Those "uber 1337 haxxors" finally get the chop

[Wapptor]

Isolde, (and blizzard)

Many great points have been made, in the end it comes down to the fact, in my opinion, that many accounts were banned, it was good but not enough and a few legit players lost their own. In the end though, I feel it didn't do enough to make a big change, it might not have been the best thing, I'd rather see hacked items go, as I've said before.

However, this is one of the best games I have ever played, and blizzard is one of the best gaming companies ever to exist. Their games are truly innovative and creative and show an artistic type of devotion to the product that makes them singularly special among other games. All in all blizzard, I love you, I love your games and I hope that you never stop doing what you do. Three years after its release I still play diablo 2, no other game has done the same. You have some flaws, but I think your better points outway your negative ones. Keep up the good work, I'm waiting for diablo 3 (since its likely to come before 1.10...)

-Wapptor :D

[Isolde]

Enforced standards, code reviews, walkthroughs are perceived to be too expensive. OK for the military boys and NASA, but not for non-critical earthbound software.

As games get more complex and the development teams larger, all of these tools are being used more and more frequently. The industry as a whole is maturing, though I think that maturation is taking the fun and originality out of a lot of games as well. I gotta say that my impressions of military software have been none-to-good, but perhaps that's just a personal bias.

I did post earlier to say that my saying that there are NO false positives was a hasty reaction. Not that I think otherwise now, but making such a claim would be arrogant, I think. My bases for thinking that there haven't been any mistaken account closings are:

1) it's a small project coded by people who I trust to know what they're doing.
2) the code is very simple.
3) the technique used to identify hackers is mathematically accurate. (it isn't statistically based, etc.)
4) hand verification of the complaints has yet to indicate that there were any errors.

This isn't to say that there were no errors and that we won't find any in the future. But so far, it looks to me as if things went okay. However, since we've decided not to reveal *how* we're deciding who's hacking, I think it would be pretty stupid of me to think that everyone could be convinced of its accuracy -- so I'm not asking *you* to have confidence in the program. But I think that what I've said will convince *some* people to look at the matter differently. I.e. not from the "blizzard has just made a mess of things again" viewpoint.


{EDIT} PS: I *can* be impressed by an OCR claim that it's 99% accurate when all previous OCR claims were for 50% accuracy. That doesn't mean that I think that 99% accuracy is enough to be useful in the field. But I get impressed because it makes me think that progress has been made in the technology. Some people are easier to impress I guess ;)

[Isolde]

Thanks Wapptor.

I think the hacked items are more important too. Unfortunately, that doesn't guarantee that they get addressed first. But they'll be dealt with eventually as well.

[Bolty]

First off, it's pretty unlikely that it was a programmer that claimed that GPOWs can be generated since as far as I know, since most of the programmers I know would rather pay fines than chat with fans.

Reading this thread (and cringing almost the whole way through it), is it any surprise why? I knew this would happen (bashing) as soon as you admitted you were a programmer. Sigh. You're putting a huge "kick me" sign on yourself for all the detractors to pile on.

A lot of people diss blizzard for horrible programming, and a lot of that is deserved.  However, in doing so people tend to overlook our accomplishments too.  Take a look at what the D2 servers are doing: ai for an average of forty monsters per player, path finding for all that, collision, countless missiles, all at most of the time 25 frames per second, and none of it exceptionally good ;) but there it is.  A couple of hundred thousand players at once, which is by the way, more than the number of people chatting on yahoo at the moment.  And all of it has to be done with a dense enough player to server ratio and low enough bandwidth in a real time game that we can avoid charging a monthly fee.  And we were stupid enough to promise to people that that's something we could do, even though we had no evidence that it would be even possible to do so.  So question our programming skills all you want, I'll admit that looking at some of the bugs that've come up it's deserved.  But I'll always know that we did some pretty damn impressive things amidst all of our mistakes as well.

That's a fantastic way of detailing my usual response to detractors - find another game out there that has as much gameplay as D2. And watch them squirm trying to find one.

