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Diablo II: Knickknacks Nicked
Various people sent in complaints, and good old Anonymous Coward sent a link to the Diablo II Forums, where all and sundry are complaining that sunspots, or h4xx0rs, or Blizzard's incompetence have made all their hard-earned Diablo II items disappear into the aether from whence they came. Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?
Seems to be a major divide between those that play and those that don't. Those of you who do not view the whole thing as silly and irrelevant and unimportant. Those that do play find this to be incredibly annoying. Some background info first, there were a number of bugs running before this happened, and these bugs caused crashing and time outs, and perhaps caused character data corruption. There were reports that three monster types had their names changed, and that items that could not exist, did, pointing perhaps to a hacking of the central item database. In addition the problems that were seen could be a result of a change to the dupe control, flipping it from if (dupe) { delete } to if ( !dupe) { delete }, but thats a wild guess. The problem happened between 9:45 EST and 12AM EST, as that is the time between me logging and off and me returning to the chaos. Now as to whether its important or not, many of these people have been playing for over a year, and most do not cheat/dupe etc, and some as in my case do not even trade, finding most people too annoying to be dealt with. Losing these items is a severe loss as the difference in a well built character with great items and one with average items is extreme. If you want to debate about the merits of D2 as receratioin go ahead, but dont trivialize others hobbies and pastimes, its a lot better than watching tv and in my opinion a heck of a lot more interesting than screaming about the latest Microsoft vapor ware for hours every day or trying to be the first to post on a topic.
Regardless of how Blizzard spends the money you give them for the game, even if they spend it on maintaining their online service, Battle.Net isn't any less "free". The price would not be reduced if Battle.Net were not included. You have paid nothing extra for it - even though your money may be actually be used for it - so from your point of view it has cost you nothing. Blizzard games wouldn't be any cheaper if they did not include Battle.Net play. (Starcraft is now $20 in many places, D2 is $35. They were both released at $45-$55 which is the same price as pretty much any other game on the shelf.)
You can say that Battle.Net was a part of the advertising for Diablo II, but it was never a major component. The game was never promoted via mass advertisement, with the exception of four different print ads I can think of. None of those said anything about Battle.Net except for a line like "compete free over the internet" or "free online play over Battle.Net". This was in small print on a full-page color advertisement. Hardly a central component of the advertising scheme.
Well, seeing as though ALL my equipment was deleted off of several characters (only on the USEast server) and that I both do not trade, nor care about knowing how to dupe (if I did, don't you think it would be "easier" to be lame on the Open realms?), I think I have a fairly decent idea that all my gear was jacked in some nasty DB fault. Unless their dupe-finding-routine includes items you can gamble for, and find on the ground after killing Mephisto entirely too many times. :)
I just love the false sense of hope they give their regular players when they announce that they are taking USEast down to investigate. I mean technically speaking, unless its an issue with a server-side flub pertaining to joining games, most everyone's stuff is gone. You just won't know it until you join a game
Yes, yes it is.
My employer maintains a free chat & game-connection server for a PC product we released 3 years ago.
Besides a small number of users constantly clamoring for expansion packs (despite the original product not selling enough to break even on development costs, which is _only_ OK since a lot of the code rolled over into a next-generation game), any time the server goes down, even for 5 minutes, even if we've telegraphed this outage days in advance, we get deluged by email and voicemail from a handful of people.
Even though the server has had 99.99% uptime the past 3 years (pretty impressive for an NT server), they claim we're "sabotaging" the server, or various other wacko conspiracy theories. They refuse to acknowledge that 99% of their problems are caused by the users having horrible ISPs and antiquated systems with MAJOR driver/configuration problems.
The real fun begins when the building experiences a power outage of such a long duration that the T1 goes down, servers go down, etc. due to the batteries running out of juice. When this happens people online are notified of the situation, given a few minutes to start up games, etc. (once started, games are done peer-to-peer), then the server goes down until power is restored. Want to guess what we hear when the power comes back? Yep. Conspiracy theories. "There was no power outage! You're just trying to screw us!" etc.
It's people like this that make companies shut DOWN free services. If all they're going to do is bitch endlessly, what upside is there for companies to continue the service?
Remember, "Loose lips sink ships."
Same could be said about one's bank account, eh?
Where have I heard that before? :-)
</joke
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Excellent point. Those items are most certainly real, as they required time and effort to earn. Losing them arbitrarily due to a poorly supported system will justifiably cause a lot of frustration in its users, and this is something Blizzard is absolutely responsible for.
Michael - it is just you.
That's "luminiferous aether" to you :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I don't know. Would it be weird if you reported on a Paypal bug which resulted in some payments getting lost ?
The significant distinction being that Paypal payments are just another shape for money. You can convert them on demand into cash. Gaming items are not demand convertable into cash, they have to go through an extra step.
Paypal is an example of the social concept of the representation of money. The value of your Paypal account is demoninated in real hard currency and is convertable on demand into the object (currency or coins) in which it is denominated in. Money is in itself a medium of exchange, and that's what gives in intrinsic value beyond the intrinsic value of any other item of commerce.
The HammerOfThor+35 isn't just something of varying social value (Diablo players vs. non-Diablo players) or even of varying market value among people with whom its significant, it can't be used to buy something else. It's not a medium of exchange; the value of other things in Diablo or outside of Diablo is not measured in terms of HammerOfThors and the intrinsic value that it has is relative to what can be done with it.
I would love to see the face of the Judge that handles this case when those facts are reveiled.
--
Linux O Muerte!
"What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you
can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply
electrical signals interpretted by your brain. This is the world that you know...
the world as it was at the end of the 20th century. It exists now only as a neural
interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You've been living in a dream world
Michael. This is the world as it exists today... Welcome to the desert of the real."
For a good time call www.sawkie.com
is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?
No. But it is odd to be reporting on Battle.net security/stability like it is a rare occurance.
> I lost a character whose name players today
> (and this is 5 years later) still grab whenever
> it comes available.
The game had nothing to do with the fact that "CowboyNeal" is just a popular handle.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
...with a game service that they don't even pay for
Actually, they do pay for it. The game is advertised with battle.net, and many people buy it for that purpose. When you pay your $50, your buying the boxed game, and the right to play on their servers.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I don't follow your argument - PayPal payments are real money. When you receive a PayPal payment for X dollars, you know that you have X number of dollars to spend on something else - just think of it as another bank account. You can in fact use that as a down payment on a house, request a check or just move the funds into your normal bank account. Possibly with the PayPal credit card you could literally buy something at a 7-11 that goes against your PayPal account (though I don't know if it really is tied to your account).
If you have an item (virtual or otherwise) you might be able to convert them into cash, but until you do so you really have nothing - If I have a can of Spam and a DII Helm Of Really Great Significance, there's no saying which one might be worth pennies or $100 tomorrow. You have nothing until you sell, which you may never be able to do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I half-agree, but I'm mostly thinking of the expansion when I do so. The game is, to me, a lot of fun, but I don't have to deal with Battle.Net lag - I mostly play on the LAN with my fiancee. On a Mac, I never really had any stability problems or lag problems with Diablo II. Then I got the expansion. The game crashes frequently, we get lag despite being on the LAN and using machines that shouldn't have problems with a game like Diablo II (400MHz G4s), and occasionally the game launches one of the two players into a "no-man's land", presumably where the client and server get out of sync. That last one is fixable with lots of running around until the machines are forced to coordinate with each other again.
We persevere, because the new classes are a lot of fun to play with, but the game is far less stable than Blizzard's previous offerings. All I can do is hope that Blizzard releases a bug fix patch soon.
Naked.
I think Michael was referring to something along the lines of cloned items through cheat codes or just outright bugs. In that sense, those items are cheated and, as such, should have "never existeed in the first place". If my interprettation is right, Michael omitted "should have"---but we have come to expect grammar snafus on /.
Think of it this way: Imagine there is a God and that God fucks up, leaving a loophole open that lets anybody create a Ficus tree out of thin air. God realizes that fuck up, closes the loophole, and retroactively zaps all the ficus trees that should have never existed out of existence.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
That's an easy fix. Start with an appropriate Google Search, then visit a page like this one, which loads every few seconds an is pretty small. A webcam would work too, if you disable images to save bandwidth.
... people around here complain about Katz articles or really bad moderation here on slashdot?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This is a disaster - if I can't rely on my Diablo character being safe, then I may as well be spending my quality time on my relationship with my girlfriend or something ;-)
Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?
"If you can see it, but it's not there, it's virtual.
If you can't see it, but it is there, it's hidden.
It you can't see it and it isn't there, it's gone."
-- Some old hacker I knew, RIP
That's odd. I'm playing on a 400mhz G3 and have no problems at all. Try ramping up the RAM real high. I have a half gig on my Blue and White and so I just added a 1 in front of the preferred memory setting and the expansion runs like a champ. In fact Battle.net seems more responsive now than before.
Speaking of this, I think this event might have totally screwed over a good friend of mine who was levelling characters up, getting them good EQ and selling them on ebay for $150+ this was practically his Job. In fact, he just finished and put up for bid a level 80 expansion sorcerous with no skill points or stat points used and a crapload of good Sorc EQ. Tons of the good Uniques. If this bug made him lose that EQ he's going to be REALLY pissed....
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Some people don't take that much time at all...
The guy I'm talking about only took 4 days to get that Sorc up to level 80 with all of that EQ. And he'll probably get 400-500$ for it. Not a bad haul for 4 days work. Much better than minimum wage.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
> If you don't play in the realm for { trading / status }
I play with guild mates on the realm. We tried Open B-net but one of our computers hosts the game then (which was terrible for ping & lag.) B-Net has been very good about no lag this last week, so we switched over to a realm game.
Basically b-net realm games allow a "smooth" game of 8 people.
