So... about the rampant botting

Ladder season 5 just started something like ~30 hours ago, and the first SCL walk of the season just happened, about 2 hours ago, on EU. I only caught it because I was up late (still am, apparently?). There was also an HCL walk even earlier, but that one took advantage of the fact that status carries over across ladder resets and it was at 4/6 or 5/6 when previous ladder ended. This SCL walk however started from 2/6, and it was fast (took like a minute to spawn), as sneaky walks usually are. This seems unusually early to have a dclone walk less than 30 hours into a new ladder (new record for a ladder start, I think?), which is remarkable by itself.

Then, after the walk had happened, I was shown a screenshot of someone apparently having 800 (yes, EIGHT hundred) unidentified annis for sale on "that site". Yes, on softcore ladder. It wasn't too hard to confirm by searching for it (the trade topics are visible even if you are not logged in there). There really is a person selling 800x unidentified annis. And again, there's been a single walk so far.

The botting seems even more rampant than I had imagined...

Been that way from the beginning, and the kickbacks blizzard gets from the stores who run them keep battle.net free for d2r players without that you'd be paying a monthly sub for it like wow, they have them dead to rights on the intellectual property front and the stores know it so they fork up a portion to keep the lights on, it was that way on legacy and nothing has changed sadly even the spam bots, its a deal with the devil for sure but its not going anywhere anytime soon, just another cartel where the drugs are pixels.

The Modern Blizzard is even more Venal though so this isn't that surprising just look at d4, typically you pay people to playtest your game, well now they found a way to make you pay them to do it the entire "games as a service" Platform operates on this philosophy. Very cunning and shrewd but not very honorable or honest.

On the evening of opening day (Sept 28), I tuned in for a few minutes and watched Heidi and crew complete Hell level, and already running Hell

Secret Cow Level.

I also watched Hedi get his butt handed back to him three times in row before he logged out and back in while they were rushing

Travincal. :-{}

So bot perhaps, but I suspect those who make money off of the game can also complete it in an evening. In players 8 games with a swap crew running 24 straight hours they are probably farming torches as well.

mhlg wrote: 7 months ago

On the evening of opening day (Sept 28), I tuned in for a few minutes and watched Heidi and crew complete Hell level, and already running Hell

Secret Cow Level.

I also watched Hedi get his butt handed back to him three times in row before he logged out and back in while they were rushing

Travincal. :-{}

So bot perhaps, but I suspect those who make money off of the game can also complete it in an evening. In players 8 games with a swap crew running 24 straight hours they are probably farming torches as well.

Yep its as entrenched as any profession its been min/maxed and optimized for peak efficiency just like any other successful business.

Xanhast70 wrote: 7 months ago

Been that way from the beginning, and the kickbacks blizzard gets from the stores who run them keep battle.net free for d2r players without that you'd be paying a monthly sub for it like wow, they have them dead to rights on the intellectual property front and the stores know it so they fork up a portion to keep the lights on, it was that way on legacy and nothing has changed sadly even the spam bots, its a deal with the devil for sure but its not going anywhere anytime soon, just another cartel where the drugs are pixels.

These are very, very bold Statements

In the beginning Blizzard has sent c&d letters to private people who were selling stuff on ebay. They've taken several people / groups / sites that offered hacks to court and had them shutdown. Several ruststorm, warden and crackdown on even the slightest way to exploit the game. That consisted of stuff like temp Softbans when opening games to fast. 5 Pindleruns back to back on the old b.net and you couldn't join or open any games for 10 minutes. They've even tripled or quadrupled the size of durance of hate lvl 3 going from 1.09 to 1.10 to keep botting in check. I'm pretty sure the guy that created the first maphack still has to pay his debt to blizzard.

And if you know the sites are that provided bugs / exploits / maphacks and duping methods back in the past, you could visit them today, look at their back log and discover that that Blizzard still cracks down on Maphacks, Duping and Botting since 2021 in D2r

But with stuff like this it will always be a losing battle for blizzard or any gamedev whatsoever.

Xanhast70 wrote: 7 months ago

The Modern Blizzard is even more Venal though so this isn't that surprising just look at d4, typically you pay people to playtest your game, well now they found a way to make you pay them to do it the entire "games as a service" Platform operates on this philosophy. Very cunning and shrewd but not very honorable or honest.

