My project : a pure legit community

[AyoR]

hi there^_^I'm a big fan of Diablo and started to play it at his beginings, all players were legit and i had a lot of fun in this period. Then i had a 2-3 years break, came back to the game and found that all bnet was under hack, cheat and stuff like that. I had my legits items stolen and copied and was very pissed off :S. So i decided to create a community with only pure legit and mature people, my project is under construction atm but we are motivated and maybe we'll grow up and make a big and active community and bring back all the fun of this beautiful game =) , you can have a look here : http://playlegit.conceptforum.net/ .
All the helps or suggestions are welcome;)you can email me at jeremie_saez@hotmail.fr

[Merlinios]

You have stumbled upon what is perhaps the largest, oldest, and even possibly ONLY legitimate community that remains for that ancient relic we all know and love. I recommend you plunk yourself down here instead of trying to get the regulars to migrate to wherever you're going, as I believe you'll spare yourself a lot of trouble. By all means, create your community, but you should be aware that this is essentially already what you're looking for.

--me

[LennyLen]

You have stumbled upon what is perhaps the largest, oldest, and even possibly ONLY legitimate community that remains for that ancient relic we all know and love.

Oldest and largest yes, but definitely not the only one.:P

I agree with Merlinios though that attemting to recruit members for your community from here is not going to work. The members of this community already have such a place to frequent, and you're visiting it right now.

Also, I think more than a few of the members here wouldn't be that fond of this rule (from your site): Always use the DiabloGuard's Scan downloadable on the "Downloads" part of the forum when playing a game, like that, you are always checking the "legitness" of you and your friends.

Most people here are of the philosophy that it's better to use your brain than a scanner to detect cheaters.

[the Langolier]

[Jane]

:huh:
You do have a lot of rules that make me think you don't trust anyone.
Scanner on at all times ... you do know those things give you wrong info sometimes, right? Like most scanners say you have dupes potions in your inventory when it is full of pots you bought at Adria's.

You ask for a lot of real life personal information: might be a reason for a lot of people not to join.

You ask for a post after every game and allow no non-members : another reason why a lot of people won't join.

I think it is a noble effort, but you won't have a lot of people actually joining you.

[Alamara]

That bot, LegitRevolution, was configured by myself a few months ago, and was kept up for about a month or so. Overall, I'll admit that it didn't really have any significant results, other than annoying a lot of the cheaters who seemed to find it helpful to message the bot itself. However, I do think that if new players are given the proper tool, and proper information regarding said tools, they can play Diablo fairly and legitimately. Ideally, I'd prefer to see a scanner that shows only assuredly hacked items. A TC with 15 AC, for instance, or any Godly FPM, or any unique in a form other than its true one(s). Most cheaters on Diablo fall within this category anyway, though there are a few that might slip through a scanner of this make. Since the above described tool is not available, and I am not capable of creating such a scanner, I did the next best thing, by advertising and hoping to propagate the concept of legitimacy through what I consider the most legitimate scanner at my disposal.

Now, to be fair about the screenshot: you did not actually show the link that was kept in the bot's profile, which led to www.legit-diablo.de.vu. This website does indeed offer a scanner download, as the bot's idle message implies. However, the download of the scanner is a rather good ways down the page (as you can verify yourself), and very few would actually find the download without stopping to read information about legitimacy, the scanner, and even the perceived legitimacy of the scanner itself.

While I agree that usually one can differentiate between a cheater or a legitimate player quickly, a scanner can be an easier tool to use. For example, who is to say that the level 14 sorcerer using mail isn't simply a purist wearing something he found, and not Thinking Cap armor? I've played with multiple players who claim to be legit, and only small things in the scanner tell me otherwise. A level 40 sorcerer with 10,000 mana, for instance, is not detectable in a game no matter how much you pay attention. As another example, I've seen many players that dupe a good ring which he/she finds him/herself. He/she may even consider him/herself playing Diablo legitimately. A scanner solves problems such as these, and although it does create different issues, I think that the benefits of it outweigh the problems which are inherent in a scanner. Also, one has to weigh the odds of a person who visits that site becoming legitimate. The chances of someone who is brand new to Diablo, has logged onto Battle.net, and is playing a public game being legitimate for more than 5 or 10 minutes are slim to none. However, one who is lucky enough to have foreknowledge of the problems in the Battle.net community, which are very detailed by the linked website, is very much more likely to survive his first experiences of the game without becoming "corrupted."


