Diablo 3 Wizards Go Nuclear

[Karloff]

Diablo 3 Wizards Go Nuclear


This new Diablo 3 exploit will probably vanish soon, but while it lasts, wizards are gods.

If you listen very carefully, you'll hear Diablo 3 demon lords weeping into their snot-covered hankies. Yesterday a new exploit was discovered that allows wizards to turn into invincible death-ray spewing maniacs, and it works on hardcore mode. No doubt the ill-gotten gains that resulted from this killing spree are on their way to the Real Money Auction House even as I'm typing this. One kind soul even posted a video to YouTube explaining the deal.

In essence, it's a mix of the Teleport and Archon abilities. Done right, your wizard becomes a glowing blue twink which monsters usually ignore, unless of course you attack them. But as they haven't got a snowball in hell's chance of doing anything to you, your blue murder machine can sweep the dungeon clean, collecting a ton of loot along the way.

Screams of "Blizzard doesn't care about this game" are already being heard on the Diablo 3 forums. [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6146816331?page=1] No word yet as to what Blizzard intends to do about the cheat. Even if the cheat itself is stopped, it's difficult to see what can be done about loot sold on the Auction House; and that means the cheat may have earned its exploiters actual cash.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-23-diablo-3-exploit-makes-wizards-invulnerable]

Permalink

 

[Clearing the Eye]

I am so very glad this game is a constant stream of fuck-ups and failure. I know the DRM has soured a lot of people already and hopefully the ton of glitches, bugs, hacks and cheats (the latter two were supposed to be made impossible with server side stuff, right Blizz? lolol) will piss off the few believers left enough for them to give up and abandon Blizzard.

Nice DRM, Blizz. You were trying to drive customers away, right?

Karma <3

 

[Zagzag]

The real problem is that dispite the gigantic fuck up that this game has been, people still love it and defend it, and it will probably encourage other companies to do the same with their DRM.

 

[KeyMaster45]

While an interesting solution for stopping players from turning to predatory gold/item buying websites, it seems that the real money AH is far more trouble than it's worth. If it didn't exist this exploit would be an insignificant problem; no game is without them even Blizzard's games. Instead of fake currency being gained from this people are now making actual money from cheating. Whatever your opinion on the right or wrongness of it the involvement of real money being exchanged will upset far more people than if it was just something you could use to farm gold easier.

 

[Falterfire]

If this is a legitimate combination of abilities that just happens to be insanely unbalanced instead of a true glitch (The article wasn't clear) then I hope the exploiters aren't punished. Nothing turns off gamers more than knowing that they'll be punished if they are too good at the game. (Or in this case, too good at picking abilities)

 

[Azuaron]

Look, I know the always online thing looks like a duck (DRM). It even walks like a duck. On occasion, it even sounds like a duck.

But it's actually a loon, and not a duck at all.

Is a loon better than a duck? Would you rather have a loon than a duck? For our practical purposes, does it even matter if it's a loon instead of a duck?

No on all three counts.

Are other companies going to look at this loon, decide it's a good idea, and implement ducks? Probably.

But when you call a loon a duck, you sound ignorant, so stop it.

If this is a legitimate combination of abilities that just happens to be insanely unbalanced instead of a true glitch (The article wasn't clear) then I hope the exploiters aren't punished. Nothing turns off gamers more than knowing that they'll be punished if they are too good at the game. (Or in this case, too good at picking abilities)

It looks like if you use the two abilities in conjunction, you get "stuck" in the in-between teleport state, making you impossible to hit, which is a complete glitch.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

If this is a legitimate combination of abilities that just happens to be insanely unbalanced instead of a true glitch (The article wasn't clear) then I hope the exploiters aren't punished. Nothing turns off gamers more than knowing that they'll be punished if they are too good at the game. (Or in this case, too good at picking abilities)

If you watched the video, you'd know that the exploit has to do with using two abilities simultaneously that the average person would normally never use at the same time. It's likely a glitch that has to do with you activating the Archon mode while in mid-teleport. (( Edit: Ninja'd xP ))

Also, real classy of the guy to give "props" to Blizzard for "letting another exploit slip by", because I'm sure that a QA department of any size is going to catch a glitch that took millions of fans a few months to accidentally trip over. I also love how this guy, who has probably been playing Diablo 3 since it came out, makes a point to talk about how shitty Diablo is. But then, at this point, I've lost all faith in Diablo fans; which is to say nothing that being compounded on top of my faith in gamers in general already being pretty low.