You do know what company / what game was the one that show every other Dev and publisher on this world how to get people to play your game while they pay a monthly fee for it? Even going so far as to get unfahtomable rich over it?

I give you a hint:
It starts with "W" and ends with "orld of Warcraft"

And If they wanted a cut from trades with real money they also could add something into the game where people can trade items with real money and just take a cut from that....

...there is something about that one i just can't my finger on...

...a way to sell your items for real money...

...i would call it an Auction House or something like that.


As you see: Blizzard has a very good understanding how to run Games as a Service and they don't need item shops to keep the Servers afloat

The name Diablo is what brings them money. So much money in fact that they can provide the battle.net for free. They've somewhat even kept their promises about paying in D4: Mostly cosmetics, no P2W from what i've seen. There is a lot more shitty stuff they could do but don't do. But the only reason D4 has sold this well and made over 660mil in one Week is because they've baited people with D4 being like D2. Nostalgia. But even this doesn't help looking at the player count today. That game is dead.


The Problem with Blizzard today is that no one from back then is still there. If you want that Blizzard, play Path of Exile that's where most of thoses ended up that created D2.


PS:

Btw: the old Battle.net is still online too. You can still play OG D2 and it's still for free

mhlg wrote: 7 months ago

On the evening of opening day (Sept 28), I tuned in for a few minutes and watched Heidi and crew complete Hell level, and already running Hell

Secret Cow Level.

I also watched Hedi get his butt handed back to him three times in row before he logged out and back in while they were rushing

Travincal. :-{}

So bot perhaps, but I suspect those who make money off of the game can also complete it in an evening. In players 8 games with a swap crew running 24 straight hours they are probably farming torches as well.

No matter if you have a 100 men crew (like a clan/team or whatever -- I saw some ppl having tags on their characters' names that supports exactly that), that has nothing to do with the Shadow's original post about a single walk from which 1 person is selling 800 unid annis. For it to make sense you would need to have 800 men crew and a trust of a single guy to sell all those annis on his own via any site. Which I don't think anyone done, yet!

Blizzard did try to fight bots with some rudimentary auto-ban system that backfired painfully tho. Even some streamers/YTubers who did like 1000 runs got caught in those ban-wave(s)... That also led to people massively got frustrated with support of which many never got unbanned (because they couldn't prove they didn't bot unlike people who had VODs/captions). It's a very slippery slope and yes, illegal mods in gaming and scripts and bots usually bring them far way more money than keeping a game clean (if companies cut a deal with makers of those 'corrupted stuff'). But that's some global problem, unfortunately (I literally seen it happen in at least 2 other games)...

Flippy wrote: 7 months ago

Xanhast70 wrote: 7 months ago

Been that way from the beginning, and the kickbacks blizzard gets from the stores who run them keep battle.net free for d2r players without that you'd be paying a monthly sub for it like wow, they have them dead to rights on the intellectual property front and the stores know it so they fork up a portion to keep the lights on, it was that way on legacy and nothing has changed sadly even the spam bots, its a deal with the devil for sure but its not going anywhere anytime soon, just another cartel where the drugs are pixels.

These are very, very bold Statements

In the beginning Blizzard has sent c&d letters to private people who were selling stuff on ebay. They've taken several people / groups / sites that offered hacks to court and had them shutdown. Several ruststorm, warden and crackdown on even the slightest way to exploit the game. That consisted of stuff like temp Softbans when opening games to fast. 5 Pindleruns back to back on the old b.net and you couldn't join or open any games for 10 minutes. They've even tripled or quadrupled the size of durance of hate lvl 3 going from 1.09 to 1.10 to keep botting in check. I'm pretty sure the guy that created the first maphack still has to pay his debt to blizzard.

And if you know the sites are that provided bugs / exploits / maphacks and duping methods back in the past, you could visit them today, look at their back log and discover that that Blizzard still cracks down on Maphacks, Duping and Botting since 2021 in D2r

But with stuff like this it will always be a losing battle for blizzard or any gamedev whatsoever.

Xanhast70 wrote: 7 months ago

The Modern Blizzard is even more Venal though so this isn't that surprising just look at d4, typically you pay people to playtest your game, well now they found a way to make you pay them to do it the entire "games as a service" Platform operates on this philosophy. Very cunning and shrewd but not very honorable or honest.

