Uber upgrade?

[Guest]

I don't think it is impossible at all to get 40/15's and BotD in quantity. These are businesses; suppose I don't know... 1,000 people spend their 8 hour work day running Baal. By the end of the day they are sure to have some good items, earned by hard work.

You're right. We cannot prove that absolutely every D2 item site sells dirty items. However, we can prove that many of them do. I did just decide to google a bit and look at the top hits as well as the sponsored links. I could confidently prove that every single one that I saw is a cheat sites. That means that none of the easiest-to-find sites are legit. However, there admittedly would still be the possibility of a legit site. You're welcome to try and find that to use as a counter-example.

Unless a website says that they hack and dupe and bot, why would you suspect that they do?

[adeyke]

I don't think it is impossible at all to get 40/15's and BotD in quantity. These are businesses; suppose I don't know... 1,000 people spend their 8 hour work day running Baal. By the end of the day they are sure to have some good items, earned by hard work.

Let's examine the rarity of BotD. The limiting item there is the Zod rune. The best chance to drop from a regular monster, in an 8 player game, is 1/5,953,029. Let's suppose one person managed to kill one monster per second. That'd mean it'd take an average of 5,953,029 seconds. That's about 1,653 hours. You can have multiple people doing it, sure, but that's still 1,653 man hours of constant killing in order to get it.

Now, if you actually had 1,000 people doing it, you could do it in just 1.6 hours. However, who would possibly sell the product of 1,653 man hours of work for just $25 or less? If you're paying minimum wage ($5.15?) for 1,653 man hours, that's about $8,513 in wages, for something that nets $25 or less. I may not be an economist, but I see some serious flaws in that business model.

As for the 40/15 jewel, you have at best a 1/34,505 chance of a jewel being a 40/15. The best reasonably runnable source of sufficient ilvl jewels would probably be the hell council, at 1/99 each. Let's suppose these take 5 seconds each to kill (counting the time to make the game and walk there). That'd make it 1 per 17,079,975 seconds. That's 4,744 man hours. That makes $24,433 in minimum wages. And they sell it for less than $10. Not a good business model.

It's simply not feasible to have a store that sells items like that for so cheap, if you're doing it legitly. Of course, if you have bots that do the runs for you, you eliminate the cost of the employees. And if you have dupes, the rarity of the items doesn't matter, as you have as many of them as you want.

Now, I'm not saying that BotDs and 40/15 jewels actually have a value of several thousands of dollars each. I'm just saying that you want to actively and reliably get them, you'd have to pay that much. You could just find one by normal playing, but then you wouldn't be able to offer it as a stock item. If done legitly, you'd just have to sell items as you find them. If someone buys your BotD, you'd simply have no BotD at all to sell until you becoming extremely lucky again and happen to find another Zod.

Unless a website says that they hack and dupe and bot, why would you suspect that they do?

If they sell any sort of rare or any sort of crafted item, and they have a quantity field, they're dealing in dupes. When there are rare/crafted items at all, I can also check if they're known dupes (by googling for the name), and I can check the stats to see if it could even possibly be legit (many of the common dupes are also hacked). And if they have any sort of information about how to avoid items getting deleted, they aren't legit.

With any of these, there's really not any doubt at all that it's a cheat site.

And, as described above, having BotDs and 40/15s as cheap stock items is also a pretty good indication. There are quite a few items that are practically impossible to legitly find but are common dupes. If they have lots of them and are selling them off cheap, it's pretty clear that they're not legit. While this is somewhat less solid than the other kinds of evidence, it's still quite solid enough.

[Chaerophon]

Now, if you actually had 1,000 people doing it, you could do it in just 1.6 hours. However, who would possibly sell the product of 1,653 man hours of work for just $25 or less? If you're paying minimum wage ($5.15?) for 1,653 man hours, that's about $8,513 in wages, for something that nets $25 or less. I may not be an economist, but I see some serious flaws in that business model.

As for the 40/15 jewel, you have at best a 1/34,505 chance of a jewel being a 40/15. The best reasonably runnable source of sufficient ilvl jewels would probably be the hell council, at 1/99 each. Let's suppose these take 5 seconds each to kill (counting the time to make the game and walk there). That'd make it 1 per 17,079,975 seconds. That's 4,744 man hours. That makes $24,433 in minimum wages. And they sell it for less than $10. Not a good business model.

It's simply not feasible to have a store that sells items like that for so cheap, if you're doing it legitly. Of course, if you have bots that do the runs for you, you eliminate the cost of the employees. And if you have dupes, the rarity of the items doesn't matter, as you have as many of them as you want.

I wouldn't ordinarily say it, but, I don't know if I've ever seen the phrase fit oh so well...

pwned.

[Archon_Wing]

Now, if you actually had 1,000 people doing it, you could do it in just 1.6 hours. However, who would possibly sell the product of 1,653 man hours of work for just $25 or less? If you're paying minimum wage ($5.15?) for 1,653 man hours, that's about $8,513 in wages, for something that nets $25 or less. I may not be an economist, but I see some serious flaws in that business model.

As for the 40/15 jewel, you have at best a 1/34,505 chance of a jewel being a 40/15. The best reasonably runnable source of sufficient ilvl jewels would probably be the hell council, at 1/99 each. Let's suppose these take 5 seconds each to kill (counting the time to make the game and walk there). That'd make it 1 per 17,079,975 seconds. That's 4,744 man hours. That makes $24,433 in minimum wages. And they sell it for less than $10. Not a good business model.

It's simply not feasible to have a store that sells items like that for so cheap, if you're doing it legitly. Of course, if you have bots that do the runs for you, you eliminate the cost of the employees. And if you have dupes, the rarity of the items doesn't matter, as you have as many of them as you want.

I wouldn't ordinarily say it, but, I don't know if I've ever seen the phrase fit oh so well...

pwned.

Nah, the proper way to do it is:
PWNZORED

This thread, although frustrating, is pretty damned funny though, if you think about it.

[Chaerophon]

Damnit! I knew I hadn't quite captured it. The pink really brings it all together.

I'd say that this is probably one of the top three funniest threads I've ever seen - and the motor driving this new era of levity is still running strong, from the looks of it ;)

[Munkay]

the motor driving this new era of levity is still running strong, from the looks of it ;)

:lol: