Diablo III

Diablo III is a year old, and Blizzard's celebratory anniversary gesture is one of those mile-long infographic things featuring selected statistics designed to make you ooh and ahh.

Said statistics include 67.1 million characters created world-wide, 3.3 trillion monsters killed world-wide, and 22.4 million characters that have killed Diablo. Interestingly, Blizzard left off the number of hours lost to launch server login issues, nor is there any mention of D3's much-maligned real-money auction house. You can see the full graphic after the break.

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After his departure from the Diablo III development team, Game Director Jay Wilson released a statement that the introduction of an auction house "really hurt the game." While players predicted doom the moment the Real Money Auction House was announced, Jay argued that the gold auction house was equally to blame for the game's fall from grace following an absolutely stellar launch sales. I don't normally agree with what Jay has to say on Diablo III, but in this case he does have a very valid point.

Diablo II was consistently popular for over a decade thanks to its immense replayability. At its core, D2 was a game about building new characters and gearing them up by any means necessary. Every enemy in the game was a loot pinata just waiting to be popped, and players farmed endlessly for a few sought-after unique items. You almost never found an item that was ideal for your particular class and build, but you could usually trade for what you needed via trade channels and forums.

Blizzard claimed that the auction house was intended just to streamline this process, but when Diablo III launched, it was clear that the entire game had been designed to make the auction house almost necessary for progress. The fault here lies not just with the concept of an auction house but with the game designers.

That's right: I'm here to argue not only that Jay Wilson was right about the auction house ruining Diablo III but also that it was his own damn fault.

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Dota 2 celebrated the incredible sales of its world championship interactive compendium with free gifts for all players; the compendium has now sold over 266,000 units, raising the prize fund in The International to over $2,000,000 US. Third-person MOBA SMITE has recently entered the competitive tournament scene with two new weekly $1,000 tournaments. Rise of Immortals also announced its first competitive tournament since the Battle For Graxia update and revealed details of its hilariously-named ranged centaur character Murderhoof.

League of Legends revealed the new custom item set feature coming in Patch 3.7 and published a new champion spotlight video on classic ranged carry Ashe. Guardians of Middle-Earth also released its latest paid DLC character, The Mouth of Sauron, based on a character who was originally cut from the cinematic release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Diablo III celebrated the first anniversary of its release on May 15th with anniversary livestreams and a magic-find bonus for all players. The latest patch also raised the increments in which money can be sold on the Real Money Auction House to ten million in response to massive oversupply. Path of Exile revealed details of its upcoming Patch 0.1.1.0 that will add new party loot options and other features, and Star Citizen showed off its new website with a special e-commerce section in which players can buy ships for cash.

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In the last few weeks, two big games we cover on Massively have been slammed with exploits that have injured their respective economies: Diablo III and Neverwinter. In Diablo III's case, a gold duping bug apparently pumped insane amounts of cash into the economy. Neverwinter's exploits run the gamut from Foundry abuses to negative auction hall bids that don't consume gold to classes that can one-shot bosses making farming trivial. According to these claims, NW exploiters are making off with thousands of real-life dollars when cashing out their ill-gotten funds.

In both cases, players called for characters wipes and rollbacks, believing each exploit severe enough to merit a clean slate. But in Diablo III's case, while the studio dealt harshly with the exploiters, the developers disagreed with the need for wipes and do-overs, presumably having concluded that such drastic measures would impact the legit playerbase far more than would a dented economy. Neverwinter, on the other hand, chose to roll back the servers, causing widespread uproar.

That brings us to today's question: Which studio was right? How bad does an exploit have to be before character wipes and server rollbacks are absolutely necessary?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

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Diablo III was hit with yet another exploit this week as players discovered a way to duplicate gold via a bug in the auction house. Blizzard responded by shutting down the auction house but did not perform a server rollback to reverse the damage. Star Citizen clarified its stance on the lifetime insurance available to veteran backers amidst debate over whether it gives early adopters an unfair advantage over other players. Path of Exile also released a new Letters of Wraeclast lore feature in its latest update, and MechWarrior Online's update 15 added a new Misery mech.

Dota 2 began preparations for its biggest world championship tournament yet with the release of a new Interactive Compendium that players can use to stay up to date with the matches. Rise of Immortals has now officially launched its Battle For Graxia revamp, and Infinite Crisis officially entered closed beta this week with the release of new champion The Joker. Finally, Smashmuck Champions released its hilarious new community-designed champion that's half platypus and half unicorn.

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Is there a light at the end of Diablo III's auction house woes? Blizzard is putting its best foot forward in an attempt to make it so. After a nasty gold duping exploit and the subsequent suspension of all services, the Diablo III auction house is back online -- and Blizzard is looking to save face with its return.

Production Director John Hight gave a lengthy explanation of what happened with the situation and why Blizzard responded the way it did. "Only a relatively small number of players had the billions of gold necessary to exploit the bug, and only 415 of those players chose to use this exploit for personal gain," Hight wrote. "We elected not to roll back the servers in the Americas and are instead working to remove duplicated gold from the economy through targeted audits and account actions (as indicated above) without taking away progress that our players rightfully earned."

Hight said that the studio is donating all proceeds from auctions conducted by dupers to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.

Oh Diablo III's auction house, you are the stuff of legends.

Late last night, Blizzard took Diablo III's auction house offline to deal with a gold duplication bug that was discovered to be exploited by players. All gold trades were halted at the time, and Blizzard had a patch in place within 30 minutes.

But it's the later update that concerned many D3 fans as Blizzard announced that it wouldn't be rolling back the server, but instead, dealing with each individual offending account on a case-by-case basis. This is more time-consuming for the dev team, but has much less of an impact on the community as a whole.

