I remember the last time I played D2:LOD years ago Bots were a serious issue.
What is going to be done “differently” “this time around?” Whatever was implemented last time didnt’ work. Bots flourished for end game runs. People were using scripts or whatever to simply grab up all the loot before a human being could.
I certainly hope Blizzard is prepared to tackle this. That’s my #1 issue personally that I think has to be addressed.
I keep hearing that they have ‘better bot detection’ - but if you look at the last few D2 ladders, and the dominance of bots, well…maybe it’ll be different in D2R.
Like you, I remember the botting, the duping - the “economy” - the people trying to make RL profits off running bots and manipulating the economy, and so on.
At the end of the day, I treat D2(R) as a game. It’s pretty clear who the zealots are.
It’s going to be exactly the same as lod with bots, cheats, real money transactions what would make you think other wise?
You will just have to either be willfully ignorant of it, or not play is how it sums up if bots, cheats, and rmt bother you. They are not going to hire the 100 people needed full time, at 20 bucks a hour, with benefits, health insurance, paid pregnancy ect to monitor diablo 2 r. That would cost like, 5 million a year. Diablo isnt worth 5 million a year.
It’s worth the what ever profit they make the 23, and that would be that.
OG D2 has been frozen in time code wise for a good long while, giving plenty of time for hackers to study the game through and through.
Warden came along and was effective for a little while, but it was hammered down from running all of the time due to anti-spyware laws. Its workings were also studied and eventually worked around.
If the code behind what makes the game work doesn’t evolve to combat hacks and exploits, the hackers win. Fighting this problem is like fighting the force of gravity and requires constant effort.
With the D2:R “shell” enveloping the original game and serving as an interface for the current Battle.net platform, there are many more possibilities to evolve the game to combat this problem.
Nope it’s not 5 million a year is no where near what it costs to fight gravity. With 100 people full time, with the only purpose of banning bots 24 7 there would be no cheating regardless of code.
The only way to do that is have every one pay a monthly fee. I would pay 100 a month if they were going to ban all the bots, almost instantly. Problem is blizzard is cheap and they know that’s not gonna make them as much money as just letting diablo be cheat infested, let the rmt make a good 100k off the first month, then ban them so they have to rebuy. That costs little to nothing to do, vs banning all the cheaters, and bots would cost the salary of 100 people.
That may be true for you. But if monthly fees were to be implemented, you’d find the player base dropping really fast.
I know, people are cheap. I was speaking just for me, I hate cheaters, botters, and rmt people enough to pay that. The majority could care less if some one cheats and wouldn’t pay anything.
So back to reality for the op, diablo 2 r will be so bot infested, it would be like jumping in a swamp and expecting not to see a thousands of frogs.
They’ll simply need to find a smarter way to combat the problem… We’ll see soon if they’ve found it.
“Work smarter, not harder.” 
There won’t be public script like for D2 Lod anytime soon, and mouth breathing botters who need help to even make their bot run at desired pathing, won’t be getting any.
Here’s hoping things aren’t as bad as they were near the end of D2.
I hope they take a zero tolerance policy towards it. Ban the account from all Blizzard games if caught cheating…imo.
This is true, but only proves my point. How many D2JSP people are taking time off work to try to max botting and trading for RL money?
It’s a game, folks. Open battle net? Get ready for randoms (if nice) to drop SoJs for you to “help” you, and other randoms to try to PK you and grief for the lulz.
Best to play multiplayer with people you trust, and ignore the rampant botting that will happen - with time.
There isn’t a smarter way, because the people doing it will just find a way around it. There is one way to do it, some one sits there and watches instant baning people breaking the rules. There is no way to circumvent some one sitting there watching you play the game, with the power to ban you. Now if your talking tools to make it easier for those people to find them yeah there is definitely smarter things to use and do. The issue isn’t any of that. There is literally gonna be zero people working on banning diablo 2 r bots and cheaters, it’s gonna be what blizzard always uses, which is just bots that are easily circumvented. Or worse like heroes of the storm, where if you have 30 accounts you can instant ban people by mass reporting them.
Yes there will be cheating from day one, some one already cracked the game, and gave it to every one that wanted it. It’s already done, I’m sure the scripts for bots, dupes, and map hack are already written. Blizzard told them to stop, but not because they care about cheating. They did it because they were afraid that some people wouldn’t buy the game.
I’m going to retain some level of optimism here. Yes it’s extremely easy to have a pessimistic viewpoint due to the extensive history of cheating in OG D2.
If D2:R turns out to be a duck as far as cheating goes, I’ll call it a duck when it happens, not before. We’re dealing with Schrodinger’s cat scenario here.
That dedicated people on jsp probably don’t need to take much time off from anywhere 
I hope in blizz servers this time that mass botting like d2lod won’t become a thing anytime soon 
I think that sun is blue, convince me otherwise.
Yeah, I worded that badly. They don’t need to take time off; I can play Diablo on my work laptop, LOL.
I do wish it won’t be what I remember from back then. But I look at the past few ladders…and wonder if Blizzard/Activision are planning something - anything - to stop that.
It already is, if you went and looked for it, you would find a long list of them already. It won’t take much to transfer the already existing ones to the new game, with the game already cracked, but you shouldn’t. If that kinda stuff bothers you the only way is to stay willfully ignorant of it. Don’t let other people ruin your fun, the bots are here.
I wish they would just stop with thier nonsense, they are just giving people more incentive to break the game. If they just left open mod support, and tcp ip those people would be more content to just stay over there, and they could have mods galore. Now they alienated all those people creating alot of anger, and now they are just gonna do it to spite blizzard for being a jerk.
So I predict mass botting, mass server attacks with the game shutting down, mass duping and free hacks everywhere to the point they can’t be stopped.
bots will be a thing u just have 2 deal with it
I think it is most unfortunate that Blizz did not launch an official trade website with D2R. not the auction house thingy at D3 launch, but just a trade site which is allowing to offer a limited amount of items for ingame items.
Of course this is not solving rmt, however the success of rmt in d2 is driven by the fact that trading happened in so many unofficial forums. One centralized trading website where majority of players will trade is much easier to monitor. Such a e.g. sql based database is so much easier to monitor than doing it ingame to block botters.
If Blizz makes the distribution harder for exploiters than it gets ineffective to run them.
E.g. trade site can have much more authorization option to validate the user than doing it ingame. It would also not bother the valid users because we are not trading huge amounts of items every day.
On the other hand, I don’t care to much. I usually play with friends anyway.
To add: as long as there are players who are crazy enough to pay for items for real money, there will be bots.
I was always wondering why? I suppose the game is too hard for them or they are just to lazy to run mf.