Yesterday, the Path of Exile Reddit held a competition where users would post the most funny, witty, or insightful comment. It was not a random give-a-way, but rather a competition.

Everyone competed with each other, and downvoted everyone else. It was like watching 300 vultures fighting and tearing at each other for a morsel of food that was, in fact, just a piece of plastic.

Seeing as how Reddit is pretty much an angry atheist comedy site, I knew that everyone was going to post a "funny" comment because those are the only comments that get upvoted.

So, I decided to put in the one and only "insightful" comment. I figured, there were 3 keys for 3 topics, and everyone would be doing funny/witty.

Apparently, though, posting a deeply insightful post on Reddit will only reward you with very angry downvotes.

Every moment your brain chemistry changes, new synaptic connections are formed, old ones are lost, your cellular structure decays, and your DNA mutates due to the persistent exposure of sunlight, carcinogens, electromagnetics, and radiation. You are in a constant state of change and evolution. So much so, in fact, that the person you were moments ago is literally not the same person you are now. You can't call this "your life" since every moment you essentially die and then you are reborn.

What you perceive as memories were merely experienced by another individual and your mind tricks you into believing that you are that same person. Memories of deep regret, emotion, foolishness, or long lost loves were all something that, in fact, happened to a completely different person. That person no longer exists, and you are not them. You just happen to the unfortunate individual to have inherited their memories, but it's just another deception of the mind.

Remember this always: none of that happened to you. It happened to that other person. You are not them. Keep telling yourself that so that your future inheritors can release their burdens and finally move forwards in life. Your "life" will be ending soon, but you can leave it knowing that you rescued someone who is very important to you.

If my contribution was not 'insightful' enough, please let me know and I can go deeper.

In the end, here were the chosen winners:

1. "Hopefully I will be playing PoE at 21:01 GMT!! [gives bot $5]"
2. "Crossin' my fingers!"
3. "Beta keys = Women Sexed. True Story!"

The very first post automatically won apparently, but the other two were absolutely hilarious and they deserved to win.

Guess I'll just wait for a random invite, I give up with these competitions.

Here's something interesting. In the 4.3 patch, Blizzard is restricting the naming policy again and changing it back to pre-2008 days in North America.

North American realms (excluding Brazilian, Latin American, and Oceanic realms) no longer permit letters with accents in character or guild names. Existing character and guild names with special characters will be unaffected by this change.

If you were around in the "Golden Days", World of Warcraft used to have very strict naming policies on all realms. No special characters, no famous names, no real world references, no partial or complete sentences, no "leet" or "dudespeak", no immersion breaking titles, etc. Everything had to be a true "fantasy name" (yes, even on normal realms) otherwise you would get a warning and a forced name change. Spam or Chuck, or example, would get reported.

Most users have totally forgotten that, during the early days of Vanilla in 2004-2005, Blizzard was very strict about character names and players were actually banned for creating "non-fantasy" related character names. Character names like "Bob", "Bruce", "Dave" or "Chad" for example, would quickly get you a flagged account, a warning, or a ban if you continued to create names that wouldn't exist in the fantasy world. This happened to me and many friends. We were all forced to create new "fantasy" names" and this was on normal PVE and PVP servers. Complaining to GMs only resulted in threats. Part of the problem was that many of the support staff were green and recently hired, new to MMORPG's and trying to make an impression to their bosses. So they were very strict and tried to comply with all company policies. They're much more laid back now than they were before.

As the subscriber base grew, though, players started running out of names. So, in May 2005, it was relaxed allowing new naming conventions.

In April 2008, it was relaxed even further and they allowed special characters to accomodate the further growth of subscribers.

Officially though, Blizzard just said that the reason for the changes were because players wanted it. Just like the Real Money Auction House.. they "only did it because players asked for it". Character restrictions? Players wanted it. Removal of restrictions? Players wanted it. Reimplementation of those restrictions again? Players wanted it. D3 Online Only Requirement? Players wanted it. You know how it goes..

I just find it very interesting that they're putting these restrictions back in place. Having too many Character Names must not be a problem anymore if you see where I'm going. :)

Can't wait for the next Shareholders Meeting.. I wonder, too, if they'll be adjusting their definition of "Subscribers" again to accomodate the WOW Starter Edition.

Very interesting read, but completely unsurprising.

