Diablo 3 Wizards Go Nuclear

[Kragg]

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

People really seem to have missed this gem of a link.

This exploit has been known and exploited for well over a month and perhaps more.

This tremendously undermines the point of a real-money auction house when exploits can go untouched for so long.

haha wow and i was worried about the 3hour thing ... this is amazing

 

[Easton Dark]

Why is this news again?

Can someone direct me to the article about the TF2 exploit where medics could become permanently invulnerable?

I mean this stuff is news worthy after all and not just rage bait, then we should have seen this last before.

Might not be news exactly, but I still like to hear all the bad things I can about Diablo 3.

 

[Zeckt]

I can't even think of Diablo 3 without immediately getting fueled with hate filled anger. What else can I possibly say? Maybe that I find it funny that even the most hardcore blizzard fans are now having serious doubts?

 

[matrix3509]

I love how people are like, "Oh Blizzard is so gonna patch this like yesterday." When my question is: "With shit loads of high level loot hitting the RMAH, Blizzard is gonna make a killing off that, why would they bother patching anything of the sort?"

Related: Hey Blizzard, you know this wouldn't have been such a big deal if you hadn't forced this DRM and RMAH down our throats right? So much for your precious fucking economy. We know where your loyalties really lie.

 

[Easton Dark]

So you are in it is rage bait more or less...

I'm not exactly sure what qualifies for rage bait.

It makes me feel better for choosing not to buy anything else from Blizzard, if that's an answer.

 

[katsabas]

I remember when these were a blast to find. Though not exactly an Exploit, nobody complained about the ENIGMA runes for armor. And one has to agree that being an INVINCIBLE DEATH-RAY SPEWING MANIAC is quite fun.

Again, it all comes down to the AH. That fucking RMAH. Where's the colony drop button ?

 

[DanielBrown]

Tried it with my 52 sorc until level 54. Hadn't played since two weeks after release.
...
Game still sucks.

 

[Megacherv]

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.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Bugs are hard to find and from my own experience they can come up in development (or even after development) at the worst of times. Also, his mocking of them for not fixing it in 3 hours is a clear sign he has absolutely no experience in making a game. This is a programming issue, and programmers will know that this sort of thing has no 'drag-and-drop' involved, it's all code. If a bug is found, the code has to be searched through. This isn't a simple case of looking through reams of code and changing something, there's a few steps to fixing a bug (programming terminology incoming, some words may not make real-world sense):

1) Searching: First you have to find the bug, and this can be very difficult. Knowing where to look is pretty hard, in this case there's gonna be at least a few places. I'd guess the searching would involve the Wizard class and all its methods, the class/method for teleportation and the other ability, and then there's still code to search through.

2) Evaluating: How the buggery are you going to fix this? It can be as simple as rearranging some blocks of code, or could entail a complete re-write and/or redesign of the code. This requires cost and time evaluations as well, so even considering fixing the bug takes time.

3) Doing: Fixing the actual bug can take time and cost money depending on how serious the issue is and/or how complicated it is to fix.

...3 Hours...

Also, despite the fact that someone posted a video a month ago with the exploit, if gaming magazines are only just now reporting the issue, then when do you think that Blizzard will have noticed it? (do you really think that the guy would've reported it)

 

[Aeonknight]

So just a quick question for the people who are trashing Blizzard for releasing an update with a glitch/bug in it:

Have you all played Skyrim?

 

[MetalMagpie]

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.)

Ahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Blizzard? Put a game on SALE? Have you even MET this company before? If you're waiting for a price drop, I hope you are prepared to wait a very long time. Warcraft III is still $40 for the game + expansion, and that game is a decade old. Starcraft II is $40 while on sale and it's two years old. (Compare Skyrim dropping to $30 during the Steam sale for a game less than a year old) The game servers will likely be shut down long before they put it on sale for less than $30. (Or even 30 euros)

*shrug* I've always found Amazon.co.uk pretty good at hammering down prices eventually, providing it makes sense for them to. WoW is currently £15 and each of the expansions are £7.

Diablo 3 was £28 (just over $40) on pre-order from Amazon (which is why I'm kicking myself a little that I didn't buy it then). But ideally I'd like to pay a little over £25 ($38). It's currently fluctuating between £32 and £35 (depending on Amazon's magic price-calculator), so it's got a little way to go.

Dropping as low as $30 would be just £19 here, which really would be quite a dip!

 

[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.)

Lol. The number of people that were severely disappointed by the game, plus the amount of people asking for refunds, combined with everyone that detests the DRM... Yeah, game's a failure for the business. It's like selling people gold plated anthrax--it might sell well, but there won't be many return customers.