As for the PLM, and I'm sorry to somewhat hijack your thread with my initial posting here, I think that this is a good idea, but I have a few suggestions. Instead of having each member post what is for the most part his/her character page, why not simply force each character to play as a new Level 1 purist. Then, whenever a player finds a good item (defined by each as an item which someone might take the trouble to steal through an itemtheft utility), have him/her post the DiabloGuard ID number of it, thus "claiming" said item. This way, each member of the community knows for sure that a member is not going to be stolen from without repercussion.

Allow players to trade those items among the community, while such trades are properly recorded in a sort of "Master Thread" by the moderator of the PLM forum. Each member of the PLM would have a small segment of a post listing his/her "good" items. While these trades would not remain "ultra-pure," they could be virtually assured as fair and legitimate, through the integrity of the PLM.

Those are my suggestions, and my opinion, on what the degeneration of Diablo has forced. The necessary course of action, to me, is to attempt to spread legitimacy and expand it to what it once was. The methods of doing so may be questioned, but in truth, few of you still even play Diablo 1 publicly on Battle.net.

[LennyLen]

As for the PLM, and I'm sorry to somewhat hijack your thread with my initial posting here, I think that this is a good idea, but I have a few suggestions. Instead of having each member post what is for the most part his/her character page, why not simply force each character to play as a new Level 1 purist. Then, whenever a player finds a good item (defined by each as an item which someone might take the trouble to steal through an itemtheft utility), have him/her post the DiabloGuard ID number of it, thus "claiming" said item. This way, each member of the community knows for sure that a member is not going to be stolen from without repercussion.

What you and the OP seem to have forgotten is that Diablo, as a game, is meant to be enjoyed. I doubt that anyone will find playing in the way that either of you describe enjoyable.

Oh, and it's not a "DiabloGuard ID number". The ID number is created by the game itself. These numbers are not unique, which is why scanners give false positives for dupes, especially amongst common items like gold and potions.

The necessary course of action, to me, is to attempt to spread legitimacy and expand it to what it once was.

You won't succeed. Those days were over long ago. Just pick a "legit" community and play with those people. (Be sure to tell people you're a scanner user though, or you're no better than the cheaters you condemn).

[Nystul]

It seems as though you and AyoR each view legitimacy as the ultimate goal. That above and beyond all other things, the ideal community is one in which each character is unquestionably legit.

Here at the LurkerLounge, the goal is (more or less) to understand the nature of the game and be able to outwit the challenges it provides. Because we were largely drawn together by this common goal, being legit could be taken as an assumption... To paraphrase Pete, cheating is the antithesis of strategy. Other communities focus on extreme challenge, or fellowship, or roleplaying, and these communities can also usually take being legit for granted for nearly the same reason. I would question whether a community can withstand the test of time if the common link between its members is simply that they don't cheat, and use draconian measures to police each other in that regard. Perhaps there is an implied deeper bond which is rooted in the pleasure of finding powerful items, but in that case I'm afraid it is a community I would want no part of.

[Merlinios]

Be careful with your scanning. False positives are easily obtained. For example:

A TC with 15 AC...

This is possible with the Warrior's repair skill in conjunction with hidden shrines, and is occasionally used to "legitimately" make it indestructible by carrying the duration to 255.

I've seen many players that dupe a good ring which he/she finds him/herself. He/she may even consider him/herself playing Diablo legitimately.

Watch out for this one too. Most scanners have the odd effect of not completely refreshing, so when a character moves an item, say from hand to inventory, the scanner reads it as a duplicate. You should also watch for the possibility of "common dupes", though that isn't as likely with the less common items. Sometimes the Battle.net (Diablo?) engine will generate a duplicate item ID completely legitimately.