I was playing last night the instant this first happened. (~ 11:30pm EST) Was playing, lost con, restarted, joined a game, found BOTH my chars completely stripped of ALL items.
I have NEVER traded for ANY items so don't give me that crap about the people complaining are the ones that had duped items.
If you meant, that Blizzard was running a dupe-checker-deleter and it had a BUG that deleted legit items as well, then that is the more likely story.
To all those others saying "what's the big deal":
Yes, it's JUST a game, but when I invest personal HOURS of fun into a (persistant world*) game, I tend to get a annoyed if the game world isn't persistant -- what's EVEN the point of playing then?! (Ask anyone who has experienced timewarps in UO)
Michael your comment about people complaining about items disapppearing would be more accurate if it mentioned "people complaining about virtual items dissappearing."
* Diablo only has persistant characters, the world is semi-persistant.
And, no, the Bard is not wrong. You are.
How many of these stories will we see when all of our Word documents are online?
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
The category is probably a bit too large for a new editor to be accepted easily, but the subcategories would make a great place to apply. Even though it is fairly well maintained at this point, none of it has a listed editor. There are three more sites waiting in the unreviewed queue there too.
"Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?"
I dont know if anyone else did this, but I was confused by this statement for a good several minutes... I thought he was referring to items that Blizzard had disabled temporarily until bugs could be worked out...oops. But these items do exists and go for a lot of money at times, since Blizzard's 'secure' Realms make them rather hard to find and hard to cheat into your possession. However, there is not much excuse for these outages, Blizzard has had over a year (not counting beta tests) to tweak this system, and still has made little to no progress. And with the recent influx of cold hard cash from the overpriced Expansion pack, they have no shortage of cash to pour on these problems to help them go away. I'm usually reading alt.games.diablo rather than the forums, and I know there is a growing discontent there, with many old players just giving up. (I dont speak for everyone, I know many people are still happy as well...Probably most of them just play on a local LAN with friends like I do instead of depending on Blizzard Quality Assurance....)
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?
I don't think it is any more odd than complaining about missing email from your inbox. It could be equally well said that all that mail never existed in the first place.
Suddenly it's no longer just 0's and 1's anymore.
Half the advertisements for smallish electronics have the little batteries not included note on them; does the fact that they're not part of the "central advertising" (whatever that means) indicate to me that I should crap my pants with fury over the fact that there are no batteries in it when the box clearly (and in tiny print) indicates so?
Likewise, Blizzard indicated on the box that there would be free netplay included with Diablo II. You and 60% of the people out there may not have bought it for that, but there's still 40% of the populace out there who may have bought it solely for the netplay and obviously want to get their money's worth.
And I'm sure that the cost of Battle.Net was factored into the price of the game.
Easy does it!
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
... but you're awful bad at comprehending what you read.
To quote myself, "and 60% of the people out there may not have bought it for that, but there's still 40% of the populace out there who may have bought it solely for the netplay and obviously want to get their money's worth."
NB: may have bought. They may not have bought it solely for the netplay, but the fact of the matter is that the netplay likely had a very major part in their purchase of the game. For all you or I know (I haven't bought the game and don't plan to until it hits the bargain bin, so don't ask me), 40% bought it with no plan to ever play it single-player; your imaginary statistics don't preclude this scenario so, however unlikely, it's still possible.
While the box may not have said (quoting you) '"Free unlimited play on Battle.net, with total security, and 100% uptime"', it did advertise Free play on Battle.net, did it not? And did it or did it not advertise "Sort of free, more or less limited play on Battle.net with security that may or may not work quite as planned and uptime guaranteed to be greater than or equal to 0%"? Mostly it advertised free play on Battle.net, right? Nothing explicit about the possibility of losing items and characters, so the product should deliver what people are accustomed to and expecting: security for characters and items.
Call it another point to could argue if you really feel like splitting semantic hairs.
Easy does it!
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
A developed enough technology is indistinguishable from magic. As Blizzard technology achieved this level recently, it worked like magic. All items magically disappeared. Nobody promised that a mature technology works like good magic ;-)
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
> It's just a game.
Yeah, it's just a game. but some people take their games very seriously. Imagine next year, just before the Superbowl, one of the teams just plain concedes, and stands around drinking Gatoraid and picking flowers or something. Imagine the uproar! Hey, it's only a game, but it would make every newspaper's headline and there'd probably be death threats on the the team.
I don't take games that seriously. I cheated plenty of times playing Diablo with my friends because hey, I bought the game, I deserve to see every cool thing in it, whether I have the skill or time to play it all the way through. But I realize that some people take their games very seriously so I wouldn't play with someone who cared that I was cheating.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- - At least not for about a week
Various people sent in complaints, and good old Anonymous Coward sent a link to the Diablo II Forums, where all and sundry are complaining that sunspots, or h4xx0rs, or Blizzard's incompetence have made all their hard-earned Diablo II items disappear into the aether from whence they came. Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?
So the next time Hotmail crashes and a bunch of people lose all their e-mail, are you going to post "is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place"?
