So, Pirates are Playing Diablo 3

[ZekeMcKillip]

How? Can you argue with anything at all that I said? No, except for my unrelated opinion that people who quote how broken D2 was need to actually play the game if they are going to say stupid crap... And I never said I was a true-fan... I'm not really I never played Diablo, and while I got into D2 alot, I haven't bought D3 either... all the release of D3 did for me was make me create a new ladder character on may 2nd when they reset the D2 ladders...

I am still confused to what extra layer of security this closed added. As far as I know what you described as closed is what I assumed they did on Open. The whole the whole difference between is open and closed is kinda blurred to me.

What didn't they do on Open, and why didn't they do that?

As far as I've ever seen and know(again far beyond my abilities and knowledge on how this is done) the items, exclusive to ladder characters and the closed servers they were on, were stored server side, as well as the characters themselves. So like any MMO you couldn't load your character save into an editor and add items... You couldn't dupe items because you didn't have a back up, and as you can see on the site, ladder matches didn't start until 1.11, by which time servers were far too fast to allow you to "trick" them into thinking that you still had an item in your inventory that you dropped... Unless you can provide proof that a ladder match was ever compromised, I've NEVER seen or heard of it, and they just started a new round on may 2nd, so people are still participating in them...

Yeah I just checked up on your terminology.

What you call closed battlenet is what the rest of us call.... battlenet... and open battlenet... had nothing to do with battlenet at all. Was just locally hosted games.
What you want is no different than what everyone else who was against the always online mode and wanted the standard D2 model.

I would like to point out thou that what you call "closed battle" was no where near as safe and hack free as you might believe. Duping happened. Like anyone here will tell you.

As I understand it, the ladder matches had a system in place where if the same item with the same UID existed on the same server(a duped item) one of them would disappear.

As to my terminology, you're right, I apologize, I for whatever reason thought that the ladder characters were on seperate servers from the other online only characters... I think I confused an open multiplayer game with a battle.net multiplayer game... As I've said, I don't claim to be the world's biggest diablo fan, or even diablo 2 fan, but Blizzard has a system that could atleast be improved that would eliminate duping, that doesn't involve removing singleplayer as singleplayer has diablo 2 has nothing at all to do with atleast a few diablo 2 items, runes, and runewords...

I am sure they removed a lot of items. That they could track. I am also sure that with the data identifying the files, it wouldn't be impossible to cheat the system.

Your unique UID system seems like an impossible system to set up unless it was done by a session by session basis. And if that case you should still be able cheat the system by finding what order it checked the values and leaving the session before a check.

The system they have now ofc isn't bulletproof, but it is a lot harder to tinker with the car when you cannot look under the hood. And that is what it is all about. The less information you have to work with locally the harder it is to break the data off site.

Looking into it, the UID system was called warden, and I guess you are right, I never really looked for it, but you apparently can still dupe even in the modern D2, so says the internet, but I couldn't find a method that would get past the latency auto-disconnect and the Warden system, and as I've never actually encountered any duping, I think it isn't as possible or probable as maybe some of the early adopters of D2, who quit before improvements were made, fear it could be. Still exclusively online doesn't seem to have solved the issue in D2, therefore D3 could possibly still be duped, and if it can't be duped, then however they stopped duping in D3 has nothing to do with no offline single player.

Edit: Ah, sorry, seems I repeated what you said, as you said the current system isn't bullet proof, didn't catch that until the second read through...

 

[StBishop]

I see it as a single player game with an additional online mode, I feel it should be treated as such, Blizzard disagree and didn't make the game I wanted, so I'm not going to buy it. Makes perfect sense.

Diablo has never been as singleplayer game, ever. It's always been a multiplayer game which can be played solo. But fine, you have your principles, I just want a game which I can enjoy with a few friends and Diablo 3 sure let me do just that.

I could just as easily say that "Diablo has never been and online game, ever. It's always been a single player game which can be played with friends." it doesn't invalidate your opinion, just as you saying the inverse doesn't invalidate mine.

Which is why I said that I see it as a single player game, in fact, plenty of people see it that way. I don't know anyone who played multiplayer on Diablo, and the people I know who played multiplayer on Diablo 2, spent more time on the single player.

Regardless, it wasn't one or the other, it was both; but now it's only one. I don't want the one it's become.

 

[evilneko]

Of course, it wouldn't need to have any account overlap, it wouldn't need an account at all. Single player characters wouldn't be tied to an account [small]well unless you consider the user account on Windows[/small] as why would they need to be? They're local.

What you dont seem to understand how big a deal the account is. Where do your gold register? it registered at you Battle.net account before. You need to set up a completely different system to undertake this. Everything from items, to lvls needs to register somewhere. The Battle.net account was at the center of that and now just make a char?
Not that simple. the system it self need to be remade almost from the bottom up. You just removed the spine of the game.

No, I think it's you who doesn't understand. An account wouldn't be needed because instead of storing the character data in a file on a remote server, it's stored in a file on the local host. All the stuff you're worried about would actually be the same, only the destination for the output would be different. That's not very hard to change. The concepts needed to accomplish it are taught in basic and intermediate level programming courses.

