I generally don't).

I find a lot more useful information and effective strategies reading the most popular fan forums for the game in question. Yes, there is bullshit in the forums and information which is wrong, but the absolutely vital thing is that people usually get called out if the provide bad information, strategies that only work on 'easy', or are easily countered. People will sometimes (best cases) give hard evidence/examples/replays/game data to back up their claims, and will comment on whether patches have changed the effectiveness of any plan.

• Detailed information or strategy discussion -> Forums
• Walkthrough for an unenjoyable/unsolvable puzzle -> Gamefaqs
• Otherwise -> Enjoy the game unassisted

It's very possible I'm out of touch with most others and get more 'into' any game I play

Games I've played recently & best website I could find discussing them:
Civ 4 at Apolyton and Fanatics
Rise of Legends also Game Replays is a pretty popular site for Rise of Legends and other popular RTSes I don't play (C&C, AoE III, Act of War, Battle for Middle Earth).
Rise of Nations
Guild Wars
NWN Official Forums and NWVault
Ground Control II Official Forums
Age of Mythology
Diablo II

I've tried looking for a good place to find out about Star Wars: Battlefront II and Homeworld 2 but I haven't really found out what the most useful site for these games is.

Unfortunately, I know what it's like to deal with working with a psychopath first-hand.

About four years ago, I was working for a company called Verticalscope as a freelance writer, writing articles about the web hosting industry. They'd send me a contract over email, I'd sign it and send it in, and about a week later, I'd have the article in for posting. Seemed like good, regular freelance work.

However, something was wrong. Payments were late and smaller than expected, and no matter how often I asked, I couldn't get an accounting of what articles had been paid for and which ones had not. When I finally brought this up with the person who I had been dealing with, I was told that none of the contracts had ever been counter-signed. It felt like being hit with a sledgehammer. At this point in time, they owed me $2,600 Canadian.

Hoping to fight him, I issued a press release, which can still be found here: http://diabloii.net/garwulfs/press-release.shtml What followed were several months of email sparring, in which the person involved attempted to intimidate me by threatening to sue me for libel. I nearly took the company to small claims court, but then I realized that even though I'd probably win, I'd never be able to collect it.

Close to a year of my life was ruined by that man, and I still see red whenever I think of it. Verticalscope has since then become fairly successful - whether the person who screwed me over is still there, I don't know. Perhaps, if there's some justice in the world, the guy who screwed me over was fired and the company cleaned up their act. But I still see red whenever I think of it, and realize that the bastard probably never cared what harm he did to me or any of the other freelance writers - he only cared about moving himself along in the company.

Moral of the story: even if an a**hole or psychopath might be good for your business, they do more harm than good in the end. Better to use the Scott Adams model of management, with no tolerance for a**holes, period.

I don't remember since I don't have the game anymore. I think it said 3D sound. According to this, it uses EAX.

That "Lytha Way" reminds me of some recent guest articles on diabloii.net, in which an expert Diablo II player describes how he completed the game on Hell difficulty with the following strange characters:

- A melee-only Sorceress whose name I forget: her primary spell was Teleport (for targeting purposes), with Enchant (extra damage) in a secondary role

- Gunter, the Barbarian who wanted to be a wizard: a Barbarian with no melee ability whatsoever, using only warcries and the fire spells provided by the items he was wearing

- Maldar the Magnificent, the compassionate, pacifist Necromancer: completed the game without killing a single monster, except those that had to die in order to complete quests (quest bosses and so on). His primary spells were Bone Wall (summon a wall), Bone Prison (trap a monster), and Dim Vision (target monster can't see).

Diablo (II) might not be a role playing game, but here are some tips on how to role play anyways...

I think you are right on the money. Blizzard is known for their ability to "throttle" the complexity of their games to suit the player.

For those people who just want to play, WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo are great for that. The controls are simple and the "rules" are obvious. You can have a lot of fun without knowing all the nits and details about every unit, every item, every doodad. Just sit down and kick @$$.