Isn't it a bit odd that somebody at Slashdot is posting that information isn't "real".
You got point :-) This is why we shouldn't attach ourselves so dearly to anything external, not even girlfriends. Because one day it will all be gone. Instead, enjoy what you have and share that now, and you'll be much happier. Without having to worry about what the future may bring or what happened in the past. Life is a game in itself, but seriousness kills the fun.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Sports stopped being fun because of the money, fame and glory - professionalism. People get attached to their teams, having moodswings and conversations depended on the last game. They might think they're having fun, sometimes they do, but the innocence of sport is lost today. Luckily, there are a few sports where people are still having fun, like orientation and timber-tossing. You can't live on it though.
As for cheating, cheating ruins the game and the innocence of it by far. It's an ego-boost to the immature trickster who enjoy others rage, just like the bully in kindergarten did, but the whole point of a game is to follow the rules. What makes a game fun is in its illusion. A game is essentially infinite possibilities limited by rules. Cracking those, dissolves the game and its enjoyment (unless it's only temporary).
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
A friend of mine recently asked me which one - "aether" or "ether" - is the better spelling. We eventually decided that either one was acceptable.
-jKarma: T-rexcellent.
The market chose cheap "free" multi-player game servers over highly reliable but expensive-to-run for-pay services.
The market gets what they paid for, and no sympathy from me.
tarth posted: "At the very least I would like direct Internet play so that I don't have to go through Battle.net when it is (slow|split|down)." Load the game. Click "Other Multiplayer". Click "TCP/IP Game". Click "Host Game" or "Join Game". If you are Hosting, tell your buddies your IP address. If you're Joining, enter the IP address of the server you want to connect to. *cough* RTFM *cough* :)
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Of course, after reading this stuff I better stay singleplayer.
(my sincere apologies to any Russians out there)
"Then imagine the server didn't work... you purchase would be rendered useless. This includes if the server is only partial in disorder, like in the case of throwing your items away. No matter what entertainment product you use, you really would feel annoyed if it missed a part."
.agrippa.
I don't have to imagine; I play Anarchy Online. Annoying doesn't begin to describe the first month.
No, you are wrong.
Rich
I found the summiters comment about "things that never really existed in the first place" to be troubling. The money in my bank account doesn't "exist" in any matter-based form, but I'd sure be pissed if it disappeared. As members of a new virtual world, we have to adopt to attitude that information does "exist" and needs to be treated with the same care that physical things do.
If you are willing to spend 60 or more hours of your life to get a super-spiffarific weapon for an online RPG game then your time is most certainly NOT worth $20/hr.
Just because someone pays you that much to do important work for them doesn't mean that you deserve $5 for taking a healthy dump in their restroom.
Do really believe those servers are free? You may not pay a monthly fee, but you do pay for the game. Lets be frank, without those servers, blizzards sales of DII would have been horrible.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
your asumtion show a clear lack of understanding the current game sales bussiness model. If they could not play on servers, then they could not market it for that kind of play. Most games must have those capablilities just to get to the shelves.
I doubt 400,000 sales at 50.00 a piece would recoup the cost of making and selling the game.Before you try to stretch that little brain of your, please relise there is at least a 10%mark up from the store plus another 10% from the distrubution line. Also they need to pay developers(1 developer at 70,000 for 3 years cost the company at least 400,000), marketers, sales, management, the people who print the box, the people who package the game, plus a slew of misc support people, and all the hardware, pens, paper, etc...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why is it sad? Is it sad that we complain when robbed (RL; I'm not a D2 player)? They're just material possessions, what do we need them for?
We could all get together, and maybe society would be better! But I bet you'd be pissed as hell if someone stole your car. I know I would be.
No, this isn't really sad. Its just an extension of the modern society, which, IMO, is MUCH nicer that the society that we used to have. Its evolving, and, although most private organization would have you believe otherwise, its getting better. And I'm not joking. Crime has dropped, teen pregnancy has dropped (somewhat), even drug usage has dropped, which I think has a lot to do with all of the commercials being put out lately, as well as other efforts.
I rather like the human condition, to tell the truth. I'd rather be human than a dog, and I'd rather be human than a rat. I like to think that we're doing rather well.
The data about the items, and which item belongs to which character is stored in a database. This data was slowly gathered by thousands of people using millions of man-hours (10000 people * 100 hours each = 1 million man/hours).
If this data is definitivly lost millions of man/hours get lost. If people were previously aware that this would happen, all or at least some of this time investment could've been used in other activities (like downloading p0rn or sleeping in front of the TV during another episode of the latest "reality show"), which in light of this data loss, would yielding a better return on investment (more enjoyment per time unit invested)
So the only real difference is that PayPal is an instance of a social concept that everyone recognizes, whereas HammerOfThor+35 is an instance of a social concept shared only by players.
You know, it's reading things like this that makes the time-honoured phrase "get a life" springs to the forefront of my mind...
