In regards to the recent banning, I seriously hope blizzard knew what they were doing. Obviously their intention was to remove all hacks/cheats/bots/whatever plauging D2. Sadly enough, they had to ban nearly 50% of the entire community? Hm.. And not only that, they banned for first offenses, minor offenses, PAST offenses, and sometimes no offense at all. Caught in the ban was a RL friend who hardly ever played, had no hacks whatsoever and would not even know where or how to use them. I know this for fact, I sat there and watched him install it, and I played with him multiple times. Not to mention my brother, who also did not use any kind of cheat/hack/mod. He simply was banned, for no reason. Account closure (8), which is impossible, seeing as how he never used any. He knew I did, but never did himself.
The only thing I used was D2Loader, which is a 3rd party program. However, it is used as a tool, not as a hack. People merely made hacks to work with it. Why punish everyone? In order for the economy to function, this tool is needed. It also required many to buy more than one copy of diablo. Somehow you missed that? Regardless of if you made the profit or not, these people supported your game.
It's clear that hacks/cheats/bots/mods are not to be used. However, without some of these, d2 would not be d2 at all. You don't understand what the inside is like. Communities like JSP were ripped apart because of this. People spent alot of time, money, and effort building these up. Glitch rushing, Uber Leveling, and other services are what made d2 fun and playable.
For people who play every day, leveling a char from 1-99 every time you messed up is not at all fun. Walking through the acts one by one, having to manually kill baal, is not fun.
For those complaining against that, they don't have to participate. Its simply another side of D2.
The fact of the matter is, Diablo 2 is practically destroyed in one day. People hate blizzard now, people are so raged. This is nothing like the ban waves of 08, this was a catastrophic blow to the core of the game. Back then there were so many people it didn't affect everything as much, but this wiped out nearly 50% of Diablo. Thousands are quitting, some of your most veteran players have given up.
People pay real life money for items on this game. No point in denying it.
Say you bought a car, then the company you bought it from decides you went over the speed limit on your way home from buying it, and they crush it while you're asleep. Essentially the same thing.
There were about 10 Btal armors lost in your wave of bans.
Each of these are equal to about $750 in value. People payed for those, too.
'Too bad, they hack, it's their fault' ... no. They may have violated your rules, that as it may... But assume you got arrested and thrown in jail every time you went one mph over the speed limit, went two feet past a stop sign before stopping. If everyone got tickets for that, this would be a very sad world indeed.
Perhaps we're wrong and your intention was only to get the botters, aimbotters, dupers, and hackers. If so, the sacrifice you made to do that will bring unbalance to diablo for as long as it survives. This isn't 08, where people can simply pick up the peices and restart. Some got lucky and had JSP forum gold to rebuild with. Others, like me, who had multiple accounts with many accomplishments, many successful / finally built characters, worked on them for years and now they are gone forever. All for what? A program that allows you to xfer your own items? SAFELY? I'm speaking of intent. Those who hacked are hackers. Those who play the game, play the game.
If you can't figure out a way to tell the difference, I highly suggest you do that.
Some of these programs made Diablo 2 what it is today. Just because you hear constant complaints about hacking duelers, spam bots, and 'lag from dupers', doesn't mean everyone hates your game.
I garantee you three times the people that played loved diablo 2 more than those who hated it for pointless, INCORRECT reasons.
'Omfg, this guy aimbotted me ban all hackers' ... No, he didn't. I've been accused of aim cheating hundreds of times. Have I ever used gmod or aimbot or whatever? No. I admit I used some cheats like TMC breakpoint mod for my own reasons, and I fully understand why that is bannable. But that was before. I was not using TMC at the time of my ban. I had that out of my D2 folder for a week prior.
Tools like Health Mods (show the # of health you have rather than in a bubble), SkillScroll (allowed you to view what skill is highlighted along with the keys they were binded too on the left side of the screen) are TOOLS. Not CHEATS, not HACKS. Why ban people for making a solution to something they viewed as a problem? Omfg Minimizing D2 if you click offscreen while in window mode. D2Loader FIXED that.
