Archive for the 'Diablo 3 in the media' Category



Auction House Clock exploit (duping)

You might think that Diablo III is an online game, definitely not an MMO like WoW but definitely an online.

So why the hell Blizzard use your computer’s system clock to determine Auction House transactions!!! Is this a single-player game where duping doesn’t matter? Why do some Korean players have 4 billion gold, yes, that is Billion, not million?

So how do you dupe items? Well, it’s easy. You sell something, you go back and cancel it. Duping complete.

Note that abusing this to dupe items will probably result in a ban from Blizzard. Sending 100M to your other account might work but I don’t encourage it. I’m just appalled at Blizzard’s stupidity – who programmed the damned local clock, with the foresight that this will allow duping 250 euro crossbows?

Diablo 3 game design myopia

This isn’t going to be a rant – that would be too easy. The point is to highlight how game designer mistakes snowball when designers don’t play their own game (i.e. are informed about the game from data mining, not understanding).

Exhibit A – Attack speed nerf

The new patch promises to nerf attack speed as it led to “not supposed to be played”. That could be the case (I play as a Demon hunter and have stacked as much IAS as possible). However, two minutes spent on closer examining the issue will reveal that this is a direct consequence of INFERNO difficulty design decision to make every mob one shot you, regardless of equipment.

Prior to inferno, I always bought/kept items with dexterity and vitality and I had a health pool of about 35,000 HP. Come INFERNO, it doesn’t matter if I have 35K or 70K, I simply cannot get hit and survive. So I ditched all my vitality and protection gear and stacked the only alternative – attack speed. I’d be extremely happy to go around with no attack speed but being able to withstand a hit. Dying from something offscreen is extremely frustrating and game designers should address this and not the fact we stack attack speed.

Exhibit B – Repair costs 5x increase

This is a different exhibit but with the same cause – INFERNO difficulty one-shots you. Of course, people will chain rez, it is the only way to defeat a boss when everything that touches you, kills you. Blizzard’s solution? Increase repair costs five times (!), so that people will care about dying. We care, trust me. Now make it possible for us to gear so that we can survive a hit.

Exhibit C – Game creation limit

Blizzard have just announced they’ve introduced a limit to the amount of games you can create in a certain time interval. No worry, it shouldn’t affect anyone but the botters, right? Wrong! After getting this insightful error message: “Input limit reached. Please wait to perform more actions”, many players found it unable to play. So Blizzard reverted the measure temporarily until the technical issue is solved.

However, the implication here is that a big PART of the excessive game creation is game designer’s fault. For example, constructing the Staff of Hoarding that gives you access to the Pony level (a.k.a. cow level), requires ingridients that are extremely easy to collect but spawn in 10% of games or less. At level 60, I had to create no less than 30 games in Normal difficulty just to get the merchant in the oasis to spawn. Is this the challenge now? Beating the random number generator?

People who are just starting to build their staffs will find it very difficult to find that merchant. In an extreme case, it could take a day or a week (assuming you also want to play).

Instead of putting a frustrating limit, simply increase the spawn rate to 50%. It is how it is supposed to be played, if any of Blizzard’s game designers actually played the game, instead of filling in Excel spreadsheets with spawn rates.

Diablo 3 error 33 – server maintenance

I come back from a trip and can’t wait to get to my computer to play a bit of Diablo 3 all through Sunday night!

First, I get my favorite error 37 (server busy) and then I get Blizzard’s message that they are working hard on the servers, fixing GOD KNOWS WHAT. It’s definitely not a scheduled maintenance as no one in their right mind schedules server maintenance for Sunday evening.

So why the unplanned server maintenance and more importantly, why the silence? Tell us what’s wrong and WHEN (in your estimate) it is going to be fixed. That’s like an auto mechanic saying, “thanks for leaving your car with us, we might have found something, drive a bike for the next month but might fix it tonight. it’s just one of these things, you know, you can never tell which one it’s going to be – a month or an hour.”

I get it when people said about the open beta – relax, Blizzard is tuning their servers and that’s why you get errors, you are not even supposed to play. But once I’m a buying customer I do have certain rights – as in when I’m going to have access to something I already paid.

Not to mention I only play singleplayer and if it was Diablo II, I wouldn’t have had this problem in the first place. And yes, I got killed twice on Friday because the servers lost my connection (I definitely had Internet connection). So Blizzard’s DRM is killing both hardcode mode and my schedule with all these server issues!

End of rant!

Update: OK, we have now moved to error 3003 – so the battle.net servers are totally unconnectable (if this was really a word). A lot of people complaining about the errors as for the majority this is a SINGLEPLAYER game.

Update 2: I managed to log on to THE AMERICAS! Go, go, go! OK, EU is back up, now I get error 37!

Diablo 3 guest pass giveaway

Update: We’ve given away 12 guest passes so far. We’ll get more tomorrow!

8ZKEHH-TTF4-EGBJ7D-ZTKW-R6MD8
DJBM4-VCEJ-6XCWZK-BF22-HEWZR6
YTX644-VNDZ-MW4EHT-NPPD-M2CX2B
XY6HN2-DDGF-R2EE9G-48YR-ZDH69X

These are two guest pass codes that were probably redeemed, but we haven’t heard back from the winners, so give them a shot.
First come, first served! The rest, follow the steps below to qualify.

We are giving away several Diablo 3 guest passes. These will give you 30 day play time – for free! The only downside is your characters will be limited to level 13 (same as the beta).

We are going to give away more of the guest passes tomorrow – courtesy of the guys who work on the online RPG Riftforge.

So in order to qualify for a guest pass, here’s what you need to do:

1) Register for the Riftforge exclusive beta, it’s playable in a browser.

2) Beat the first two tutorials (takes only a few minutes).

3) Send us an email with the name of the Guardian commander who gives you the third mission.

The email address for the giveaway appears below, it’s a picture, so spammers cannot collect it. It’s same as the domain name (in case you can’t spell unless you copy and paste).

For the record, these are Bulgarian guest passes but work anywhere – all thanks to Blizzard’s global marketing!

HOWTO: Guide how to redeem your Diablo 3 guest pass:

Update: We got several extra guest passes today as well, so we’re going to give them away to people who have emailed us! So keep your emails coming (remember that the correct Commander name is four letters long and starts with C). We have given away 3 passes already!

Disclaimer: This giveaway doesn’t require any purchases on your behalf. It also doesn’t guarantee you are going to win a Diablo 3 guest pass. There’s a good chance you won’t win anything.

Diablo 3 launcher problems fix

Get a Diablo 3 guest pass now!

Note: Diablo 3 guest passes allow 30 days of free gameplay.


Quite a few of us have been affected by a problem with the Diablo 3 launcher. It seems to start OK (clicking on INFO gives the relevant download info). However, the progress bar doesn’t move and the PLAY button remains gray (inactive).

Here’s a few solutions to try:

1) Exit launcher, go to the DVD and start the Diablo III Setup.exe. It will force the launcher to start again and it worked for me on first try.

2) Click Diablo III (via the shortcut or Diablo III Setup.exe) and select “Run as Administrator…”

3) Turn off all anti-virus programs as they slow down the update (a thousand new files to check). Be patient and wait for a few minutes (if you have done solutions 1 or 2).

4) Kill agent.exe and re-open the launcher. This has worked for people getting the ‘failed to read required file’ error. I got the error but retrying Diablo III didn’t work, I had to re-try the Setup file on the DVD.

If you decide to contribute your solution to the launcher problem, post it at this technical forum!

Don’t get too frustrated about this error because even people who managed to get the launcher to update everything are stuck at the login servers which seem to be under a lot of pressure. Everyone is getting either server busy errors (37) or Battle.net service outage error (75).

Diablo 3 error 75

If you’ve just entered you game code (or your guest pass), you are probably thinking playing Diablo 3 is just a few minutes away!

Not so fast. Apart from the now infamous server busy error (37), Diablo has another secret weapon to keep you from playing – error 75: There is a temporary outage of the Battle.net service.

The error is generated at login, the first checkbox lights and then you wait for about 30 seconds. During regular play, the login is almost instantaneous. The only fix is to try to log in to the Diablo 3 servers later… much later.

The numerous complaints at the Diablo 3 tech forum about error 75 doesn’t seem to motivate Blizzard to get additional servers. In fact, most of us are not able to POST at this forum even though we have purchased a copy of the game and added to the Battle.net account.

Update: Changed location to AMERICAs and I was able to go log in but I’m stuck at Retrieving Hero list.




Get Diablo 3 guest pass!

Note: Your guest pass gives you 30 days of free Diablo 3 play!


  

Get Diablo News

Enter your email address:




Subscribe via RSS

Vote on the Diablo 3 Top 200
Diablo 3 Top 200 - Diablo 3 Items, Gold, Maps, Quests, Guilds, Guides, Hacks, Cheats

BlogRanks

BlogRankers.com game, diablo, blizzard, diablo 3, release date, characters, beta game, diablo, blizzard, diablo 3, release date, characters, beta