Diablo II has always been plagued by one major problem: cheaters.
In the Open games that was pretty much expected, since it’s impossible to prevent client hacking when the data is saved on your own system and there’s no central server to enforce the rules. The Realm games were supposed to be different though; with them there is a central server and the data is stored at the server end, not on the client. The Realm games were supposed to be unhackable, giving people a place where their accomplishments actually had meaning, items up for trade were actually worth something, and you had to play by the proper rules.
And unhackable they were. For about five minutes.
Because of the security the hackers were much more limited in what they could do, but still they managed to find holes in the system and it wasn’t long before they could duplicate items, create gold out of thin air, make buggy items with insane stats, use split-second triggers to kill you instantly in unfair duels, reveal the entire map at once and see where enemies are before reaching them, and other cheating tactics. Blizzard fixed the bugs that allowed these cheats as they popped up, but the hackers would always seem to find another way to achieve the same effects, and some of them still exist today. And there’s still long-term damage to the item economy and fairness of duels from all the bugged items.
Well Blizzard has decided to fight back a bit. In the last year or so they’ve started banning accounts caught using the hack programs, with a total of almost 330,000 accounts closed in total so far. That’s a medium-sized city’s worth of people. (Though people often have more than one account, so the actual number of people banned was far less.) That didn’t really solve the problem though; the hackers were still able to continue finding the holes and cheat, and they could just create new accounts.
Blizzard has a few more tricks up its sleeve, though. First, the 1.10 patch is expected to be released soon. This is going to be a *huge* patch and they’ve supposedly done a lot of work on cheat prevention. Along with the patch will be what the Blizzard reps have dubbed the “Rust Storm” which is expected to scan and sweep the realm characters clean of all of the duplicated and hacked items they’re carrying. Although the bugs that allowed the creation of dupes and hacked items have mostly been fixed, the items themselves continued to exist on the Realms, often being traded about among people who didn’t know any better. Well, get ready to kiss them goodbye now… It’s suspected that not all of the duplicated items will be detectable though, due to technical limitations (some item types don’t have unique IDs so it’s not possible to tell if they’re dupes), so the realms won’t be swept completely clean, but as close as is possible.
There is an alternative though: the patch will also introduce ‘Ladder’ characters. If you create a ladder character, it will only be allowed to create new games or join games with only other ladder characters. There will be no way for ladder characters to interact with old characters, basically creating a fresh new economy and level ranking system untainted by all the old cheats. They’ve also indicated that they may at some point take ladder characters, move them to the ‘normal’ character type, and start a new ladder season at their discretion, presumably if the ladder somehow gets hacked and they want to start fresh again.
Has Blizzard finally won against the hackers? Will the new ladder system remain cheat-free and untainted? Only time will tell now. I’d like to think so, and Blizzard is putting a lot of effort into ensuring so now, but then again you should never underestimate the ingenuity of those hackers…
It’s always frustrating when you’re playing with people who cheat. The game’s not fun anymore.
You’re absolutely WRONG, Jenn. Cheating *enhances* games, especially for those of us who have lives spiralling out of control — it’s nice to know there’s at least *one* thing we can still have some control and choice over…
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with Heide-san about enforcing fairness, and how abusing other players thru such methods is a bad thing… There are limitations, as in all things.
But to say “the game’s not fun anymore”… well… obviously you’ve never really tried it. :-)
Well, it depends…
In the single-player games nobody cares, go ahead and cheat to your heart’s content, especially after you’ve already beaten it legitimately and just want to try out some different things.
As soon as you move to multiplayer and other people become involved though, a certain degree of fairness is expected. You’re in competition with them for items, points, prestige, etc., so you want a level playing field. Especially in a game like EQ where a lot of resources are limited. The Emperor of Ssra only appears once a week, and it would suck to always lose him to a group that can instantly teleport in and kill him in one hit. As soon as other people start to cheat and aren’t stopped, you’re forced to cheat yourself to remain competitive and that often sucks the fun out of it. Instead of being proud that you had the winning strategy and tactics that got you past the raid’s obstacles, it’s hard to be proud of having pushed the “Insta-Kill” button on the cheat GUI before the other guy did…
Anyway, with D2 specifically, you have a choice: the anything-goes single player and Open games, or the secure, by-the-rules Realm games. Given that choice it’s certainly reasonable for the Realm players to expect cheating not to be allowed, or the whole point of having the different types is meaningless.
I was referring to multiplayer. Hell, who cares when it’s just you. But like Cam said, when there are others involved, there has to be a level of fairness. Otherwise, what’s the point?
What’s the point, you ask? Well, the same one you’d use if I asked you what’s the point in playing games altogether.
Of course it has to be an agreed-upon thing by all parties involved, but to rule out any one aspect of enjoyment might as well be to rule ’em all out.
It all comes down to the reason people play at all. Those, like you two, who dislike cheating altogether, play for the challenge and the enjoyment of succeeding. Not everyone thinks that way.
I do for escapism. Losing myself in a good game is like reading a good novel — it gets you away from reality. As I said, I cheat at some games because it’s a nice change to succeed at something for once. Challenging myself at gaming holds less than no interest for me because simply existing is enough of a challenge.
In all fairness, I agree with the specific D2 example wholly. I do not (and will not) cheat at a game where it’s not accepted by everyone involved. However, a cheat is simply an unaccepted rule — a possibly exploitative one conceived by someone who wishes to play for a different motive than the norm.
Games are a human invention, borne out of a need for fun, enjoyment, and recreation. Humans think up, develop, revamp, and redefine the details of how a game is played. When a game ceases to be fun, as a human, I reserve the right to alter those rules until it becomes fun. The fact that it is labelled “cheating” is a subjective interpretation by those who have fun with the game the way it is.
As long as neither “sect” interferes with each other, what does it matter how the rules are used? If everyone is gleaning the fun from the activity intended by the creators, isn’t that the point?
Yup. Cheat to yer heart’s content if everyone’s okay with it. I’m referring to if all parties involved do not agree, however. It takes the fun away from everyone else who is actually trying to play the game set up by the rules that were intended.
So nu. Goes without saying.
Any situation where all parties involved don’t agree to terms and definitions will be largely unpleasant and unenjoyable.
In the gaming world, we label those who exploit rules and make the whole experience unpleasant for all involved cheaters.
In life, we call them politicians. :-)