04-02-2003, 11:42 PM
Yes, this "Judgement Day" is absolutely a great thing for b.net and D2, and I wish they'd done it a lot sooner. D2 is pretty a old game now, so it's past saving or destroying, but this action can only help clean up the public cess-pits of b.net. I always felt that Bliz's big problem in D2 was that they refused to do this kind of thing for too long: there will always be bugs and exploits, even on a server side game, so this kind of action is the only way to maintain the integrity of the realms.
Reading the complaints on the b.net forums shows that Bliz seems to have done a pretty good job at targeting maphackers and bot-users, and I don't have one shred of sympathy for any of them (pretty much every complaint includes an admission that they did in fact use 3rd party progs, often followed by some of the more amazing self-rationalizations I've been priviledged to read, which just warms my heart).
I don't believe the ever obnoxious GF, however, when he claims that there were no mistakes -- with that many bans there are guaranteed to be mistakes, and who knows how many. Unfortunately, based on my experience with the PNF mess from January, I wouldn't expect a quick or accurate response from Bliz support to anyone whose account shouldn't have been closed. Also, Bliz has to take some responsibility for not fixing things like the drop/trigger hacks, even though those still don't justify anyone using a 3rd party prog as protection (any more than using god-mode in D1 was justified as protection from the cheating PKs there).
I also think there's a good reason why they're doing this now: what would be the point of releasing 1.10 if its clean economy was immediately flooded with botted items? (And going after the root problem instead of, say, trying to hide Pin better is the way to go.) I don't know if they'll delete existing hacks and dupes when 1.10 comes out (I hope so), or just concentrate on keeping the new ladder characters as clean as possible. At any rate, they've sent a clear message that people using 3rd party progs can and will be banned.
Reading the complaints on the b.net forums shows that Bliz seems to have done a pretty good job at targeting maphackers and bot-users, and I don't have one shred of sympathy for any of them (pretty much every complaint includes an admission that they did in fact use 3rd party progs, often followed by some of the more amazing self-rationalizations I've been priviledged to read, which just warms my heart).
I don't believe the ever obnoxious GF, however, when he claims that there were no mistakes -- with that many bans there are guaranteed to be mistakes, and who knows how many. Unfortunately, based on my experience with the PNF mess from January, I wouldn't expect a quick or accurate response from Bliz support to anyone whose account shouldn't have been closed. Also, Bliz has to take some responsibility for not fixing things like the drop/trigger hacks, even though those still don't justify anyone using a 3rd party prog as protection (any more than using god-mode in D1 was justified as protection from the cheating PKs there).
I also think there's a good reason why they're doing this now: what would be the point of releasing 1.10 if its clean economy was immediately flooded with botted items? (And going after the root problem instead of, say, trying to hide Pin better is the way to go.) I don't know if they'll delete existing hacks and dupes when 1.10 comes out (I hope so), or just concentrate on keeping the new ladder characters as clean as possible. At any rate, they've sent a clear message that people using 3rd party progs can and will be banned.