You do know what company / what game was the one that show every other Dev and publisher on this world how to get people to play your game while they pay a monthly fee for it? Even going so far as to get unfahtomable rich over it?

I give you a hint:
It starts with "W" and ends with "orld of Warcraft"

And If they wanted a cut from trades with real money they also could add something into the game where people can trade items with real money and just take a cut from that....

...there is something about that one i just can't my finger on...

...a way to sell your items for real money...

...i would call it an Auction House or something like that.


As you see: Blizzard has a very good understanding how to run Games as a Service and they don't need item shops to keep the Servers afloat

The name Diablo is what brings them money. So much money in fact that they can provide the battle.net for free. They've somewhat even kept their promises about paying in D4: Mostly cosmetics, no P2W from what i've seen. There is a lot more shitty stuff they could do but don't do. But the only reason D4 has sold this well and made over 660mil in one Week is because they've baited people with D4 being like D2. Nostalgia. But even this doesn't help looking at the player count today. That game is dead.


The Problem with Blizzard today is that no one from back then is still there. If you want that Blizzard, play Path of Exile that's where most of thoses ended up that created D2.


PS:

Btw: the old Battle.net is still online too. You can still play OG D2 and it's still for free

Plausible Deniability Sir, The oldest organ of statecraft. Enough action to save face and keep the cockroaches running its not as inconceivable as you make out, and I know a few store owners myself sir so I know how it runs, and I know who fails and why.

Yeah, after the faked Moon Landing, 9/11 and the earth being round now the next big cover up: item shops in d2r

If they wanted to make a profit from sold items they would provide a way to do so. In the past they have with the auction house and then they have taken it offline despite making a huge profit out of it. 1$ per trade.

So please explain why. Why would they secretly partner up with item shops?

And not "because I know someone that know someone"

I can say that I know someone from Blizzard who says that what you're saying is BS

Flippy wrote: 7 months ago

Yeah, after the faked Moon Landing, 9/11 and the earth being round now the next big cover up: item shops in d2r

If they wanted to make a profit from sold items they would provide a way to do so. In the past they have with the auction house and then they have taken it offline despite making a huge profit out of it. 1$ per trade.

So please explain why. Why would they secretly partner up with item shops?

And not "because I know someone that know someone"

I can say that I know someone from Blizzard who says that what you're saying is BS

Because yes its free to us but not to them and its a business like any other no tin foil hat promise there is a list of accounts on blizzards end that are known botters and have been for years and they do not get banned ever and they supply the stores and blizzard gets a cut of that your doubt doesn't dispel this fact.

The retraction of the public auction house for diablo 3 was a political shift/maneuver consciously made to curtail a very vocal outcry from a certain subsect of the diablo player base it was a political maneuver just like any other and all politics and policy makers are plastic especially in democracies, and blizzard is based in the US this isnt anymore shocking, then any other political maneuver.

Flippy wrote: 7 months ago

Yeah, after the faked Moon Landing, 9/11 and the earth being round now the next big cover up: item shops in d2r
So please explain why. Why would they secretly partner up with item shops?

I can't say Blizzard is doing this as well but I can confirm for some other companies/games. And answer is very simple actually -- because it's just a good business, it's lucrative for both sides. Blizzard being Blizzard is definitely not an entity that will fight righteous war against the economical windmills for alone pleasure of their customers. Unfortunately and disgustingly, gotta emphasize again, we live in a world where that is a usual thing (still not normal, just usual). Blizzard shouldn't receive all the blame here (if any at all, can't prove anything but I am inclined to believe that guy just a little bit), gaming industry is evolving and becoming same as anything is in economical sphere -- more simplified => if you can only make it 'right' with high expenses then cut yourself a good deal with much lower costs that will earn you more money in the long run. It's basis of a proper business deal. And about part of "why do it under the table" is, again, simple -- their reputation is dwindling in last 10+ years (or so), just hush hush and nobody has to know the real truth (which is almost always somewhere in between) since they failed miserably with the good old "even the bad publicity is still a publicity". Some entities can succeed off of that, yes, Blizzard apparently did not.