Are you kidding me?
You cannot be serious.
What exactly is your exp with this?
The whole game itself is build up around the account system. To say "You just save it in a file on the local computer" Is no where near as simple. How the heck do you intend to do that?
Just copy paste the battle.net system for saving the chars. Oh yeah that is integrated to all the other feature that needed them to force the system to be online.
How can I break this down for you. This is a square peg round hole situation. Its not just "Oh you just save the files on the computer"
First you need to make the char files work without the framework of battle.net as well as make something that would work in place of the battle.net account. We are talking at the very least 6 months of work here.

You assert that the code running a Diablo 3 server is so dependent on the environment of Bnet and it would take at least "six months of work" to modify it to run outside of that environment. This is like saying, if I took the motor out of my fan it won't work anymore.

So what exactly is the mechanism preventing an application independent of BNet from say, parsing a save (assume, for argument's sake, you could just download your save file and plop it somewhere to do with as you please) or generating one? Is the save encrypted? The local version could simply skip that step. Is the D3 daemon itself unable to read the saves, does the BNet daemon parse the save and then pass data over to the D3 daemon? That would be truly silly. Dungeon and loot randomization wouldn't work without BNet? Why? This is silly. Even Microsoft Windows is less monolithic than you're implying BNet to be.

 

[NortherWolf]

You know, I had planned for this huge reply to your post, dividing it and answering it part by part. But no, you're one of those I thoroughly despise, you're one of those that's helping ruining a business I've been a member of for 24 damn years!
Your entire post is pretty much. "Well, it's not that good...But hey, it's Blizzard and they're awesome!"
No company deserves that sort of devotion, especially not the lazy ass bastards at Blizzard. Lore you say? Yeah, good f****** luck with that considering it's been rewritten up the ***.
Graphics not shite? Well, no, but on par with a game six years it's senior. Reminds me of when I got WC3 back in the day, I could play hell of a lot newer and and have less issues with it over the badly made WC3. Blizzard just doesn't give a **** about anything beyond making their damn cut-scenes.
And you know what? They'll succeed, they'll keep on churning out decent games at 8 year intervals and the fans will gobble it up. No matter how much stupid **** they implement, Blizzard fanboys are the Nintendo fanboys of the PC industry.

 

[Triforceformer]

Soooo...any confirmed pirates playing the game yet?

 

[SovietSecrets]

Soooo...any confirmed pirates playing the game yet?

No crack that I know of so guess not. Actually I stand corrected it seems, Skidrow has released a working offline SP crack to play the game. I stand corrected in 5 seconds, fake.

 

[danp164]

Sun Sets, Moon Rises, Cows eat Grass, Pirates get around DRM.

You have to bare in mind Tripple A companies might have 20 people max doing the DRM protection.... How many pirates trying to get around it?

The internet is more like a nation nowadays, like any nation it has its criminals, unfortunately it consists of 99% of the civilised world. Pirates outnumber DRM guys.

 

[DancePuppets]

Nope, currently still no crack. A couple of fakes have been uploaded though.

 

[TheAmokz]

SKIDROW ‏@SKIDROWC

Staff: Tuesday (5/23/2012) we?ll make small announcement regarding our current progress on Diablo III emulator.

 

[evilneko]

Of course, it wouldn't need to have any account overlap, it wouldn't need an account at all. Single player characters wouldn't be tied to an account [small]well unless you consider the user account on Windows[/small] as why would they need to be? They're local.

What you dont seem to understand how big a deal the account is. Where do your gold register? it registered at you Battle.net account before. You need to set up a completely different system to undertake this. Everything from items, to lvls needs to register somewhere. The Battle.net account was at the center of that and now just make a char?
Not that simple. the system it self need to be remade almost from the bottom up. You just removed the spine of the game.

No, I think it's you who doesn't understand. An account wouldn't be needed because instead of storing the character data in a file on a remote server, it's stored in a file on the local host. All the stuff you're worried about would actually be the same, only the destination for the output would be different. That's not very hard to change. The concepts needed to accomplish it are taught in basic and intermediate level programming courses.

Are you kidding me?
You cannot be serious.
What exactly is your exp with this?
The whole game itself is build up around the account system. To say "You just save it in a file on the local computer" Is no where near as simple. How the heck do you intend to do that?
Just copy paste the battle.net system for saving the chars. Oh yeah that is integrated to all the other feature that needed them to force the system to be online.
How can I break this down for you. This is a square peg round hole situation. Its not just "Oh you just save the files on the computer"
First you need to make the char files work without the framework of battle.net as well as make something that would work in place of the battle.net account. We are talking at the very least 6 months of work here.

You assert that the code running a Diablo 3 server is so dependent on the environment of Bnet and it would take at least "six months of work" to modify it to run outside of that environment. This is like saying, if I took the motor out of my fan it won't work anymore.

