Earlier today I completed the Hellforge quest on Hell difficulty but received no drops at all from the forge.
This occurred at around 14:30 GMT in a private online game with no other players.
It is my understanding (and 15 years’ experience) that the Hellforge quest always drops at least one rune and four gems; the lowest rune to drop in Hell difficulty is a ‘hel’ rune.
After this occurred, the quest completed and I returned to town, where I was also unable to identify items with scrolls or Deckard Cain. This leads me to believe that the bug is related to the ongoing server issues.
Note that monsters continued to drop items normally during this time.
Due to only identifying and quest drops being affected, I believe these things are being handled in D2R as ‘transactions’ with the server, likely for game security reasons. The side effect is that when the server is unavailable, these actions cannot be performed correctly. It is important to note that the quest is marked as completed, meaning that quest completion is not handled by the server, whereas the drop from such a quest is. This creates a discrepancy between the character’s “completed” status of a quest, and their possession of the reward for doing so.
To address this bug, either such quests should be tied to the server in the same way that the item drops for them are, or the item drops should not require a ‘transaction’ with the server and thusly drop normally when the quest is marked as completed.
There are numerous reports of this bug in the forums and I hope I have provided an insight into a potential workaround to avoid this happening in the future.
As the Hell difficulty Hellforge represents a significant wealth milestone for a character (in both the ability to create runewords and/or trade) I feel that the fairest resolution is to reset the quest for those affected, allowing it to be completed fairly for the proper reward.
Thank you, Blizzard for working to address such bugs and I hope this will be addressed expediently so as to avoid many more disappointed players in the future.