End of Ladder Season

[Caaroid]

I'm not sure, but I think this might just mark the end of D2 for me

Well. I did say I don't care either way (reset or no reset). At the same time, a reset might actually mark the end for me too. Still. I don't care either way. Game's been around for, what, 6 years? I seriously couldn't tell. In the past X years, since being part of the original beta, I lost interest twice. Both times it was Bolty and this site that brought me back. Seeing that he's gone, if I loose interest again, it might just stay lost.

I had hoped they would've made sure duping, botting and cheating in general wouldn't be possible after they'd reset the ladder

I got three takes on the issue.
(1): the system designer's take:
While D2 and Bnet contain serious programming errors a 5 year-old could fix (like the dreaded UNABLE TO ENTER GAME message; it had caused me to think rather nasty thoughts over and over again), stopping botting and cheating seems impossible. I understand that the bots these days do not act like they used to; they are "simply" mouse-moving programs that do not directly interact with D2. That means, they are completelly undetectable (or at least I hope they are; were they not then D2 would be the greatest security risk in my system and I would gladly sue the whole company). Their performance is not better than that of standard humans, so statistical approach is also useless. (Ok, I am talking about Pindlebot here, I did not care to research Andybot as well.)

(2): the economist's take:
Um, well, um, what's the damage? No, really! IF you elect NOT to use these cheats (as I have), you will stay poorer. Jeez. How terrible! WHO CARES? I have always been a non-rich player, however it is actually MORE fun to kill/humiliate/outperform those poor players, who are really wealthy. My point is, who cares if THEY have it all? The game is the same for all of us, and unless you're REALLY serious about ladder running, or cannot accept that you just won't beat an enigma necro in duel, why make such a huge fuss about botting? (Besides, when I managed to kill an engima necro with my poor ole pvm boner, it made me happier than finding a stashful of Jahs.)
MOREOVER: Botting creates currency. Yes, it brought back the old Soj economy, so WHAT? (btw, it was fun to watch that over the past 3 weeks the number of Sojs must have quadrupled, since their price fell from 4 IST to 1 MAL. Must have made all them stone-hoarders vince :P) Having a steady supply of Stones is not really that much of an issue; the only thing it sort of ruined is lev 29 dueling, but there were only a VERY limited number of people who had the brains to know how to use them. Ok, your fireball sorceress won't do 10k damage. Wow. I can feel the pain. My lev 8x elemental druid runs around with two 10% cast rate rings, a +2 druid helm, a skin, a Bladebuckle and other "high-end" gear like that, yet I outkill most pubbies by knowing how to use the caracter. Do we really need to get so competitive? (Especially, since nobody can stop botting :))

(3): the philosopher's take:
Botting is evil. All botters should be beheaded. I know botting cannot be stopped, but they still need to be beheaded. Now.
(See? There is a reason why system designers and economists are well paid, while philosophers aren't :P).

---------------
Anyway. If I had the power to make changes for the next ladder season, I'd ask for two things.
ONE: fix the errors. Don't worry about the botters, the evil scum (apparently) ruining the game for everyone; rather fix the stupid mistakes made by Blizzard (marrow bug, Trang Oul cast rate, Bnet messages blocking access for 30 seconds+, etc.)
TWO: install a filtering service, that scans for the word NOOB, and if anyone enters it in any message, have their character deleted and account banned. Maybe do some reverse-IP-lookup and send over a team of wrestlers to explain things. Better yet, send the address to me: you_will_learn_manners@if_your_momma_did_not_teach_you.i_will.org