This week is packed with MOBA news as almost every major title released a new patch. Infinite Crisis introduced new champions Poison Ivy and Gaslight Catwoman and announced that the game's closed beta will start in two days' time on May 8th. SMITE introduced new Norse god Fenrir the Unbound, and League of Legends released a champion spotlight on new Ice Witch champion Lissandra. Dota 2 also released new hero Elder Titan based on the original DotA hero Tauren Chieftain, and Heroes of Newerth released several months of balance changes at once in its colossal version 3.1 update.

Star Citizen celebrated hitting $9 million US in its ongoing crowdfunding campaign, and to celebrate, developers controversially gave all current backers free lifetime insurance on their ships. The title's success has also spurred EVE Online developer CCP Games to show off its own virtual reality dogfighter called EVR that uses the upcoming Oculus Rift headset.

Diablo III's first anniversary is just over a week away; details of any celebrations haven't yet been released. Developers confirmed that the PlayStation 4 version will not be getting mouse and keyboard support and that the PC version won't be getting support for analog controllers. For those of you up for some oldschool dungeon-crawling, Diablo II also announced that its ladder will be reset on May 14th this week and all players will start the game fresh again.

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Details of this year's $1,600,000 US Dota 2 world championship have been released ahead of next month's qualifiers for the remaining three competitor spots. Heroes of Newerth began gearing up for its own tournament at DreamHack Summer 2013 with details of a qualifier tournament to determine which teams will face off at the event. Team Stay Green may be in with a chance if it enters, as the group just took home $32,000 US following a decisive win in the HoNTour grand finals.

A new Diablo III exploit that allowed Witch Doctors to farm XP by repeatedly killing their pets was discovered this week and promptly hotfixed. Riot Games released spotlight videos for newly revamped League of Legends champions Trundle and Sejuani, and CLG pro gamer Peter "Doublelift" Peng discussed his challenging road to success and heartbreaking family issues in a fantastic short documentary for Machinima.

Turbine released details of two new Infinite Crisis champions this week with video spotlights on hulking brute Doomsday and the gadget-wielding Gaslight Batman. Russian success Prime World let press into the English language beta for a first look at its castle-building and MOBA style gameplay. Rise of Immortals geared up for the official launch of its Battle For Graxia game overhaul with the addition of a new reputation system. And Star Citizen developer Chris Roberts revealed that he's been holding off on accepting investor deals because of the success of the game's crowdfunding campaigns.

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If you've been following the development of upcoming crowdfunded sci-fi sandbox Star Citizen with interest, Massively has a brand-new column you might enjoy. The Diablo III test realm hinted at upcoming boosts to life regeneration and the damage output of a few spells, but Blizzard also suggested that a nerf to the Wizard Archon Form might be on the way. Path of Exile started its second season of race events, with over 200 events to take part in and massive prizes to be won.

Third-person MOBA SMITE added the 34th god to its roster this week with acrobatic assassin Ne Zha entering the fray, and Guardians of Middle-Earth released new DLC character Kili the Dwarf. Rise of Immortals added support for game replays and introduced and interesting new White Knight feature that lets players take over from characters who have disconnected or quit in the middle of a game.

Heroes of Newerth announced a huge upcoming balance patch that may finally get rid of the paid-for early hero access and promises to rebalance much of the game's expansive roster of characters. Dota 2's streamlined abuse report update backfired when players discovered they could use the report feature itself to abuse other players. And Firefall may finally be edging toward release with the announcement of a date for the start of open beta.

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Patch 1.0.8 was released to the Diablo III public test realm this week, adding some big multiplayer upgrades and fixing quality of life issues with the Wizard class, crafting and the auction house. Path of Exile published its first series of articles in a new Development Manifesto forum looking into the thought process behind upcoming game changes and features. And sci-fi sandbox Star Citizen tackled the age-old problem of letting players have unique names without breaking immersion.

The European Dota 2 servers experienced heavy disruption this week as what appears to be a DDoS attack interfered with the DreamHack Invitationals and the G-1 qualifier tournament. A research firm also claimed that the game had recently passed giant of League of Legends in peak concurrent users despite publicly released statistics to the contrary.

Following on from its huge success in Russia, castle-building MOBA Prime World officially entered its English-language closed beta this week. Newly announced DC Comics MOBA Infinite Crisis released a champion profile video on new hero Green Lantern, and Heroes of Newerth published a classic hero spotlight on fan-favourite Devourer.

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It seems as if everyone is jumping on the MOBA bandwagon lately and trying to cut a slice of the action for himself. Creative Assembly announced that the next game in the Total War series will be a MOBA with RTS elements named Total War: Arena. MMO developer Turbine has also thrown its hat in the ring, teaming up with Warner Bros. and DC comics to develop a MOBA based on the Infinite Crisis DC storyline.

League of Legends continued its plans to revamp old characters with overhauls to Sejuani and Trundle. Developers also revealed upcoming Ice Witch champion Lissandra, a crowd-controlling mage who can cast some of her spells mana-free. Guardians of Middle-Earth finally released Frodo Baggins as a DLC character, and Heroes of Newerth announced that the $60,000 grand final of HonTour Season One will take place later this month in Las Vegas.

In a new Diablo III developer journal, Blizzard discussed its efforts to get players into multiplayer and public games, including some gameplay improvements and a new matchmaking tag system. Path of Exile's Patch 0.10.5 went live today, adding three powerful new support gems, four new unique items, and several balance changes and bug-fixes. And Torchlight II gave modders a huge gift this week by releasing its in-house development tools to the public and officially adding Steam Workshop support to the game.

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