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Games Entertainment

Diablo II: Knickknacks Nicked 127

Posted by michael from the keystone-kops dept.
Various people sent in complaints, and good old Anonymous Coward sent a link to the Diablo II Forums, where all and sundry are complaining that sunspots, or h4xx0rs, or Blizzard's incompetence have made all their hard-earned Diablo II items disappear into the aether from whence they came. Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?
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Diablo II: Knickknacks Nicked More

Diablo II: Knickknacks Nicked

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  • D2 Redux (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seems to be a major divide between those that play and those that don't. Those of you who do not view the whole thing as silly and irrelevant and unimportant. Those that do play find this to be incredibly annoying. Some background info first, there were a number of bugs running before this happened, and these bugs caused crashing and time outs, and perhaps caused character data corruption. There were reports that three monster types had their names changed, and that items that could not exist, did, pointing perhaps to a hacking of the central item database. In addition the problems that were seen could be a result of a change to the dupe control, flipping it from if (dupe) { delete } to if ( !dupe) { delete }, but thats a wild guess. The problem happened between 9:45 EST and 12AM EST, as that is the time between me logging and off and me returning to the chaos. Now as to whether its important or not, many of these people have been playing for over a year, and most do not cheat/dupe etc, and some as in my case do not even trade, finding most people too annoying to be dealt with. Losing these items is a severe loss as the difference in a well built character with great items and one with average items is extreme. If you want to debate about the merits of D2 as receratioin go ahead, but dont trivialize others hobbies and pastimes, its a lot better than watching tv and in my opinion a heck of a lot more interesting than screaming about the latest Microsoft vapor ware for hours every day or trying to be the first to post on a topic.

  • Re:What a wonderful world (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I disagree. The majority of purchases were due to interest in the single-player game - over 4 million copies were sold, and there are fewer than 250,000 Battle.Net users at any given time (including Starcraft players which account for over 120,000 during Asian peak hours - Starcraft is a part of Korean culture now). Blizzard estimates the percentage who have never gone online (even open Battle.Net) with their copy of Diablo II to be around 60%.

    Regardless of how Blizzard spends the money you give them for the game, even if they spend it on maintaining their online service, Battle.Net isn't any less "free". The price would not be reduced if Battle.Net were not included. You have paid nothing extra for it - even though your money may be actually be used for it - so from your point of view it has cost you nothing. Blizzard games wouldn't be any cheaper if they did not include Battle.Net play. (Starcraft is now $20 in many places, D2 is $35. They were both released at $45-$55 which is the same price as pretty much any other game on the shelf.)

    You can say that Battle.Net was a part of the advertising for Diablo II, but it was never a major component. The game was never promoted via mass advertisement, with the exception of four different print ads I can think of. None of those said anything about Battle.Net except for a line like "compete free over the internet" or "free online play over Battle.Net". This was in small print on a full-page color advertisement. Hardly a central component of the advertising scheme.

  • Re:Where have all the items gone? Well .. /dev/nul (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:08AM (#62799)
    Well, seeing as though ALL my equipment was deleted off of several characters (only on the USEast server) and that I both do not trade, nor care about knowing how to dupe (if I did, don't you think it would be "easier" to be lame on the Open realms?), I think I have a fairly decent idea that all my gear was jacked in some nasty DB fault. Unless their dupe-finding-routine includes items you can gamble for, and find on the ground after killing Mephisto entirely too many times.
    I just love the false sense of hope they give their regular players when they announce that they are taking USEast down to investigate. I mean technically speaking, unless its an issue with a server-side flub pertaining to joining games, most everyone's stuff is gone. You just won't know it until you join a game :)

  • Re:What a wonderful world (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @04:03AM (#62800)
    Yes, yes it is.

    My employer maintains a free chat & game-connection server for a PC product we released 3 years ago.

    Besides a small number of users constantly clamoring for expansion packs (despite the original product not selling enough to break even on development costs, which is _only_ OK since a lot of the code rolled over into a next-generation game), any time the server goes down, even for 5 minutes, even if we've telegraphed this outage days in advance, we get deluged by email and voicemail from a handful of people.

    Even though the server has had 99.99% uptime the past 3 years (pretty impressive for an NT server), they claim we're "sabotaging" the server, or various other wacko conspiracy theories. They refuse to acknowledge that 99% of their problems are caused by the users having horrible ISPs and antiquated systems with MAJOR driver/configuration problems.

    The real fun begins when the building experiences a power outage of such a long duration that the T1 goes down, servers go down, etc. due to the batteries running out of juice. When this happens people online are notified of the situation, given a few minutes to start up games, etc. (once started, games are done peer-to-peer), then the server goes down until power is restored. Want to guess what we hear when the power comes back? Yep. Conspiracy theories. "There was no power outage! You're just trying to screw us!" etc.

    It's people like this that make companies shut DOWN free services. If all they're going to do is bitch endlessly, what upside is there for companies to continue the service?

    Remember, "Loose lips sink ships."
  • "is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place".

    Same could be said about one's bank account, eh?

  • You mean, people are complaining about an article without even reading it?

    Where have I heard that before? :-)

    </joke

  • Excellent point. Those items are most certainly real, as they required time and effort to earn. Losing them arbitrarily due to a poorly supported system will justifiably cause a lot of frustration in its users, and this is something Blizzard is absolutely responsible for.

    Michael - it is just you.

  • That's "luminiferous aether" to you :)

  • I don't know. Would it be weird if you reported on a Paypal bug which resulted in some payments getting lost ?

    The significant distinction being that Paypal payments are just another shape for money. You can convert them on demand into cash. Gaming items are not demand convertable into cash, they have to go through an extra step.

  • Paypal is an example of the social concept of the representation of money. The value of your Paypal account is demoninated in real hard currency and is convertable on demand into the object (currency or coins) in which it is denominated in. Money is in itself a medium of exchange, and that's what gives in intrinsic value beyond the intrinsic value of any other item of commerce.

    The HammerOfThor+35 isn't just something of varying social value (Diablo players vs. non-Diablo players) or even of varying market value among people with whom its significant, it can't be used to buy something else. It's not a medium of exchange; the value of other things in Diablo or outside of Diablo is not measured in terms of HammerOfThors and the intrinsic value that it has is relative to what can be done with it.
  • I would love to see the face of the Judge that handles this case when those facts are reveiled.


    --
  • "What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you
    can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply
    electrical signals interpretted by your brain. This is the world that you know...
    the world as it was at the end of the 20th century. It exists now only as a neural
    interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You've been living in a dream world
    Michael. This is the world as it exists today... Welcome to the desert of the real."

  • Is it odd? NO (Score:4)

    by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:50AM (#62809)
    is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?

    No. But it is odd to be reporting on Battle.net security/stability like it is a rare occurance.


  • > I lost a character whose name players today
    > (and this is 5 years later) still grab whenever
    > it comes available.

    The game had nothing to do with the fact that "CowboyNeal" is just a popular handle.

    -Chris

    ...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @05:36AM (#62811)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I don't follow your argument - PayPal payments are real money. When you receive a PayPal payment for X dollars, you know that you have X number of dollars to spend on something else - just think of it as another bank account. You can in fact use that as a down payment on a house, request a check or just move the funds into your normal bank account. Possibly with the PayPal credit card you could literally buy something at a 7-11 that goes against your PayPal account (though I don't know if it really is tied to your account).

    If you have an item (virtual or otherwise) you might be able to convert them into cash, but until you do so you really have nothing - If I have a can of Spam and a DII Helm Of Really Great Significance, there's no saying which one might be worth pennies or $100 tomorrow. You have nothing until you sell, which you may never be able to do.
  • I half-agree, but I'm mostly thinking of the expansion when I do so. The game is, to me, a lot of fun, but I don't have to deal with Battle.Net lag - I mostly play on the LAN with my fiancee. On a Mac, I never really had any stability problems or lag problems with Diablo II. Then I got the expansion. The game crashes frequently, we get lag despite being on the LAN and using machines that shouldn't have problems with a game like Diablo II (400MHz G4s), and occasionally the game launches one of the two players into a "no-man's land", presumably where the client and server get out of sync. That last one is fixable with lots of running around until the machines are forced to coordinate with each other again.

    We persevere, because the new classes are a lot of fun to play with, but the game is far less stable than Blizzard's previous offerings. All I can do is hope that Blizzard releases a bug fix patch soon.
  • I think Michael was referring to something along the lines of cloned items through cheat codes or just outright bugs. In that sense, those items are cheated and, as such, should have "never existeed in the first place". If my interprettation is right, Michael omitted "should have"---but we have come to expect grammar snafus on /.

    Think of it this way: Imagine there is a God and that God fucks up, leaving a loophole open that lets anybody create a Ficus tree out of thin air. God realizes that fuck up, closes the loophole, and retroactively zaps all the ficus trees that should have never existed out of existence.

    ----
  • Oh, like what they did to Tribes 2. They went in and removed parts of some of the maps, and castrated the small fighter jet, and set the fog to about 2 meters away.

  • "is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place".

    Heh, 29 years ago i didn't exist either. This line of thought could have interesting implications in murder trials. Time to dig out the old grudge book!

  • MSN will disconnect your modem if there is no web activity within 10 minutes, a feature that ruins gaming.


    That's an easy fix. Start with an appropriate [google.com] Google Search, then visit a page like this one [bnl.gov], which loads every few seconds an is pretty small. A webcam would work too, if you disable images to save bandwidth.

  • ... people around here complain about Katz articles or really bad moderation here on slashdot?
  • This is a disaster - if I can't rely on my Diablo character being safe, then I may as well be spending my quality time on my relationship with my girlfriend or something ;-)
  • Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?

    "If you can see it, but it's not there, it's virtual.

    If you can't see it, but it is there, it's hidden.

    It you can't see it and it isn't there, it's gone."

    -- Some old hacker I knew, RIP
  • That's odd. I'm playing on a 400mhz G3 and have no problems at all. Try ramping up the RAM real high. I have a half gig on my Blue and White and so I just added a 1 in front of the preferred memory setting and the expansion runs like a champ. In fact Battle.net seems more responsive now than before.
  • Speaking of this, I think this event might have totally screwed over a good friend of mine who was levelling characters up, getting them good EQ and selling them on ebay for $150+ this was practically his Job. In fact, he just finished and put up for bid a level 80 expansion sorcerous with no skill points or stat points used and a crapload of good Sorc EQ. Tons of the good Uniques. If this bug made him lose that EQ he's going to be REALLY pissed....

    Kintanon
  • Some people don't take that much time at all...
    The guy I'm talking about only took 4 days to get that Sorc up to level 80 with all of that EQ. And he'll probably get 400-500$ for it. Not a bad haul for 4 days work. Much better than minimum wage.

    Kintanon
  • > If you don't play in the realm for { trading / status }

    I play with guild mates on the realm. We tried Open B-net but one of our computers hosts the game then (which was terrible for ping & lag.) B-Net has been very good about no lag this last week, so we switched over to a realm game.

    Basically b-net realm games allow a "smooth" game of 8 people.

  • It happened to LEGIT items (Score:3)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:17AM (#62825)
    I was playing last night the instant this first happened. (~ 11:30pm EST) Was playing, lost con, restarted, joined a game, found BOTH my chars completely stripped of ALL items.

    I have NEVER traded for ANY items so don't give me that crap about the people complaining are the ones that had duped items.

    If you meant, that Blizzard was running a dupe-checker-deleter and it had a BUG that deleted legit items as well, then that is the more likely story.

    To all those others saying "what's the big deal":
    Yes, it's JUST a game, but when I invest personal HOURS of fun into a (persistant world*) game, I tend to get a annoyed if the game world isn't persistant -- what's EVEN the point of playing then?! (Ask anyone who has experienced timewarps in UO)

    Michael your comment about people complaining about items disapppearing would be more accurate if it mentioned "people complaining about virtual items dissappearing."

    * Diablo only has persistant characters, the world is semi-persistant.
  • When Juliet says "Wherefore art thou Romeo," she's not asking "Where are you, Romeo?" It's a rhetorical question -- Why are you Romeo? She's agonizing over the fact that her true love is Romeo Montague, a member of the rival family to her own Capulets.

    And, no, the Bard is not wrong. You are.

  • How many of these stories will we see when all of our Word documents are online?

  • Open Directory (Score:3)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:18AM (#62828) Homepage Journal
    The Open Directory Project [dmoz.org] has a very good Diablo II [dmoz.org] category. It even has sections about cheats, hints, and modifications.

    The category is probably a bit too large for a new editor to be accepted easily, but the subcategories would make a great place to apply. Even though it is fairly well maintained at this point, none of it has a listed editor. There are three more sites waiting in the unreviewed queue there too.

  • "Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?"

    I dont know if anyone else did this, but I was confused by this statement for a good several minutes... I thought he was referring to items that Blizzard had disabled temporarily until bugs could be worked out...oops. But these items do exists and go for a lot of money at times, since Blizzard's 'secure' Realms make them rather hard to find and hard to cheat into your possession. However, there is not much excuse for these outages, Blizzard has had over a year (not counting beta tests) to tweak this system, and still has made little to no progress. And with the recent influx of cold hard cash from the overpriced Expansion pack, they have no shortage of cash to pour on these problems to help them go away. I'm usually reading alt.games.diablo rather than the forums, and I know there is a growing discontent there, with many old players just giving up. (I dont speak for everyone, I know many people are still happy as well...Probably most of them just play on a local LAN with friends like I do instead of depending on Blizzard Quality Assurance....)

  • Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?

    I don't think it is any more odd than complaining about missing email from your inbox. It could be equally well said that all that mail never existed in the first place.

    Suddenly it's no longer just 0's and 1's anymore.
  • Half the advertisements for smallish electronics have the little batteries not included note on them; does the fact that they're not part of the "central advertising" (whatever that means) indicate to me that I should crap my pants with fury over the fact that there are no batteries in it when the box clearly (and in tiny print) indicates so?
    Likewise, Blizzard indicated on the box that there would be free netplay included with Diablo II. You and 60% of the people out there may not have bought it for that, but there's still 40% of the populace out there who may have bought it solely for the netplay and obviously want to get their money's worth.
    And I'm sure that the cost of Battle.Net was factored into the price of the game.
    Easy does it!
  • ... but you're awful bad at comprehending what you read.
    To quote myself, "and 60% of the people out there may not have bought it for that, but there's still 40% of the populace out there who may have bought it solely for the netplay and obviously want to get their money's worth."
    NB: may have bought. They may not have bought it solely for the netplay, but the fact of the matter is that the netplay likely had a very major part in their purchase of the game. For all you or I know (I haven't bought the game and don't plan to until it hits the bargain bin, so don't ask me), 40% bought it with no plan to ever play it single-player; your imaginary statistics don't preclude this scenario so, however unlikely, it's still possible.
    While the box may not have said (quoting you) '"Free unlimited play on Battle.net, with total security, and 100% uptime"', it did advertise Free play on Battle.net, did it not? And did it or did it not advertise "Sort of free, more or less limited play on Battle.net with security that may or may not work quite as planned and uptime guaranteed to be greater than or equal to 0%"? Mostly it advertised free play on Battle.net, right? Nothing explicit about the possibility of losing items and characters, so the product should deliver what people are accustomed to and expecting: security for characters and items.
    Call it another point to could argue if you really feel like splitting semantic hairs.
    Easy does it!

  • Magic Really Worked (Score:3)

    by ^Z ( 86325 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @02:42AM (#62833) Homepage Journal
    A developed enough technology is indistinguishable from magic. As Blizzard technology achieved this level recently, it worked like magic. All items magically disappeared. Nobody promised that a mature technology works like good magic ;-)
  • > It's just a game.

    Yeah, it's just a game. but some people take their games very seriously. Imagine next year, just before the Superbowl, one of the teams just plain concedes, and stands around drinking Gatoraid and picking flowers or something. Imagine the uproar! Hey, it's only a game, but it would make every newspaper's headline and there'd probably be death threats on the the team.

    I don't take games that seriously. I cheated plenty of times playing Diablo with my friends because hey, I bought the game, I deserve to see every cool thing in it, whether I have the skill or time to play it all the way through. But I realize that some people take their games very seriously so I wouldn't play with someone who cared that I was cheating.
  • I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- I WANT RARE EXE 200+ DMG LIFE LEECH IAS TRADING 3 SOJ'S WHISPER -=31337H@Xor=- - At least not for about a week

  • Michael is such a moron (Score:5)

    by briancarnell ( 94247 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:15AM (#62836) Homepage
    Various people sent in complaints, and good old Anonymous Coward sent a link to the Diablo II Forums, where all and sundry are complaining that sunspots, or h4xx0rs, or Blizzard's incompetence have made all their hard-earned Diablo II items disappear into the aether from whence they came. Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?

    So the next time Hotmail crashes and a bunch of people lose all their e-mail, are you going to post "is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place"?

    Isn't it a bit odd that somebody at Slashdot is posting that information isn't "real".
  • You got point :-) This is why we shouldn't attach ourselves so dearly to anything external, not even girlfriends. Because one day it will all be gone. Instead, enjoy what you have and share that now, and you'll be much happier. Without having to worry about what the future may bring or what happened in the past. Life is a game in itself, but seriousness kills the fun.

    - Steeltoe
  • I planned to write something along what you said. However, if you think about it, it's not really Blizzard's responsibility to accomodate hardcore gamers that take the game a little too serious (trading on ebay and such for instance). Sure, they _should_ support Battlenet in a better fashion than they have a history for, but some of the whining is just not mature and reasonable. Supporting a fault-free service would require more money, preferrably a monthly payment.

    Now as for the discussion of what is "real" and not. It shouldn't take much brainwork to see that it is really a subjective definition. On one hand you can say everything we see/think/fantasize about is real, on the other hand nothing is real. What is real then? It's up to who you ask, and those who can't tolerate anothers opinion should open up their eyes. Everybody has their reasons for believing what they believe and everybody changes their opinion. So what's the use in bashing down on others when tomorrow you'll perhaps see what they really meant?

    - Steeltoe
  • Sports stopped being fun because of the money, fame and glory - professionalism. People get attached to their teams, having moodswings and conversations depended on the last game. They might think they're having fun, sometimes they do, but the innocence of sport is lost today. Luckily, there are a few sports where people are still having fun, like orientation and timber-tossing. You can't live on it though.

    As for cheating, cheating ruins the game and the innocence of it by far. It's an ego-boost to the immature trickster who enjoy others rage, just like the bully in kindergarten did, but the whole point of a game is to follow the rules. What makes a game fun is in its illusion. A game is essentially infinite possibilities limited by rules. Cracking those, dissolves the game and its enjoyment (unless it's only temporary).

    - Steeltoe

  • A friend of mine recently asked me which one - "aether" or "ether" - is the better spelling. We eventually decided that either one was acceptable.

    -j

  • Heheh. Wow, if I ever have a son, I'm naming him Luminiferous Aether. I hope my hypothetical wife doesn't mind.

    -j
  • The market chose cheap "free" multi-player game servers over highly reliable but expensive-to-run for-pay services.

    The market gets what they paid for, and no sympathy from me.

  • tarth posted: "At the very least I would like direct Internet play so that I don't have to go through Battle.net when it is (slow|split|down)." Load the game. Click "Other Multiplayer". Click "TCP/IP Game". Click "Host Game" or "Join Game". If you are Hosting, tell your buddies your IP address. If you're Joining, enter the IP address of the server you want to connect to. *cough* RTFM *cough* :)
  • Slightly offtopic here but has anybody managed to get battlenet working in wine. The game itself works as close to 100% as it gets but no battlenet.

    Of course, after reading this stuff I better stay singleplayer.

  • ...they're reporting the fact that certain values in an online database have suddenly gone awry.
    Ah, komrade, now we are finally knowing where our nuclear material is going!

    (my sincere apologies to any Russians out there)

  • "Then imagine the server didn't work... you purchase would be rendered useless. This includes if the server is only partial in disorder, like in the case of throwing your items away. No matter what entertainment product you use, you really would feel annoyed if it missed a part."

    I don't have to imagine; I play Anarchy Online. Annoying doesn't begin to describe the first month.
    .agrippa.
  • Seems the Bard and I are both wrong.

    No, you are wrong.

    Rich

  • I found the summiters comment about "things that never really existed in the first place" to be troubling. The money in my bank account doesn't "exist" in any matter-based form, but I'd sure be pissed if it disappeared. As members of a new virtual world, we have to adopt to attitude that information does "exist" and needs to be treated with the same care that physical things do.
  • Same as software piracy perhaps?
  • why not?
    diablo II sold millions, and with the additional profits from LOD, we're talking dozens of millions from diablo alone. nevermind the profits from war/starcrafts and other games.

  • If you are willing to spend 60 or more hours of your life to get a super-spiffarific weapon for an online RPG game then your time is most certainly NOT worth $20/hr.

    Just because someone pays you that much to do important work for them doesn't mean that you deserve $5 for taking a healthy dump in their restroom.

  • Do really believe those servers are free? You may not pay a monthly fee, but you do pay for the game. Lets be frank, without those servers, blizzards sales of DII would have been horrible.
  • your asumtion show a clear lack of understanding the current game sales bussiness model. If they could not play on servers, then they could not market it for that kind of play. Most games must have those capablilities just to get to the shelves.
    I doubt 400,000 sales at 50.00 a piece would recoup the cost of making and selling the game.Before you try to stretch that little brain of your, please relise there is at least a 10%mark up from the store plus another 10% from the distrubution line. Also they need to pay developers(1 developer at 70,000 for 3 years cost the company at least 400,000), marketers, sales, management, the people who print the box, the people who package the game, plus a slew of misc support people, and all the hardware, pens, paper, etc...
  • "is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place".

    On a more serious note, it's not really very odd at all. They're not really reporting the disappeareance of imaginary items, they're reporting the fact that certain values in an online database have suddenly gone awry. Hardly an 'odd' occurrence at all.
  • Why is it sad? Is it sad that we complain when robbed (RL; I'm not a D2 player)? They're just material possessions, what do we need them for?

    We could all get together, and maybe society would be better! But I bet you'd be pissed as hell if someone stole your car. I know I would be.

    No, this isn't really sad. Its just an extension of the modern society, which, IMO, is MUCH nicer that the society that we used to have. Its evolving, and, although most private organization would have you believe otherwise, its getting better. And I'm not joking. Crime has dropped, teen pregnancy has dropped (somewhat), even drug usage has dropped, which I think has a lot to do with all of the commercials being put out lately, as well as other efforts.

    I rather like the human condition, to tell the truth. I'd rather be human than a dog, and I'd rather be human than a rat. I like to think that we're doing rather well.

  • Another way to see it ... (Score:3)

    by Aceticon ( 140883 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:41AM (#62856)
    Look at it this way:

    The data about the items, and which item belongs to which character is stored in a database. This data was slowly gathered by thousands of people using millions of man-hours (10000 people * 100 hours each = 1 million man/hours).

    If this data is definitivly lost millions of man/hours get lost. If people were previously aware that this would happen, all or at least some of this time investment could've been used in other activities (like downloading p0rn or sleeping in front of the TV during another episode of the latest "reality show"), which in light of this data loss, would yielding a better return on investment (more enjoyment per time unit invested)

  • So the only real difference is that PayPal is an instance of a social concept that everyone recognizes, whereas HammerOfThor+35 is an instance of a social concept shared only by players.
  • You know, it's reading things like this that makes the time-honoured phrase "get a life" springs to the forefront of my mind...

    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • But think about his $250 auction. Given the hours it took to get to a level to find the bow, he's probably making all of $4/hour on time spent. He could have made more working at MickeyD's or Domino's.
  • Given that Diablo costs no more than most other games that DON'T provide a server-based online game, I actually wonder how Blizzard can afford to pay for battlenet. I don't believe for a second that the $35 I spent for D2 and the $32 I spent for D2:LOD multiplied by the number of copies sold can pay for the hardware and bandwidth that battlenet requires for 24x7 operation.
  • ...imagine, you have a life, a girlfriend, and you spend, literally, your life with her... then, suddenly, she's hit by a car and is gone... that hurts. it's all relative. it's only a game, folks.
  • If you don't play in the realm for trading, and assuming you aren't playing for status, then why not play the TCP/IP mode and keep your character local. If you're playing for status, well, everyone in the realm is vulnerable to the inventory eating worm.
  • Playing a game for 8hrs a day 5 dayz out of the week, is real. searching countless levels, redoing things over and over, trading for hours, IS REAL. finding an Item that you have been looking for, for months. IS REAL. Having them stripped away because of whatever problem battlenet is having, IS REAL. I suggest that if you don't play these games, u keep your 2 cents to yourself. nothing like slashdotters commenting/talkin out there ass, bout something they know little about

  • D2 (Score:1)

    by CFBMoo1 ( 157453 )
    Eh... it's just a game. Not like it's a big deal or anything. Besides I play off realms and back up the save directory in the D2 directory so I don't loose any character information for single or open battlenet and I have just as much if not more fun. Thats why I'm kinda miffed about realm only items, but thats another topic, sorta. So if they don't work or disappear it's no loss to me. ;)
  • The real skill is the player who can do it with a blaster or knife depending on the FPS. In diablos case I'd say it'd be the person who can take a normal Wirts Leg which is like 2-8 damage and beat the game in hell mode with it and a cheap suit of armor with no special items! Thats not saying I did that. Athough I've done the FPS blaster/knife thing. :)
  • Perhaps they're betting that Blizzard will rollback like before and reimburse items, so the character someone throws away because he/she lost her gear will suddenly be decked out with all the stuff they had before?
  • I'm a regular /. reader, and I haven't played any computer game more complicated than Minesweeper in years. Even in the simple realm, I think playing a "memory" game twice is the most I've done in a year. And that was because a very amazing website took over my display.

    But, I never said I wasn't weird.
  • buying all your items on ebay - $9334

    spending hours adventuring to get the stuff - $1150 (@ $50/hr billable :)

    spending hours cheating instead - $650

    paying some 14 yr old in booze to do it for you - $70

    the look on your face when Bliz takes it all away -
    PRICELESS

    (disclaimer: I don't play these or really any other games)

  • OK, OK, OK.

    Sorry.

    Yes, the above post is horribly redundant.

    The lesson is not to let too much time go by between hitting the "reply" and the "submit" buttons.

  • Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?

    Like if someone made the numbers in your bank account balance go away?

  • Why do people do this? One thousand two hundred US dollars for something so insubstantial. Up to $20 is understandable, from a certain viewpoint.

    Why? It's obvious. Some people have far too much money. A distant friend of mine was an early employee at small ISP named in Northern Virginia called AOL. Let's just say that when they IPO'd, she could burn her net worth for heating purposes and still never have to work again. She was one of those people who payed 5 or 10K on eBay for some Ultima-on-line stuff. Why? Because the money to her was nothing, just like spending $.50 on a coke.

  • The price would not be reduced if Battle.Net were not included. You have paid nothing extra for it

    Using that logic, Blizzard could release a patch to remove most features from the game. "Hey, it's not like you paid extra for the Barbarian, and we're tired of him forgetting that he's not outside and crapping on the rug, so he's gone." "Hey, it's not like you paid extra for a real villain. Instead, we're just going to put a single, normal skeleton in the last room. Kill him and you win. Diablo himself will instead be busy doing children's parties."

  • Why do people do this? One thousand two hundred US dollars for something so insubstantial. Up to $20 is understandable, from a certain viewpoint.

    Let's say I really, really want the bow. Let's say it'd take me approximately 60 hours of gameplay to get it. If I make more than $20/hour, it's more cost-effective for me to work and then buy the bow. It may not be as fun and $1200 is a bit steep, but spending a few hundred dollars on something that will bring a comparable amount of enjoyment isn't unreasonable.

    Besides, there're some people who'd say that spending $50 on a flat, plastic disc and $1500 on the hardware to use, just so you can move around a little plastic widget and click the buttons on top for hours on end is silly.

  • I believe the "never existed at all" actually refers to the fact that these items were created by a bug in earlier versions of the software. These items never should have existed even online at all.

    ---

  • If we can perceive it in any tiny way, it is somehow real. Everything that you perceive is really just an image held by neurons in your brain and not the real thing anyway, so it's all the same. Now, about those things we believe but cannot perceive...

  • I really wanted to understand this post. I must have read it over three or four times before I finally gave up comprehension. Maybe it's because I don't play Diablo but every time I read this post I just get more and more confused.

    In other aspects though this is a nice time to rant about the current MMPOG situation! Anarchy Online in my opinion was a complete flop and continues to be up to this moment and Everquest just doesn't hold much for you anymore. It seems that we as consumers are stuck until Shadowbane or Dark Ages of Camelot ends up coming out.

    Woe is me

  • Thoughts from a victim (Score:5)

    by rosta ( 196310 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:04AM (#62877)
    Hey ya'll... a little while ago, I was a victim of this... on the one hand, it cured me of my diablo 2 addiction... on the other hand...

    1) You have to realize that diablo 2 items, characters, and accounts can be sold on ebay, and other such sites, for cold hard cash... granted, this cash could be virtual... but no more virtual than the use of a credit card.

    2) People spend huge amounts of time with this stuff... I was on the low end of the addicts... and there were months were I spent 3 hours / day playing... imagine if you're a teenager, and you spend, literally, 8 hours / day playing a video game with security features to prevent cheating, so everyone knows everything you have is legitimate... then, suddenly, it's completely gone... That hurts...

    3) the stuff is just stuff in a video game... but the entertainment value can be there (it's fun to have better stuff, to constantly improve your character (this is the secret to Diablo 2's success))... so if items can make a game more entertaining... then how are they really different from a game, in and of themselves (in that they may exist entirely in the vapor we call the internet... but they still provide tangible mental benefits that people consider worth paying for)... to put a finer point on it... what about expansion packs?

    4) observation - others agree with me... I've seen an individual bow going for upwards of $1200 on ebay...

  • Yep, here's a $250 bow [ebay.com].
    Amazing.
    I actually don't play Diablo at all but I am suddenly sort of feeling interested in doing such commerce.
    Easy indeed: Get a $15 sorcerer, buy him a $20 axe and $30 worth of hit points (is it still called this way?), then sell it for $100...
    I'm not sure one could buy a Ferrari within a week, though.

    So, who is more complaining?

    People that sell, people that bought or just the ones who are not in there for the money?
    --
  • And figured it would be a few days before I got it back, so I started playing again, just for the fuck of it. Didn't lose my money, so that got me started. I was annoyed, but my stuff wasn't that good, and I don't take it that seriously- hey, where aren't payin for it like Everquest or anything.

    On the bright side, it only took me a few minutes to get a new archer-wench-hireling back up to near my level.

    I figured no point in bitching, and if I lose a new set of items if/when blizzard restores everything, oh well. It's just a game.

  • Agreed...What's the problem?? (Score:3)

    by QwkHyenA ( 207573 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @02:55AM (#62882) Homepage
    Ever done a search [ebay.com] on Ebay for the words 'Diablo II'?

    If you've lost your stuff, just go there and buy new equipment...

  • I can't believe people pay that much money for such a crappy product. If Diablo2 came out from MS there would be post here every day using it as an example of just how bad closed source software is.

    This is so true it is sad, and is such an example of the tunnel-vision so many people have. I paid that money for Diablo II: hell, I was even on a local store's waiting list. And you know what ? In the context of the day, I found it to be a shitty game, very little better than its predecessor, which felt like a rip-off given how many years ago Diablo came out. Only the Mac version could even run at 800x600. DO YOU KNOW HOW CRAPPY THAT LOOKS ON A 19" MONITOR ??? The original Diablo was great fun, but this game was just squeezing the family jewels for every last drop of juice.

    Not to mention multi-player on battle.net was awful for the first 3 months (I uninstalled the game afterwards I was so frustrated): games crashed all the time, I couldn't get into games when the servers weren't down, Blizzard pretty much kept all its users in the dark about system status, and the game play blew chunks. I feel like an idiot for having fell for the marketing hype, I still feel like an idiot when I again fall for more Blizzard hype when I see the new displays and think about buying the expansion pack (I won't), and I am going to be extremely suspicious and skeptical of Warcraft III (which I also anxiously awaited). Blizzard, you are close to leaving a formerly loyal customer.

  • The significant distinction being that Paypal payments are just another shape for money. You can convert them on demand into cash.Gaming items are not demand convertable into cash, they have to go through an extra step.

    What do you mean I can convert them on demand into cash ? You mean I can convert them with Paypal to cash, don't you ? AFAIK, I can't go to the local 7-11 and pay for things with Paypal dollars or credits or whatever they call them. I can't use them to make a down-payment on a house. I can't use them to buy a soda downstairs.

    In the example I made up, there was "work" being done (say, IT consulting for some guy I met over the Net, or putting up a web page that somebody thought they wanted to contribute to). For this work I "earned" something - say some Paypal payments. It's arguable that this is similar to some kid who "works" for a year on his computer (albeit playing D2) and "earns" things that are convertible into money (see item sales on Ebay). I f something is convertible into money than it is arguable that something is also "just another shape for money" - and though you are right that this does involve an extra step, this is no different than Paypal.

  • Virtual items (Score:4)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:26AM (#62886)
    Is it just me, or is it a bit odd to be reporting on the disappearance of items that never existed in the first place?

    I don't know. Would it be weird if you reported on a Paypal bug which resulted in some payments getting lost ?

    Having said this, I must say I have little sympathy for users who lost stuff. It is a game, after all, and having played MUDs (mostly Isengard) for years, I know too well that the lords of these games frequently purge inventories and such, especially in response to rampant cheating. I remember one time when the game was loaded with high-level characters (including mine), the DMs were going to do a reinstall and they claimed they had to purge all players because (they claimed; I was skeptical) they were doing an upgrade and had no effective way to migrate characters (I believe they had to purge because of cloned items, too). I offered to write some scripts for them to save our characters but they demurred, and I lost a character whose name players today (and this is 5 years later) still grab whenever it comes available.

    We all bitched to no end, swearing up and down that we would never come back. But surprises of surprises, almost everyone came back, and 3 weeks later everyone was pretty much back where they were. For my part, I am proud to say I stuck to my guns and pretty much gave up on MUDding.

    People have to realize that this is a game, that certain shit will happen in the interests of game play over time, and sometimes for addicts shock-treatment is the only thing that will work. And if stuff like this diminishes player fanaticism just enough that people aren't spending ridiculous amounts of money on jacked up characters, or cloned items, this will all be a good thing. Maybe it will help bring a bit of perspective. I know it did for me.

  • Computer games create new realities (Score:3)

    by hillct ( 230132 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:16AM (#62887) Homepage Journal
    As computer games advance, they allow users to descend into a reality of their choosing and completely immerse themselves within it. Networked RPGs like Ultima Online [uo.com] were the first generation then games like Asheron's Call [microsoft.com] and progressivlely more advanced games, each involving the user at a deeper level. There are people who spend their lives playing such games. They have become the Dungeons and Dragons [wizards.com] of the technology era. Thankfully, we have not heard of kids killing themselves [cale.com] over computer games yet though.

    The newest generation of networked RPGs out there go for complete immersion where the player will recieve faes phone calls and emails from game characters, and the games will effectively encroach on everyday life.

    In short, no, I'm not suprised that players are upset about the loss of virtual posessions from a game universe (although I can see where the argument could be made that they paid for [ebay.com] those posessions and should have tem returned). It's kind of a sad comentary on the human condition though.

    --CTH

    --
  • Cause, my friend? Here's cause for you: Blizzard are the biggest jackasses in gaming history. There's cause for you.

    Their goal is to have new people buy the game, and keep *juuust* on this side of pissing the rest off enough to quit. That is to say, to do as little work as they can get away with. Dedicated and industrious, they are not.

    Oh and btw, I've had a great chuckle from the D2SF forums, laughing at all the whiners. I shall now take a refreshing and utterly selfish moment for a little I-told-you-so: I predicted in detail that this sort of thing would happen, well over a month before D2 was even released. This is not news. If you don't want to lose your stupid little items, DON'T PLAY FUCKING REALMS. It's as simple as that.

    -Kasreyn
  • ...imagine, you have a life, a girlfriend

    yes, imagine a girlfriend...god, we've gotta get out more ;)

  • Looks like Blizz [battle.net] has found out the problem and according to this [battle.net] the disappearing items problem is going to the taken care of. We shall see I suppose.

    Ruger
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • UPDATE: Items Restored (Score:3)

    by Edgewize ( 262271 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @10:20AM (#62899)
    Blizzard has fixed the item loss issues and rolled the realm back to a state captured the previous day, resulting in all items being restored with a loss of under 48 hours of user playtime. See their Battle.Net Status post [battle.net].

  • What a wonderful world (Score:4)

    by Edgewize ( 262271 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:00AM (#62900)
    It sure is nice to see that when people talk about Battle.Net [battle.net], they usually complain [battle.net] about problems with a game service that they don't even pay for while being too lazy to investigate [battle.net] the cause [battle.net].

  • this isn't the first time (Score:3)

    by skermit ( 451840 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2001 @03:06AM (#62912) Homepage
    this reminds me of the time when at the launch of the original diablo ii (not the expansion pack that just came out), hundreds of people's characters where hacked into by hacking groups who sought to take over peoples hardcore accounts who were leading the rank ladders and systematically killing them off for show. they'd make webpages showing the deaths and then pass around the urls. remember, hardcore characters die once, and that's it... once you're dead you can't play with that character anymore. it caused such a p.r. snafu that blizzard ended up rolling many people's accounts back to a backup of a few weeks prior once they fixed their security holes. -Super Kermit http://www.christopherwu.net/
    -Christopher Wu
  • The point of the game is to PLAY the game. If you would rather pay cash to NOT PLAY for 60 hours, then maybe you should keep your cash and NOT PLAY at all? I do understand the appeal of Diablo. It's a "get stuff" game. It's so addictive because of the way our society works... we have a "get stuff" society... My favorite game is Tribes2, and I would put the T2 CD in the microwave before I would cheat at it. Ah well.
  • The entertainment industry is huge and growing by the minute. We all play computer games (please show me a /. reader who don't). So this is defiantly relevant for all of us.

    Imagine you bought a computer game to be played online (we see a lot of these now). Then imagine the server didn't work... you purchase would be rendered useless. This includes if the server is only partial in disorder, like in the case of throwing your items away. No matter what entertainment product you use, you really would feel annoyed if it missed a part. Imagine a book, a movie...

    And we are talking big bucks. Today I know people who sell/buy items in online games for real money! And this business has come to stay. We need to escape our daily boring work.

    Now you may like Diablo II or not (I don't really play it), but you probably would be annoyed if your own personal entertainment product was tampered with.

    ... and as goes for real or not. Do your money in the bank exist or not? Scary, right.

    Saggi
  • ... investigate..

    By the way, you missed this post [battle.net] where they explain they will repair it.

    But if you investigated you would have found in the news [diabloii.net] that items got lost before the message of battle.net. i.e. here on US-WEST [diabloii.net]

    But battle.net will explain here .....8-) [battle.net] why your "item" was not found.

    ---------- Damn. I just reacted to a troll. Mod me down for this! At least i could resist to the "Not pay" part.

  • $1200? Why do people do this? One thousand two hundred US dollars for something so insubstantial. Up to $20 is understandable, from a certain viewpoint. It's something people pay to enhance the experience of the game. But $1200? That's 4 months rent in a low-income housing project. It's 2 +1/2 months' worth of groceries to a family of 4 living there. It's a well used but working car. But instead it's changing hands for some bits on a server disk somewhere, which, at any moment, may be totally obliterated without any notice. Hmph. At least buy some new computer parts with it...
  • Probably blizzard nuking all the cloned items that have plagued the game since day one..

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