I currently work in a multi-tier support job for a software firm, the kind that requires you to be a guru at just about everything (networking, Oracle databases, Java, web hosting, server hardware, operating systems, web design, you-name-it) and it's thrilling. But it also causes me to become intimate with the inner workings of the software my company designs, so much so that I assist with its design phase. The one truth is that the more you get to know any software program, the more you think it's terrible, because you get so used to seeing everything that works that all you notice is the stuff that DOESN'T work, and the nitty interface design issues that drive you nuts. Sometimes you have to back away, see the forest for the trees, and realize that you still have a damn nice software program on your hands, and the flaws found, while seemingly huge to you, are minor in the whole view.

The same goes for computer games. Here at the LL we have posters who delve so deep into the program and find problems with it that they forget, looking back, that it is indeed one incredible computer game. It's been described as a "behemoth," and that's what it is - a game so bogglingly huge and impressive in scope, that its stunning that it has as FEW problems as it does. You and I both know gamers are picky; we demand a LOT that is sometimes deserved, sometimes not. Developers know they've done well when the sales figures pour in and the reviews laud their efforts. But there's always going to be that element that is never satisfied, and, well, you'll always be able to find that element here, that's for sure! It can be a good thing, as you'll find plenty of suggestions from the Lurkers, but I don't always agree with the execution of the complaints. Destructive criticism will only serve to push away any interest a developer may have of coming here to hear our thoughts on the game. I wish various posters here (not naming names, but they know who they are) would see that and stop ripping on the Blizzard dev team as a bunch of incompetents. You are wrecking it for the rest of us who would like to offer constructive criticism.

-Bolty

[Roland]

...I still love 'im. ;)

(Sorry. Had to lighten the mood. ;))

[CorwinBrute]

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".

[Roland]

Or Max Shaefer, for that matter. He walked into it of his own accord, and as far as I am concerned, got what he deserved. Quite frankly, the whole thing still ticks me off. Not even so much because PKs are allowed to ruin games, but because of the way Blizzard handled (still handles) the implementation. The quote:

"It's an integral part of the Diablo II playing experience and storyline" is a load of horse manure, plain and simple. The fact that certain individuals at Blizzard still spew that hock a bile in our faces burns me up something fierce, and I'm not alone on it. I can deal with their decision to leave PKing the way it is. It's their game, and I will respect their decisions, for better or worse, even if I don't agree with them. But if they expect me to believe that "PKing is an integral part of the storyline", they got another thing coming. I've read the manuals for every Blizzard PC game to date, and never once, in ANY of them, was PKing mentioned in the storyline.

I'll stop there, before I go on a multi-page tyrant that'll get me nowhere except pissed off, and everyone else bored to tears and/or equally frustrated. Take my advice and do likewise: There are some things of the past that are best left in the past. PKing and the Sirian / Max Shaefer debate are two of those things.

Oh, BTW - I have to ask. Just what the hell is PNF? I haven't played on Realms since before the economy went to Hell, back when Maphack was your biggest worry. Quite frankly, I don't play any D2 these days except my mod: I just can't take the imbalances. So please excuse my utter ignorance when it comes to the latest and greatest hacks, cheats, dupes, etc. I still don't even know the deal with Iths or White items, although I can probably make an educated guess.

[l33t h4xx0r]

Oh, BTW - I have to ask. Just what the hell is PNF?

PNF = Player Not Found

You get this message if

1.) you haven't touched your character(s) within the last 90 days (character has expired) or
2.) the realms/servers somehow got messed up

The latter was the case in Blizzard's recent attempt to get rid of any account(s)/character(s) that have not been played at least 2 hours during the first 48 hours after their creation (late enforcement of the "2/48-hour rule" - the "official" argument). Whatever method they used to indentify those accounts/chars, it has affected a lot of players who have played their chars a lot longer than these 2 hours. A bit later, they have restored a lot of PNF chars because they had to admit that their method was not error-free. Many people considered this very late enforcement of the "2/48-hour rule" as PR stunt. It rather seemed to be a cheap, quick and easy way to get rid of many thousand mule characters that may (or may not) carry botted/duped/hacked items. You can draw your own conclusions now as far as their latest "cheat detection" method and the 131,000 closed accounts goes.

[Thoreandan]

However, since we've decided not to reveal *how* we're deciding who's hacking

The above is indicitive of why Diablo 2 has been and will continue to be hacked to pieces.

