PROBLEM: Memory Corruption and Session Management Issues in Legacy System
PRIORITY: HIGH
CATEGORY: System Stability
ENVIRONMENT: Legacy backend (architecture not publicly documented)
ISSUE SUMMARY:
Two critical, interconnected issues affecting system stability and data integrity:
Progressive String/Name Data Loss After Removal Operations
Short character names become unavailable immediately after deletion
Over time, the issue affects increasingly longer names
Eventually, names of any length fail to be re-used or registered
Pattern suggests progressive memory corruption in name/string storage
Session Instability During Rapid Login/Logout Sequences
Users experience forced disconnections when switching between accounts quickly
A delay of 5–10 seconds between login events is required to prevent disconnects
Rapid succession of login/logout operations triggers instability
Timing dependency implies resource cleanup lag or contention
TECHNICAL DIAGNOSIS:
Root cause likely involves memory corruption in shared memory regions impacting both string persistence and session management. Likely contributing factors include:
Race conditions during allocation/deallocation in session handling
Incomplete memory cleanup during character deletion leading to dangling references
Lack of synchronization when multiple threads access shared name/session storage
Cleanup routines requiring asynchronous delay, explaining the 5–10 second buffer need
The worsening name loss and login timing dependency strongly indicate systemic issues in memory management and concurrency handling within the legacy codebase.
RECOMMENDED INVESTIGATION STEPS:
Review memory allocation and cleanup logic for character deletion and name reuse
Audit session management code for race conditions and thread safety
Check for corruption in shared memory structures linking name and session systems
Analyze timing and dependencies in resource cleanup routines
Employ memory debugging tools and race detection instrumentation
Implement proper locking or synchronization mechanisms around shared resources
BUSINESS IMPACT:
Data integrity degradation (character names become unusable or lost)
Poor user experience (login instability, unexpected disconnects)
Ongoing risk of broader memory corruption across subsystems
System currently unreliable for production use without mitigation
URGENCY JUSTIFICATION:
Memory corruption tends to escalate over time, increasing the risk of permanent data loss or total system failure. Immediate action is needed to contain and remediate before further degradation occurs.
This perfectly matches everything I’ve noticed myself, but you really took it to another level with the low-level details of the issues that I couldn’t explain. Amazing work on debugging and analyzing these problems — your thorough breakdown should be incredibly helpful for anyone looking into fixing this. Again, great work man !
I’m afraid this is also a critical security vulnerability. I’m worried a malicious user will exacerbate the problem by having an army of bots create and “brick” character names until making new characters is completely impossible.
If that happens Legacy LoD is cooked.
You could immediately compensate by temporarily disabling character deletion provided anoyone’s working in a position to do so.
If you cannot solve the problem, the next best solution would be to ask users to register for a D2R migration + hand out D2R licenses.
I don’t think this is ideal but it’s a gesture of goodwill.
Maintaining the game that they sell should not be such a huge ask. I played D2R for about a year but have no intention of going back to it. It’s overall a poorly made product with its own unique set of bugs and drawbacks that are worse than anything experienced in the original game. I would rather they spend the time to fix actual D2 instead of attempting to pass people along. D2R contains changes to the core game that many people don’t like. Also, there are many people who do not own computers capable of running D2R and have no desire to upgrade their computer to play a game they already aren’t interested in. I understand that you are just trying to explore possible solutions, though.
The bug basically removes names available from the list once character is deleted. Is it really that hard for such a large entity to maintain their best game? You even continue selling it it for 20$ per CD key pair. What happened to Blizzard?
That’s been my thought towards the issue as well. I know the game is old, but it is a bad look for Blizzard when they still sell a product but will not maintain it. The age of the game really doesn’t justify that attitude. The tech support guy who had posted in the other (now deleted) thread about this mentioned Diablo 2 being low on the priority list. That is understandable, but the game essentially receives no support or fixes at all. It’s as if it’s simply not on anyone’s priority list. However, Blizzard will still happily take your money for it. Players actually feel like it’s pointless to even make threads on here. That’s an embarrassingly low standard for a company that used to be so highly regarded.
I previously posted in the other thread that was deleted, but the issue is still ongoing, and getting worse by the day.
There’s no point in leveling a character with a name we don’t want, or on an account we don’t care about, especially when we can’t move it without permanently locking it away. For my part, I’ve stopped playing until this is resolved, because I want to enjoy the game by leveling characters where I choose.
Why is it so hard to address a critical issue like this, especially when people are still paying over $20 for Classic + Expansion? Are you seriously telling us that this money goes toward maintaining newer games instead? That’s not acceptable. If your response is going to be “It’s your choice to play a legacy game,” then ours is: “It’s your choice to keep selling it on your Battle.net store, so maintain it accordingly.”
Maybe you’ll say, “Legacy tech support is limited,” or give another canned response… honestly, we don’t care. Your poor financial decisions or internal priorities should not fall on paying customers. We’re not asking for miracles, just that you take responsibility for your servers.
The issue has been clearly identified. It’s server-side. We’ve done all we can. Now it’s on you. Please act.
Your post is too logical and shuts down all of their possible nonsense replies, so you won’t get any response. The wall of communication is intentional and ensures that the customer has no way of reaching anyone who can solve the problem. It’s interesting too because if they actually maintained legacy games there would be more people buying/playing them. It’s also… you know… the right thing to do when you sell a product.
Having the same problem, I was sent here by Battlenet assistance, and told I would “find troubleshooting steps from [their] technical team”… Hmm…
The customer support people you talk to when creating a ticket do not know anything about D2 or this forum. There is simply no “technical team” that assists with problems on here, at least in current times. Perhaps that was how this forum used to operate years ago when the company cared more about providing quality support. In my experience, customer support seems to be trained to give really generic replies that are all focused on solving problems on your end rather than those which exist in the game itself.
There is a user named Leviathan who has a title of “MVP Technical Support” but he is not a Blizzard employee and is only able to relay issues to people at Blizzard if he chooses. However, he had already mentioned that he would pass the issue along to people at Blizzard in a thread that was later deleted. This all happened a little over a month ago now. It’s pretty clear that they have no interest in maintaining the game.
Now that would be pretty sad. Let’s hope they don’t want to go down in history as the ones who completely negelected and destroyed one of the most compelling games ever made. The fact that the game is still running after all this time speaks volumes about how very good it is. Crossing fingers.
Already received two answers to my tickets concerning this bug, but all useless.
Ended up writing to “GM Iduellophos”, who supplied me with a link to D2r, L-O-L:
“Again, and for the third time, please bring this issue to someone who has the knowledge and skills to fix it. Am I even chatting with a human, or is this AI?” …because it does look like useless AI answers.
(In our sad era, the words “knowledge and skills” sound so refreshing, don’t they?)
If that bug came up something like a month ago, my unexpert guess is they might have changed something in another game, which had system repercussions in D2 LOD. Could it be?
AI machine answering complaints… How very nice. I suppose it can’t get any better. Blizzard has become such a disappointment and object of ridicule.
