07-05-2004, 09:15 AM
What is really mindboggling is that they did such an incredibly abysmal job in controlling cheating in D2. That's their true shame.
It is a puzzler. They pulled off the hardest part, hosting all of those games and characters server-side without any pay-to-play charges, and seemed to do a pretty good job of having enough resources to handle it without things getting too bogged down. Unfortunately, they didn't take full advantage of the security that setup can offer, and some of the types of cheating that happened are pretty inexcusable. I wouldn't expect them to be able to stop bots (I don't think it's feasibly possible), and a few other things (like maphack) may have been a worthwhile compromise in favor of smooth gameplay. Other examples are less acceptable though. Players should never have been able to dupe items, sniff out results before gambling, etc.
It is a puzzler. They pulled off the hardest part, hosting all of those games and characters server-side without any pay-to-play charges, and seemed to do a pretty good job of having enough resources to handle it without things getting too bogged down. Unfortunately, they didn't take full advantage of the security that setup can offer, and some of the types of cheating that happened are pretty inexcusable. I wouldn't expect them to be able to stop bots (I don't think it's feasibly possible), and a few other things (like maphack) may have been a worthwhile compromise in favor of smooth gameplay. Other examples are less acceptable though. Players should never have been able to dupe items, sniff out results before gambling, etc.