Today no one knows how your new detection code works. But the people that want to know have the resources(stolen CD keys, lots of free time, there's a lot more of them then you, etc.) to find out and they will. All you've done is bought yourself a bit of time you haven't fixed any of the underlying problems. Some problems being:

1. A game that requires thousands of hours to "win"(find all the neat stuff, get to high levels). And that is simple and repetitive enough that a computer can be made to play the game.(botting).
2. You trust the client and/or client/server protocol to make decisions it shouldn't be making(tradehack/ITHs).
3. You trust the client with information it shouldn't have(maphack). Though latency issues make this one a lot harder to "fix".

If you want to design secure systems you have to start with the assumption that the attacker knows everything because given enough time the attacker will know everything.

<Rant>
But Blizzard didn't take the above approach. Instead Blizzard wrote an insecure game for a mostly open system(The x86 PC) running on an open networking protocol(TCP/IP) and an open public network(the Internet). And then they attempted through dubious legal(HA!) means to close these open system through their EULA/TOS. And the only way they can even begin to pull all of this off is because most of their customers are ignorant about computers and contracts.

All I wanted was a game to play. But because of Blizzard's inept(blatently obvious hacked to pieces realms) and dishonest(not informing me that their "security" relied on a hidden EULA/TOS until after I spent my money) approach I did get my game. But I also got a nice heap of mental anguish and frustration as well. Argh!!!!!

I much prefer Turbine's approach with Asheron's Call. They acknowledge that the client is on an open system and network and proceed from there instead of trying to define the openness away.
</Rant>

[Brista]

<polite cough>

did you not notice Bolty's post?

[Bolty]

He's allowed to disagree with it. I'm allowed to be really annoyed at him, too. :)

-Bolty

[LavCat]

You're all blind!

...(replying to Bolty but addressed to no one in particular) -- the plot is obviously to get most of battle.net posting here, which would relieve the burden on their servers considerably.


My view on the subject of legitimate accounts being banned: as of a few moments ago 4908 people have viewed this thread (not sure though how many of those views are unique). Not one person has said "I abided by Blizzard's battle.net terms of service, my account was closed."

If someone were to say that, I would hope Blizzard would investigate.

Bugs happen. Bugs happen in Mars landings, bugs happen in medical equipment. Bugs happen in Blizzard code. Not all bugs have equal consequences. My observation over the last four or five years is that Blizzard makes a reasonable effort to fix bugs. Could they do better? Obviously.

One moral gray area for me: I'm not comfortable with reverse engineering Blizzard's code, but I have benefited from the work of numerous people who have done so. I think Blizzard has benefitted too.

I play in private games, so I am not as much affected by the cheating as some others. I trade only with friends and family. However there are a number of issues that spoil my game experience. I think these issues are preventible.

Herewith are my top ten annoyances:

1.) Player Not Found -- there could be some warning given before a character is deleted. Have the avatar turn green or something. Better, display the date when the character was last played, or the number of days since the character last was played. Maybe even after a character has been played a thousand hours or so, grant him or her some kind of immortality. This should not eat up that much server space.

2.) Assertions -- assertions do not belong in production code (in my opinion). Every couple of weeks my client locks up because of an assertion failure. Some may say having a 0.000000374291 chance of dying randomly lends interest to the game. The last time baal was casting his yellow nova just as my polearm barbarian was connecting with concentrate -- quite a dramatic picture, too bad I couldn't save it as a screen shot. (In truth, that time the barbarian had a sliver of life left, but all too often the result is death.)

3.) Timeout delay -- I don't know what else to call it, but I cannot understand why the server waits however long it takes for a character to die (or so it seems) after the client stops responding. Maybe some people play with 15000 ms ping? Ever have your modem drop while facing lister? It may be only a game, but I lost a week's worth of experience. Pity those who play hardcore. Making the timeout shorter (or a user selection) would possibly also solve the drop hack issue, if I understand it.