But for those people who want to master those nits and details, the games can become impossibly complex. Charts, formulas, special combinations, randomizers, special modifiers, etc... the list goes on and on in ever-increasing complexity. Spend some time thumbing through www.diabloii.net to see just how complex that game can really get.

I think this is why Blizzard does so well. They offer infinitely-variable levels of complexity to fit the needs of the player -- all in the same game.

A "No Hostile Players" checkbox at game creation time is one of the best D2 ideas I've ever heard.

Not sure about your necro ideas though. And apparently they are nerfing necromaners even more. Or were at one time anyway.

Ravi

...Blizzard North co-founders Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer...

Man, all I hope is that my Level 89 Barbarian with two Schaefer's Hammers (Shael'ed) doesn't get nerfed now when they finally release 1.10

"Curse bitch..."

Because without passive-aggressive complaining about Microsoft we'd have nothing to talk about. The whole approach that Slashdot takes on Microsoft with is not helping the common cause.

Like the story about X-Box mods being banned. Blizzard does the same thing with Diablo and Warcraft hackers as it is a very good idea, so no need to heap on the accusatory tone.

This reminds me of two things: the criticism of Dilbert that it makes workers more content to whine than change the system, and the lament by CmdrTaco about childish anti-Microsoft tactics, framed nicely against the Slashdot topic icon for Microsoft.

Next time you interact with orcs, demons, and can shoot people, get back to me, if you're just running and throwing a ball around, don't bother.

Might as well mention Morrowind, which went gold last week and is expected in stores late next week. According to the many previews out there, Morrowind looks to be more open-ended and immersive than any other RPG to date. It's only single player, but given the joys of many multiplayer RPGs, that's probably a good thing. In addition to the official site and forums, there's a good RPGPlanet site that collects most relevant information. Look for the water screenshots; they use pixel shading to get some truly impressive effects.

Next they will have to shut down DiabloII.Net since they post screen shots. Also, any magazine that plans on doing a review of the game better think twice before printing screen shots.

As of a few days ago, the fan website has been banned any discussion of the legality of bnetd in their chatroom, #diabloii on irc.wiregrass.com. Furthermore, when many of the regular members protested this action by included [censored] or [oppressed] in their nicknames, they were banned. The nickname modifications that resulted in being banned include: [bnetd], [censored], [oppressed], and [not_battle_net] (there may have been others).

A posting to their forums mentioning the censorship was deleted, and the account of the poster (myself) is no longer allowed to post (not a big deal, I created the account specifically for that purpose). Don't petty tyrants surpress news of censorship, too?

As it stands, discussing bnetd is forbidden in the chat room. Protesting the censorship in any way is forbidden. Discussing bnetd or the censorship in the forums is forbidden.

Under a different account, I posted a rebuttal to their recent anti-bnetd article. I wonder if they will censor that as well?

As of a few days ago, the fan website has been banned any discussion of the legality of bnetd in their chatroom, #diabloii on irc.wiregrass.com. Furthermore, when many of the regular members protested this action by included [censored] or [oppressed] in their nicknames, they were banned. The nickname modifications that resulted in being banned include: [bnetd], [censored], [oppressed], and [not_battle_net] (there may have been others).

A posting to their forums mentioning the censorship was deleted, and the account of the poster (myself) is no longer allowed to post (not a big deal, I created the account specifically for that purpose). Don't petty tyrants surpress news of censorship, too?

As it stands, discussing bnetd is forbidden in the chat room. Protesting the censorship in any way is forbidden. Discussing bnetd or the censorship in the forums is forbidden.

Under a different account, I posted a rebuttal to their recent anti-bnetd article. I wonder if they will censor that as well?

As of a few days ago, the fan website has been banned any discussion of the legality of bnetd in their chatroom, #diabloii on irc.wiregrass.com. Furthermore, when many of the regular members protested this action by included [censored] or [oppressed] in their nicknames, they were banned. The nickname modifications that resulted in being banned include: [bnetd], [censored], [oppressed], and [not_battle_net] (there may have been others).