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
But think about his $250 auction. Given the hours it took to get to a level to find the bow, he's probably making all of $4/hour on time spent. He could have made more working at MickeyD's or Domino's.
"Population 1,656"
...imagine, you have a life, a girlfriend, and you spend, literally, your life with her... then, suddenly, she's hit by a car and is gone... that hurts. it's all relative. it's only a game, folks.
"Population 1,656"
Playing a game for 8hrs a day 5 dayz out of the week, is real. searching countless levels, redoing things over and over, trading for hours, IS REAL. finding an Item that you have been looking for, for months. IS REAL. Having them stripped away because of whatever problem battlenet is having, IS REAL. I suggest that if you don't play these games, u keep your 2 cents to yourself. nothing like slashdotters commenting/talkin out there ass, bout something they know little about
We spend our lives learning, if you like learning life is hard. it can never be only the ups the downs will always co
Eh... it's just a game. Not like it's a big deal or anything. Besides I play off realms and back up the save directory in the D2 directory so I don't loose any character information for single or open battlenet and I have just as much if not more fun. Thats why I'm kinda miffed about realm only items, but thats another topic, sorta. So if they don't work or disappear it's no loss to me. ;)
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
The real skill is the player who can do it with a blaster or knife depending on the FPS. In diablos case I'd say it'd be the person who can take a normal Wirts Leg which is like 2-8 damage and beat the game in hell mode with it and a cheap suit of armor with no special items! Thats not saying I did that. Athough I've done the FPS blaster/knife thing. :)
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Perhaps they're betting that Blizzard will rollback like before and reimburse items, so the character someone throws away because he/she lost her gear will suddenly be decked out with all the stuff they had before?
-Corvidae
I'm a regular /. reader, and I haven't played any computer game more complicated than Minesweeper in years. Even in the simple realm, I think playing a "memory" game twice is the most I've done in a year. And that was because a very amazing website took over my display.
But, I never said I wasn't weird.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
buying all your items on ebay - $9334
:)
spending hours adventuring to get the stuff - $1150 (@ $50/hr billable
spending hours cheating instead - $650
paying some 14 yr old in booze to do it for you - $70
the look on your face when Bliz takes it all away -
PRICELESS
(disclaimer: I don't play these or really any other games)
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Sorry.
Yes, the above post is horribly redundant.
The lesson is not to let too much time go by between hitting the "reply" and the "submit" buttons.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Like if someone made the numbers in your bank account balance go away?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Why? It's obvious. Some people have far too much money. A distant friend of mine was an early employee at small ISP named in Northern Virginia called AOL. Let's just say that when they IPO'd, she could burn her net worth for heating purposes and still never have to work again. She was one of those people who payed 5 or 10K on eBay for some Ultima-on-line stuff. Why? Because the money to her was nothing, just like spending $.50 on a coke.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Using that logic, Blizzard could release a patch to remove most features from the game. "Hey, it's not like you paid extra for the Barbarian, and we're tired of him forgetting that he's not outside and crapping on the rug, so he's gone." "Hey, it's not like you paid extra for a real villain. Instead, we're just going to put a single, normal skeleton in the last room. Kill him and you win. Diablo himself will instead be busy doing children's parties."
Let's say I really, really want the bow. Let's say it'd take me approximately 60 hours of gameplay to get it. If I make more than $20/hour, it's more cost-effective for me to work and then buy the bow. It may not be as fun and $1200 is a bit steep, but spending a few hundred dollars on something that will bring a comparable amount of enjoyment isn't unreasonable.
Besides, there're some people who'd say that spending $50 on a flat, plastic disc and $1500 on the hardware to use, just so you can move around a little plastic widget and click the buttons on top for hours on end is silly.
I really wanted to understand this post. I must have read it over three or four times before I finally gave up comprehension. Maybe it's because I don't play Diablo but every time I read this post I just get more and more confused.
In other aspects though this is a nice time to rant about the current MMPOG situation! Anarchy Online in my opinion was a complete flop and continues to be up to this moment and Everquest just doesn't hold much for you anymore. It seems that we as consumers are stuck until Shadowbane or Dark Ages of Camelot ends up coming out.
Woe is me
E-mail address is backwards.
1) You have to realize that diablo 2 items, characters, and accounts can be sold on ebay, and other such sites, for cold hard cash... granted, this cash could be virtual... but no more virtual than the use of a credit card.
2) People spend huge amounts of time with this stuff... I was on the low end of the addicts... and there were months were I spent 3 hours / day playing... imagine if you're a teenager, and you spend, literally, 8 hours / day playing a video game with security features to prevent cheating, so everyone knows everything you have is legitimate... then, suddenly, it's completely gone... That hurts...
3) the stuff is just stuff in a video game... but the entertainment value can be there (it's fun to have better stuff, to constantly improve your character (this is the secret to Diablo 2's success))... so if items can make a game more entertaining... then how are they really different from a game, in and of themselves (in that they may exist entirely in the vapor we call the internet... but they still provide tangible mental benefits that people consider worth paying for)... to put a finer point on it... what about expansion packs?