World of Warcraft bleeding subscribers... Diablo 3 being a shitfight... Good times <3

I can sense quite a lot of bitterness, so I think I'm just going to back away now. When you've cooled down a bit, maybe just remember that lots of people on this website thinking something is not the same as it being the opinion of the majority.

If it was, EA Sports games would never make a profit!

 

[MetalMagpie]

http://www.amazon.com/Warcraft-III-Battle-Chest-Mac/dp/B00009ECGK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343062708&sr=8-1&keywords=warcraft+3

Consider yourself corrected.

That's Amazon. Blizzard themselves...
http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=110000050
$40.

I will concede that if you can find a third party source you can get it cheaper.

Ah. Therein lies your mistake.

Never buy a game from the publisher.

EDIT: With the possible exception of Valve games on Steam.

 

[TK421]

Now Blizzard, what did we learn about putting a RMAH in our games?

Karma strikes again.

 

[MetalMagpie]

*Snip*

*Snip*

I'm not saying a game has to be perfect or that a developer CAN catch every bug, I'm saying that Blizzard didn't catch THIS one. I'd have thought testing for something like staking abilities would have been pretty basic, but as long as Blizzard DOES address the issue then that's fine. I just don't see exploiting a glitch in the game as ban worthy as I would a legitimate hack, especially since this isn't PvP.

Well, either the bug has been in the game since release. In which case it took millions of players three months to discover it. Which hardly makes it something easy to catch. Or it was introduced more recently in a patch. (Apparently the glitch involves stacking two abilities that it makes no real sense to stack, but I'm still leaning on it having been introduced in a recent patch. Millions of players do crazy things.)

In any case, that sort of thing is an absolutely bugger to automate testing for. So testing every combination of stacked abilities may well have involved someone sitting there and manually trying them all in turn. And then trying every combination of items too. No normal human being is going to be able to do that for a patch that needs to be out now now now in order to solve a current bug.

Fixing bugs in software often causes more bugs. It's one of life's little ironies. Remember the dragons flying backwards in Skyrim? That was introduced in a patch that was supposed to fix performance issues! (But the save-destroying patch for Fez really takes the biscuit.)

Banning players for using the glitch - on the other hand - I'm not so happy with. An understandable mistake by Blizzard is still a mistake by Blizzard. I don't especially see why players should be banned for exploiting it.

(Real Money Auction = Really Bad Idea. But that's just my opinion.)

 

[CardinalPiggles]

"ZOMG THEY HAVENT FIXED IT IN 3 HOURS! IVE LOST ALL FAITH IN BLIZZARD THEY CANT DO ANYTHING RIGHT DIABLO 3 IS A MASSIVE FAILURE"

This is what always happens, people will blow any small thing out of proportion because they have a general dislike towards a game. And of course more people will flock to the hate club.

My question is, if he doesn't like the game, why is he playing it? To find something wrong with it? That's pathetic.

 

[Zer_]

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.

Blizzard saw the huge market for Diablo 2 items, they tried their best to fight it, but in the end they just wanted a piece of the pie. They got what they wanted, but unfortunately for us long time fans, they shat on our faces in the process. I can't bring myself to touch Diablo 3 anymore. The RMAH just destroyed Diablo 3, and it will continue to do so no matter what Blizzard does. Their planned PVP combat is going to be fucked over by RMAH users spending hundreds of dollars to get an advantage.

I don't even know if I'll buy StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm after this, though I didn't mind SC2 overall, the lack of LAN play was always a bit of a thorn at my side.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Warcraft III is still $40 for the game + expansion, and that game is a decade old.

*shrugs*

I bought mine for 12 bucks in a box collection at Best Buy, new back in 2006.
Needed a replacement disc for Reign of Chaos, since my launch copy was uh...well, it had seen better days (an SUV and my game bag was involved).

Of course, this was before the days of Bnet 2.0, and when you could still find some PC Games in retail.

Why is this news again?

Can someone direct me to the article about the TF2 exploit where medics could become permanently invulnerable?

I mean this stuff is news worthy after all and not just rage bait, then we should have seen this last before.

Unless that Medic glitch in TF2 has profound implications on the Hat Economy (correct me if it does), then I don't think that's quite the fair comparison.

On the other hand, this still isn't terribly newsworthy for anyone who saw this coming.
It was very obvious even months before D3 launched that a real money auction house was inevitably going to motivate players into looking more thoroughly for glitches like this, and it is foolish in the extreme to assume that any game will be shipped glitch-free.

As for the nature of exploiting glitches, there is some small room for an ethical* debate about whether Blizzard should be banning people who exploit these glitches.
(*not legal, because Blizzard can ban users for any reason they see fit)