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Blizzard Deletes 112,000 Diablo II Accounts
pixelblur writes "An update over at fan site DiabloII.Net points out that Blizzard has deleted 112,000 Battle.net accounts for Diablo II." The official post from the Battle.net team in part reads: "Numerous.. ..accounts were tied to the use of a hack or cheat program while playing Diablo II on Battle.net. In keeping with our aggressive stance against cheating, we have permanently closed over 112,000 of these accounts and documented the CD keys with which they were used." This clean-up comes ahead of the forthcoming 1.10 patch for the seminal title.
They're being a bit silly there. From playing occasionally, I can vouch that about 1/2 of the people who still play Diablo 2 (so much time after it was first released) use maphack as a convenience. And I think that most of these will simply stop playing if maphack is disabled. So one of two things. Either:
1) They're trying to scare people, cause they can't really do shit to detect maphack actually, or
2) They don't want to support D2 anymore and are trying to chase away all those people who still play to decrease the load on their servers (and hence how much it costs to maintain them)
But if 2) is correct, then why are they bothering to release so many new features in 1.10? Which leaves possibility 1), or even possibility 3) (they're just stupid).
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Further, the two years without a patch, despite the myriad insecurities brought to light, gives further evidence of a lack of caring.
Forgive me for asking, but why SHOULD they care? Diablo 2 has been out for three years and the expansion has been out for two.
Now, I'll examine whether or not they do indeed care:
Since the game's release, people have been able to play through the entire game easily offline (in other words, no significant bugs that prevent such), they've been able to do matchmaking on battle.net AND they've even been able to play games hosted on battle.net servers. During that time, they've also been provided with new special items, enhancement and correction of unbalanced skills and repair of the serious playability bugs that existed. Even more relevant, Blizzard is STILL trying to address the problem of cheaters as is clearly evidenced by THIS STORY.
In short, Blizzard cares more about Diablo 2, a product over two years old that is now being sold at discounted prices, than most companies care about games in their first month of release. More importantly, they're demonstrating that they care about the people who are still playing by getting rid of cheaters and providing better customer care than some of the companies running MMORPGs which you actually have to pay monthly fees to play.
Even shorter: You're wrong.
So, who's speaking up for the 112k accounts that just got terminated? You think Blizzard was 100% accurate in numbers that massive? Some poor little kid just lost 4 months of hard earned levels/items.
mmmm... smell that hypocrisy...
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Incidentally, idiot mods should note that seeing as Battle.net is hosting several hundred thousand games at the moment it is unlikely to have Slashdotting troubles. Go mod a goatse up for kicks or something instead.
- Chris
It's all about public relation...
Blizzard is known in the online gamers community to "allow" cheating and to not really care about it, in a couple of months ( years ? ) they will sell World of warcraft, a MMORPG where cheating is forbidden, so they have to show "hey look we are taking care of cheating, we are banning them !".
I used to play diablo2 pre extension ( mind you it has been 2years now ) and they were already cheats/hacks around, I have reported one bug / hack ( I am not the only one, basically everyone who played D2 reported / experienced it ) where everyone in the game were killed at the same moment, I have been told that it wasn't due to a bug but lags...when it happened 5times+ ( in hardcore game where the character when is dead is "really" dead ), it's definitly not a bug and kinda annoying one...One year after the expension was lived, they reconized this hack...
That's just one of them, there have been at least 5critical others.
So to come back to my point, they don't give a fuck about players, it's only to clean their image and money money money....
And I will repeat again, they don't care about players, they never cared in the last 3/4 years and if they are doing that, it's just to clean their pathetic image on that point for World of Warcraft.
Battle.net is still a free service.
Why hasn't Diablo 2 gotten a lot of attention/bugfixes/patches by Blizzard over the last year or so? Not many people are buying Diablo 2. So how does Blizzard pay an army of developers to fix the problems in Diablo 2? Well, either from the company coffers or the profits of some other game. If I were Blizzard, would I commit more than a few developers to these issues? No.
Would I claim I was battling cheaters when I deleted over a hundred thousand cheater accounts from my system? Yes.
Quite simple, really. Is Blizzard committed to stopping cheating in Diablo 2? Yes, as committed as they can afford to be.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!