Charm Cubeing

[Crystalion]

I think it's safe to conclude that gambling does still have a cap of 99.

Yes, I knew that, statistically, it has just been so long since beta that I temporarily forgot that gambles never showed the higher slvl charges. Sorry about that.

re MH: I was actually extremely annoyed for hours over this incident. In the end I decided it was both pointless to report the person and pointless to be upset.

I wasn't, however, upset that the game is imperfect or allows one to cheat (I'm not against cheating in games, per se)... I was upset at "cheating" in the old style definition of "rules" being that which players expect each other to adhere to, in interactions with each other (I really could not care less if someone uses ATMA or cubemod or whatever in their own private play). This guy scanned my trade window item (a grand charm I erroriously thought dropped from Diablo in hell, but was instead only ilvl 85... it had clvl req 69, so I knew it was a pretty high drop) without asking my permission, and it bugged me.

A much thornier issue about "cheating" in mmorpg and IRL concerns the distribution of "wealth". My personal feeling about wealth in games is that they are imaginary playgrounds, and to take commerce/value in them too seriously is a very bad idea, completely apart from any messiness with translations to IRL wealth (ebay being the example everyone thinks about, but player's time can be perceived as having lost relative value, to their emotional detriment, when they discover others have "easily" "mis"-procured fruits that they labored long and hard for).

This latter issue is very thorny, in that I both, as a D2 "expert" have an advantage over "ordinary" players, as well as knowledge of "protomatter" shortcuts to accomplishing certain things in game, that are more greyhat. For example, because the problem interested me, I've learned far more about rushing on ladder since v1.10 release than my meager speculations here prior. Yet I continue to believe Blizzard "should" be anti-rushing (yet "should" be rewarding players with high-end goodies... the two views are somewhat in opposition). My "solution" to this "ethical quandry" has been to defer publication of rushing refinements until there isn't any question of "polluting" the pristine early ladder and the enjoyment thereof by purists (I'd say the economy is old enough, and dupe polluted enough, at this point, that I don't need to remain quiet any longer).

All in all, while advocating not getting too worked up over "just a game", I'd have to say that D2 is an interesting microcosm of real life socio-economic and ethical issues. Very educational ("Hey kids! Now you can get *college credit* for all those hours of video game play your moms' said were a waste of time! Just send $19.99 to Video University, P.O. 666, Diablo, CA, USA by midnight yesterday... if you sent your money by last week, we'll include an inflatable Succubus, completely free of charge!")