Reddit post here, followed up with a confirmation from the CEO of Lewt.com (a major D2 item seller).

tl;dr version for these posts; Duping exploits in Diablo 2 are still very common, Blizzard knows about it, ignores it for years without patching, hacks@blizzard.com is useless, Blizzard programmers have been intentionally adding new duping exploits, and the Blizzard employees involved with this are suspected to be profiting significantly from it.

The solution to fixing exploits and hacks is really just posting it on as many different sites as possible, and try to get as many players using the exploit as possible. Destroying an economy and ruining everyones game playing experience is one really good way to finally get Blizzard to act.

While discussing the monetary risks involved in the RMAH, I just realized another new facet of the non-refundable Listing Fee.

• Blizzard will be crediting players with a certain number of free auctions per week (or month.)
• It's much like casinos comping players, or giving them weekly coupons for a couple free slot machine pulls. It's free, there's no risk, it's not really gambling, but it gets them comfortable and hopefully addicted to the thrill.
• Even if the item sold, you're still paying for the Transaction Fee and Cash Out fee.
• Diablo 3 is a VERY "item centric" game, meaning that even if you sold 5 free items per week, your chances of getting even more items that week are very high. If you were to wait and sell the following week, your stash would just keep growing and growing.
• Compound that with the item selling in the first place. I mean, what's even the point of having Free Listing Fees if the item doesn't sell? You could use up all 5 Free Lists per week all on the same item. It will keep being undercut by other players (with free listings too) to the point where your single item never sells and you're all out of Free Listings.
• Compound that even further with player psychology! How many of you have experienced "auction house fervor" or "competition rage" when someone keeps undercutting you? Once your free listings are used up, you'll be on such a streak that you'll start spending money in order to beat your competitor.

So really, what is the point of Free Listing fees if there's a high probability you'll burn through them before even being able to sell an item?

Also, on a related note; it was stated that "Blizzard does not plan to post items that affect gameplay, such as gear or character-enhancing runestones, for sale in the auction house."

The system is anonymous and in no way transparent. Blizzard has "no plans" to post items right now. And, they're only prohibiting "item sales".. they didn't say anything about not selling characters or gold. :)

Well well well..

So, the opinion that the Diablo 3 RMAH would be illegal was not received well by many. Everyone is claiming that it's perfectly legitimate and it's no where near the definition of gambling. Many forum users are even calling the notion ridiculous, paranoid, and even retarded.

Apparently, the country of South Korea disagrees with you.

In fact, Michael Morhaime, Robert Bridenbecker, and Blizzard Korea Sr. Mgmt had to meet with the Game Ratings Board this past Thursday to defend the use of their in-game auction house which is being called gambling. A similar in-game auction house system within the game "Emperor Online" was also rejected for its similar item trading, which was also considered gambling.

Without a rating, the game cannot be sold in SK. For now, though, Morhaime has called it "premature" to speculate on the outcome.

South Korea practically invented RMT and microtransactions, and their population makes up a huge stake of Blizzard gamers. So, if they believe something has gone too far (e.g. virtual gambling), then it probably has.

Here's a very interesting section from the news article:

The country’s attitude toward gaming involving cash transactions has irked Blizzard’s local staff who are reluctant to deal with the controversy expected with the introduction of the auction house but are forced by headquarters to launch the feature, an industry source familiar with the matter said.

Before the as-yet-undecided date of the official launch of Diablo III, the U.S. games subsidiary of Vivendi invited journalists Thursday to rebut the accusation that its auction house feature is a virtual casino.

“We’ve heard speculation comparing item trading...to some form of gambling, but in gambling you’re putting something at risk to win,” said Morhaime.

“Items” are won by individual players during the game when they complete a mission. Critics say they come through a randomized selection process, which is based on uncertainty like a card game, but Blizzard says it is a product of the player’s efforts.

“(In Diablo III), you’re not risking anything. You’re just investing your time (to win items to sell). It is an important distinction.”

* Apparently, either Blizzard is being forced by Activision to move ahead with the real money auction house system, or they mean Blizzard Korea is being forced by Blizzard US. It's possible that the Blizzard Korea office is trying to avoid using the RMAH in Korea due to its gambling nature and related laws, but HQ is forcing them to implement it regardless.

* Morhaime stated that in D3, "you're not risking anything". However, when you're trying to sell items on the Auction House to make money, you ARE risking your own money. If you don't sell the item, or someone undercuts you, you lose your Listing Fee for each of your auction posts.