P.S. Pretty please with a cherry on top, don't put Moon landing with 9/11 with flat Earthers in the same basket, my intelligence is getting offended jk (but someone else might)... xd
If something is publicly available it doesn't automatically means it's true. "Don't doubt everything, but question everything. Because doubt will only lead to poisoning of a mind while questions can eventually get answered" or whatever is the exact quote.

Wait running online servers all over the world costs money? Now then what you've said early must be true then

See here is the point what massively frustates about arguing with people like you:

I've written a multiple paragraph posts where i've given you points and examples (wich are easily certifiable by reading the patchnotes of D2 and articles from News Papers from that time) where Blizzard heavily stomped on people on eBay, itemShops, botters, maphackers and even people that programmed those maphacks with life destroying law suits. Additionally i've given you examples of Blizzards capability of, let's call it, regular monetization with WoW and the Auction House of D3

And everything that comes from you is: "Duuuuuuuude look at the truth, it's just a big ploy"

Thank you, no thank you. I guarantee you no Publisher or Game Dev on that level would even think about doing stuff like that. they would sell the items themselves. it's called P2W. Aside from loss of face if this would come out (wich it probably would have by now since by your statement it's going like this since old school D2) it's a complicated and faulty process and it leave them in vulnerable, easily exploitable state if one item shop goes rouge. I think you misjudge the size of (ACTIVISION) Blizzard. It's not a small indy dev who would even need the peanuts those item shops probably make. And then the actuall hassle that comes with it?

This reminds of something that a buddy of mine once said: If you hear hooves clatter think of horses not zebras.

The reason D2, or the battle.net for that matter, being free from monthly subscribtions are actually quite simple. It's cross financing from various other games where Blizzard HAS those monthly subscribtions. It was always like this since the beginning. Initially it was just expenses that were covered by sales from their various games. Then WoW came around and you could say, from that point on, blizzard had some sparechange.

In D3 it was the auction house in D4 it's comsmetics and skins

Somewhere in the middle came overwatch (yay microtransactions), hearthstone was highly profitable at some point too and then there still is the shitty but financially very much successful Diablo Immortal.

And again: D4 has made 660million in the first fucking week. I guarantee you, the cost of the whole battle.net (og battle.net, starcraft, warcraft and Diablo) from then (2000) until today has not crossed the 500mil mark. I'll see if i can dig up the numbers

And that's only the (major) Blizzard Parts. Then there is Activision. I've heard they've made some money with at least some of their games. Some minor stuff. i think they call it "Call of Duty" or something like that, maybe you've heard of that one.

Even if Activision Blizzard is a shitty company nowadays, their Portfolio alone should give you a rough estimate about how much money they probably can spend on dumb shit as servers for the battle.net


Edit: one 0 short with battle.net upkeep cost

ShadowHeart wrote: 7 months ago

Ladder season 5 just started something like ~30 hours ago, and the first SCL walk of the season just happened, about 2 hours ago, on EU. I only caught it because I was up late (still am, apparently?). There was also an HCL walk even earlier, but that one took advantage of the fact that status carries over across ladder resets and it was at 4/6 or 5/6 when previous ladder ended. This SCL walk however started from 2/6, and it was fast (took like a minute to spawn), as sneaky walks usually are. This seems unusually early to have a dclone walk less than 30 hours into a new ladder (new record for a ladder start, I think?), which is remarkable by itself.

Then, after the walk had happened, I was shown a screenshot of someone apparently having 800 (yes, EIGHT hundred) unidentified annis for sale on "that site". Yes, on softcore ladder. It wasn't too hard to confirm by searching for it (the trade topics are visible even if you are not logged in there). There really is a person selling 800x unidentified annis. And again, there's been a single walk so far.

The botting seems even more rampant than I had imagined...

Ignoring that whole tinfoil hat discussion here, this is in no way surprising.

Bots have always run rampant in D2. That's a tale as old as..well, D2..which is basically time. ^^
Blizz has never gotten a handle on this. Regardless of whether they just don't want to (let the tinfoil hatting continue!) or they're just too incompetent to. There's always been the occasional ban wave (typically conveniently followed by a sale on new copies of the game *cough*) but that's so spread apart that it'll never actually stop botters from having a solid business overall. Or even from stopping the "occasional" private botter.