Allow players to trade those items among the community, while such trades are properly recorded in a sort of "Master Thread" by the moderator of the PLM forum. Each member of the PLM would have a small segment of a post listing his/her "good" items. While these trades would not remain "ultra-pure," they could be virtually assured as fair and legitimate, through the integrity of the PLM.

That's rather extreme. If you have a lack of trust this deep, I must really question where your community is taking you.

Those are my suggestions, and my opinion, on what the degeneration of Diablo has forced. The necessary course of action, to me, is to attempt to spread legitimacy and expand it to what it once was. The methods of doing so may be questioned, but in truth, few of you still even play Diablo 1 publicly on Battle.net.

I play publicly, or did a week ago. And believe it or not, there ARE still newer players. I watched two become corrupted before my eyes, helpless to do anything about the lure of powerful items. I explained to one or two what legitimacy was, and have no idea if it took root. I met a few players that appeared to be legitimate, albeit at low level. I even met some cheaters who were good people, as antithetical as that may seem to some of you. The type that cheat enough to leave the game looking at least somewhat like what it was intended to. None of them used the typical "Force items on the newbies" approach. They were all cool about not using Apocalypse with other people around (whether they had it or not).

Cheaters aren't the scum of the universe, as some (including myself, once) would have you believe. Yes, some of them are immature, moronic, self-delusional idiots with no self-esteem. But some of them just don't want to put forth the "effort" to play legitimately, which is fine by me as long as they keep it to themselves. No ten-thousand damage arrows. No Apocalypse spam. No duplicating and giving it to others. Just giving themselves a little "edge" (while the legit players still wind up getting more kills).

At this point in Diablo, I think we need to focus more on community and less on legitimacy. At one point it was possible to grab only the non-cheaters, and sort them until you have a community, but you need to build bottom-up with maybe a thousand players left, a lot of which don't even play publicly anymore.

So I encourage you to try meeting some of the cheaters. I've seen some that would fit right in here, and probably eventually turn legitimate when they realize how easy the game can be.

If you want to do something about cheaters, howsabout those on Diablo II? It has gotten so bad that they are generating lag enough to disconnect people from servers in private games. Their cheats also seem more malicious, for the most part, with their auto-grab-good-item things, aiming "utilities" for the caster PKs, and such. Yes, Diablo had autokill, but at least that was confined to the actual malicious people, and could easily be avoided if one knew what one was doing. How do you avoid a computerized grab program if you're on dial-up?

--me

[Alamara]

For the matter of false positives, you need to reread what you quoted. A Thinking Cap with 15 AC, (not durability, as you implied) is and will always be illegitimate. The AC on a TC can be 2-4, and nothing else. As for the matter of a duplicate potion, or a ring, for the potion, yes, there is the chance, and it's been observed by my scanner twice. I laugh about it and ignore it. As for false rings, it is HIGHLY doubtful that two of the exact same ring will drop. If I recall correctly, there are two hexidecimal bits, giving 256 outputs for a single item. With potions, this happens occasionally, sure. With rings? Say two Obsidian Zodiac. Obsid can be one of 10 different values, and Zodiac can be one of 5. This gives 5*10*256, or 12800 chances. Not to mention the rarity of actually finding one of such an item. If he has two of the exact same ring, I'm going to go ahead and trust my scanner.

The only false positives that I suspect are dupes added by DiabloGuard, as foolish as that may sound. This is actually from an experience I had today with a legitimate claiming that Triv. is a cheater himself, and manipulates the dupelist with an itemtheft program, and adds all other items used by legits encountered to the list. Judging from the dupelist which can be viewed on DiabloGuard, this wasn't very farfetched of an idea. There were items no cheater would ever be intelligent enough to wield, such as a Garnet shield of Brilliance or Obsidian Armor of Harmony (This one especially. How many LAW cheaters have you seen, ever?). While I'm doubtful to trust such shaky evidence, I do believe that this is a possibility, and the claiming of item numbers as legitimate in a forum would really only act as both a precaution and a deterrent to potential cheaters. Also, I like the idea of everyone starting fresh at the same time with a new character. Then in say a couple of weeks, you could have a duel tournament and it wouldn't be able who found the three Dragons/Wizardry jewels, but more about the challenge and ingenuity of players to work with non-idealistic setups. I would actually almost prefer a sort of ladder like D2 has, where players that level up are ranked accordingly. This would take a good deal of commitment from someone, though, and is a bit of a dying wish for a dying game.

While cheaters generally aren't the sort to be absolutely moronic, most are. The twinking of new players is just a small step of it. I'd guess that about 35-40% of the cheaters I encounter also have hacked stats, through the use of a trainer. These know full well what they are doing, and are worse than most.

Also, your point that some cheaters are not complete scum is proven by the fact that you can still play public games on Diablo 1. I was recently told separately by a couple of different people that by exploiting the code skillfully enough, a player can modify your character as well as his own and the environment. The programs to do so are supposedly private, which is logical, because they could as easily be turned on the creator as anyone else. Since I've played Diablo, I've maintained that this is impossible. However, I also recently had !~God~! be kind enough to show me Blood Knights on Level 1 of the dungeon. I don't know what to trust, anymore.

As for your mention of Diablo II, I refrain from playing it. Yes, I own it, yes, I prefer Diablo 1.

[Occhidiangela]

A Thinking Cap with 15 AC, (not durability, as you implied) is and will always be illegitimate. The AC on a TC can be 2-4, and nothing else.
As for your mention of Diablo II, I refrain from playing it. Yes, I own it, yes, I prefer Diablo 1.

Edit: This response point, and the second point, was made based on brain mixing AC and Dur. Thanks to Nystul for reminding me to read more carefully.
Point 1: Read Jarulf's Guide before you make a statement like that, please. If you hit the shrine twice and get a bit of luck, the TC's AC goes up by 10 twice, so the TC could, after a battle, have been temporarily reduced to 15 before being repaired.

Point 2: Download and read Jarulf's Guide.

Point 3: As to Diablo II, I understand how you feel about the feel of the original. It took me a while to get used to Diablo II. My graphics card didn't make me happy at the 640-480 size of the original game, but I eventually played a lot more of it since my friends, legits I had met in Diablo I, played it and we had a lot of fun.

It's who you are with, not where you are, that makes all of the difference. ;)

Oh, and lest I forget my old admonission: fun is where you find it.

Occhi

PS: To the OP, I can't get your web site to load, it keeps timing out. Will try later.

[Nystul]

Point 1: Read Jarulf's Guide before you make a statement like that, please. If you hit the shrine twice and get a bit of luck, the TC's AC goes up by 10 twice, so the TC could, after a battle, have been temporarily reduced to 15 before being repaired.

The infinite loop of misreads! Hidden shrines and repairs affect durability. AC is that thing that keeps you from getting hit, and it is always in the 2-4 range on a Thinking Cap in multiplayer Diablo.

[Occhidiangela]

The infinite loop of misreads! Hidden shrines and repairs affect durability. AC is that thing that keeps you from getting hit, and it is always in the 2-4 range on a Thinking Cap in multiplayer Diablo.

My bad, I have not played in a while, and brain did not differentiate between AC and Dur. Thanks to the 255 number in a thread above, my brain went to Dur.

Off I go to Jarulf. IIRC, in SP you can increase AC on a shrine, but I'd need to look.


Edit_ For the record, my gaffe is a double.

Error 1: Gloomy is only in SP.
Error 2: Hidden only changes Durability.
:blush: blush: :blush::blush::blush::blush::blush:

Occhi

[Merlinios]

Hooray for lack of sleep!

You are indeed correct on the Thinking Cap, as two seperate people have stated. Feels better when someone else misses it right after I do. I believe the problem comes from Thinking Cap always having durability associated with it. It is not an item from which anyone wants armor class. And it obviously has durability problems.