* Robert Bridenbecker also mentioned that there are 3 tiers of money: in-game gold, cash, and the a Blizzard proprietary unit called "battle coins". Battle Coins is a term used by many other online games, so this might be in reference to the Battle.net credit system.

* And, just remember, when Bashiok was first asked about illegal gambling in D3, he claimed that their lawyers had already worked it out, but there was a caveat. His forum post went something like this, "our lawyers worked hard on this, it's sound from a legal perspective, don't worry.. BUT, if any local or country-specific laws do become an issue we'll of course be sure to let people in those regions know." Meaning, they're not really sure and they won't allow it in certain regions if they do find out it's illegal. (You can pretty much ignore anything someone says before the "but".)

And this is just the beginning.. wait until it's released and it starts getting questioned in other countries and even certain US states.

So, something has happened between now and 3 weeks ago. It was after I had made that "Titan Details Spotted" post. (Disappointed that TitanGuru took credit for my little find.. even though I asked nicely. No worries though, it's happened many times with this blog I've seen.)

Cameron Dayton has deleted all of his tweets regarding Titan and his work comments about his team at the time; it was a very targetted clean up of his public posts.

I guess this confirms that Stan Sakai really is involved with the Titan project (lore side of things), and his tweet about Atlantis and Teotihuacan might have some real relevance now.

So, Titan might be involving ancient civilizations in Mexico and Japan, as well as mythical ones. There will be historical locations to visit, as well as present and future.

He also revised his LinkedIn profile (after like a year of no activity.)

Old One:

Imagining, creating, and writing the universe for Blizzard's new MMO (working title: Titan) from the ground up -- the history, philosophy, heroes, and villains. In addition to the core construction of the game's story, I wrote flavor pieces for the main characters and important events to lend depth and immersion for our team. Much of my time involved meeting with the art and animation team to ensure their work wove into the narrative.

New one:

Imagining, creating, and writing the universe for Blizzard's new MMO (working title: Titan) from the ground up. In addition to the core construction of the game's story, I wrote flavor pieces for the main characters and important events to lend depth and immersion for our team. Much of my time involved meeting with the art and animation team to ensure their work wove into the narrative.

So, he cut out this very specific piece about Titan:

the history, philosophy, heroes, and villains.

I wonder what he means by philosophy. Is that the philosophy of the game, the Titan universe, or each culture within Titan?

Mynsc.. funny how both KimSellentin and CameronDayton are both official followers of the Titan Focus tweets hey? :)

Looks like it will be coming out December 20, 2011 in NA and December 22 in Europe.

Just a couple quick points;

Funny how it came the day after Blizzard's announcement that Diablo III was delayed until 2012. They could have released it any time in December, so judging by the late release date it was probably just a coincidence.

That release date is way too close to Christmas. The logistics for this are going to be brutal, and I'm willing to bet that they're not fully prepared. I'm not concerned about the number of users playing the game, Christmas is actually a pretty slow period considering all of the other activities taking place. I do have a slight concern about the technical side (stability during stressful load), but where I'm most worried is their own Customer Service department. It's going to be a nightmare managing the employees, making sure they have enough, and planning ahead for the 50% of staff that won't be showing up during the Christmas break (even though they're scheduled.) It will be even worse even if their Customer Service team has been outsourced.

I'll try to remember to monitor forums around the time of release (I'll be busy myself), and see how their Customer Service fairs. I think it's going to turn out very bad though, you should never release a game close to a major holiday, and it will be a good learning experience for them and other companies.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to buy the game or not.. it's very tempting, but I'm trying to give up subscription based MMOs.

Ah, cool.. more news about the continued battle between Interplay and Bethesda.

It seems like Bethesda is getting pretty desperate now. Unfortunately, their lawyers waited way too long (7 months knowing full well it was being developed) to file their restraining order, which is what undid them in the end.

I think they're getting really desperate because they want to start working on Fallout 5 soon. It's a highly successful IP after all, and they don't have much else planned. In the original Fallout IP sales contract, as soon as Fallout 5 is developed by Bethesda, the IP is reverted back to it's original owner: Interplay.

They have Fallout 3, which has 5 DLC packages. And Fallout 4: New Vegas (which I suspect they didn't call FO4 in the hopes that it might help them in court when the time comes) now has 6 DLC packages. The DLC is being used to buy them some more time, but they can only keep shoveling out crap so far.