4) observation - others agree with me... I've seen an individual bow going for upwards of $1200 on ebay...
Yep, here's a $250 bow.
Amazing.
I actually don't play Diablo at all but I am suddenly sort of feeling interested in doing such commerce.
Easy indeed: Get a $15 sorcerer, buy him a $20 axe and $30 worth of hit points (is it still called this way?), then sell it for $100...
I'm not sure one could buy a Ferrari within a week, though.
So, who is more complaining?
People that sell, people that bought or just the ones who are not in there for the money?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
OK, either he paid some kids to play instead of him (When I was young this was my dream):
"Hey, I'll give you $10 for your +10 axe"
or he'll send the buyer some nice mail:
"I send you this file in order to have your advice..."
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
On the bright side, it only took me a few minutes to get a new archer-wench-hireling back up to near my level.
I figured no point in bitching, and if I lose a new set of items if/when blizzard restores everything, oh well. It's just a game.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
could you suggest ANY game simaler in play that is better?
Nethack, Crossfire (if you can still find it)
If you've lost your stuff, just go there and buy new equipment...
LFS. Have you built your system today?
This is so true it is sad, and is such an example of the tunnel-vision so many people have. I paid that money for Diablo II: hell, I was even on a local store's waiting list. And you know what ? In the context of the day, I found it to be a shitty game, very little better than its predecessor, which felt like a rip-off given how many years ago Diablo came out. Only the Mac version could even run at 800x600. DO YOU KNOW HOW CRAPPY THAT LOOKS ON A 19" MONITOR ??? The original Diablo was great fun, but this game was just squeezing the family jewels for every last drop of juice.
Not to mention multi-player on battle.net was awful for the first 3 months (I uninstalled the game afterwards I was so frustrated): games crashed all the time, I couldn't get into games when the servers weren't down, Blizzard pretty much kept all its users in the dark about system status, and the game play blew chunks. I feel like an idiot for having fell for the marketing hype, I still feel like an idiot when I again fall for more Blizzard hype when I see the new displays and think about buying the expansion pack (I won't), and I am going to be extremely suspicious and skeptical of Warcraft III (which I also anxiously awaited). Blizzard, you are close to leaving a formerly loyal customer.
What do you mean I can convert them on demand into cash ? You mean I can convert them with Paypal to cash, don't you ? AFAIK, I can't go to the local 7-11 and pay for things with Paypal dollars or credits or whatever they call them. I can't use them to make a down-payment on a house. I can't use them to buy a soda downstairs.
In the example I made up, there was "work" being done (say, IT consulting for some guy I met over the Net, or putting up a web page that somebody thought they wanted to contribute to). For this work I "earned" something - say some Paypal payments. It's arguable that this is similar to some kid who "works" for a year on his computer (albeit playing D2) and "earns" things that are convertible into money (see item sales on Ebay). I f something is convertible into money than it is arguable that something is also "just another shape for money" - and though you are right that this does involve an extra step, this is no different than Paypal.
I don't know. Would it be weird if you reported on a Paypal bug which resulted in some payments getting lost ?
Having said this, I must say I have little sympathy for users who lost stuff. It is a game, after all, and having played MUDs (mostly Isengard) for years, I know too well that the lords of these games frequently purge inventories and such, especially in response to rampant cheating. I remember one time when the game was loaded with high-level characters (including mine), the DMs were going to do a reinstall and they claimed they had to purge all players because (they claimed; I was skeptical) they were doing an upgrade and had no effective way to migrate characters (I believe they had to purge because of cloned items, too). I offered to write some scripts for them to save our characters but they demurred, and I lost a character whose name players today (and this is 5 years later) still grab whenever it comes available.
We all bitched to no end, swearing up and down that we would never come back. But surprises of surprises, almost everyone came back, and 3 weeks later everyone was pretty much back where they were. For my part, I am proud to say I stuck to my guns and pretty much gave up on MUDding.
People have to realize that this is a game, that certain shit will happen in the interests of game play over time, and sometimes for addicts shock-treatment is the only thing that will work. And if stuff like this diminishes player fanaticism just enough that people aren't spending ridiculous amounts of money on jacked up characters, or cloned items, this will all be a good thing. Maybe it will help bring a bit of perspective. I know it did for me.
As computer games advance, they allow users to descend into a reality of their choosing and completely immerse themselves within it. Networked RPGs like Ultima Online were the first generation then games like Asheron's Call and progressivlely more advanced games, each involving the user at a deeper level. There are people who spend their lives playing such games. They have become the Dungeons and Dragons of the technology era. Thankfully, we have not heard of kids killing themselves over computer games yet though.
The newest generation of networked RPGs out there go for complete immersion where the player will recieve faes phone calls and emails from game characters, and the games will effectively encroach on everyday life.
In short, no, I'm not suprised that players are upset about the loss of virtual posessions from a game universe (although I can see where the argument could be made that they paid for those posessions and should have tem returned). It's kind of a sad comentary on the human condition though.