 

[gigastar]

Discovering an exploit in a Blizzard game is like trying to enforce copyright law in China.

In short, guys in charge will shut them down. Hard.

 

[Worgen]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if blizzard rolled back the game or something like that.

 

[Shjade]

Glitch or not, It's Blizzard's fault it's there and they shouldn't be punished for using it.

If only developers had a certain type of employee dedicated specifically to finding problems with the gameplay.

Faulty reasoning. "It's there, therefore it's okay to use" is rarely, if ever, an accurate statement. If you come across a glitch like this, the expected course of action is to report the bug so that it can be fixed.

If you come across a glitch like this and your reaction is, "Sweet, I'm going to abuse this as hard as possible before it gets fixed!" you should expect to get banned. Why? Because that's ban-worthy behavior.

It doesn't matter how or why you're exploiting the game. You are still exploiting the game. That's the infraction, not the methodology behind the exploit.

 

[KevinFournier]

Awesome! Prices in the RMAH are going to plummet! A cool illustration of supply and demand.

 

[Tahaneira]

I see Blizzard likes to Butcher their games in more ways than one.

...I don't know whether to high five you for being one of the few people who references a series I love, or punch you in the face for that pun.

I'm surprised at all the hate being leveled at Blizzard because of this. Glitches, especially ones like this, aren't really rare, and I'm sure it'll be fixed posthaste. The only real issue I see is that people will be using it to make real money. Don't get me wrong, it's still very bad, and I get the feeling Blizzard didn't think things through when they made the RM AH. If they thought anything besides, "More money! YAY!" But that doesn't seem to be what most people are angry about.

 

[Aeshi]

Between this and the Diamond Skin exploit a while back it seems like the best way to balance D3 would be to just remove the Wizard altogether (although the same could be said of most fantasy games as well, since when has the meathead hitting things with a metal stick ever been better than the guy who can call down meteors and teleport?)

 

[MetalMagpie]

I am so very glad this game is a constant stream of fuck-ups and failure.

It still sold 3.5million copies in the first 24 hours (6.3million in the first week), which makes it the fastest selling PC game of all time. Despite hiccups and complaints about the DRM, I'm going to assume Blizzard will view this game as a massive success. Businesses listen to sales figures, not to forum threads.

Just to be clear: I don't own the game. I'm waiting until it's a bit cheaper before I try it. (Although - with sales still strong - it looks like it's going to be a while before the price even dips below £30.)

 

[Paul The Best]

Remember when half the fun of video games was to find glitches in the game code and then go play around seeing what you could do with that glitch? Yeah those days are long gone; look at the levels of apoplexy people are at over a "standard" God Mode glitch. Damn shame to see where video games have evolved.

And on the almost certain retort about the integrity of the real currency auction house with respect to this issue, all I will say is Caveat Emptor.

 

[Paul The Best]

Remember when half the fun of video games was to find glitches in the game code and then go play around seeing what you could do with that glitch? Yeah those days are long gone; look at the levels of apoplexy people are at over a "standard" God Mode glitch. Damn shame to see where video games have evolved.

And on the almost certain retort about the integrity of the real currency auction house with respect to this issue, all I will say is Caveat Emptor.

 

[MetalMagpie]

I dont see the big deal here. Shit happens glitches get discovered and are patched fairly quickly. Those who exploit them know they are cheating and will have to deal with the consequences of that. The guy who make the video sounds like a complete fucking idiot. Bitching and moaning about how blizzard doenst give a fuck because this hasnt been patched in under three hours.