Now, I suppose they could create a "new type" of "expansion pack" that completely rebuilds the graphics and gaming engine. Fallout 5 could in fact just be an "expansion pack" to Fallout 4 for example. :) But then there would probably be more legal fights about what exactly constitutes a PC game and an expansion pack.

I think Interplay is just playing the long game. They might not have any money, but they're thinking ahead and they just need to hold out longer then Take Two Interactive can in facing their investors Zenimax can in facing their private investors.

There's probably no real development happening, and Interplay has no serious plans to produce a Fallout MMO, so they're just waiting for Bethesda to fold and finally purchase the Fallout IP unconditionally with an outrageous price tag. This recent legal game is just demonstrating how desperate and unplanned Bethesda is in dealing with the situation. I think, in the end, Bethesda will completely own the Fallout IP but they'll pay an arm and a leg for it. Would be funny though if Interplay got the IP back, and sold it to their competitors.

* Correction: Take-Two published some of the Elder Scrolls, but not Fallout. Fallout was self-published by their Bethesda Softworks division. Although, Namco Bandai published FO4 New Vegas in EU, AU & NZ.

Community, Parks and Rec, and The Office all returned last night.. the episodes sort of felt like they never really left though. Even though they were pretty good, I think I was expecting something more out of them. I'm just glad the Community musical number was kept really short, however.

I had forgotten all about The Mentalist, but it made a return as well. And apparently, it came as a big surprise to many that Red John was still alive. I was a little disappointed by the episode, and it looks like the writers just wanted to rush through it so that they could get back to the "usual formula".

They should have left Jane in jail for a couple episodes or so, it could have given the writers something fun to work with. But instead, the writers just came up with a non-clever (and heavily contrived) idea to get him out of his predicament.

And they've also totally closed the investigations into J.J. LaRoche/Gupta and Fake RJ.. the writers found a brilliant way to justify it too: "They found nothing in their investigation!" Amazing!

"Person of Interest" was "meh", but I didn't actually expect much. Surprisingly, it had "received the highest test ratings of any pilot in 15 years", and the first episode drew in 13.2 million viewers. [Source]

I found it a lot like Human Target (which opened with 10 million viewers), and I won't be surprised if it's popularity and cancellation ends up being identical. It seems that everyone is really hurting for fresh ideas and decent shows.

I hate that backseat car cliche so much though.. Det. Fusco (the corrupt cop) walks right towards his car in daylight, can clearly see into his backseat, and yet doesn't notice John Reese (the hero) sitting in his backseat with a gun. This does not happen in real life. Similarly, he taps her cell phone and listens in to all of her conversations (ie, using it as a microphone), and yet it doesn't cause a terrible drain on her battery and she never needs to recharge it. She cellphones are tapped in real life, even dumb criminals know that dead batteries are a dead giveaway.

And to top the day off, I found out that Dexter 06x01 was leaked online. I was genuinely pleased with the episode and I hope it's a sign of a really good season. Seasons 1 and 2 were awesome, but I wasn't much of a fan as it progressed from Seasons 3 to 5 (they had no real direction or character development). I'm glad that they finally killed off Rita, but I wish that they had gotten rid of LaGuerta instead of Doakes (who was my favorite character). Maybe there's still time for her. :) Anyways, I hope they don't go too overboard with the new religious direction otherwise it could become a slobbering mess.

My speculation, at this time, is that Professor Gellar (Edward James Olmos) and his young protege Travis (Colin Hanks) are probably trying to kickstart armageddon or The Second Coming. Gellar might try to "maintain innocence" throughout the season, and he just gets his pupil to do all the dirty work. I'm hoping they take a different approach, and let the bad guy escape in the end (e.g. he moves to different town and finds another easily influenced pupil after the death of Travis.) Travis himself probably isn't helping the Professor purely because of his charisma either, but maybe because something bad happened in his life. For example, the death of his wife and children, and he wants to be with them again (suicide is a sin, so that's out) or punish the world (believing he can end it by starting the end of days).

You can be certain, though, that the writers are going to randomly pull passages from the Bible and make it fit into the story. Rather than re-enacting Revelations in order (they started with Revelations 13 by the way), they'll just jump around to different verses that they have the budget for and can reproduce.

