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Diablo 3 Banhammer Dropped Just Before RMAH Goes Live
eldavojohn writes "One thing Diablo 3 has that many other games do not is a 'Real Money Auction House' (RMAH), which went live today for players with two factor authentication. Of course, mere hours before that, Blizzard publicly announced they would follow through on their promises. Accounts they have identified as cheaters and botters have been banned 'by the thousands.' No official number is out, but the news is indicating that as people get off of work and return home to their bot-wives and bot-kids they may find themselves without a valid Battle.net account (possibly tied to other games like SCII and WoW). Blizzard has also included many fixes to remove/dissuade many other exploits but if their past arcane attitude toward the 'gamers of the game' is any indication, thousands will be unhappy."
Many a scorned Blizzard fan will wail away on the message boards over this, I'm sure. But hearing a Blizzard fan say "I've had it with them this time!" is like listening to a crack whore bitch about her dealer. She'll rant all day, but you just know by that night she'll be crawling back, offering to suck dick for more.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Downfall of Blizzard has begun.
"Blizzard has also included many fixes to remove/dissuade many other exploits but if their past arcane attitude toward the 'gamers of the game' is any indication, thousands will be unhappy"
So they should keep thousands of cheating douchebags happy at the expense of hundreds of thousands/millions of good paying customers who are trying to have a good time?
A game now so immersive they included a hardcore mode for botters!
Papa Legba come and open the gate
That's what I keep hearing anyways. I heard something about working on some kind of house and then selling it to other players. But it's a single player game? What?
many of them are from China
A friend let me play his account, the game is mediocre at best. The game mechanics aren't any better than Titan Quest which came out years earlier.
The metagame is more interesting with the leveling up your blacksmith and using runes to change skills. But all that means is that your toon doesn't really get fun until level 30ish when you finally have access to most of your skills.
Its just like most AAA crap that comes out now, highly polished, derivative, good enough until you've seen all the pretty pictures once, and ultimately forgettable.
I bought Diablo 3, but have had 3 separate occasions where my "single player" game was unavailable for multiple hour long "maintenance" windows. Not being able to blow off steam in a dungeon crawler so Blizzard can get more value out of its players is leaving a SERIOUSLY bad taste in my mouth.
Who the hell is going to pay real money for gear in a single player game?
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
the more I hear about it the more I am glad I didn't. Sounds boring and a constant money grab / drm crap fest.
Did the ban emails happen to come with a handy link where you could enter your account info to verify your identity and get unbanned?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
That was my thought too. My WoW account has "been banned" quite a few times. Which is interesting considering I don't even have one.
boring story full of holes
I've never played any videogames for their stories... thank god WoW had quest goals highlighted (in green I think) so you could just scroll through to find the item you had to look for an be on your way, killing things. Stories are for books and movies.
Bow before me, for I am root.
There is a petition over at change.org asking Blizzard to release an offline mode path. It would be nice if we could reach the 100'000 signatures necessary
Track IP - Remotely track the IP address of a machine via email or MySQL.
in Wow, several times. All of them after I no longer played the game.
So you were no longer playing the game... several times?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
>>And D3 is very, very boring. No now creativity, boring story full of holes.
Haha, oh, Geekoid. Always telling these crazy stories! Go eat your applesauce.
-Leah
I've never played any videogames for their stories... thank god WoW had quest goals highlighted (in green I think) so you could just scroll through to find the item you had to look for an be on your way, killing things. Stories are for books and movies.
No, stories are for people who want stories. You just want to mindlessly kill things, and that's fine too (although I find it starts to get needlessly repetitive past the half-hour mark or so).
of the cheaters, modders, and botters...hopefully there's some sort of appeal process if you are mistakenly banned from the game however. I'm tired of people bitching about the internet connection requirement...do you really disconnect your computer from the internet often when gaming? It's not like you have to pay a monthly fee. It makes sense seeing how the single player game is still tied into the auction house and now the real money auction house. It keeps a level of legitimacy to the items in these places. Don't like it?, I don't care. It's a good game and I'm all for keeping out the cheaters, modders and botters as much as possible.
haha, no. I talked to support several times. Telling them, no, someone got into my account that I no longer use, because I don't pay you money any more. Why would you even allow people to use that account.
This happen even after I went to the secure token.
It seems to be taken care of, but man.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Does this mean if I want to play hardcore, I still have to put up with people spamming advertisements for gold and items?
"Stories are for books and movies."
How sad.
Stories are for..stories. Media is secondary.
Doesn't mean it has to be about the story all the time, but when all you have is 'Click a lot' having a decent story gives reason to see the next bit. When the next pit is the same as the last bit, then it's important.
