D-Clone going crazy on Asian server now

Many of you may already have experienced this, but to me it is new.

As I started noticing, Asian server had 6 D-clone spawned in a quick 30min or so time frame. I was reporting D-clone status to the site, but many times could hardly keep up with the D-clone progess.

D-clone between D-clone is only 5mins as I recorded. When I kill one, identify anni, carry and place it in the stash, the progess would already be on the 2nd or 3rd progress stage for the next D-clone.

In one TZ timeframe, 1 hour, I collected 8 anni. and as of this writing, it is not slowing down.

My questions are:

what are the mechanics behind this? is it just someone mass selling SOJ, or some kind of unkown event to me?
more importantly, does this happen often? could I know such busy schedule in advance?

Many thanks ❤

EDIT: softcore, non-ladder, asian server

Botters doing what botters do.

Yeah, even on daily basis dclone walks Asia few times a day

I think it is over finally.

I might missed a few, but in the end, I collected 15 anni, none of which could be considered as A or even A+, talk about bad luck.

Maybe it is not over ... again 4/6

Yup, it seems over. I was late to the party, gathered ~8-9 but nothing good as well.
42/50 max I think

Does anyone know where this mass of SOJs is coming from? In Asia NL there are constantly multiple walks a day.

DasNarf wrote: 10 hours ago

Botters doing what botters do.

My guess would be what DasNarf stated already. I played D2R many hours since release and only found 2 Sojs (To be fair I do not target them) ...

oOKIWIOo wrote: 8 hours ago

Does anyone know where this mass of SOJs is coming from? In Asia NL there are constantly multiple walks a day.

The game is riddled with botters, and you have to understand the scale of botting happening (and the lack of care from Blizzard). During an earlier ladder season there was evidence of a single person running their own personal bot farm of 700 accounts. That was a single botter. I can assure you that there are multiple people/groups running bot farms, and you can safely assume that each bot farm consists of at least several hundred bots, probably closer to a thousand or even more. Bots are not human - they run 24/7, they never need to take a break for sleeping or eating, they never lose focus.

Assume the total population of bot accounts is 10,000 (this is just an example, it's impossible to know the exact number). Say they all run Hell

Andariel over and over, assuming 50 runs per hour each, with 150% MF each. That's 12,000,000 runs per 24 hours. That's on average over 4000 SoJs found per day from

Andariel alone (1 in 2865 non-terrorized). A lot of botted items make their way to RMT sites (you've all seen the advertisement spam in lobby chat, I'm sure), but they have to be stored somewhere, stash space is limited and botters don't only care about SoJs, they RMT other items too like runes.

The assumption is that botters simply vendor SoJs when they have too many stashed, sometimes automatically as they are found and sometimes as sudden mass selling. This gives the botters themselves a reliable source of

Annihilus charms, which they can RMT as well.

ShadowHeart wrote: 7 hours ago

That's on average over 4000 SoJs found per day from

Andariel alone

Not disagree with you on botting and the estimated looting stats.

But, If that were the case, wouldn't game economy get crashed already? SOJ would be dirt cheap.

SOJ's will hold their value like runes because they are consumed by selling, like runes are consumed in runewords.

seansixsixsix wrote: 7 hours ago

But, If that were the case, wouldn't game economy get crashed already? SOJ would be dirt cheap.

You're assuming the items end up on item-for-item trading sites. That's not true - the main purpose of botters is to make money, real money. So the majority of botted items end up on RMT (real money trading) sites, like the ones being advertised in lobby chat by continuous spam messages. You've seen it, I'm sure. Have you ever visited those sites out of curiosity? Items are sold for real $$.

One reason SoJs in particular maintain their item-for-item trade value is because so many of them are vendored for dclone walks, but the value of items such as high runes has changed a lot since the early ladder seasons. Tanked, as some might put it.

ShadowHeart wrote: 7 hours ago

oOKIWIOo wrote: 8 hours ago

Does anyone know where this mass of SOJs is coming from? In Asia NL there are constantly multiple walks a day.

The game is riddled with botters, and you have to understand the scale of botting happening (and the lack of care from Blizzard). During an earlier ladder season there was evidence of a single person running their own personal bot farm of 700 accounts. That was a single botter. I can assure you that there are multiple people/groups running bot farms, and you can safely assume that each bot farm consists of at least several hundred bots, probably closer to a thousand or even more. Bots are not human - they run 24/7, they never need to take a break for sleeping or eating, they never lose focus.

Assume the total population of bot accounts is 10,000 (this is just an example, it's impossible to know the exact number). Say they all run Hell

Andariel over and over, assuming 50 runs per hour each, with 150% MF each. That's 12,000,000 runs per 24 hours. That's on average over 4000 SoJs found per day from

Andariel alone (1 in 2865 non-terrorized). A lot of botted items make their way to RMT sites (you've all seen the advertisement spam in lobby chat, I'm sure), but they have to be stored somewhere, stash space is limited and botters don't only care about SoJs, they RMT other items too like runes.

The assumption is that botters simply vendor SoJs when they have too many stashed, sometimes automatically as they are found and sometimes as sudden mass selling. This gives the botters themselves a reliable source of

Annihilus charms, which they can RMT as well.

Thanks for this explanation! I thought this must be traced to bot farms. But I never thought this is the case on this large scale... It seems to me even selling D2 items for real money is not really profitable. I cannot imagine what motivation people have doing this. Surely it must cost a huge amount of money to set up such a system and keep it running? And you have to program tools who are capable of auto-playing games, managing stashes with multiple accounts etc. It seems at least to me that it requires very sophisticated programming skills to set up such a system.

oOKIWIOo wrote: 6 hours ago

And you have to program tools who are capable of auto-playing games, managing stashes with multiple accounts etc. It seems at least to me that it requires very sophisticated programming skills to set up such a system.