It also appears that the Lieutenants promotion that was intended for Angel Batista (he shouldn't have sprung for the champagne until it was confirmed) will be going to Deb Morgan instead for her heroics in that restaurant shoot out. She'll probably become an internet sensation in the next episode, which is what prompts that specific PR move.

Just some random stuff over the past couple weeks that don't deserve their own posts.

• I just noticed an article called "Diablo 3 Beta Server Hacked - Playable Games Are A Reality". What is this madness?? The beta server has hacked? Anyways, I checked it out and it was just old news about the D3 emulator project. It was through a news aggregator and if I had known it was a N4G article I would have avoided it (they're terrible). I'm not interested at all in the emulator until they actually get some actual gameplay though (e.g. quests, mobs, NPCs, etc.)


• All of the Diablo 3 videos are still looking the same. It's unfortunate that the Media NDA took so long to lift.. by the time it happened, everyone had already watched a hundred full playthroughs. But, it's even more disappointing that the media sites, knowing this, still created the same recycled demonstrations. I have to give mad credits to TotalBiscuit though, he already knew this was going to happen, so he took a completely different approach and focused on lore instead.
• Rumor is that D3 beta invites were slowed due to technical problems with the beta servers. Apparently, they were breaking under the stress of some 400-900 concurrent users. They're in the small beta invite release phase right now, but once they work out the technical problems, many more invites will be sent out to ramp up stress testing. It'll just be very quiet for a bit, which is why it seems that no one is getting beta keys. That's the rumor anyways, but you can check out current beta users logged in here. These reports are submitted by other players, but they're very accurate.


• The class rush videos were pretty awesome, those were my favorites. With a little bit of luck, and a shared stash, almost any player should be able to beat the beta in about 20-25 minutes. The best I've seen so far was 24 minutes, and that was with no stashed gear. Different reports say that the beta is 1/2 or 1/3 of the full Act 1.


• Since the Monk has a team healing ability, I'm wondering if Blizzard will be implementing any other kind of team healing dynamics but through items instead. For example, an item Lifesteal ability, that effects yourself and other team members for example (or maybe just "everyone else"). Would be pretty fun to have a heavy long-range damage dealing Wizard healing the party during difficult Inferno encounters. And, with all of the heavy PVP implementation in the future (and expansion packs), I wonder if they'll eventually create a large scale PVE experience.. Diablo 3 Raids maybe?


• Have there been many complaints about the lack of skills in Diablo 3? Most players would have been spoiled by all of the abilities in WoW, and might find themselves using the exact same 2 or 3 abilities from level 20 to 60. I can see a lot of players complaining about this come retail.


• I probably won't get into the D3 beta, so I'm hoping that I'll get a random invite for the Path of Exile Beta. Trying to get into the PoE beta, though, is the worst kind of tease.. even worse than Diablo 3. Atleast in D3, you have no idea if you're getting a beta key or not. But, PoE has been having multiple competitions, random give-aways on various forums, and the PoE website has a "Beta Invite Timer" showing randomly selected users. You die a little on the inside every time 4 players in a row win a beta key, and they just registered on the forum 2 days ago with 0 posts (when you've had a PoE account since 2010 hoping for an invite). :)
  
  I tried out one of TalesOfLumin's Twitter contests too. He posted a beta key that needed to be unscrambled. For this contest, I was fully prepared. :) I started the exact instant he tweeted the key (which no one knew when), had an scramble app ready, and started to work on the 120 permutations possible. There's a limit on the number of beta keys you can register and you can get locked out for "Too many key attempts". Took me about 15 minutes to get about 3/4 of the way through the 120 possibilities, and using 3 different proxy servers to avoid the key lock out. Then, I discovered someone had already won it in under 5 minutes of the release. Seriously, that's some crazy luck.
  
  TalesOfLumin held another YouTube contest for 6 beta keys, which I didn't find out until too late. This time, though, it was for game development ideas in the categories of Most Helpful, Most Creative, and Most Funny.
  
  The winning ideas were:
  
  Helpful / mattuo: Queuing up skill points, like in other RPGs.
  Helpful / BogusMeatFactory: Traps or puzzles that require 2 or more players, like in other RPGs.
  Creative / dmlayton1984: Implement the "Lethal Decoy" skill from Diablo 3, but call it "dopplebomb".
  Creative / Cexial: Find a hidden scout, he gives you a quest to fight pirates, the boss is the Ships Captain. You know, like in other RPGs.
  Funny / Spinaltouch: A boss named "COLD SNAP", who is an ice elemental. When you kill him, the loot includes "Rare Sharktooth Maul, 1 Portal Scroll, and a free subscription to the Tales of Lumin Adventure Series."
  Funny / Smackdo: Pokemon reference.
  