4.) Delay in reconnecting to battle.net after a interruption (i.e. after an assertion failure) -- granted that Blizzard cannot control all interruptions. Last night, as frequently happens, my modem dropped. "Why, yes, thank you -- I am aware my CD key is in use by me." "Please wait five minutes before reconnecting, so that your game has time to go away." Five minutes would almost be tolerable, but too often it is more like half an hour before a character can reconnect.

[Isolde]

Thanks for the support Bolty, Roland et al. You guys are great.

That said, I'm an adult and can handle a certain amount of abuse :) And I certainly don't mind discussion.

I had this weird thought running through my head yesterday about whether or not any other games generate this much vitriol from its "fans". However empowering it might be if everyone was just full of praise, I'm not sure that in the long run that that would be such a good thing you know?

re: what Roland said about this being "blizzard's" game -- I had an interesting argument several years ago with someone in the diabloii.net chat room about this very thing. His point was that the customer was always right and that if the majority of customers felt that we should take out non-consensual PvP then that is what we must do. My point was that while the customer is always right in the end (ie. the customers will either spend money on a product or they won't), the common adage doesn't actually apply to each detail of the design of a game. For multiple reasons, one of which is that if the designers aren't making the game that they want to play, then the game will be total crap (or it won't exist at all). And two, the majority is quite often wrong. For example, if you took a poll of the general battle.net population and asked, "would you want to be able to see the entire map and all the monsters on the map all of the time", well -- I think we have a pretty good idea what the results would be. Perhaps that's elitist of me though.

This isn't to say that our decisions are always right -- they're most definitely not. And even within the company there's usually quite a lot of debate about some of these "hot" topics. Oh well, just my thoughts on the matter.

[Isolde]

All you've done is bought yourself a bit of time you haven't fixed any of the underlying problems.

Yup. Which is what I've said previously. By not releasing the specifics we're buying some time. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. As far as fixing underlying problems is concerned: we fix what we can with the resources we're given. At this point, I'm not about to rewrite *everything*. And a lot of the problems are core.

A game that requires thousands of hours to "win"(find all the neat stuff, get to high levels). And that is simple and repetitive enough that a computer can be made to play the game.(botting).

don't know what to say to this. you're right. though the same could be said of nethack... ;)

You trust the client and/or client/server protocol to make decisions it shouldn't be making(tradehack/ITHs).

none of that was supposed to happen (same goes with information hiding): not enough code review. I apologize, though it doesn't do much good at this point.

[Isolde]

Assertions -- assertions do not belong in production code (in my opinion).

You're right. Certainly not on the client anyway. (I admit, I always used to laugh at products that would assert). Ah, but there was a "wee" bit of rushing towards the end, and they were very useful to have on the server... Besides which most of the assertions you see would have just resulted in unhandled exceptions anyway.

Though out of curiosity, which assertions do you get?

[Zitta]

Sometimes I wonder about the future of the battlenet. It seems like it's been a grand experiment that didn't quite pan out. One problem is that it relies too much on a quasi honorary system, and there is no honor among the masses populating it. The other problem is money. Since it is not subscriber based service it doesn't generate a solid ongoing income, and I know how tight fisted the money people get at any large company. My guess is that d2 maintenance doesn't have as much headcount as it would need. The next big rlease WoW makes it seem that Blizzard might move away from battlenet - it's pay-to-play and won't be on the bnet servers.

[Bolty]

I had this weird thought running through my head yesterday about whether or not any other games generate this much vitriol from its "fans".&nbsp; However empowering it might be if everyone was just full of praise, I'm not sure that in the long run that that would be such a good thing you know?

Most definitely not. My point was only that constructive criticism is needed, not glorified representations of "you guys suck." On the old DSF, there was quite a history of constructive criticism. Two points of example I can think of is Crystalion's actual posting of code information revealing how to fix a bug, and the DSF Buglist, an attempt by the game's fans to provide a detailed listing of the known bugs in the game. We did all we could to bring them to the attention of the North programmers.

My point was that while the customer is always right in the end (ie. the customers will either spend money on a product or they won't), the common adage doesn't actually apply to each detail of the design of a game.