Never underestimate the lengths some people will go to in order to make money. Sure, the initial cost of setting things up is high (in terms of time), but once set up it basically runs itself. Also, it's not unlikely that a lot of botters use the same botting software, I doubt they all program their own bots. Someone provides the botting software and sell the software to the people using the bots, they pay for the bots and sell the items they find, etc.

You will run into people who pay for items with real money during normal item-for-item trades, without even knowing. They will trade with you in order to resell the item for real money, and/or trade with you using runes that were acquired through RMT. You can't know, and the runes you got in return are legit (as in not duped), but you will never know for sure where they originally came from or how they were found. I've encountered a couple of fairly obvious cases myself over the years (of people who engage in RMT who I made an item-for-item trade with).

oOKIWIOo wrote: 6 hours ago

[..]
it requires very sophisticated programming skills to set up such a system.

If you've ever encountered one of those bots in-game, you'd see that whatever code drives them is far from "very sophisticated".

Sure, it'd take a lot more skill to code something that truly performs and can adapt to things but merely creating a basic "run xyz over and over" bot in a game that generally speaking follows the same Pattern every time really isn't that hard when you at least generally know how to code. Especially when the company running said game has decided to not give the slightest of f***s about what you're doing, meaning you don't even need to worry about making what you do un- or at least less detectable.

All it takes is some bored mediocre coder to whip one up and start selling it.

Bot farms then pay for the bot once, get a bunch of accounts when they're on sale and off they go. Comparatively little invest for what is guaranteed to be a long-term steady stream of income for realistically at least as long as streamers have an audience, seeing how they all* spend a fair chunk of cash at RMT sites repeatedly to have stuff to give away to their audience and to have thousands of SoJs ready for their next dclone marathon.

Viewer gives money to streamer, streamer gives money to RMT site providers and supplying botters, botters give money to bot creator, server provider and Blizzard.
(The last end of the chain being why they couldn't care less about botters)

And that's still ignoring the added exchange layer of not even having to sell D2 stuff for money directly, seeing how there's also sites that let you effectively turn D2 stuff into some-other-game stuff which could potentially be sold easier/faster/for more.



*I'm sure there's a couple of exceptions but ya know..generally all. Not much of a secret.

I didn't think this game was still so popular that it would be worth the effort. Setting up a bot who does runs surely is not that sophisticated. But you have to choose which drops to collect, indentify them, transfer them to specific mules, manage them on a large scale etc. (It seems to me there are many variables to consider and balance if the system should be prevented from "collapsing") It would be interesting to know how many manual steps there are involved and what is set up automatically.

The game is not very popular today , but the game is very very old and was very very popular before.
So my guess is that the greater part of the effort to create the bots was actually made before D2R era, and people just adapt the old bots to work with D2R

Schnorki wrote: 5 hours ago

Viewer gives money to streamer, streamer gives money to RMT site providers and supplying botters, botters give money to bot creator, server provider and Blizzard.

^ Yeah, this

oOKIWIOo wrote: 5 hours ago

I didn't think this game was still so popular that it would be worth the effort. Setting up a bot who daoes runs surely is not that sophisticated. But you have to choose which drops to collect, indentify them, transfer them to specific mules, manage them on a large scale etc. (It seems to me there are many variables to consider and balance if the system should be prevented from "collapsing") It would be interesting to know how many manual steps there are involved and what is set up automatically.

I mean, if you're curious about how it works, you could always research what options are readily available and try it yourself offline (don't do it online, obviously).

ShadowHeart wrote: 4 hours ago

Schnorki wrote: 5 hours ago

Viewer gives money to streamer, streamer gives money to RMT site providers and supplying botters, botters give money to bot creator, server provider and Blizzard.

^ Yeah, this

oOKIWIOo wrote: 5 hours ago

I didn't think this game was still so popular that it would be worth the effort. Setting up a bot who daoes runs surely is not that sophisticated. But you have to choose which drops to collect, indentify them, transfer them to specific mules, manage them on a large scale etc. (It seems to me there are many variables to consider and balance if the system should be prevented from "collapsing") It would be interesting to know how many manual steps there are involved and what is set up automatically.

I mean, if you're curious about how it works, you could always research what options are readily available and try it yourself offline (don't do it online, obviously).

I barely find the time to do a few runs a day...
Besides that, my sons are my bots

oOKIWIOo wrote: 3 hours ago

ShadowHeart wrote: 4 hours ago

Schnorki wrote: 5 hours ago

Viewer gives money to streamer, streamer gives money to RMT site providers and supplying botters, botters give money to bot creator, server provider and Blizzard.

^ Yeah, this

oOKIWIOo wrote: 5 hours ago

I didn't think this game was still so popular that it would be worth the effort. Setting up a bot who daoes runs surely is not that sophisticated. But you have to choose which drops to collect, indentify them, transfer them to specific mules, manage them on a large scale etc. (It seems to me there are many variables to consider and balance if the system should be prevented from "collapsing") It would be interesting to know how many manual steps there are involved and what is set up automatically.

I mean, if you're curious about how it works, you could always research what options are readily available and try it yourself offline (don't do it online, obviously).

I barely find the time to do a few runs a day...
Besides that, my sons are my bots

congrazt on that. My daughter claimed she wants to play with me... Got together to A2 normal and never played since... At least I have more mules to use