Just as a heads up, emails from Blizzard generally don’t ask you to click on a link (for this reason, to distinguish them from phishing). Even if they might, manually go to their website and log-in there. There’s never a reason to click on an email link.
The way email is set up makes it very easy to spoof an address (and a sender) convincingly enough.
DeepT
1782
I delete all emails I get from “blizzard”. Gmail is very good about doing that for me. I was just surprised when I went to battlenet to find my account suspended for suspicious activity. I just want to know why it was suspended, IE: What was the suspicious activity? I am guessing that someone tried to log in a bunch of times with a bunch of passwords that were wrong and that is what caused the account lock.
Maybe they just got a bunch of emails addresses and they simply try them all against Battlenet with a bunch of common passwords hoping for a hit.
WarrenM
1783
or have we shaved our necks of that one?
I’m putting this expression into rotation, thanks!
fenrir
1784
Well, if you forget your battle.net password and reset it through their system you do get an email asking you to click a link to enter the new one. Other than that I agree though.
HRose
1785
Another guy to fire for blatant stupidity. Alex Mayberry, senior producer:
We can provide a much a much more stable, connected, safer experience than we could if we let people play off-line.
Online is stabler and safer than offline. And he says that with a straight face?
Another idiot is called Robert Bridenbecker, the Vice President of Online Technologies at Blizzard:
Internally I don’t think [DRM] ever actually came up when we talked about how we want connections to operate.
Yes, and we are going to believe you because you’re so obviously HONEST.
Bridenbecker continued, mentioning the fact that offline characters in “Diablo 2” could not be used for online play on Blizzard’s servers, thus forcing people to start from scratch. "If [offline players] want to come over to the online environment , what are we going to have to do about those players that are in the offline environment coming into the online environment?
It must be really, really hard thinking all day about these sort of problems (that were solved 10 years ago, or never perceived by anyone as problems in the first place).
HRose
1786
Also, this is game journalists not doing their job.
It’s their responsibility to highlight the pile of lies and illogical justifications Blizzard is providing instead of just “quoting” their answers in their articles and avoid at all costs asking in the merit of things.
Maybe with a passable game journalism there would be also game companies that treat their customers with a bit more respect.
HRose you’re like Diablo III negativity royalty. Yours was not only the first reply in this thread, but the first negative one as well. Good to see you still fighting the… fight, 3 years on.
HRose
1788
I have nothing against Blizzard’s choices (beside thinking they are stupid and will have effects on the market), my problem is about what they are saying to explain those choices.
Diablo 3 remains a game I’m not interested about, with or without these latest developments, so for me the point is criticizing the pile of lies they are saying as some awful cover up for choices that have completely different motivations.
And I repeat that game journalism should be about pulling the truth out of there.
Teiman
1789
And I have to step here to defend these persons.
Diablo is a hybrid game. It may be played offline, but wen its played online is a very competitive, very hardcore game. In some ways more hardcore than DOTA.
Since is a game that run locally, the range of things a cheater can do his huge. Maybe making the game unplayable for everyone else.
The things Blizzard seems doing suck if you want to play in a house in the forest. But probably helps garantee a hard time for cheaters. “stable” and “safer” don’t mean the same thing to a suit dude than a engineer. He is probably not lying with a straight face. The design of Diablo3 can be described as more “safe” than the design of Diablo2, because will make cheating harder. Stable… well… I don’t know how to defend the word stable, but I am saying that maybe theres a logical means to it. …
…maybe the stable thing is the bigger problem. By introducing lag into inventory management the code must be very well written and tested, since lag is evil and could create stability problems. If is well written this will be invisible to the user. Except if there are bugs sudddenly a item is deleted or duped, and the player will go “WTF just happened?”
By not providing a way to play the game offline, Blizzard can garantee that the cheaters will never see the code for inventory management. So must completelly reverse engineer it the hardest way possible. As a side effect, not providing a offline mode make a warez copy of the game much harder to make. There are missing parts that need to be rewrite. Too bad the warez people is very good as his thing, so “much harder” means the warez copy will exist in a few weeks, (not hours)… but will not exist the first day, week and maybe month (unlikely (?!)) and this can be important to force a few more people to buy the game (1 every 10.000 warez players will buy the game if can’t warez it).
HRose, you do understand that its just a game right? That in the big picture it means nothing. I have never felt disrespected by any game company. Either I buy there stuff or I dont, end of story.
Get pissed about stuff that really means something, games who gives a damn
The issues we see are symptomatic of a bigger problem. Might as well start with something close to the heart.
I continue to believe that this entire problem was solved to most people’s satisfaction with the Diablo II split between offline and open B.net characters and closed B.net characters. I would be very surprised if even half the potential Diablo III players cared about any additional security eliminating the first type of play might afford.
I’m just sort of proud of Hrose managing a post or two without invoking the words Erikson or Malazan.
Budvar
1796
This is one of the most inane, pointless arguments that anyone can trot out.
First of all, it’s not ONLY a game. It’s about producers and consumers, producers exploiting consumers, and the very limited recourse consumers have in this domain to obtain some semblance of power over their purchases. I mean, when your toaster breaks after two weeks, do you just say “well, it’s only a toaster, there are bigger problems like world hunger” and let the manufacturer off the hook for selling you a shitty product? They are not “only” games. Like anything else in our capitalist society, these are things we choose to spend our limited quantities of money on (often at fairly expensive prices) and each person has expectations on how these purchases should satisfy them.
Secondly, if it’s ONLY a game, then why the hell do people care about cheating in the first place? It’s only a game right? There are bigger things to worry about, so why bother implement any anti-cheating mechanism?
Thirdly, if they are ONLY just games, and there are bigger things to concern yourself about, I would suggest you are in the wrong forum. This place is populated by people who’s lives and livelihood are built around these rather and banal and irrelevant things we call “games”
Budvar
1797
Ummm what?
Is this game going to be COMPUTED online? No, I don’t think so. Code is still running locally on the local machine. Blizzard can’t guarantee shit about people looking at and hacking the code running on their own machines. The only thing they can sort of guarantee is that characters on Battlenet will be within regulation.
But then again, for offline play, who the hell needs regulated characters? I guess the days of loading up a save game editor and screwing around with your character are gone. Who cares about cheating in single player, other than the most anal of fun police?
Anyway, I think people forget that Assassin’s Creed 2 was an “always on” connection and that was broken. Undoubtedly, pirates will implement some circumventions like utilizing a dummy server that the game can talk to. It will probably take some time to reverse engineer (like Assassin’s Creed), but I’m guessing Diablo 3 is expected to be selling strongly for longer than the usual AAA title.
Yep there only games, if this or any other game never never comes out, life goes on. They in the big picture mean nothing, you do know there are people who have no clue who or what Blizard is.
I love games but I sure dont think companies are out to get me or lie to me.
This reminds me a lot of that bullshit about IWNet and MW2 on PC. How it was going to be cheat-free and full of flowers and candy for all players.
Of course, IWNet sucks, the cheating is (or was) rampant on consoles as well as PCs, and thanks to the game using VAC, cheaters could go weeks or even months before getting banned.
I don’t blame people for being suspicious.
Budvar
1800
Good work on totally missing the point.
I could make the same argument for anything. Life goes on. Hey man, we should pirate games. If no other games ever come out, life goes on.
It is a stupid argument. Stupid.