It's who you are with, not where you are, that makes all of the difference. ;)

From personal experience, it's either that, or fun is inversely proportional to age (or perhaps likelihood of hooking up with Battle.net friends is inversely proportional to age). Meh, I suppose my standards are just growing too high, and the folk I would hang out with for nostalgia are LONG gone, and my people skills (and ridiculously high standards, coupled with the fact that most people seem to lose about twenty IQ points when they log in to the internet) keep me a loner.

Oh, and lest I forget my old admonission: fun is where you find it.

I used to know where it was. I think it surfaces more when you're s'posed to be doing something productive.

--me

[the Langolier]

I just took the screenshot (back in November as you can see) and posted it here merely because of the irony of aquiring a scanner to play the game the "way it was meant to be played" - considering the game doesn't come with one. I have a scanner, I used to use it. I am sure that it was a great project for Moe and others who made them and I keep it just because it is a fine creation. I don't use it anymore because I learned, like others here, that it wasn't very useful. Not only that but I was much more paranoid and was prone to abuse instead of use it. Let's just say there can be a big difference between having a legit character and having a character that "scans" legit.

For example, I have two Soldier's Bastard Swords with identical stats on a mule. They were both droped in one game in in fact even dropped with the same duribilty (current/max). Obviously, I figured the game generated a dupe (plus it's junk), so after ID'ing them at Cain I dropped them - and was suprised to see them both fall to the ground with no dupe message.

If I recall correctly, there are two hexidecimal bits, giving 256 outputs for a single item. With potions, this happens occasionally, sure. With rings? Say two Obsidian Zodiac. Obsid can be one of 10 different values, and Zodiac can be one of 5. This gives 5*10*256, or 12800 chances. Not to mention the rarity of actually finding one of such an item.

This is not the way item data is stored. If it were the case, then there could only be 256 unique codes of any specific item (specific meaning exact affix values, etc), like only 256 unique 40/20 obsidian/zodiac rings ALL of which would only differ by one byte (Ok, technically it would be 768 since there are three "base" ring types). This is not the case. I can't tell you how many different unique codes there are for one specific item because I don't know how the routine that generates items works. It may be more or less than 256, but I am willing to guess that is a lot more, which means that I agree with you that it is extremely suspicious if two characters have an item with the same unique code.

What worries me, however, is how often I will be in a game and the game generates a dupe of some random item drop. I may see a sword drop and get a dupe message pop up, destorying one I certainly left behind before. I noticed it at least three times in the past few months with rings when I am playing low level characters through the catacombs and caves too - moderately helpful things like silver/strength or something.

If you won't mention the rarity of an obs/zod, I will: about 1 in 740 games. :)

[Nystul]

It may be more or less than 256, but I am willing to guess that is a lot more, which means that I agree with you that it is extremely suspicious if two characters have an item with the same unique code.

At the absolute rarest possibility (for sure there are other ways that the game can generate duplicate items, but in this case it is guaranteed), two people would have to create games with the same seed. To the best of my memory, Diablo seeds using the system time in seconds only (as opposed to milliseconds). Hopefully my memory is right, or this argument is going to be very flawed. There are 3600 seconds in each hour. Now there used to be easily 50,000 people playing Diablo at a time during peak hours, not counting anyone playing outside of b.net. You would almost have to expect that if one person found an obs/zod, there could be not only 1 other but possibly a whole bunch of others who started a game at the same time. Even to have hundreds of people start a game at the same second and kill at least Laz's gang does not seem too outrageous at that point in time. Today with only maybe 500 playing at a time (across the 4 gateways and solo), it is still to be expected that at some given time, a handful of people will start a game at the same second. It's not the safe bet that it once was, but it still has to be a very common occurrence. While most items have a tendency to disappear pretty quickly, I imagine the retention rate of obs/zods and other uber items is a different story, so even the thought that hundreds of obs/zods found in the same timestamp 5 years ago could still be floating around b.net is not too absurd.