  So yeah, a little disappointed. Out of the 400 posts, there were some really bad ones and there were some really good and creative ideas. I was really surprised that the above ones were chosen.. I mean, there were some really good ones out there that should have won.


• Wait.. True Blood is over? I just discovered that this past weekend. I had no idea that this last episode was in fact the last episode of the season. It felt just like a mid-season episode. The show basically went nowhere, and it really worries me that the writers produced such drivel. Running out of ideas.. boring storylines.. last minute changes and rushes. Talk about disappointing.
  
  The only "cliffhanger" for the season was the surprise visit by Reverend Steve Newlin. So.. let me spoil that for you: he's going to be the comic relief for next season. He's also a newly turned vampire, who knows nothing about being a vampire, and doesn't realize that he can't enter Jason's house. It'll become a running joke next season.
  
  And, the escape of Russell Edgington shouldn't be a big surprise.. it was talked about for months leading up to the season finale (ie, how he'll be making a return next season.) He can't kill the main characters whom he hates, of course, so the writers will need to find a new direction and purpose for him..
• New episode of Community starts tonight, can't wait! It's unfortunate that they're opening the new episode with a long musical number though.. I hate it when TV shows use this type of filler to extend show length (like in Family Guy). It's really just a way to give writers a break when they can't think of anything clever. What Community really needs to avoid is musicals, flashback episodes, breaking through the 4th wall, and animated episodes. They make a truly great show start to look desperate, and I hope this isn't a sign of writer fatigue.
• I checked out "The Secret Circle". First and last time mind you. Looks like that show is going to be renewed.. high production value and bad acting, but it targets a key demographic of young females, housewives, and androgynous males who will be gobbling this stuff up. An attractive young girl moves into a new town populated with only attractive people and starts going to a new school with attractive and mysterious men who also have superpowers. Yes, it's the exact same plot as every other vampire and magic novel/series/film. It's weird seeing Thomas Dekker as a high school student.. that guy has been forever playing a high school student (Terminator SCC, Heroes, 7th Heaven). He has a weird "Andrea Zuckerman 90210" type situation going on (Gabrielle Carteris was 29, but portraying a 16 year old high school student).. and it's quite creepy seeing fully grown men still in high school.


• Ringer, on the other hand, opened up with ratings that were pretty much equivalent to The CW's other last season (drying up) veteran shows. Not a lot of interest in the show, the acting is bad, and cancellation is quite probable. However, the production costs on the show seem very low (they sure saved a ton of money on the green screen boating adventure), so it might be really cheap to produce. Maintaining 1 million viewers might be "adequate" to keep it afloat.

Apparently that gambling post is a pretty big hit within Blizzard headquarters. Hopefully, it provides some insight and ideas that they might not have considered and so that their legal teams can further prepare or fix the potential issues.

(I would recommend removing the Listing Fee, or make it refundable if the item does not sell. If the auction is cancelled in advance, for example, then keep the Listing Fee since it was a strategic decision and had nothing to do with chance.)

Since yesterday, I'd have to guess that over 40 unique PCs and smartphones belonging to Blizzard employees have hit the blog, but I've started to lose count now.

All of the direct links seem to be from internal emails, and not by Google searches or other referrals. So, it's something making the rounds inside the office and of definite interest.

If you're a Blizzard employee and reading this, some commentary on the subject of RMT, gambling, and international law would be appreciated. :)

Guess we all knew this was coming.

At the beginning of this year, Daeity got the feeling that DCUO would be merging servers, lowering prices, and then converting into a F2P game.

Everything has happened just like he predicted.

Funny note too; back in January Sony also said that F2P was very unlikely. That was around the time they also promised major content releases every month too.. :)

I've touched on this subject a couple of times and you could say that I have a fixation on the subject. I'm not a lawyer, so I really don't know what or if certain online games can be classified as gambling. What I do know is that lawyers aren't perfect, sometimes they make mistakes and sometimes they don't realize or comprehend all of the variables. I also know that there hasn't been enough questions, or even answers, about this very grey area subject.