So what exactly is the mechanism preventing an application independent of BNet from say, parsing a save (assume, for argument's sake, you could just download your save file and plop it somewhere to do with as you please) or generating one? Is the save encrypted? The local version could simply skip that step. Is the D3 daemon itself unable to read the saves, does the BNet daemon parse the save and then pass data over to the D3 daemon? That would be truly silly. Dungeon and loot randomization wouldn't work without BNet? Why? This is silly. Even Microsoft Windows is less monolithic than you're implying BNet to be.

The hack attempts already proved that the char files run through the account framework in order to play the game. Gold registers on an account wide lvl while chars are saved individually.

You need to make something that would do the work of the Account in offline mode and that will take time

You engine analogy would be more along the lines of "expecting a car to run without a gearbox" if you want it to be correct.

You need something to work in the place of that gearbox that isn't a gearbox or redesign the car to work without a gearbox. Both is a major amount of work.

Btw good effort trying to make it about the loot and dungeon randomization. I never said they would be a problem. I talked about the account system. That is what will take time. Dont try to make it an argument I never made. Generating the world will not be a problem. Accessing it will.

Let me just make my position real simple:

The account system's irrelevant and unnecessary locally. It's all shit in a database. All you need is to read and write to it, and that's not that difficult (especially not for programmers of Blizzard's caliber, Bethesda OTOH... )

If you concede that the important shit of character and world generation could easily run locally, I see no reason for it to have been easily possible for single player to be offline. Hell it'd be simpler as there'd be less hoops for the game to jump through to store and retrieve data. Bear in mind also, I'm advocating complete separation of single and multiplayer--no mixing of characters, no AH, no online features at all for single player. Under these conditions there's no need to talk to Bnet.

 

[Night_S1ash]

Blizzard sucks, that's why

 

[hellgod]

Speaking personally, you're not missing much.

To 'crack' D3 would require developing a standalone server for it.

Hi Starcraft II.....

Isn't the pirated version of Starcraft 2 pretty much shit though outside of givin you the single player?

Ha! Haha! HAH!

No, they're identical.

I was unaware that that pirated version of Starcraft 2 had the kind of matchmaking that a legitimate copy would have. How about the wealth of custom maps and hundreds of thousands of people to play them with? What about a ladder system like the one a legitimate copy would have?


Oh that's right. The pirated version doesn't have that stuff because it's meant solely for people who don't play online at all or people who want to play locally. Tryin to claim the pirated version of Starcraft 2 is identical to a legitimate copy is disingenuous at best.

Hundreds of thousands of players is not something you program into a server(talk about disingenuous)
Custom maps can be imported
Their is a ladder in place
Things like match making have not been implemented as they are trying not to get shutdown by blizzard.
It also has the advantages of letting you play against anyone not just people in your own region and no lag in lan play.

They will never go through the trouble.

Yeah they will.

I'd be surprised if any pirate would take the time to completely emulate D3 the way they would need to in order to have a copy of the game equal to that of someone who bought it legitimately. I mean, its possible, but the amount of work that'd require is far beyond your simple .exe crack and requires a time and money investment equal to that of someone who runs a private server in WoW.

It's taken alot of time to crack SC 2. Their is also no need to completely emulate the game, a cracked version doesn't need to be exactly the same to be as fun or more fun.

 

[Simeon Ivanov]

DRM sucks, no question there. But the game is awesome. Isn't that the only thing that should matter?

 

[nu1mlock]

SKIDROW ‏@SKIDROWC

Staff: Tuesday (5/23/2012) we?ll make small announcement regarding our current progress on Diablo III emulator.

That's not Skidrow though, that's some random person having a website and Twitter to make people think it's them. But it's not.

 

[Jadak]

DRM sucks, no question there. But the game is awesome. Isn't that the only thing that should matter?

Sure, if 'awesome' weren't an entirely subjective opinion. Hell, for many people the DRM is the main thing preventing the game from being awesome, and I'm not referring to the whiny anti-DRM people, but rather where the always online aspect is literally hindering gameplay. Whether it be continuously getting killed directly as a result of lag, or getting disconnected outright. Both issues are rather common.

 

[Volkov]

Obviously I'm not going to link anything or recommend anyone look. I'll just say that it involved the beta files.

Here's to knowing what you are talking about.

 

[kingthrall]

Who cares if they are playing on a pirate cd, really does it effect your game or your life at all?

Of course its illegal and all that jazz and the perma online stuff is another reason to remove it. However its there and there is no way blizzard will remove it for Diablo 3 and is going to be stuck there forever.

to Pirate a blizzard game or a microsoft product is a lot of work anyway and only the really dedicated would know how to bypass all the stuff. Its not something your average gamer torrenting ect would be able to do.

 

[soultrain117]

The always online was not to stop piracy it was to stop people from cheating in the online mode which was rampant in Diablo 2, and to help their online auction house. I love the auction house idea, but hate the idea that if I want to play Diablo on a trip or something I can't can you say BS. Hopefully they will recognize the error of their ways and fix this though I bet not. I would still recommend this game so much fun.