In fact, you can throw that adage completely out when developing a game. Games actually run against the grain of all other kinds of software. In a game, the goal of the programmers is to present a challenge to the user of the software. In other words, you develop roadblocks towards using the software "successfully" - whether it be "winning" the game, or "getting the best stuff." No other software works this way. In all other software, the goal is to make the software easier to use and faster to "win" with, in that case writing a good document, editing pictures, etc etc ad infinitum.

So gaming development is the one kind of software development where you are required to make things difficult for your customer. You need to present them with a challenge, and the goal is to make it challenging enough for some customers to be happy, but not too challenging or you alienate other customers. In some cases, mere difficulty levels is enough, but that cannot apply to a multiplayer environment. I don't think you're elitist with your claim that a majority of users would want the entire map revealed; I think you're just being realistic. Listen to the gamers too much, and you wind up making the game too easy. But if you listen to another subset of gamers (such as many you can find here), and you make the game too hard.

Game development is half art, half science. Perhaps that's why good games are so rare - and what makes game design so exciting to at least the outsiders of the industry. Some people know the "art," and can just "feel" when something in a game should be done differently. Others take a more scientific bent and analyze game theory to do it right. I think you need a little of both.

In any case, we're long past the days where 2 guys in a basement can make a killer game. The industry has matured, lost something in the process, but yet I think the end product has improved over time. Bad games are bad games, but I'm finding that the bad games of today are far better than the bad games of 10 years ago.

-Bolty

[Roland]

Bad games are bad games, but I'm finding that the bad games of today are far better than the bad games of 10 years ago.

Mayhap so. But I'm finding that bad games are more and more common these days. Is a boatload of glorified crap any better than a handful of utter crap?

I don't demand perfection from all games, but when the industry as a whole seems to be on a downward spiral, it's cause for a bit of alarm, don't you think? The more we except crap, the more it's going to be given to us. And, the more the industry is going to push the envelope to see just how low they can go before we call them on it and write them off completely. There will always be gems, but with more and more companies (and games) coming out, 6 gems a year is ALOT more scarce than it used to be.

This, of course, is speaking nothing about Blizzard. Yet, anyway. I have hope, and faith, and a good gut feeling. But there's alot of years between now and future releases. Alot could change. I don't think it will, at least not anytime soon, but it's still a possibility.

For now, I'll just be content that there's still at least one good company out there. And, hope they stick around. :) For all my complaints about Blizzard and their games, it's almost entirely revolving around D2 in some way. And, no matter how much I complain, and bash, I never forget the GOOD things D2 has. Ever.

[LavCat]

Though out of curiosity, which assertions do you get?

Had I thought I would ever have had the opportunity to be asked the question I would have documented more carefully! The first couple assertions I saw I wrote down. I just spent a few minutes looking through stacks of paper, but I could not find one. It has probably been at least a year since I last noted one on paper. Unfortunately I did not write down the one the other night when my barbarian was facing baal. I'm sorry I did not.

My rememberance is that it is not always the same assertion. I also exagerated the frequency when I said every couple weeks. It is more like every month or two, but there have been quite a number.

But this pales in comparison with the problems that happen when my modem drops. I believe my ISP drops the line about every six hours. I sometimes forget how long I've been playing. As much as I would love to be able to blame that on Blizzard, I'm afraid that I cannot. Since I'm making bread at the moment, an analogy from a French book on bread is with a Paris flour company whose main customer complaint was that people ate too much of it.

I will make an effort to record the next assertion message, but this will probably mean I will never see one again.

I understand the difficulty of trapping an exception, but at the point in the code where you have the assertion, you could replace the assertion "assert (n)" with something like "if (n) life/=n else TellServerAndCrash". That way the server could dump one's character from the game immediately.

Again, though, if the server could time out more quickly after a client dropped, assertion failures or other interruptions would be at most a minor nuisance (at least to me), particularly if one could then rejoin one's game.

Thanks, Isolde, for taking the time to solicite feedback. I think I can speak for almost, if not everyone that it is very much appreciated. By the way I have a D2C sorceress on USEast by the name of Brangane. (I don't care what anybody says, this is an RPG!)

[Isolde]

D2 keeps around the last 5 log files, so any recent assertions should be in one of those.

I'll lower the timeout from 15 sec to 5 sec which is what it is in Hardcore.

Brangane ;) I had to look it up.