Here's what I do know though;

In 2006, a guild on Lightbringer held a virtual raffle for the AQ War Effort with prizes consisting of virtual items like Guild Gold or Gear. Blizzard promptly shut it down and they called it "ILLEGAL GAMBLING."

In 2007, the FBI launched a probe into online gambling taking place within Second Life. As a precautionary measure, Linden Labs shutdown all gambling activity within Second Life and prohibited all forms of gambling. It was left as a grey area, and never deemed illegal, but Linden Labs didn't want to take the risk of potential prosecution. Most lawyers agreed however, that it was illegal gambling; you buy the game, play a game of chance within the virtual world, receive Linden dollars, cash out the Linden dollars into real money. In this situation, however, it was a player run economy and not gambling games created by Linden Labs. (However, they provided the means of facilitating the gambling.)

In 2007, the UK Gambling Act 2005 was revised to include MMOs. They redefined the definition of "gambling" as any and all games which involves the use of both chance and skill to win a prize (the definition of a "game of chance"). Prizes can be cash prizes, products, or virtual objects that can be exchanged for money. A similar change was made in US law in 2006.

Online Gambling

Online gambling is illegal in most countries, but I'm going to focus specifically on the USA. Every country (or region) has different regulations of course, and they go about different ways of trying to control online gambling. It's very convoluted from what I understand and a very unclear legal area, which is why they created the UIGEA.

It's not just for gambling sites, but also anyone or anything related to the gambling service (installation, maintenance, facilitation, etc.) The reason why online gambling was made illegal in the US is because it's difficult to license, regulate, and internet gamblers don't know who is operating the gambling site, if the games are honest, if winnings will be paid, or if the money wagered is used for criminal purposes. Players also have no recourse if they are not paid or cheated, they're put at risk to identity fraud, and internet gambling is an uncontrolled environment for problem gamblers and minors.

As you read through each of those examples, you could see how this already relates to Blizzard in the case of the supported gold and item selling; accounts can be banned with no recourse, money or gold can be seized and not returned, minors can play the game, there's no regulation, it's an addictive environment that is uncontrolled, there's no oversight, it's impossible to tell if the games are honest, and RMAH users don't know if any of the money is used for criminal activities. Blizzard has made posts (but no strong regulations and monitoring) regarding identity theft, so we also know for sure that it happens.

Blizzard has also stated that the Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House will be completely anonymous. So, players will never know who're they're playing against, who they are buying and selling from, if the sales are honest, if sales are being used in criminal situations, or if Blizzard or Blizzard employees are selling items. It's impossible to know and there's no third party oversight.

The generally accepted definition of gambling has 3 components:

* consideration (you have to pay to play the game)
* chance (a random game of chance in which skill can play a minor part)
* compensation (cash, something of value, or a reward)

Consideration and Compensation

Both of these can come in many forms, and it doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of cash. Basically, it's "value in" and "value out".

For example, you could cash in to play a game, but win a car. Or, gamble your car for another car. Value in and value out can be representative of chips, tokens, or virtual gold. Technically, you could apply value to almost anything, but online gambling laws are only interested in something that is cash or can be converted into cash (e.g. "it's liquid").

Gold in Diablo 3 is just a token representing cash value, in the exact same manner as casino chips. Your gold "chips" can be cashed out into real money, or used to play other games inside the virtual "casino" game world. Blizzard owns the virtual property and when you pay for items or sell items, you collect money, but the items ("tokens") are still owned by Blizzard. It's much like a casino owning their own proprietary chips.

Real world value of gold can also change, depending on the virtual economy. Some days it might be worth more than others. Just like in the real world, there are dynamic economies and variables that can adjust the value of money.

So, how does Diablo 3 exhibit these 3 components?

1. The most obvious one that everyone immediately thinks of is loot drops.

Blizzard has repeatedly stated that Diablo 3 is an "item centric game" but they have also stressed a major difference between WOW and D3. Whereas WOW had fixed loot tables and drops in an "Achiever Economy", Diablo 3 random wins are "indeterministic" and everything has a random chance of dropping varying levels of value. There is no skill required in WHAT drops.. you can't control it, it's like a roulette wheel. So, the "loot generation" is purely a game of chance with no skill. However, there is another game of chance (and skill required) to get TO the loot generation components.. and that's by killing a virtual monster. The gambling part is what the monster might drop when you roll that dice.