WoW has some great stories. Unlike D3. Yawn.
Anyways, Never play Max Payne, it's all about the story. You overly simple view of entertainment would hate it. Maybe when you are 30 you can enjoy it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
full of holes
Those are called town portals.
Between the hacks, single player lag, gold and material replication, and lack of content, I've just had it, which is why I got a refund.
Diablo 3 is inherently set to fail. This is coming from someone with 180+ hours into the game. The basic mechanics of this game prevent any long-term success. I mean for fucks sake just last night hyper-inflation ensued on the gold auction house because a bug got out about buying an item from the auction house, then changing your COMPUTER's date back two days, thus getting the gold back and still keeping the item. Really Blizzard? This game is and was a complete pile of shit. Unfortunately.
This makes the requirement to be online to play D3 much worse. Blizzard better be 100 % sure there are no false positives. They probably have all kinds of CYA stuff in their EULA, but now that there's real money involved, some victims of wrongful banning may actually try to sue.
at the beginning was ruined by the bots/farmers and NC Softs half ass attempts and promises to control the mayhem. I've never tired a game needing Internet connection to play single player but its its like trying to use my Logitech Harmony remote (which is a brick of plastic when you buy iy) no thanks. I'll stick to D1 and D2.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Playing on a public server in D2 was downright treacherous. You could enter the game only to be instantly killed by some cheater. I'm glad they have the ban hammer. Also, there's not many times when i'm playing D3 and my computer is not connected to the internet given that I don't often shut off my home router nor does my internet connection go down.
Internet is becoming a new "always on" utility, just like power, water and phone.
^ this
Games are merely an interactive medium for story-telling. While others are passive ( TV, Movies, Books ) the game format is an interactive means to get the story out. The better ones take the decisions you make along the way into account and alter the game play as a result.
Games that have outstanding stories within usually find a permanent place on my shelf. You know, back when you could load a game as many times as you wanted, on as many computers as you wanted, without all the TSA wanna-be restrictions added in :|
its having to connect to their servers to play the game single player and worse, you can lose access to your game which you are in no way playing with other people should their authentication servers have an issue or be down for maintenance.
Let alone if your on a plane or somewhere without access to an internet connection you cannot use the software you purchased.
There was ZERO requirement to maintain any legitimacy of items for characters wholly off the net. As in, they could have very easily made it so you had characters on their service and characters not on the service with no chance for either to interact.
They chose not to. They chose that because they wanted to increase their revenue stream by any method they could envision.
As for keeping cheaters/etc/out... good luck, the game is a classic Exploit Early Exploit Often. What you may find a neat gimmick one day could be ban worthy, but you won't mind will you?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The story in an MMO should never require reading any quest text. Story is great - but it needs to be what I do, not what I read. So called "second person storytelling" (not that that excuses Charlie Stross's bad game-related books actuallly written in second person).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We also know why - you hate DRM, you don't like how "single player" should require internet, blah blah blah.. And you're giddy with Schadenfreude that some people aren't quite satisfied with the game
But this is story is about the real money auction house, the banning of accounts, the bots being banned, perhaps false positives etc... Can we please try to keep this discussion relevant? Personally my account's not banned, and I'm seeing a lot less spam in the general forums.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
The story in an MMO should never require reading any quest text. Story is great - but it needs to be what I do, not what I read. So called "second person storytelling" (not that that excuses Charlie Stross's bad game-related books actuallly written in second person).
I agree. And I would expand it to cinematic sequences as well...
Bow before me, for I am root.
I had a chance to buy DIII the weekend before Launch for $5. I declined.
Instead, I'm playing NetHack. It's infinitely replayable, at zero cost. And I didn't have to upgrade my graphics card to play it.
Specifically, the Junethack Tournament.
But the real event will come in October.
I can see the fnords!
Another alternative is Path of Exile by Grinding Gear Games. A few facts:
It's currently in closed beta, but you can join for a donation of $10 or more
It'll be free to play when released.
You do have to be online to play.
I haven't bothered with D3, but I'm enjoying PoE whilst waiting for Torchlight II to be released.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
The way it's worked with both WoW and Starcraft II is that it only affects the particular game licence you were cheating with.
With WoW, you can have multiple WoW licenses on the same Battle.net account. If you cheat on your WoW1 and get banned for it, it does not affect your WoW2 and you can continue playing it.
With Starcraft II, you could put a new authentication key on the same Battle.net which makes it remove your old Starcraft II license and then add the brand new license which would need a new character and likewise achievement and match records are also new and reset.
