I will be creating some blogposts about gold/cash making in Diablo 3. The new RMT system really interests me, so I'll be jumping right into that. It will be easier once the game comes out, of course, but for now I already know of some sneaky (and currently unpublished) methods. Most of them will be legitimate methods of gold farming and I haven't decided yet whether to create the more shady guides. :)

But first, there's something I need to get off my chest.

If anyone ever says that World of Warcraft has never had duping or that Diablo 3 will never have duplication exploits because WoW has never had them; I am sorry, but you are completely wrong.

Anyone who believes this is;

* Misinformed and they believed it without question
* or, they don't know for sure but go with the flow
* or, they only read official Blizzard press releases and didn't read other WoW news sites
* or, they never read the forums
* or, they know it happened but they drank the blue kool-aid, pushed it into the back of their memories, will only say positive things about Blizzard, and will try to convince everyone else in their beliefs.

Diablo 3 will have dupe exploits and tricks as well, I have no doubt in my mind. Item duping, gold duping, point duping, or stat duping (e.g. stacking of stats).. users will always find a way.

Blizzard has a great team of programmers but a lot of these exploits slip by. They have a limited quantity of QA Testers, and besides, they are tasked with testing the gameplay, quests, and bugs that appear in normal gaming sessions for the casual player. They don't sit there with WPE trying to exploit the game.

Exploits are discovered over a long period of time and after thousands of players have played the game and stretched the variety of gameplay in ever which direction.

Unfortunately, most gamers believe "Diablo = Serverside = no Dupes/Hacks". I am completely shocked by the amount of players who believe this. Wikipedia and even wowwiki even have "duping" articles because they're so common. Please, question everything.

If anyone every does tell you that "wow duping never happened", just send them a link back here. Below are some examples of item duplication exploits and tricks that have taken place on the official World of Warcraft realms.

* From 2004-2005 [LINK 1] [LINK 2]

a. Player 1 hands player 2 a large amount of gold
b. Player 1 goes into the instance. If the bug works, he/she will get kicked back out after a delay.
c. Player 1 will have the original amount of gold he had before he traded and player 2 will still have the traded gold he received as well.
d. Rince and Repeat

* They extended maintenance in late July to fix the dupe exploit that had been around since beta. [LINK]
* After this issue was fixed, players found out another method by fearing players (or mind controlling them) into bugged instances and duped items and gold again. This method still worked in TBC.
* From 2004-2008 [LINK 1] [LINK 2]
Trade equipment with another player, make a character with an inappropriate name to have it reported and reset or con a GM. Policy exploitation could also be used by claiming hacks, and having the account reset. All items/gold duped.
* From 2004-2010 Trade gold/items with another player, have the character rolled back to the state before the trade by entering bugged instances, realm reset exploits, or GM request.
* 2004-2009 Duplication and control of disenchants by filling up bag slots, cancelling, and trading items.
* 2004-2010 Recharging items with limited charges by re stacking items with newer timers.
* 2007 Guild Bank rollbacks.
* 2008 Rolling BG instability issue, causing players to DC and rollback (trade items first).
* 2004-2006 Auction House duping. Players were duping nexus crystals mostly, but any item could be duped. You would place multiple items in the Auction House as quickly as possible. As soon as the first item expires, you cancel the rest of our auctions. You would get back all of the cancelled items (20 crystals) and you would also get back the "expired items" (19 crystals.) That's 39 Nexus crystals duped from 20 posted.
* 2004-2005 Warsong Badge Dupe [LINK]
* 2010 The loot bag duping trick for infinite Justice Points [LINK]
* 2010-2011 Non-combat pet dupe exploit.
* 2011 Daily quest duping by exploiting the time zones of shared instance servers to reset timer.

And remember.. these are just the ones that made it public because they were so exhaustively exploited. How many dupe exploits are there that only a couple, very cautious, people know about?