I suppose, but that glitch wouldn't be there TO exploit if Blizzard had done it's job properly.

If you think its possible to release a bug/glitch free game you are delusional.

So totally this.

I write software for a living. Sometimes the code I write has bugs. Guess what, I'm a human being. Most of the time those bugs will be caught in testing. Every now and again, they will be found by a client instead. Usually a client using the software months later, doing something they think is totally normal, but that our testing didn't cover. It's embarrassing when it happens, but most clients are happy as long as we get it fixed within the week.

Complete test coverage for anything more sophisticated than a "Hello World" is a laughable idea. And for any software product that doesn't have people's lives depending on it, there's only so much bug testing that can be justified.

 

[Kross]

Blizzard doesn't really ban in Diablo for exploiting. There's been multiple leveling (Azmodan and ZK quest chaining) and invulnerability exploits (Diamond Skin/Mantra of Healing/Smoke Screen) since launch. Though this is the first I've seen that requires a race condition.

Diablo 1 had a great dupe bug that exploited a race condition as well (not overly relevant, but was fun once you were able to do it). Drop gold or an item on the ground you wanted a copy of, then walk a few steps away from it. Click on the item to pick it up, and time grabbing a potion off your belt to coincide with the item pickup. If you did it right (fairly difficult to time at first), you would be holding a copy of the item rather then the potion you pulled off your belt.

Diablo 2 had similar dupe timing issues involving the trade window. After it was patched they didn't ban anyone (slight lie, there was some banning of people duping, but it was very sporadic and inconsistent - seemed to be mostly accounts that did other naughty things), but would look for duplicate item IDs (every item had a hidden unique identifier) in game and delete the items when two matched. They DID ban for trade scamming... eventually. And you had to scam a LOT of people for them to care if I recall correctly.

The hardcore (in both senses of the term, esp in regards to leveling exploits) crowd generally finds and exploits these as much as possible for quite a while before someone leaks the details. Then hundreds of people who read the right parts of the Internet start trying the exploit/heavily farming it. Blizz patches in a few days after it becomes public knowledge, and everything gets a bit cheaper for a while until the economy recovers (well, not really, the flippers on the AH will buy up anything undercutting too much and relist - eventually you'll get a bit of a clearance sale when they try to unload a backlog). I'd be a fan of them banning for abusing an exploit, but it's probably difficult and a major support headache to draw the line of what constitutes abuse versus "checking out what happened" (and the myriad other UNBAN ME reasons they'd receive) for thousands of your active playerbase.

Now once PvP is out, and there's direct competition with other players (technically you wearing all perfect gear and farming A4 Inferno really means nothing other then you might put a few more items on the auction house - which demand will float up to a proper price range because you still won't be flooding the supply), they might be more aggressive about such things, but who knows.


Edit: Check out the date on this vid [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBB093Pkw2Y]

 

[Li Mu]

ummm wtf?

As far as I'm aware, this has been around for about 3 hours now and still hasn't been patched

Is this guy retarded? He really thinks that they can make and release a patch in three hours?

 

[Trishbot]

As someone that thrived on finding cool glitches in games, buying Game Genies and Gamesharks, and messing around in all those glorious cheat codes in older games, I honestly look at the current state of gaming and get depressed.

Things just aren't as FUN anymore. You're not ALLOWED to have fun YOUR way. You have to have fun the developer's way only. You play the game when they allow it, how they all you to play it, and don't you dare try and play when and how you want to.

I heard a seminar from godfather of great games, Shigeru Miyamoto, and he was asked the secret to making great games. He bluntly said "Make the best game you can that gives your players the best experience they can get. They should play the game how they want to play it, not how you want to design it."

Companies keep forgetting that as they try and see how much they can restrict gamers' freedom to play. DRM, always-online (even for single-player), online passes, on-disc Day-1 "DLC", charging for features that used to be free, banning people that discover and use in-game exploits (or in Old Republic's case, just going to high-level planets)...

... I want to play games the way I want to play them, not how companies like Blizzard demand that I play them, entirely on their terms.