I suspect Diablo III will work like Starcraft II, you will be able to buy a new copy of the game and use it to overwrite your old license on the same Battle.net account, but your characters and items on the banned Diablo III account are permanently inaccessible.
I liked Diablo 3 before it was cool to hate it.
Seriously, you all go ahead and not play. Make your protest and stand up and shout about how lame it is that you need to be online. The rest of us (or maybe it's just me and my friends) are having a TON of fun playing.
If you don't like it, that's fine. But don't tell me that *I* don't like it. 'Cause I do.
I've never been a fan of requiring internet service to play a single player game, However I am ALL FOR the banning of botters and cheaters....they have ruined games (some more than others) that have any online element as far back as UO. Before as well but UO was one of the first games it could have any large scale impact on. Where there is a way for a profit there will always be those that exploit it to the determent of everyone else. Every one of those accounts that they ban brings a smile to my face.
"The story in an MMO should never require reading any quest text."
I agree.
"Story is great - but it needs to be what I do, not what I read."
That's fine but not always true. Not to say YOU need to play a game where the story is critical to out come.
And story doesn't have to mean 'reading'. Cut scenes, NPC dialog, etc.. can all be part of the story.
Very few games are actually about what YOU do as much as getting you to figures out how to beat the boss. The fact that you can where different armor doesn't mean you aren't on a rail.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Can you get Blizzard to refund your purchase price for the game, since the game and your account are now both kaput?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So, what's the story of Pacman, Space Invaders, Asteriods, Frogger, Snake or Tetris?
Back in my day I could play videogames on my C64 without understanding English.
The bans are there simply to drive up the value of these fake virtual items. I can understand bans in a competitive MMO like EQ or WOW. But this is not an MMO, no matter how hard they try to pretend it is. How long do they think this idea of virtual goods being worth real money thing is going to slide past political figures before it dawns on everyone what this really is? Poker chips. The house controls the odds, you usually have no idea what they are... you roll the dice, win something... sell it to other people for real money... It's poker chips plain and simple. They are letting little kids gamble with real money online. One day congress will want to distract everyone from the latest war or something and this shit is going to get real, fast.
"if their past arcane attitude toward the 'gamers of the game' is any indication, thousands will be unhappy"
But hundreds of thousands will be appreciative as their 100 hours of grind is worth more.
Thats nothing. MY blizzard account keeps getting hacked.
That's what the emails say anyway.
And i've never had an account with them since the bnet bull that made me swear off them forever.
I hadn't played WoW in over 5 years. I'd been through several computers since then, none of which had any sort of Blizzard software installed (including Battle.net, obviously). There is no possible way whatsoever that I could have been phished. I hadn't typed that account name in over half a decade.
Told Blizzard about this, but they were completely incapable of deviating from the script. The only record of that account existing at that point was on Blizzard's side. Looks like you, too, are incapable of deviating from the script. How many weeks do they allocate to training bullet item number 1? Do does bullet item number 2 get ample time to learn as well?
why?
because they have such a large pool to error with and there are more than enough sycophants to dismiss the claims of anyone truly banned unfairly.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Unfortunately the duping and botting is still going on. They did ban some, but the duping is so rampant that people are discussing it openly in General chat. There's a streamer who is showing how to dupe gold to have billions of it in a matter of minutes. I personally don't understand the real-money auction house, you spend real money to buy items so you can do what? Farm items that are not as good as what you bought ? The end-game of Diablo is farming items and always has been, so why would someone waste money buying items? There would be nothing left to do other than stop playing. Seems to defeat the purpose of the game - buying items in order to quit the game.
There is really only one good solution to the real-money auction house and for me that is to go and play Hardcore mode where the real-money auction house does not exist. I'm not expecting that gameplay to last very long for me either, they really screwed up making the level cap 60.
I'm still wondering why the thousands of people who've purchased my account haven't paid yet. I mean, the emails clearly say I've been selling my account.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
...because what Blizzard is "selling" is something considerably inferior to ownership!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Blizzard is simply exploiting the power gamers. Our society has a culture of 'must win at all costs'. Blizzard likes the sound of that.
If you just want to play the game 'for the gameplay', then you don't need the auction house, and you won't get bot-kicked.
Unfortunately, D3 is a bit of a disappointment from that perspective. The eye candy is good, but the gameplay is inferior to D2 - as is the skill tree - and the plot is basically identical.
Having played several new release games recently, it is quite clear that some game-makers are trying to give something good to the gaming community. They charge for their efforts, but they really want to delight their audience. And then there's Blizzard. Clearly jaded by years of piracy, Blizzard is simply extracting revenge on the gaming community. I will be much more cautious next time I consider purchasing anything from them.