Since that whole "aww shit, bot update made 'em not set passwords on bot's games!" event on Asia a while ago, it also became blatantly obvious just how big some of those bot farms are and that you're not looking at tens or even hundreds of them but literally thousands each.
So yeah, the first walk also turning into thousands of annis for each of them..not surprising. If anything, 800 being sold there is surprisingly low.

Botters are simply a part of D2 that'll never change. Would be nice if it did and if they did get removed..but yeah, unlikely.

Schnorki wrote: 6 months ago

Botters are simply a part of D2 that'll never change. Would be nice if it did and if they did get removed..but yeah, unlikely.

I don't know exactly how I would feel if that would happen

While leaving morality completely out of it

On one side the surely would get a lot more grounded. Even the fact that high runes are a universally accepted currency is a perversion in itself. That people actually thinking of giving their Merc Last Wish is mind boggling to say the least. 40 Jahs for perfect Pala Torch is complete and utter lunacy. The droprates of those runes in relation to the availability of torches goes beyond any reasonable equivalent worth. Also the fact that Annis are given away for free is ridiculous if you think of time it takes to farm just one SoJ

If you on the other side crank up to 110% with a Horker you're not even happy anymore even if you get a few elite legendaries or one or two high runes after two weeks of farming. "Hey I got a Herald. Do I need it? No? tough shit it's worth pennies"


Now this all has a different side as well. I must agree that I did buy the runes for Enigma too for the equivalent of some tokens and keys. Two

Lo for Grief and Forti were very readily available too some time later.

With things like Infinity rather easy to get you even get the chance to play builds that normally could never work or could never work as efficient/fast

Things like an auradin (as stupid as find that concept) wouldn't exist either.

Actually having an anni is nice. Nowhere mandatory but the bonus xp sure helps a lot if you wanna go that last mile

So, what to do?

SSF?

Sooner or later I'd fire up an char editor anyway. Massive kudos that have the mindset to play legit in SP

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

mhlg wrote: 7 months ago

On the evening of opening day (Sept 28), I tuned in for a few minutes and watched Heidi and crew complete Hell level, and already running Hell

Secret Cow Level.

I also watched Hedi get his butt handed back to him three times in row before he logged out and back in while they were rushing

Travincal. :-{}

So bot perhaps, but I suspect those who make money off of the game can also complete it in an evening. In players 8 games with a swap crew running 24 straight hours they are probably farming torches as well.

No matter if you have a 100 men crew (like a clan/team or whatever -- I saw some ppl having tags on their characters' names that supports exactly that), that has nothing to do with the Shadow's original post about a single walk from which 1 person is selling 800 unid annis. For it to make sense you would need to have 800 men crew and a trust of a single guy to sell all those annis on his own via any site. Which I don't think anyone done, yet!

Blizzard did try to fight bots with some rudimentary auto-ban system that backfired painfully tho. Even some streamers/YTubers who did like 1000 runs got caught in those ban-wave(s)... That also led to people massively got frustrated with support of which many never got unbanned (because they couldn't prove they didn't bot unlike people who had VODs/captions). It's a very slippery slope and yes, illegal mods in gaming and scripts and bots usually bring them far way more money than keeping a game clean (if companies cut a deal with makers of those 'corrupted stuff'). But that's some global problem, unfortunately (I literally seen it happen in at least 2 other games)...

I wasn't disagreeing with Shadowheart I was suggesting a possible alternate scenario. As far as I know other than automation Bots have to follow the same rules as individual players. Meaning a single Bot per game. To farm Sojs all a player need do is make to act 1 nightmare which could've been done in the first hour or so of ladder. Another possible scenario is duping. There are dupe tutorials on a number of sites. Perhaps it's a confluence of all of those?

https://www.aoeah.com/news/1328--d2r-du ... esurrected

Flippy wrote: 7 months ago

Xanhast70 wrote: 7 months ago

Been that way from the beginning, and the kickbacks blizzard gets from the stores who run them keep battle.net free for d2r players without that you'd be paying a monthly sub for it like wow, they have them dead to rights on the intellectual property front and the stores know it so they fork up a portion to keep the lights on, it was that way on legacy and nothing has changed sadly even the spam bots, its a deal with the devil for sure but its not going anywhere anytime soon, just another cartel where the drugs are pixels.

