Q u o t e: Very wrong. WoW is a very simple game to emulate. It does not have ANY randomness to it. Every dungeon is the same every time you play it. Every item is the same etc etc etc. D3 is a WAY more complex system. And if someone DID in theory end up building the item system, it would never really be the d3 item system, it would be a crude copy, the only reason thats alright in WoW is because its simple and not random.
It could pirates a YEAR to emulate sc2 multiplayer, and trust me thats peanuts compared to the client/server protocols being used in D3.
Also your comment about putting game systems offline would not affect the online. Your wrong again. Putting the very complex systems like the randomizing of dungeons,loot and encounters offline would allow people to quickly reverse engineer the code and work out how the systems work deep down. Allowing them to find exploits and make hacks for the online world.
Oh wow, the randomness, how could I forget! Of course the randomness will stop all attempts to emulate the servers! How could I have been so silly to not see that!
The WoW servers were not that easy to replicate and it took about a year for the WoW servers to finally be up to scratch with blizzard's quality. It will be the same way with D3. Yes, a pirated item system would be a copy of the blizzard system. The people making the pirate servers would just keep gathering data until they could reasonably replicate it. It might not exactly the same, but it will be close enough. Randomness just isn't enough of a deterrent, as anything can be emulated eventually, and pirates are resourceful.
Also, how would the complex randomising systems contribute towards exploits and hacks for an online world? People might be able to pick apart how the randomness system works, and then use that to metagame their play style. But as for exploits and hacks, they would still have to break the security of the client/server model. They wouldn't just be able to upload new randomising code to the server or have it operate in a different way when blizzard controls access to the secure servers. As always, hacking an online server comes down to hacking the protocol foremost.
You call me wrong, but what you consider hard is not really as hard as you think. A randomisation system for a game is pretty damn weak, when the data can be gathered by playing it.