I don't understand all the people on the net claiming that banning all these accounts right before the RMAH came out was to increase the price of items and thus gain a bigger share. As with all transactional systems, blizzard isn't planning on raking in money from 1,000 people buying $100 items, but from 1,000,000 people buying $4 items. In-game inflation will greatly reduce Blizzard's profit, not increase it.
I liked this game, it was fun to play through and when I have some spare time to play I like to fire it up. I'm a casual gamer through and through but the common Error 37 or 39 or whatever means that when I have a hour to kill and wanna play some Diablo, I can't. So, I do say, Fuck blizzard. This is the last time I buy a game that requires not just an internet connection (no biggie), but a server on the other side which is down constantly, which I have no control over giving me a 60$ game I can't play. Ya, Fuck that.
This is WoW so yes the same way a lot of people no longer smoke cigarettes several times
Millions of legitimate gamers will rejoice.
Torchlight had everything that was fun in Diablo and Diablo 2 minus multiplayer. Torchlight 2 intends to remedy that issue and will not likely require always on, an authenticator, or a lot of the other nagging issues that are required to be endured when playing Diablo 3. Torchlight 2 is also 1/3 the price of Diablo 3 and if pre-purchased on Steam gives a copy of the original Torchlight game. By value and ease, my opinion is that Torchlight 2 is a better product. Still, I have no real hate for Diablo 3 if that is what other people choose to spend their money on and play. Hopefully everyone enjoys their click fests.
The advantages of reading over listening to speech are that it is way faster and allows random access. The latter is important when the dialogue contains clues to a quest puzzle. If the gamer wasn't paying sufficient attention or needed to re-hear a part to figure out their next move then speech would be incredibly frustrating.
Games are combinations of many different forms of entertainment; stories, puzzles, real-time reactions (akin to sport), pretty pictures and mindless lever/action mechanisms (akin to whittling). Claiming that they should never involve a certain type is too narrow as it will appeal to some group of people who already like that form.
"I used to do drugs. I still do, but i used to too."
Yes, I think that was the bit of humor he intended....
You're just parroting the line Blizzard gave you, without even considering if they were lying.
I don't want to derail a perfectly nice argument, but consider that my account got banned a few days after cancelling too.
Haven't taken much action to remedy it, because, well, frankly I don't mind as I don't have time to play games anymore.
Anecdote, I know. But still.
My friends have been writing their own Diablo 3 bot that supposedly works very well. I messaged one of them this morning to see if they are part of the news today, but no -- it sounds like they got missed.
If you don't like the game don't buy it and don't play it. Simple. No one owes you anything. If enough people don't like it the game will be a flop. So be it. But no one is forcing you to buy anything. Blizzard have a product and you have the chance to purchase it. That's it. The entitlement people have is amazing.
You can play by yourself and disallow anyone from joining your game. That is by definition "Single player" - Whether it is online or not is irrelevant for this definition. The game was not designed to "trade items". It was designed to play through the game and beat Diablo. Nothing more, nothing less. The auction house is an add-on that people are not required to use at all. Nothing in the game will prevent a person in single player game from getting every item in the game.
I'd include cutscenes and narration as "quest text". It's very nice if my actions critically influence the outcome of a story, but it's quite silly where "picking the obvious dialog choice" critically influences the outcome of a story.
Overall, though, a game should be about living the story, not abou passively experiencing the story - there are far better media for the latter.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Is there such a thing?
In case you're not joking, I'll take this on as a serious question, and give a serious response.
Pacman: A hunter-gatherer struggles in a labyrinthine wilderness to collect enough resources to support his family (don't forget about Ms. Pacman and Jr.!). He is haunted and opposed at every step by supernatural beings who he can overcome, if only temporarily, through the use of rare totems. His successes are temporary, and he must return daily to the labyrinth to face ever more aggressive foes. Inevitably he will eventually fail, his wits and endurance having run out, and leave his family fatherless. (No, I was never any good at Pacman, and found it depressing).
Space Invaders: A lone gunner operates anti-air artillery to defend the Earth against Alien invaders from another world. He is prepared to sacrifice his life to defend his homeworld - it is, in fact, inevitable. Before that happens, though, he'll make sure the enemy pays a high price for their aggression. His infinite supply of ammunition and periodic resupply of ablative shielding allow him to make his last, valiant stand count.
Asteroids: Lost in space, a miner seeks to find his way home. It's a hard journey, through dense fields of space rock and hostile space pirates. Only his skill and wits will help him survive his journey...
Frogger: You're a frog. You're stuck on the wrong side of rush-hour traffic from your lily pad. Make it there alive or you'll never reproduce. Go!
