Insane ladder prices

I've just noticed a pretty massive spike in rune costs and was curious if someone could enlighten me as to why.

The cheapest I've seen a

Jah priced on a store is 7.25 up from 4.85. I just sometimes use these sites to Guage value. I've never seen a

Jah go for this much, not even when d2r launched, so I'm curious why now?

Heard from a friend who knows more than me that a bunch of botters were banned and prices are skyrocketing across the board bc of it

Thanks Kerph. Might need to change the value on your signature

As far as I know, there’s been multiple ban waves, both last season and this season. It seems like Blizzard has been quietly ramping up their anti-bot/cheat measures. They don’t make a big deal out of it so you wouldn’t know about it until you start seeing the long term effects like this.

They have an automated system that detects and bans cheaters. Sometimes the automated ban system hits the wrong target, and one tell that they’ve ramped it up recently is that the wrongful bans seem more frequent of late. I know several people who were banned this ladder season and then got their accounts restored with a “whoops we did a boo-boo” email from Blizzard (a few even without having to appeal, some had to appeal before a human had a look and saw the mistake). It feels like the number of mistaken bans have gone up this season (in particular there were a lot of cases about 3-4 weeks ago IIRC).

Example

Here’s an example of an email someone received:

This guy was banned and unbanned overnight in the matter of hours (all while he was sleeping).

Darkhold wrote: 1 hour ago

Thanks Kerph. Might need to change the value on your signature

You're right

I think it's great that Blizzard is improving their anti botting, despite the risks of some wrongful short-term bans.

Finding a

Jah/

Ber should feel really special and finally allow you to make one of the great runewords, and not be like, oh well, I guess I'll put it to my other 20...

Now if only they'd extend their anti-botting measures to finally target those f'in spam bots sitting in lobby all day...

Couldn't care less about some random bot I'll never meet farming all day to sell stuff on some site I'll never visit. Sure, they should be taken care of but at least they don't directly affect your average player.
But constantly getting spam-whispered and having to reset chat windows every single bloody time because the chat system still sucks and their "block non-friend whispers" feature simply doesn't work either and either blocks noone or blocks friends instead is beyond annoying.

Plus those are exceptionally easy to auto-detect...no excuse to not have had a handle on that for decades now.

I agree with schnorki on this. Not that I'm a fan of botting but they've allowed for dclone spawns as well as keeping high runes somewhat affordable. The fact that a

Zod or

Jah is about 30

Ist each is pretty limiting as far as most casual and semi casual players go. Hopefully the market will readjust. Nl prices haven't budged so that seems odd. Imagine your

Jah going from 30

Ist to 10

Ist overnight when season ends!

I'm kinda neutral on it, yes it's nice in a way that high runes are accessible. But i think would prefer a version of the game where high runes are genuinely as rare and expensive as they "should be". High runes are what enable you to make build capstones like Enigma etc after all, and at least for me as a ladder player those are the milestones/goals i'm shooting for each season. Once all my characters are fully geared i tend to lose interest

If you're a casual player and you just can't be satisfied without endgame items like Enigma, i think non-ladder would be more the mode for you anyway

Darkhold wrote: 40 minutes ago

I agree with schnorki on this. Not that I'm a fan of botting but they've allowed for dclone spawns as well as keeping high runes somewhat affordable. The fact that a

Zod or

Jah is about 30

Ist each is pretty limiting as far as most casual and semi casual players go. Hopefully the market will readjust. Nl prices haven't budged so that seems odd. Imagine your

Jah going from 30

Ist to 10

Ist overnight when season ends!

how long does ladder last before that 30 become 10 ?

Somewhere between 4 and 6 months I believe. I'm sure Kershaw or schnorki would have a better answer.