04-06-2003, 11:47 AM
Woot, nice thread here :)
First, a word of clarification about the "Mule refresher" program being quoted as the possible cause for ABMs accounts being banned : it is absolutely impossible that this program (which I started developing but never finished) was the cause for ABMs accounts being tagged, because I never released it, to ABMs or to other people. It never left my computer, and was used for testing on a grand total of 2 accounts, both of which are still available. I started developing it, but because I didn't want to use a packet analysis tool such as D2HackIt, it had to rely on guesses on time needed to create a game, which proved impossible to do correctly because of the wait queues. Possible consequences of bad timing were typing the account password in a public channel, or pressing the "delete character" button. :) No good. Some comments regarding the ethics of such a program also made me think a lot about carrying on with the development.
Bottom line is that if ABMs said it was because of my program that they got tagged, they are obviously lying, because it's impossible that they got this program in the first place. For an organization as vast as AB, with 300+ listed members, and over 4000 Community Members, it is of course impossible that there are not a handful of "bad apples", ie people posing as legit players while they are not, and trying to get the benefits of association with AB without recognizing the duties associated with it. On this one, I will trust Blizzard, which I thank a lot for taking the much needed step of cleaning the Battle.net players pool. This move makes me look forward to 1.10 with renewed interest.
On to Blizzard bashing, which is something I can rightly be accused of, as I did my fair part of it. You are only bothered or made angry by what you like (I've software on my shelves which makes D2 looks like it was coded by programming gods, and it doesn't bother me the slightest, while I still have fits when I think about GA Piercing). The fact that 2 years and a half after the release of D2 we are still playing it is obviously proof that many things were done the right way. There are a few things that could use improvement, but even that is not always very easy :
- relationship with the user base. The problem is that the user base of online D2 is 98% moronic cheaters, who only want to get more freebies, and would petition to have Maphack included in 1.10, or failing that have Blizzard do some free support for Maphack, "becuase th1S M0us3p4d d00d he nevre anSw3rZ mY 3m4iLs". 98% of the 2 remaining percents (my estimate is probably on the optimistic side, there) are "mostly legit" players (by mostly legit, I mean that while they don't cheat, some of those players can take advantage of cheating in one way or another, such as trading in the jokonomy). 2% of those 2% are actually the truly legit and purist players. Talking with any of those groups is hard. Simple economic sense would dictate to only pay attention to the 98%, but this would ruin the credibility of Blizzard for the upcoming WoW. Discussion with the "mostly legit" and "purists" sadly tends to end badly for Blizzard people, if only because of sheer numbers of people joining the bashing party. The abuse being thrown at Max Schaeffer in the old PK debate is obviously an example of this. :(
- patchs and updates. Although there have been a handful of screw-ups, most recent being the PNF debacle, and several hacking sprees that left the Realms on their silicon knees, Battle.net has been mostly stable for the 2 years or so I've played this game online. The problem is mostly with the annoying small bugs that you have to live with, bugs which require like 2 minutes of MPQ digging to fix, and that have been there for a long time (prime examples would be Lightning Strike damage, Assassin's Blades of Ice 3d charge not freezing, and Grand Matron Bows not getting 6 sockets). Those little bugs are annoying, not show-stoppers, and living with them for a long period of time makes the irritation grow.
- balance. Well, Bolty talked about it much better than I could do in his Ladder article. Yep, some items and skills could use some toning down or boosting, but that's not a show-stopper either.
- hacks. Well, this one was becoming a real problem, but it slowly seems to be getting better. Which is, of course, a Good Thing™.
Bottom line here is that I think we can all agree that D2 is a great game, with incredibly vast gameplay potential, and that we played it so much that it makes us very sensitive to small and/or medium-sized issues with it, something aggravated by Blizzard's perceived "lack of communication".
First, a word of clarification about the "Mule refresher" program being quoted as the possible cause for ABMs accounts being banned : it is absolutely impossible that this program (which I started developing but never finished) was the cause for ABMs accounts being tagged, because I never released it, to ABMs or to other people. It never left my computer, and was used for testing on a grand total of 2 accounts, both of which are still available. I started developing it, but because I didn't want to use a packet analysis tool such as D2HackIt, it had to rely on guesses on time needed to create a game, which proved impossible to do correctly because of the wait queues. Possible consequences of bad timing were typing the account password in a public channel, or pressing the "delete character" button. :) No good. Some comments regarding the ethics of such a program also made me think a lot about carrying on with the development.
Bottom line is that if ABMs said it was because of my program that they got tagged, they are obviously lying, because it's impossible that they got this program in the first place. For an organization as vast as AB, with 300+ listed members, and over 4000 Community Members, it is of course impossible that there are not a handful of "bad apples", ie people posing as legit players while they are not, and trying to get the benefits of association with AB without recognizing the duties associated with it. On this one, I will trust Blizzard, which I thank a lot for taking the much needed step of cleaning the Battle.net players pool. This move makes me look forward to 1.10 with renewed interest.
On to Blizzard bashing, which is something I can rightly be accused of, as I did my fair part of it. You are only bothered or made angry by what you like (I've software on my shelves which makes D2 looks like it was coded by programming gods, and it doesn't bother me the slightest, while I still have fits when I think about GA Piercing). The fact that 2 years and a half after the release of D2 we are still playing it is obviously proof that many things were done the right way. There are a few things that could use improvement, but even that is not always very easy :
- relationship with the user base. The problem is that the user base of online D2 is 98% moronic cheaters, who only want to get more freebies, and would petition to have Maphack included in 1.10, or failing that have Blizzard do some free support for Maphack, "becuase th1S M0us3p4d d00d he nevre anSw3rZ mY 3m4iLs". 98% of the 2 remaining percents (my estimate is probably on the optimistic side, there) are "mostly legit" players (by mostly legit, I mean that while they don't cheat, some of those players can take advantage of cheating in one way or another, such as trading in the jokonomy). 2% of those 2% are actually the truly legit and purist players. Talking with any of those groups is hard. Simple economic sense would dictate to only pay attention to the 98%, but this would ruin the credibility of Blizzard for the upcoming WoW. Discussion with the "mostly legit" and "purists" sadly tends to end badly for Blizzard people, if only because of sheer numbers of people joining the bashing party. The abuse being thrown at Max Schaeffer in the old PK debate is obviously an example of this. :(
- patchs and updates. Although there have been a handful of screw-ups, most recent being the PNF debacle, and several hacking sprees that left the Realms on their silicon knees, Battle.net has been mostly stable for the 2 years or so I've played this game online. The problem is mostly with the annoying small bugs that you have to live with, bugs which require like 2 minutes of MPQ digging to fix, and that have been there for a long time (prime examples would be Lightning Strike damage, Assassin's Blades of Ice 3d charge not freezing, and Grand Matron Bows not getting 6 sockets). Those little bugs are annoying, not show-stoppers, and living with them for a long period of time makes the irritation grow.
- balance. Well, Bolty talked about it much better than I could do in his Ladder article. Yep, some items and skills could use some toning down or boosting, but that's not a show-stopper either.
- hacks. Well, this one was becoming a real problem, but it slowly seems to be getting better. Which is, of course, a Good Thing™.
Bottom line here is that I think we can all agree that D2 is a great game, with incredibly vast gameplay potential, and that we played it so much that it makes us very sensitive to small and/or medium-sized issues with it, something aggravated by Blizzard's perceived "lack of communication".