Essentially, the ban was not only unfair, but nobody got any warning. There was no minor/severe offenses, no ladder banning (as in prioritizing what should be banned and what should be warned/advised against), there was no warning whatsoever. No one saw it coming. I heard you posted on Battle.Net everyone should shut off third party programs.. Alot of people did. And were still banned. Some discovered that even if you deleted the hack fully, it was STILL THERE. Even if you reinstalled. You should have some kind of way to notice that banning someone may be a mistake. If it's a human, they will comply to what you tell them. If it's a bot, they will simply keep doing what you warn them against until they're banned. Simple as that.
Fact of the matter is, alot of people lost alot of things. You didn't just take items/accounts/characters/cd keys away.. You took away hard work, passion, time, and energy from HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. Who CARES if someone wanted to move an item from one character to the other? This isn't some 'everyone should be treated fairly, therefore all 3rd party ... ' This was unfair, unjustified, and unBELIEVEABLE to those of us who were first time offenders, minor offenders, or not offenders at all. Some people were '100% legit' and proud of it, who still got banned. No, they were not lying about being legit, don't bother to say that. Anyone who suggests vega (i.e) was a hacker needs to uninstall.
He had a unique item. Eth Zog Bug Glitched Enigma Archon Plate. Priceless in value. Only one on East realm. Gone! For no reason. If he was banned for owning that item, there is serious problems there. Apparently it's against the game rules to possess anything that's not supposed to exist?
You will never understand what you did on 11/11/08. You think you do, but you don't. You lost so much support it's not even funny. If you think that support didn't matter, you'll see otherwise someday. People are actually boycotting against your products, and no, that's not a temporary joke. These people are serious. It's not that hard to do, either. I'm not pleased myself, and have no intention of buying diablo 3 when it comes out. It all ends up being a waste of time and money.
Take a canvas of a beautiful sunset you just finished painting. Take that, and accidentally knock a candle on the floor and walk out of the room without realizing it. Those 5 years you spent on that wall-sized painting totally wasted. You cannot deny that people looked at diablo as a hobby. I admit I did, it's a fun game that never ends. You can never be good enough.
By the way, in this nuke, you missed alot of the real offenders. Spam bots are still flying around, and websites are still in business. Meaning you missed the private dupes, as well.
If your intention was to move everyone to WoW, I'm afraid you've failed from what I've heard. To D2 players, WoW sucks. It's simply taste, plus the fact Diablo 2 was perfectly done. Sure, it was messed up in some ways with all the glitches and such.. But it remains the most legendary beloved game of all time. D3 won't be able to touch it, mark my words. You can't make something like D2 better. Simply because it is, what it is.
If your intention was destroy this 10 or whatever year standing community, congratulations on your success. People will still play, but it will NEVER be the same.
And that's not a good thing.
I speak not only for myself, but for 90% of the JSP community, which is a big portion of the Diablo 2 community. And this is nothing. This was typed hastily and without plan, nothing in words can express what happned on 11/11/08. You nuked your own game... Though the blast is over, the winter is yet to come.
If that is not what you did, I'd love to see proof showing otherwise. To everyone else, your actions were destructive, regardless of the fact what you did may have been to HELP the community.
Know that it didn't. At all. You simply should have let it be. It wasn't as big of a deal as you thought it was. Whatever you banned for, it will gain you nothing. Or, it will lose you alot more than it will gain you. You'll see in time.
Diablo 2 is no longer the Diablo 2 it used to be. If you're going to do something like this, at least give people a chance. No one had ANY chance at all. No announcment on the lobby page. No gamewide intercom messages. Nothing. Nothing except the knowledge 'hey, warden is warden really on?' There was no time for anyone to react or prepare. No one had any time to change their ways or go back and reread the rules they agreed to follow. This was cold-blooded and wrong.
I assume that most of the viewers here will disagree with me. I expect contradiction, but regardless... Diablo 2 has been slammed on purpose. This 'war on hackers' had way too many civilian casualties, if that is indeed the reason.
Thanks to everyone who submitted your opinions about this on JSP and allowed me to make our voices heard.
And.. If you see programs like Loader getting so much support and use.. Why not make a legal program like it yourself so people don't HAVE to 'hack'? Seeing as how it's not a hack in the first place..
Without things like this... it's simply not right.
If you read this whole thing, thanks for reading.
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