The bottom line is, it is impossible for a common dupes list to have any kind of reliability. There is just flat out no way that on public b.net you can discern the difference between the possibility of ~100 identical legit obs/zods, and the possibility that I find one nobody else has ever found, dupe it, and trade or use it on 2 or 3 separate characters. Almost nobody seems to really grock this, and that is a large reason why scanners are capable of doing more harm than good in the general case.

[[vL]Kp]

Also, your point that some cheaters are not complete scum is proven by the fact that you can still play public games on Diablo 1. I was recently told separately by a couple of different people that by exploiting the code skillfully enough, a player can modify your character as well as his own and the environment. The programs to do so are supposedly private, which is logical, because they could as easily be turned on the creator as anyone else.

That's absurd. Anyone competent enough to write the tool should be able to write the corresponding patch that blocks it. Most anti-crash / anti-corruption changes are pretty short, so it's not even a matter of not having enough code space in which to work.

With regard to Merlinios' remark about bogus duplicates in inventory: that's a Diablo bug. It sends notifications when you equip/unequip gear, but never updates other players' view of your inventory. Thus, scanners tend to report a duplicate if you equip an item which was in your inventory when the scanner user entered the game. As an interesting side effect, this can also be used in reverse to conceal an item from a scanner. By having the item equipped when the scanner user joins, then moving it to your inventory, it vanishes from the scanner's view entirely.

Given the OP's great emphasis on legitimate play, and Alamara's apparent pursuit of the same: where do you stand on corrective hacks? For instance, preventing duping is a tiny hack, yet it avoids cheating and is a convenience too (no more need to worry about converting something good into junk). What about fixing MS bug? Hacks to block remotely induced crashes? A code tweak to fix the PvP logic to ignore most autokill attempts? None of these make the game easier (and some of them make it harder), yet they all involve changing the flow of Diablo's code. Does that make them inherently wrong?

[Merlinios]

The bottom line is, it is impossible for a common dupes list to have any kind of reliability. There is just flat out no way that on public b.net you can discern the difference between the possibility of ~100 identical legit obs/zods, and the possibility that I find one nobody else has ever found, dupe it, and trade or use it on 2 or 3 separate characters. Almost nobody seems to really grock this, and that is a large reason why scanners are capable of doing more harm than good in the general case.

*grok

Howsabout this for a general rule of thumb: Do not use the scanner to determine the legitimacy of others until you can make such a judgment without it with (arbitrary number time!) 90% accuracy. By the time you are this competent with the game, you should be able to avoid false positives and such on your scanner. 'Course you don't really need it now...

Kp' date='Jul 17 2006, 08:59 PM' post='113969']
With regard to Merlinios' remark about bogus duplicates in inventory: that's a Diablo bug. It sends notifications when you equip/unequip gear, but never updates other players' view of your inventory. Thus, scanners tend to report a duplicate if you equip an item which was in your inventory when the scanner user entered the game. As an interesting side effect, this can also be used in reverse to conceal an item from a scanner. By having the item equipped when the scanner user joins, then moving it to your inventory, it vanishes from the scanner's view entirely.

Ah, thank you. I remember a lot of bugs from way back in the days of yore, but not necessarily their causes. You'll probably see a lot of bugs with faulty causes springing forth from me.

--me

[Hureg]

The only false positives that I suspect are dupes added by DiabloGuard, as foolish as that may sound. This is actually from an experience I had today with a legitimate claiming that Triv. is a cheater himself, and manipulates the dupelist with an itemtheft program, and adds all other items used by legits encountered to the list. Judging from the dupelist which can be viewed on DiabloGuard, this wasn't very farfetched of an idea. There were items no cheater would ever be intelligent enough to wield, such as a Garnet shield of Brilliance or Obsidian Armor of Harmony (This one especially. How many LAW cheaters have you seen, ever?).

I know enough players on the DLP list to know that is an absolutely absurd accusation. A lot of people I know would not take kindly to reading what you have written, so in future I think you should bite your tounge until you've got your facts right.