Snake: You are a gluttonous snake. Gorge yourself until you've grown so long that you tear into your own flesh by mistake. (I've never cared much for this simplistic morality tale, Tron did it much better with the light cycles).
Tetris: OK, you've got me there.
Seriously, though, all of these games (except perhaps Tetris) are about taking a role, fulfilling that role's duties, and surviving by wit, skill, and strength. Most of them (Frogger is a rare exception) are only about the journey involved in fulfilling those duties; having a destination at the end would make the story jump the shark. I don't hold that against them, I like the story of the TV show King Fu, too; it would also have ended had he reached his journey's end. There may not be much story line to speak of, but that's the point of interactive fiction. I write the story by my actions. The obstacles set before me (waves of aliens, cars in rush hour traffic, maps, etc) are the settings and villains, and each stage is its own sub-plot with conflict, climax, and resolution.
I'm fine if you want to argue that there isn't much story, that it's simplistic, or that it's not compelling. I am up for debating the relative merits of finite storylines as opposed to never-ending journey tales, too. I don't think, though, that my descriptions of the "stories" for those games were far-fetched or even stretching much. If you pay attention to setting and action then impressive stories can be told, even without dialog or full-motion video. I'm of the opinion that if you were willing to spend hours playing those games then you found the gameplay (setting + action) compelling enough to keep coming back, whether or not you recognized it for the story that it is.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
That was my point, that games are first and foremost about the rules of the game (aka gameplay). The story is just window dressing. Also, not every genre depends on story to the same extent. For an RPG or an adventure game the story is important, for others it's less so.
It's nice they try and clean up the game environment it's not so good that they use a proven to fail bot to find boters and cheaters. You can look at it this way, the ones that aren't cheating can just post a ticket to Blizzard and get there account. Sometimes if how every answers the ticket is willing to look at there account to see if they really did cheat or bot (they use to keep month long logs of account active don't know if they can now might just be anything there hunter bot tags). You could look at this way, they do nail allot cheaters and boters around 99% (if you believe the Blizzard rep's, it does sound plausible to me unlikely but plausible) of what the hunter bot finds (since it's being updated all the time now according to Blizzard) are legitimate cheats/bots. I can remember when they first revealed they where using a hunter bot. It sounded like such a great idea, clean out the bots and cheats. Then about a month after there first hunter bot ban list when into effect almost hafe those ban hadn't done anything to desire the ban. Blizzard undid all the bans the hunter bot issued but kept it running. They refined the hunter bot over a year and then had it make a list again. The second time almost everyone the hunter listed for banning was ban. They went over it's list one account at a time before issuing the bans. They don't go over the accounts anymore because they've refined the hunter bot to be almost flawless (nothing is prefect). I'm sure they're others ways to look at the mass banning but these two , in my option, are the most base and prominent. Ban hammer it's a good thing ... unless your really unlucky.
Off Topic:
Not happy about having to plan an encounter based on if there's a boss or champions in the pull because of loot check lag spikes. Don't know if anyone else has had this issue. When I was really trying to like D3 I noticed every time I had champions or hero mob pulls I'd get a lag spike then the server would catch me up. Not a big deal on normal the hero or champions would drop like flies. On nightmare and beyond it was just horrendous. I'd have to click like mad to make sure my toon would run way like a scare little girl when every I encountered champions or a hero because when the lag spike hit for the loot check I'd be nearly if not dead when it does the catch up. If they where desecration champions I'd almost always die during the lag spike and would have to suffer through it repeatedly. I play to inferno but I just could take anymore.That had been my play experience since the patch Blizzard said would fix most lag issues but before this mass banning.
I'm glad to see we're in agreement here. I think I'd go a step further and claim that game developers trying to tell a story using cutscenes and dialog sequences don't understand the medium and are doing it wrong.
In my opinion the storytelling in a game should be found primarily in the gameplay, as that's the core and strength of the medium. Just like Film is a bad medium for long dialog-driven exposition and Novels are a weak medium for expressing explosive action, Video Games suffer when the storyteller takes control away from the player to start showing a film or have a long conversation.between characters.
I also think that games where the player has to grind through the same encounter over and over miss the point just as badly. Once you've defeated the orc chief in the plains that part of the story has already been told; what point is there in defeating him again? Am I a hero or a bully? If I'm just farming him for gear then I'm beginning to sound like the guy who wrote The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries : "21 - Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow." That works for an anti-hero, if that's how the game is scripted, but having it as a primary game mechanic for a heroic character just doesn't work. Knowing that the game designers are doing it just to push my Pavlovian buttons only makes it worse for me.
Yep, I think about this stuff way too much =) And now you know why I don't play WoW...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin