Today, Patch 1.0.8 was released and with a great deal of controversy. At first, the bugs seemed quite small with a few annoying issues that came out of a nice sized patch. Of course, you also have some QQ issues as well with the change in XP/drops for certain mobs. However, the real disaster occurred in the form of gold duping.
Gold duping apparently was a noted bug in PTR but apparently was not considered a serious enough threat to prevent the full release. The gold dupe essentially was an issue with the Real Money Auction House that allowed people to get a ridiculous amount of money back from a cancelled purchase. As of right now, the auction house in general has been shut down as the issue is quite serious and has essentially disrupted the economy in the game.
Streamers over at Twitch.tv demonstrated the exploit, showing how one could make billions of gold. Not long after that, other websites and gamers caught onto the exploit and began replicating the actions. Soon, gem prices skyrocketed and you could see some streamers making huge purchases with their newfound money.
As of now outside of acknowledging the issue with the auction house, Blizzard has taken little action outside of shutting it down and banning those who have exploited the bug. It’s yet to be said whether a rollback will occur as the issue is not so simple, dealing with money/transactions and other systems outside of Blizzard’s control (like PayPay). Not to mention that a full rollback would imply those playing without knowledge of these exploits potentially would be adversely affected. In short, Blizzard is in a huge bind.
But when you look at the situation, this is not dissimilar to the ZillianOP issues that had arisen. While the ZillianOP issue centered around one unscrupulous individual that utilized a false image of being disabled to sucker people into donating to him, the core relation is that greed as a result of the game design clearly highlights why Blizzard needs to re-think their game asap.
I truly believe that the problem in all of this is that the game was designed to be an online game as opposed to an offline game with an optional online mode. The interdependency of the game being online forces players to rely on Battle.net and the resources there-in. In turn, the game intentionally becomes a brutal farming game where only the most scheming can succeed. Those who attempt to play normally do not really have a chance of success without relying on the Auction House to advance through the game. While it is possible with a great deal of effort to attempt to compete in such an environment, the average player with little patience and luck along with the way items and their drop rate have been designed does not give them much chance.
More than that, the design pretty much funnels you towards inferno mode since “that’s where the game really picks up.” But once you hit that point and complete it the first time, there’s little left outside of farming for loot, rings, limited PVP and paragon levels. Most people focus on the loot aspect because potentially you can make real money. But when a game design goes towards that direction, then a lot of the other aspects quickly loses its charm.
Right now, people label Diablo 3 as a “pay-2-win” game, which pretty much is true. But it gets worse because you pretty much are forced to flip, bot and/or duplicate in order to compete. With this new exploit, the economy just tanks to the point where high end items end up becoming unobtainable and pretty much taints Blizzard as the go-to company for games with such an obvious and notorious issue.
For me, I believe that the game needs to have an offline mode and remove cooperative play from Battle.net into the older private LAN type of style. Already, when the game was launched, it faced issues on day one when many people could not login. That alone should have alerted Blizzard to the upcoming disaster on their hands.
But another major issue that goes along with this is just the instability as a game. For instance, I felt that Patch 1.0.7 was the best patch yet mostly because the game was pretty stable, no major issues and just another step in the right direction. It was playable and fun and made me anticipate 1.0.8. However, with the nerfs and bugs, I really have to question the people in charge over at Blizzard. This was sloppy and some parts felt utterly pointless. Yet karma could be a bitch and just slapped Blizzard in their peanut sack.
I think making the game offline would increase the stability overall. I hate being forced to be online to play. I hate having to deal with server restarts and whatnot. For what? If you’re not patching a game, why do a restart? Also, people can choose what patches that they want and not worry about things like nerfs/buffs all the time. People constantly complain about nerfs/buffs but when it happens, it effects everyone. I think if the game were optionally patched through it being local, people could grab the patches they want and deal with issues in the game as they please.
Lastly, making the game offline would allow for the game designers to increase drop rates with better itemizations and just have the online mode act as a competitive environment. I honestly feel that the people who constantly gripe about the game are those that already are exploiting it and creating artificial ceilings to satisfy their own nefarious schemes. The average person probably does not give a shit about nerfs/buffs but just wants to play the game for what it is. However, those who complain constantly about challenges, the AH, etc. imo are the high end gamers because they’re afraid of losing their spot.
So in order to bridge that gap, Blizzard should implement and offline mode and leave the online mode for something like ladders. That might fix the AH problem to a degree or at least make it so that it affects less people overall. And that’s really the key in all of this.