Those "uber 1337 haxxors" finally get the chop

[FenrisWulf]

Originally posted by Grumpy
Also, have you thought about how huge e-bay sales on D2 items effect their business? Do you think they would for or against such sales taking place on e-bay?

Well, it's a tossup. eBay sales draw in more casual gamers who don't care to spend much time on the game, but want to have all the uber-items off the bat. So, less server time wasted, which is good for Blizzard. You also have many people leaving Diablo II based on the hacking, which is driven almost solely by eBay and other auction sites. This does not directly impact the business side of Blizzard, though more money must be spent on hack elimination.

Remember, though, the programmers at Blizzard are pretty hardcore gamers themselves, and thus you can't turn solely to business reasons to explain their motivations. eBay simply makes BNet a less enjoyable place to play, for both the above reasons. I think that most Blizzard employees would generally be against it.

Originally posted by Grumpy
...but I have been told that both DOAC and Evercrack are relatively secure and free of cheats. (someone correct me if I am wrong) So why can't D2 be?

I believe that both Dark Ages of Camelot and EverQuest are pay-for-play, requiring a monthly fee for use of their servers. This means that both companies have more capital with which to pursue hackers and eliminate them from circulation, and also, yes, more incentive to do it quickly and decisively. Now, it doesn't mean that Blizzard isn't obligated to fix hacks as they spring up, but it does explain to some degree that Blizzard isn't able to devote the same resources to the issue as these other two games.

Originally posted by Grumpy
Frankly, I never could understand people that found 3 years of joy in PvM against a silly AI. It just bores me....

I'm in it for the character design. The "silly AI" is just something to test my ideas against. :)