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Is it just me or is there something rather pathetic about people wanting to sue Blizzard because someone hacked the free servers or there was a bug in the free servers that caused them to lose thier +3 DemonSwords and +5 Bone Shields ?
Cause, my friend? Here's cause for you: Blizzard are the biggest jackasses in gaming history. There's cause for you.
Their goal is to have new people buy the game, and keep *juuust* on this side of pissing the rest off enough to quit. That is to say, to do as little work as they can get away with. Dedicated and industrious, they are not.
Oh and btw, I've had a great chuckle from the D2SF forums, laughing at all the whiners. I shall now take a refreshing and utterly selfish moment for a little I-told-you-so: I predicted in detail that this sort of thing would happen, well over a month before D2 was even released. This is not news. If you don't want to lose your stupid little items, DON'T PLAY FUCKING REALMS. It's as simple as that.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I'll give you the "whence" but I'll need some clarification on "wherefore". To wit:
"Romeo, Romeo... Wherefore art th..." Oh damn. I just came upon the alt.usage.english FAQ. Seems the Bard and I are both wrong.
Oh well, learn something new...
GTRacer
- Wishes people would get the diff between "site v. sight" and "lose v. loose".
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Well there you have it. I've learned two things today! Or maybe remembered from my senior English Lit classes, 10 years ago. Yes-s-s, I *DID* know that the star-cross'd lovers were from rival Houses. Curse my lack of recall and over-eager desire to be pedantic...
Later!
GTRacer
- Sits with egg on face -
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Looks like Blizz has found out the problem and according to this the disappearing items problem is going to the taken care of. We shall see I suppose.
Ruger
In some ways, a database rollback or crash is like a natural disaster in a virtual community. In real life, we cope with natural disasters by insuring life, property, or income. For an online identity that has acquired or developed sufficient material goods or status, perhaps it would be worthwhile to insure the identity and online possessions against loss. The insurance could compensate the policy holder in the event of loss of online community property, status, or "life". Perhaps a system of insurance could help pay for the cost of running an online community.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
And what is with this stupidity of buying imaginary items on ebay? The idea of the games was not to have the winners be the people that have the most disposable income/least common sense. The winners were supposed to be the people who played the games the most skillfully. It's reminds me of Tanya Harding -- she didn't think she could win in the rink, so she payed someone to break her opponent's knees.
Excuse me, but you are talking about soemthing completely unrelated. Blizzard has not removed a feature. You are not suddenly unable to play on Battle.Net. Yes, there was a server goof. Yes, some items may have been lost or some characters corrupted. You can still create new characters, you can still find new items. The game itself has not been reduced or made less complete in any way.
As far as I can tell, the point that was being made was that the service is FREE because you have not paid for it. This is not the same thing as the service being NEGLECTABLE or REMOVABLE. Blizzard still has an obligation to keep the service running in a reasonable manner.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
> I dont know ANYONE who played D2 as single player except when bnet was down.
It's not our fault you don't have any friends.
> The majority of people who play on bnet play ONLY on bnet. THEY bought it specifically for BNET access.
Prove it.
>Whatever YOU bought it for doesn't matter. You can whine about them whining when YOU BUY IT FOR THEM.
I didn't see anyone imply that the whiners should shut up - just that they should find some facts to whine about instead of assuming that everyone bought the game solely for online play.
Blizzard has fixed the item loss issues and rolled the realm back to a state captured the previous day, resulting in all items being restored with a loss of under 48 hours of user playtime. See their Battle.Net Status post.
It sure is nice to see that when people talk about Battle.Net, they usually complain about problems with a game service that they don't even pay for while being too lazy to investigate the cause.
Also, perhaps the people that actually host the servers give them a cut rate for mentioning who is providing bandwidth. I know that USEast is hosted by AT&T because I get told so every time I log on (which has been way too much lately.)
I would have a hard time believing that Blizzard is breaking even on Battle.net, even if they do sell ad space tou outside companies, and get a cut rate on the colocation costs.
OK, here's how it works. The poster 2 posts above me said that 60% of people had never logged on to battle.net. The next poster somehow thought that just because someone had bought the game, and played on battle.net, that meant they bought the game solely for online play. That's not necessarily true. This is quite simple. Not everyone on battle.net bought the game solely for online play. I certainly didn't, even though I play regularly on USEast.
I am sure there are people who did buy the game solely to play on battle.net, just not 40%.
If you bought the game to play on battle.net, you can still play. You have unlimited access. Your data may get munged from time to time. That's life. I know for a fact that the box did not say "Free unlimited play on Battle.net, with total security, and 100% uptime"
That was my real point. The fact that you didn't get past the first paragraph of my post, and decided to argue about math (If you knew me, you would think this was a really bad idea.) saddens me.
Actually, they're done already.
Look here for the explanation of the solution,
and go here for the all clear message.