A posting to their forums mentioning the censorship was deleted, and the account of the poster (myself) is no longer allowed to post (not a big deal, I created the account specifically for that purpose). Don't petty tyrants surpress news of censorship, too?

As it stands, discussing bnetd is forbidden in the chat room. Protesting the censorship in any way is forbidden. Discussing bnetd or the censorship in the forums is forbidden.

Under a different account, I posted a rebuttal to their recent anti-bnetd article. I wonder if they will censor that as well?

i'm boycotting this simply because of blizzards past history of abandoning games after they've made their money.
see the problems in diablo2 which hardly get addressed in the following:

hacking of 'secure' realms

big rant

Essentially Blizzard made Diablo 2, got money, said "fuck you" to the consumers of it, and abandoned it.

i'm boycotting this simply because of blizzards past history of abandoning games after they've made their money.
see the problems in diablo2 which hardly get addressed in the following:

hacking of 'secure' realms

big rant

Essentially Blizzard made Diablo 2, got money, said "fuck you" to the consumers of it, and abandoned it.

Thanks to the latest duping hack (don't bother, the loophole's been closed), the Diablo II economy has taken a hit bigger than Elvis.

If you're really interested then check out DiabloII.net for more, but suffice to say that items that were gold dust are now as common as mud.

A quick look at the prices on Ebay (yes, I know that selling items in this way violates the D2 EULA but people do it and Blizzard's turned a blind eye to it) would show that D2 rares are way, way down in price.

The only real-world parallel I can draw is early 1930's Germany when people had to take wheelbarrows of notes to buy a loaf of bread as hyperinflation kicked in. Bank notes literally weren't worth the paper they were printed on.

D2 (sadly) looks like it's going the same way.

$700 Diablo 2 II USWest LOD INSANE 344% MF BOW?!

$500 Diablo 2 II USWest Pally Paladin +6 Ring +6! [ebay.com]

Both of these items were created because of bugs on battle.net's closed servers. Blizzard has stated that these items WILL BE DELETED when the bugs are fixed. They're also most likely prone to random morphing and other such strange occurances as Blizzard changes game code server side.

So you have people paying real money for items that are guaranteed to go away.

More on the buggy items at Diabloii.net. Including this quote: "Blizzard is aware of these buggy items, and there are plans to wipe them from the realms in the future, so it's not a real good idea to trade big for one, since it might vanish at any time.

~Moller

By the way, you missed this post where they explain they will repair it.

But if you investigated you would have found in the news that items got lost before the message of battle.net. i.e. here on US-WEST

But battle.net will explain here .....8-) why your "item" was not found.

---------- Damn. I just reacted to a troll. Mod me down for this! At least i could resist to the "Not pay" part.

By the way, you missed this post where they explain they will repair it.

But if you investigated you would have found in the news that items got lost before the message of battle.net. i.e. here on US-WEST

But battle.net will explain here .....8-) why your "item" was not found.

---------- Damn. I just reacted to a troll. Mod me down for this! At least i could resist to the "Not pay" part.

Check out diabloii.net
That site has tons of reviews and more.

If you check the news and screenies at DiabloII.net you will find that in the D2X, Blizzard IS including an 800x600 resolution mode. Woot! The bad news is that most of the news abilities don't have much in the way of flashy graphics (Druid's summon and form change aside). For example, the assassin skills all look like the sorceress skills. Seriously, check the screenies.

DiabloII.Net says that the "normal", not "hardcore", ladder was reset, which wouldn't help those permanently killed characters, and it didn't stop the problem anyway.
--

Hmm... didn't MEAN to post anonymously...

And I guess lasting half a year without any cheating incidents is pretty good, compared to most other online games.