Having said that, I now expect a Private Message from you, with the name of the accuser, who after a week, I'm sure to have enough evidence against to bury once and for all.

And just to counter your foolish logic... Some cheaters aren't the typical GPOW brain dead morons... some actually want to be be passed off as legit. They think people will look up to them or something I guess, or maybe they just like messing with people, but basically they just don't have the patience to find the items themselves, so they steal, using trainers or whatever. Together with that, certain communities in the past, have been involved in item sharing, where nobody wants to cheat but they feel that if an item is found that is actually meant to exist in the game (Obs/Zod etc.) then it should be shared amongst the community. I know that some of the home country channels on Europe had players who thought along those lines and people here seem to have long been of the thought that some of the old x'ers were doing it as well. That is why Diabloguard exists, it's got nothing to do with spotting GPOW's or hacked attributes, or halfwits... spend a minute, usually less, in a game and you can figure that out for yourself. It was an attempt to saveguard against involving yourself with those kinds of 'legit' players.

[Alamara]

Kp' date='Jul 17 2006, 10:59 PM' post='113969']
That's absurd. Anyone competent enough to write the tool should be able to write the corresponding patch that blocks it. Most anti-crash / anti-corruption changes are pretty short, so it's not even a matter of not having enough code space in which to work.

I don't claim to know enough about writing code to be able to block or even attempt to make a hack, so I'll take your word for this. It seems logical enough, but that is still a much more harmful effect than most on Battle.Net today.

Kp' date='Jul 17 2006, 10:59 PM' post='113969']Given the OP's great emphasis on legitimate play, and Alamara's apparent pursuit of the same: where do you stand on corrective hacks? For instance, preventing duping is a tiny hack, yet it avoids cheating and is a convenience too (no more need to worry about converting something good into junk). What about fixing MS bug? Hacks to block remotely induced crashes? A code tweak to fix the PvP logic to ignore most autokill attempts? None of these make the game easier (and some of them make it harder), yet they all involve changing the flow of Diablo's code. Does that make them inherently wrong?

In order to play the game as it was intended, I would advocate the usage of such hacks. As laughable as the "I have legit hacks" screenshot floating around is, I still believe that some hacks can be used to propagate legitimacy, and help games to be more pure. For example, an anti-autokill, such as the one included with DiabloGuard. People often say to me that I am a cheater because I use a hack. To me, a cheater is someone who gains an unfair advantage over another through some trick or tool. I thus consider my anti-autokill to be, if you will, a "legit hack."

I would also be very happy to see a 1.10 "update" made for Diablo among the community of Battle.net gamers. As far fetched as it sounds, if it was of a high enough quality I could actually see Blizzard biting and using it. Perhaps that's a bit of a dream, though. In any case, I would love a patch that fixed the MS bug, the dupe bug, the horizontal walk bug, the lack of stunlock when friendly, the use of scrolls from the belt bug, an anti-crash, or anti-autokill. While I agree that these are hacks, and some of them assuredly violate the ToS, (Please read said paragraph in it, before trying to mention that ALL hacks violate the ToS.) they are helpful for the Diablo community.

In all honesty, if Blizzard sent one man around with even a rudimentary knowledge of Diablo into public games, he could kick hundreds of players in a day with no one the wiser. Let me dream. =D

I have another question, related to violating the ToS. Do you think such a program as an anti-autokill actually modify the gameplay? I'm interested to see where people stand on this issue, because I've encountered very differing comments about it.

Having said that, I now expect a Private Message from you, with the name of the accuser, who after a week, I'm sure to have enough evidence against to bury once and for all.

When you say this it is very much a deterrent to your case of innocence. You are going to get evidence to "bury" him? What if he is simply a legitimate player? The fact that you are so sure of being able to acquire evidence which will make him look bad makes it seem as if you are indeed part of such a conspiracy that he believes exists. Thus, I'd prefer to allow different stances to remain, and will not reveal his name to you.

Also, please refrain from attacking me, as I'm offering another's opinions, and remain undecided on the matter.