Diablo 3 Announces Bot Apocalypse

[Karloff]

Diablo 3 Announces Bot Apocalypse

Blizzard bans several thousand Diablo 3 players for "undermining the spirit of fair play."

Blizzard has announced a Diablo 3 bot apocalypse, banning "several thousand" players for what community manager Lylirra described as "undermining the spirit of fair play;" running bots, in other words. The exact number of bans is, as yet, known only to Blizzard, and some fans of the game voiced their concerns [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7415462781#1] that perhaps this was too little, too late.

"This isn't our first rodeo," said Lylirra, in response to those concerns. "We have been actively monitoring for exploitative behavior since the game launched and taking action as needed." Blizzard just hasn't been making an announcement every time it brought out the banhammer. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117854-Update-Diablo-3-Cheater-Purge-Imminent]

The announcement wasn't quite enough to please everyone, and a complaint made more than once in the forum was that, by not visibly addressing the issue before, the game's economy had been negatively affected. Though this issue was not addressed directly, Lylirra did say that the ability for players to report abusive players though the game client would be added "in a future patch". Lylirra also said that Blizzard would be more vocal about its bot banning in the future.

Source: VG24/7 [http://www.vg247.com/2012/12/19/diablo-3-blizzard-bans-several-thousand-players-for-using-bots/]


Permalink

 

[Aeshi]

Gee Blizzard, you sure that's a great Idea i mean knocking off a few thousand players for life? I mean really. You make a game that is built around mindless repetitive grinding and throw hissifits when some people say. This game is mindless and repetitive I could easily automate this and get the same effects.

You want to stop bots, here's a though, make a game that is dynamic enough that automation becomes impractical.

Short of making D3 a puzzle game, that's basically impossible.

 

[Sylveria]

And those people turned around and bought new copies and started botting all over again. Why? Cause they probably made hundreds of dollars if not thousands off your real-money-trading auction house.

 

[fwiffo]

Let them bot, I say. There's little reason to play the game these days. No pvp. Barely any randomness, so each playthrough is pretty much the same. The game is dead.

If you have hopes for future patches and xpacs, I'm sorry.

 

[Aeshi]

Actually not that hard. A slight tweak to Monster AI would be enough, randomize the skill/spell sets and attributes a little and bam.

Bam nothing. The best-case scenario is that the bots stop for a day or two until the bots own AI is updated to compensate for their update and the new unquestionably superior build is found among the randomized skills/stats.

Really we all know what Blizzard and the players are griping about. Someone found a more effecient way to get high level stuff and is selling them at lower prices. If real world business operated this way, you'd still have people assembling cars from start to finish by hand

Actually they still profit off the bots by virtue of the cut taken in RMAH transactions. So by your logic they should be encouraging the bots, not banning them.

 

[Breywood]

Blizzard can't stop botting on their Diablo games? Look at me having a heart attack from NOT surprise. I wonder how long they're going to keep that up. I suppose just long enough until profit=upkeep and then introduce the single player button. Wait, they're owned by Activision, so it'll be infinite xpacs THEN pull the plug.

I'm surprised that there's still bnet capability on D2, as decrepit as it is, it's still there.

 

[gardian06]

Gee Blizzard, you sure that's a great Idea i mean knocking off a few thousand players for life? I mean really. You make a game that is built around mindless repetitive grinding and throw hissifits when some people say. This game is mindless and repetitive I could easily automate this and get the same effects.

You want to stop bots, here's a though, make a game that is dynamic enough that automation becomes impractical.

the major issue is not the bots themselves, but when it is tied to potentially effecting the "real money auction" house (you know the reason over half the game is so mindless, and repetitive)

 

[BrotherRool]

Don't you love it when your game ships with no single player mode, and you can get banned from it for not being 'in keeping with the spirit of the game'

 

[Tiamattt]

Talk to us when they start IP banning, you know something that actually DOES SOMETHING. Seriously it's not hard for botter to take a small % of his profits to buy a new game, bot for another few months before getting banned again, and repeat. But of course since them doing so gets blizzard more money so......

 

[antipunt]

Oh silly silly Blizzard.

You are so dead to me.

 

[Eric the Orange]

Oh silly silly Blizzard.

You are so dead to me.

And yet you went to an article about blizzard and posted in it. If you really didn't care would you not ignore the article all together?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Blizzard creates an economy based on random reward, and then punishes people for optimizing their gains under that exact system. Yeah...that's pretty much how a cartel operates.

Caveat Emptor, to those who deal with Blizzard.

 

[Easton Dark]

I hope PvP is released right after this

That's still not implemented yet?

God damn, Blizzard. That's pitiful. What else are they doing with their time and employees?

 

[Warachia]

Oh silly silly Blizzard.

You are so dead to me.

And yet you went to an article about blizzard and posted in it. If you really didn't care would you not ignore the article all together?

There's a difference between calling the company an idiot, and saying they didn't care.

 

[mruuh]

I wonder, wouldn't it be more efficient (not to mention more satisfying) to just flag the "botters" as such, and change the game around them so that they never get good loot, or are punished in some other, more subtle, way? They can do that, since most of the game logic is server-side, remember?