But there were other "cheating" incidents. Two major ones come to mind. In the first, characters were able to go "hostile" on another character from anywhere in the game. Normally you can only go hostile on another character if you are in town (where you can't attack) thus preventing a quick hostility + attack to surprise kill players.

The second hack increased running/walking speed tremendously by exploiting a feature in the game's frame rate code. This in general was not a major problem until people used it to go hostile in town and then run and kill someone.

The problem with the new hack is that it's not done in-game. The "hack" is just a bug in the server code that lets a player jump into another player's character, then join games and play as that character without ever typing in a password. At first all that happened was that characters were losing all their items (read a few threads at the lurker lounge or in the forums of www.diabloii.net) but then characters started dying. That's when the REAL uproar happened.

Frankly this disgusts me. It's one thing to use legitimate, in game features to attack, kill and steal, it's quite another to exploit a bug to do it covertly. And don't expect Blizzard to do anything about it, there have been lots of scamming and other Bad Things (tm) going on for awhile now, and even though they *could* disable specific CD keys from Battle.net, they apparently refuse to do so.

Stronger encryption isn't the answer either, incidentally, since it's a bug in the server code (or, so says the forums).

Ladder was reset :(

http://www.diabloii.net

We have received email after email from people reporting that their characters have been stripped of all their equipment, and many have been killed as well, costing experience, or in the case of Hardcore characters, permanent death. The USEast HC ladder is now a graveyard, with the top 15 or so dead, and we've heard from several of them, they were all alive, even sitting in chat when their chars suddenly turned to ghosts. There is no known way to prevent this, and if you want advice, I took every item off of my highest lvl HC char last night, and if she's dead next time I get on, I won't be surprised.

As for the ladder reset, it appears to have been undone on East, as there are numerous characters in the 90's. West already has characters in the 60's, and there are a bunch in the 50's on Europe, so either bugs are letting older chars on the ladder, or else a lot of people did some impossibly fast levelling in the past 9 hours. Happy New Year.

Of course not. :) I'm referring to things like Andarial's fire resistance, which is -50 in the data file, becoming 206 because they used unsigned numbers, or never getting the max value for the AC on armor or the modifiers on magic items because they didn't know how to use their random number generator.

For any who doubt that end-users can fix Blizzard North's errors better than they can, I've got a patch/mod that fixes a ton of the errors in the data files at mods.diabloii.net/arthondo/uthaur.html, and their are a number of other mods that make more drastic changes as well.

Here they are linked:

http://www.gamesdomain.com/news/3036.html

http://video.gamespot.co.uk/ects2000/

http://www.diabloii.net/expansi on/ects-2000-1.shtml

http://www.stomped.com/publ ished/jcal968167198_1_1.html

http://www.gamecenter.com/Ne ws/Item/0,3,0-4710,00.html

http://www.mgon.com/article s.phtml?id=31931&language=en

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/rev iews/2272/1/

click :)

I didn't follow them for accuracy. I just linked them.

And hopefully, battle.net will actually work normally by then. I'm probably not the only one who would pay to get reliable service there. Not only am I tired of lag (on a fast box and a T1), but I'm annoyed at their architecture, which lets Duriel mow you down before the tomb of tal rasha even loads.

If you were concerned you might not have a life because you play it too much, check out the auctionwatch info about what in-game items are selling for on E-bay.

DiabloII.net is a pretty decent source of info for this game. They give daily updates and they seem to be able to filter out the real insider info from bs hype.

I don't read it religiously, but it's nice when I need a "how's Diablo II doing" fix.

As for possibly slashdotting the servers, well it happened with the Starcraft beta sign up, and as a result Blizzard extended the sign up time considerably. I can only hope that they've upped their server capacity considerably.

Finally, I'm surprised that no one mentioned the recent announcement that after the limited 1000 person beta test (encompassing the entire 1st act, or 1/4 of the game) there will be an open beta test to stress test the battle.net servers! Yes, that means everyone can get a small fix of Diablo II before it comes out.

G0del

P.S. www.diabloii.net is my main source of D2 news.