These are very, very bold Statements

In the beginning Blizzard has sent c&d letters to private people who were selling stuff on ebay. They've taken several people / groups / sites that offered hacks to court and had them shutdown. Several ruststorm, warden and crackdown on even the slightest way to exploit the game. That consisted of stuff like temp Softbans when opening games to fast. 5 Pindleruns back to back on the old b.net and you couldn't join or open any games for 10 minutes. They've even tripled or quadrupled the size of durance of hate lvl 3 going from 1.09 to 1.10 to keep botting in check. I'm pretty sure the guy that created the first maphack still has to pay his debt to blizzard.

And if you know the sites are that provided bugs / exploits / maphacks and duping methods back in the past, you could visit them today, look at their back log and discover that that Blizzard still cracks down on Maphacks, Duping and Botting since 2021 in D2r

But with stuff like this it will always be a losing battle for blizzard or any gamedev whatsoever.

Xanhast70 wrote: 7 months ago

The Modern Blizzard is even more Venal though so this isn't that surprising just look at d4, typically you pay people to playtest your game, well now they found a way to make you pay them to do it the entire "games as a service" Platform operates on this philosophy. Very cunning and shrewd but not very honorable or honest.

You do know what company / what game was the one that show every other Dev and publisher on this world how to get people to play your game while they pay a monthly fee for it? Even going so far as to get unfahtomable rich over it?

I give you a hint:
It starts with "W" and ends with "orld of Warcraft"

And If they wanted a cut from trades with real money they also could add something into the game where people can trade items with real money and just take a cut from that....

...there is something about that one i just can't my finger on...

...a way to sell your items for real money...

...i would call it an Auction House or something like that.


As you see: Blizzard has a very good understanding how to run Games as a Service and they don't need item shops to keep the Servers afloat

The name Diablo is what brings them money. So much money in fact that they can provide the battle.net for free. They've somewhat even kept their promises about paying in D4: Mostly cosmetics, no P2W from what i've seen. There is a lot more shitty stuff they could do but don't do. But the only reason D4 has sold this well and made over 660mil in one Week is because they've baited people with D4 being like D2. Nostalgia. But even this doesn't help looking at the player count today. That game is dead.


The Problem with Blizzard today is that no one from back then is still there. If you want that Blizzard, play Path of Exile that's where most of thoses ended up that created D2.


PS:

Btw: the old Battle.net is still online too. You can still play OG D2 and it's still for free

Facts, I received a C&D for selling 1 (ONE!) pair of war travs for....$0.99

mhlg wrote: 6 months ago

I wasn't disagreeing with Shadowheart I was suggesting a possible alternate scenario. As far as I know other than automation Bots have to follow the same rules as individual players. Meaning a single Bot per game. To farm Sojs all a player need do is make to act 1 nightmare which could've been done in the first hour or so of ladder. Another possible scenario is duping. There are dupe tutorials on a number of sites. Perhaps it's a confluence of all of those?
https://www.aoeah.com/news/1328--d2r-du ... esurrected

Might be... Although I thought they fixed the duping problem, right... Right? o_O

Anyway, sorry if I sounded harsh, I just wanted to highlight the second part of what Shadow said and that is the actual walk which was only one and from that one there are hundreds of annis a single guy is selling. Can be legit yes, but it's waaay too farfetched. Now about the first part of how it was a record Dclone spawning in the first place is not that unexpected or improbable, yet an interesting observation nevertheless (thanks Mr. Shadow<3 again for this post) -- everyone who was watching the new ladder season's ranking table for the first couple of hours could see 40-60% of total players being Asians (yes I scrolled and refreshed for quite some time since I'm not playing it from the start) and we all know what dis-balanced economy and markets in general last time and from who it came, *cough* I'm not trying to point fingers here. Let's give everyone a fair benefit of doubt...
On top of that, this is probably a new record season by amount of players playing it as well which doesn't automatically means we have more crazy 1-to-ubers in first day rushers but it does increases chances of SoJs with a global amount of grinding => more players, more grinding, faster walks. That's all cool and all that, a natural progression, more players are having fun, trying things out or hunting for the exclusive RWs. But ye, *sniff sniff*, I find something oddly stinky here as well apart from my feet ofc that is...

P.S. Justice for tinfoil hats and caps!