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http://www.examiner.com/article/blizzard-breaks-diablo-3-with-patch-1-0-8-gold-dupe

Blizzard released Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.8 today which introduced minor gameplay fixes and new features – it also completely broke the game with a gold dupe.

Players of Diablo 3 patiently awaited patch 1.0.8 to drop today and as Blizzard promised it seemed to go off without a hitch. That is of course until the entire gaming community found out about a brand new gold dupe exploit through the RMAH (Real Money Auction House).

One gamer (GoodIdeaGaming on Twitch.tv) unwillingly streamed exactly how to perform the Diablo 3 gold dupe - six billion gold was magically turned into a whole hell of a lot more. With a minor patch, Blizzard has created a disaster that they might not be able to recover from.

Illegal gold sellers are having a field day as they are selling the duped gold via the real money auction house and websites while making thousands of dollars off of people who don’t know about the dupe and only see gold prices at unreasonably low prices.

What do you all think Blizzard can do to fix the Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.8 gold dupe exploit? Should a complete rollback be implemented and every PayPal and credit card transaction from today be refunded? While that sounds like an insane amount of work for Blizzard, it seems to be the best route as they are the ones who have released a game-breaking patch.

Comment below with your thoughts on the Diablo 3 gold dupe. Has Blizzard ruined the game forever? Will they be able to recover from such a disastrous mistake?

Be sure to check out GoodIdeaGaming on Twitch.TV - he is the Diablo 3 streamer who verified the gold dupe.

It was only a matter of time before something like this happened, really.

People still play Diablo 3?

They did.

Soladrin wrote:People still play Diablo 3?

n0t_u wrote:They did.

All that needs to be said really

I play Diablo 3 occasionally.

I never use real money, however. That'd be stupid.

 Melissia wrote:
I play Diablo 3 occasionally.

I never use real money, however. That'd be stupid.

I also never payed for items with real money, but every once in a while, you pick up an item that you can sell for a couple bucks.

Maybe they should go back to making good games, then charging people to buy those games.

From the looks of things, the RMAH was just the vehicle used for the dupe bug - it might be karmic justice, but it's not really the "RMAH blowing up in [their] face" per se (that would have been the huge numbers of people who found the game less satisfying as a result of its existence). The real fallout here is to the gold economy, which is now going to be dealing with some additional amount of new gold and the resulting inflation. Blizzard's post here suggests the amount of gold offloaded from the affected accounts before they disabled the trade system was small, and that by removing the gold from the accounts that used the dupe bug (and presumably assisted by the transaction records of the RMAH) they should be able to correct most of the damage.

 BryllCream wrote:
Maybe they should go back to making good games, then charging people to buy those games.

I wonder how much their other teams exist in the shadow of WoW. For all their other projects they probably end up having to explain to some Activision-Blizzard business unit beancounter about how, no, this game will not be a never-ending money fountain (and then asked how they can shoehorn in ways of making it one, like the RMAH).

 Melissia wrote:
I play Diablo 3 occasionally.

I never use real money, however. That'd be stupid.

Pretty much this.

I never really got all the hate, though it seems to be of the vocal internet minority variety, because it was both a commercial and critical success. Admittedly I don't do the 'play over and over on higher difficulty ad infinitum' thing where many of the legitimate issues appear, such as grinding gear. The RMAH was a bad idea from the start.

The hate stems from it 'forcing' the always online feature onto PC gamers. Of course, that feature would have been there anyway.

As for hating D3, it's a super duper dumbed down game with a poorly crafted story. But then after the critical success of Diablo II, what could Blizz really do to live up to the expectations? I was unimpressed with the game simply because there are Diablo Clones that are funner (Torchlight/Titan Quest).

 LordofHats wrote:
The hate stems from it 'forcing' the always online feature onto PC gamers. Of course, that feature would have been there anyway.

As for hating D3, it's a super duper dumbed down game with a poorly crafted story. But then after the critical success of Diablo II, what could Blizz really do to live up to the expectations? I was unimpressed with the game simply because there are Diablo Clones that are funner (Torchlight/Titan Quest).

Add Path of Exile to that list of Diablo Clones, I enjoyed the hell out of that game and then my graphics card took a gak on me D:

Also I think the one thing that prevents me from buying Diablo 3 is the always online feature, I'd like to just play the game by myself in my own time and not have to worry about my friends with more free time playing it and out leveling me...

There was a lot to hate about it. Something for everyone!

- launch issues; error 37
- "always online" compounded by above
- Battle.net 2.0: like Battle.net 1.0, but with all the features replaced by Facebook integration
- truly spectacularly awful story
- auction house (not just cash auction house) undermining the whole "loot casino" aspect of the game
- poor skill/glyph balance leading to very limited skill choice
- limited randomisation and awful story lowering replayability
- bad endgame design and tuning
- miscellaneous complaints about character development, skill trees, stat allocation and what have you

I'm not sure what inroads they've made on addressing those issues. I think some of them (like the endgame balance and skill/glyph balance) have probably been improved a lot since launch. There's a lot of ill will floating around from it, though, and I personally think "argh" whenever the game is mentioned! That's why people are happy to see it biting Blizzard in the backside.

HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

- limited randomisation and awful story lowering replayability
- bad endgame design and tuning

Makes me think of the old Woody Allen joke "the food was terrible, and in such small portions". If the game was so terrible, and the story was so terrible, why would you play through it 4 times to get to endgame?

I didn't. That's sort of my point about there being "something for everyone" to hate, though.

 BryllCream wrote:
Maybe they should go back to making good games, then charging people to buy those games.

Don't usually say this, but Bryll is 100% correct here.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Maybe they should go back to making good games, then charging people to buy those games.

Don't usually say this, but Bryll is 100% correct here.

Oh god, the End Times are here!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Maybe they should go back to making good games, then charging people to buy those games.

Don't usually say this, but Bryll is 100% correct here.

...

"Mummy, hold me."

"What?"

"JUST DO IT!"

BlapBlapBlap wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Maybe they should go back to making good games, then charging people to buy those games.

Don't usually say this, but Bryll is 100% correct here.

...

"Mummy, hold me."

"What?"

"JUST DO IT!"

DA's Forever wrote:

Soladrin wrote:People still play Diablo 3?

n0t_u wrote:They did.

All that needs to be said really

In a thread full of fail, it's incredible how there's so much win

Diablo 3 isn't a bad game at all, but a lot of the shell around it is terrible, such as the RMAH and always online.

 Ahtman wrote:
Diablo 3 isn't a bad game at all, but a lot of the shell around it is terrible, such as the RMAH and always online.

Wait what? Diablo 3 was horrid. And this well....just goes to show why you never should expect Blizzard to make a good game

Remember Trondheim, some people might think its gak, others might like it. Respect that not everybody thinks alike.

 BrookM wrote:
Remember Trondheim, some people might think its gak, others might like it. Respect that not everybody thinks alike.

You know, I dont recall anyone appointing you to my moral mentor but I suppose your entitled to your opinion.

Dark Spore was more fun than Diablo 3.

 Trondheim wrote:
Wait what? Diablo 3 was horrid.

88% Metacritic. Why does that seem familiar? Oh yeah, Diablo 2 has the exact same score.

87.64% on Gamerankings

I understand for some it is hard to understand that simply not liking something doesn't make it actually bad, but it is true. For instance I don't enjoy Skyrim, but many did, and it seems like a fine game, it just didn't do it for me. I won't run around calling it horrid just because I didn't like it. The core gameplay in Diablo 3 is solid, and if you think it is horrid, you must have thought that Diablo and Diablo 2 were also horrid, as it is essentially the same. The level up system is different, but the point and click mayhem is the same. The story was Ok, and probably not as good as 2, to be sure, but then expectations were through the roof, which has a habit of making anything seem lackluster. Was it a great game? Nah. Was it a good game? Most certainly. Much of the problems are external; if it didn't have RMAH and 'always online' I don't believe we would be having this discussion.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:
Wait what? Diablo 3 was horrid.

88% Metacritic. Why does that seem familiar? Oh yeah, Diablo 2 has the exact same score.

87.64% on Gamerankings

I understand for some it is hard to understand that simply not liking something doesn't make it actually bad, but it is true. For instance I don't enjoy Skyrim, but many did, and it seems like a fine game, it just didn't do it for me. I won't run around calling it horrid just because I didn't like it. The core gameplay in Diablo 3 is solid, and if you think it is horrid, you must have thought that Diablo and Diablo 2 were also horrid, as it is essentially the same. The level up system is different, but the point and click mayhem is the same. The story was Ok, and probably not as good as 2, to be sure, but then expectations were through the roof, which has a habit of making anything seem lackluster. Was it a great game? Nah. Was it a good game? Most certainly. Much of the problems are external; if it didn't have RMAH and 'always online' I don't believe we would be having this discussion.

When the game has as many flaws as it did I dare say that the game was horrid. Granted it was bit of the game that may have redeemed it and that was the cinematic bitzs. As for the story well the less that is said the better. And just because a few gaming related pages has given it good scores dose not mean one needs to bow down, and follow the herd regarding ones opinions about I dare say.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:
Wait what? Diablo 3 was horrid.

88% Metacritic. Why does that seem familiar? Oh yeah, Diablo 2 has the exact same score.

87.64% on Gamerankings

I understand for some it is hard to understand that simply not liking something doesn't make it actually bad, but it is true. For instance I don't enjoy Skyrim, but many did, and it seems like a fine game, it just didn't do it for me. I won't run around calling it horrid just because I didn't like it. The core gameplay in Diablo 3 is solid, and if you think it is horrid, you must have thought that Diablo and Diablo 2 were also horrid, as it is essentially the same. The level up system is different, but the point and click mayhem is the same. The story was Ok, and probably not as good as 2, to be sure, but then expectations were through the roof, which has a habit of making anything seem lackluster. Was it a great game? Nah. Was it a good game? Most certainly. Much of the problems are external; if it didn't have RMAH and 'always online' I don't believe we would be having this discussion.

Yeah... ratings based on a faulty numerical system that has no meaning whatsover, made by people who get paid for giving higher ratings... these are the true judge of quality games right?

IMO D3 was worse then D2 in every way, except I guess updated graphics, though the loss in atmosphere kind of hampers that too. Classes, skill system, level up system, combat, loot, enemies, story... it was all better in D2, even before LoD.

As for Diablo 3 being online only. I guess it is a very bad PR-wise and very good money-wise way of fighting piracy. I can't tell how the situation looks in your environment, but in here there are plenty of people who wouldn't even think about buying the original if it could be downloaded illegally.
I definitely don't want the games to go in that direction but I do understand why they did it this way.

And am I the only one who thinks Diablo II was way behind the first Diablo if you look at atmosphere?

The AH and RMAH was what killed it for me. I'm a huge blizzard fan but I just didn't have fun with D3 as much as I did with D2. To easy to get gear that way making anything you found useless. At least the old way required the persons to be present to trade so there was some kind of limit.

Was disappointed with the last wow expansion as well. That's 2 let downs in a row. Something's going on over at blizz. I used to be able to count on every release being great, now not so much.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:
Wait what? Diablo 3 was horrid.

88% Metacritic. Why does that seem familiar? Oh yeah, Diablo 2 has the exact same score.

87.64% on Gamerankings
.

Zeitgeist.

 Trondheim wrote:
When the game has as many flaws as it did I dare say that the game was horrid.

Your criticsim is so devoid of detail and reason that I don't believe you actually played the game. It seems more likely you just parrot what others have said, which is what you have been doing here.

 Trondheim wrote:
And just because a few gaming related pages has given it good scores dose not mean one needs to bow down, and follow the herd regarding ones opinions about I dare say.

No one said anyone needed to bow down, but if you are going to claim that it is horrid it is perfectly reasonable to counter with information that shows that by any reasonable and objective standard it is actually not horrid. The whole point of references such as metacritic are to, you know, reference them. Do you complain whenever you see a Works Cited page? Did you never have to write an term paper? It is also hard to take you seriously when you don't even know what metacritic and gamerankings do. If you did you wouldn't refer to it as 'a few game related pages'.

You have what my Poly Sci professor called a Phantom Opinion: it has no weight, foundation, or body, but there it is. I suppose that is why your fallback argument is refer to others as 'herd', like an 8th grader that just discovered and misunderstood Nietzsche, and boil it down to pure opinion. If you can make all opinions equally valid, which they aren't, then suddenly yours wouldn't be so poorly made, which it is.

No one cares if you do or don't like it, that isn't the issue at all. The problem is that you can't seem to understand your opinion is not reality, and that it certainly isn't objective.

 Soladrin wrote:
Yeah... ratings based on a faulty numerical system that has no meaning whatsover, made by people who get paid for giving higher ratings... these are the true judge of quality games right?

We could build a small community of the strawmen being introduced to the discussion? No one said that aggregate ratings meant anyone should like the game, but it helps give an overview of what was thought about the game. I also understand that sometimes payola can happen, but to believe every reviewer out there is paid off is just rubbish, and frankly, I think you are smarter then believing that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Zeitgeist.

That is a fair criticism, but without more to back it up, it is at best a possibility. Are their follow up reviews where the writers retracted their statements?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Macok wrote:
And am I the only one who thinks Diablo II was way behind the first Diablo if you look at atmosphere?

No you are not alone.