Who is more foolish: the fool,
or the fool that follows him? (Obi-Wan Kenobi)
most of the posts are amsuing to read. Considering the Battle.net service is free, people still feel they have to complain, complain, complain. Perhaps they never bothered to look at the Battle.Net Terms of Usage.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
There have been reports of this happening since Diablo 2 came out...months ago.
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silence is poetry.
Diablo II is cheap compared to EverQuest, Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call, etc. as there is no monthly charge. EverQuest charged for the original game, charged for the first expansion pack, charged for the second expansion pack, and charges $10/month on top of that. There networking is definitely better but it's because it costs more. Diablo is cheap, so the support is cheap. You get what you pay for. This is not a complaint about either game. Just pointing out the different business models. Battle.net has actually gotten a whole lot better recently in terms of service. It hardly lags at all for me whereas 6 months ago it was barely usable. Also, with this latest release Blizzard simultaneously released Diablo II for both the Windows and the Mac. This is significant for me because I switched to Macs recently because of OS X (consumer UNIX). EverQuest is only available on Windows.
The problem is that gamers have a lack of choice. If you buy Q3A, you get to pick which server you play on, and you have several server listing programs to select from. If you don't like one, you can actually do something about it by switching to another server or program.
With Battle.net, you have to play on their realms, or by yourself. I personally hardly ever complete the single player game, because I enjoy playing online with friends much more. If Blizzard stops me from doing this in an enjoyable manner, what incentive do I have to buy their games? It is in their best interest to either fix the problems or open up their servers. It's obvious they are having trouble, but their problems shouldn't prevent me from playing the game I paid for that has advertised multiplayer. At the very least I would like direct Internet play so that I don't have to go through Battle.net when it is (slow|split|down).
The FSGS server doesn't currently have support for realms, only open, with the potential for hacks galore, losing the last few minuets of work from the host geting disconected, sometimes more lag than the realms, and more... There are some other servers though, haven't checked them out. I really don't like open though I do play on it with my freind sometimes. (For some reason it's not as laggy on open for him)
'`~.,| ClosetPacifist |,.~`'
this reminds me of the time when at the launch of the original diablo ii (not the expansion pack that just came out), hundreds of people's characters where hacked into by hacking groups who sought to take over peoples hardcore accounts who were leading the rank ladders and systematically killing them off for show. they'd make webpages showing the deaths and then pass around the urls. remember, hardcore characters die once, and that's it... once you're dead you can't play with that character anymore. it caused such a p.r. snafu that blizzard ended up rolling many people's accounts back to a backup of a few weeks prior once they fixed their security holes. -Super Kermit http://www.christopherwu.net/
-Christopher Wu
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
Imagine if people bitched about losing weapons/powerups in a FPS game (Unreal Tournament, Quake, Half-Life, etc.)...
(message from complaining lamer) "Hey, where'd my MegaNuke and SuperDouble Shield thingie go?"
(a nearby player) "Shut up!" (Frags 'em)
(complainging lamer) "Shit, now I lost everything!"
(another player frags him AGAIN) "Shut up chatty bitch and play!"
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
After the russian KI moves to keeping their nuke inventory on Diablo II:
"mm... I amving my +5-50 Fire damage Nuke of the Sickle and Hammer... oh shit i got logged off!... Its gone! Why does this always happen to us????"
Free as in *BUUURP!*
The entertainment industry is huge and growing by the minute. We all play computer games (please show me a /. reader who don't). So this is defiantly relevant for all of us.
... and as goes for real or not. Do your money in the bank exist or not? Scary, right.
Imagine you bought a computer game to be played online (we see a lot of these now). Then imagine the server didn't work... you purchase would be rendered useless. This includes if the server is only partial in disorder, like in the case of throwing your items away. No matter what entertainment product you use, you really would feel annoyed if it missed a part. Imagine a book, a movie...
And we are talking big bucks. Today I know people who sell/buy items in online games for real money! And this business has come to stay. We need to escape our daily boring work.
Now you may like Diablo II or not (I don't really play it), but you probably would be annoyed if your own personal entertainment product was tampered with.
Saggi
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
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.
i wish i had 200 dollars to spend on a claw
Ok - So this time it appears to be due to a server problem (Doesn't surprise me). Your right, I stopped bothering with Diablo II (including reading any forums) a long time ago due to widespread cheating. Although I did hear from a friend that there are still ways to cheat with items. Also please note my use of the word 'Probably' in my post. 'Probably' means that I am not making a statement of fact, but mearly a judgement based on my prior experiences..
Probably blizzard nuking all the cloned items that have plagued the game since day one..
Ok, but think of it this way. There are gamers out there that play for hours and hours and hours. EQ kids, for instance. For them, selling items/characters is just a plus. They would play the game even if they couldn't sell stuff. Selling stuff is like money for your fun. And even if it is somebody's job, there are people that would be happy to get $4/hour for playing games (kids).
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practically an AC
if these items do not exsist, then what does exsist in the realm of computing. does any of it exsist? how do you define exsist. hmm......