Ridiculous VPN Ban Policy

After hearing about D2R officially being released, i jumped on the hype train. I dusted off the old CD keys, downloaded the horrendously out of date launcher, and logged into hell to smash some demons. Four days later, i decide to use my computer for something other than D2. I guess to this point I was lucky, as my VPN had not been turned on. The end result of this was quite predictable. This is ludicrous. For personnel who serve in the active duty military at overseas assignments in foreign countries, or even live on a military installation, VPN’s are a common household good. They let personnel in foreign countries enjoy the same TV series or streaming site content as they would have back home. Many deployment location WIFI’s have a built in VPN functionality for that specific purpose.

What does this mean?

Blizzard is systematically banning CD keys for essentially all military personnel overseas from accessing their servers.

I wouldnt find this so reprehensible if it was not for one simple fact: there’s no warning!!! Unless you are looking for this information, it is not readily available. This means if i log into my hulu or netflix account using my VPN, forget to turn it off, and try to log into d2… im done.

Now I understand this is an old game, and it will be replaced very soon. I even understand why they did it to some degree… but this “fix” that stopped bots from spamming chats that are now dead silent, served only to ban a lot of legitimate players from PLAYING the game without warning. Some of those people banned in this regard never knew why they couldn’t join in the first place. This is very similar to their bans for logging in and out too quick. If they want to ban bots, look in the active game tabs and ban them… these policies only hurt legitimate players and not cheaters. It also disproportionately affects the men and women of the armed services from enjoying a nostalgic game… they PAID for.

I know this wont be resolved and my unpermed mule character will get deleted… but for goodness sake Blizzard… use common sense from this point on when you make your policies. A 12 year old could have reasoned why this was an impractical solution to the problem.

It’s pretty silly that they ban using VPNs when people are WFH and playing over lunch breaks and so on… It’s easy for people to connect via the company VPN if they forget to turn it off.

That’s of course without considering your circumstances which are even worse.