In regards to loot drops, there's consideration ($60 to play the game and/or gold "chips" to equip armor and play the game), there's a game of chance (loot drops are randomized and have real world value), and there's compensation (items have real value and can be sold.)

But this is where it gets interesting. You see, even though World of Warcraft already falls under this same example, Blizzard is free from legal prosecution because the compensation component is not maintained by Blizzard nor is it supported in any way. Blizzard has called gold sales illegal, and compensation can only occur in the black market. Most MMORPGs are free from prosecution, because gold selling (cashing out) is a violation of their rules, not supported, and there are preventative measures in place to prevent it. Without the "cashing out" component, it's not considered gambling.. even though a form of virtual gambling does take place.

In Diablo 3, it seems as though they're getting around this loophole by calling it a "Player Run Economy". The current beta client also has old references to actual "gambling" systems within the game, but I strongly suspect that the word "gambling" will be removed from all Blizzard announcements and communications and probably stricken even from the game itself. :)

In a "Player Run Economy", Blizzard is implying that any activities or gambling within the system will take place between the users and which they won't directly profit from. But, they still get a cut of all the action, they create the games and prizes, they collect consideration, they control the odds, and they can influence or change the economy. It's not really a "Player Run Economy" either if they can control and change the economy on a whim directly or indirectly. This is what Linden Labs tried with Second Life, and it didn't work out for them.

2. Player Gambling and Betting

The impression that Blizzard is trying to give is that the "Player Run Economy" will all take place between the players and they're completely hands off. We know that's not exactly true though. But, let's say for arguments sake that it truly was a player-run economy and that they profited in no way from gold or item sales.

What if players started gambling in game? What if they create virtual casinos like they did in World of Warcraft? (Which Blizzard had already banned and called "illegal.")

What if players engaged in gambling and placing wages in Arena PVP matches?

There are already some great communication systems in place to facilitate and support these exact activities.

The players might be doing something illegal, but Blizzard is supporting the activity, facilitating it, and maintaining it. And, as stated by Blizzard previously, since they don't view it as "gambling" in the first place, then that would mean it's not regulated, there's no oversight, minors can participate, and they're not stopping or preventing the activity from taking place.

Arena PVP would be an awesome betting and gambling system with very high stakes and risks. (And undetectable cheating.)

It might also encourage the development of virtual bookies, escrow services, and loan sharks. Don't have enough money? Just put your high level players up for collateral, if you lose, they're sold off. Gaming is becoming a professional sport, and it wouldn't be a professional sport without gambling and cheating.

3. "Gheed" Gambling and Artisans

As mentioned previously, there are references to gambling and a Gambling Vendor in the Diablo 3 beta files. They're right along side the General, Weapon and Armor vendors.

It appears that there was, at one point, a "Gheed" gambling vendor available in the game. I'm uncertain if it will be in retail or not, but I suspect that all references to "gambling" will be removed.

"Gheed" gambling is a gambling system within the game where you can wage gold, and there's a small chance to win a highly valuable item. That item can be, in turn, converted into real money.

Artisans also have a gambling feature. When you craft certain items, by inputting gold and materials, the item crafted has random statistics.. this means that you can gamble your money (gold) for a chance at winning an item of less, equal, or higher value. Salvaging of items is also gained through a randomized gambling system.. so you can gamble an item, to create random materials, which can be used for more gambling to increase overall value and win more cash.

You shake the dice when getting loot, you shake the dice when converting the loot into mats, you shake the dice when turning the mats into a random item, and you shake the dice when selling the item.

As you can see, there are layers upon layers of gambling systems within this virtual world.. and everything can be cashed out into the real world.

4. The Auction House Metagame

This is one of the activities that Blizzard lawyers might not have considered to be gambling. Blizzard has already boasted at great lengths about the new Auction House metagame within Diablo 3. They're completely right about the AH being a metagame.. it's a game of chance within a game of chance.

However, when you see how the system works, it's evident that "playing the Auction House" is actually a type of gambling.

Whenever you put an item up for sale on the Auction House, you must pay a mandatory Listing Fee. So, every time you post an item, you're taking a risk or a gamble that your item may or may not sell. If you don't win the AH gamble, you lose money. If you do win the AH gamble, Blizzard takes their cut and you get a cash prize.

There are inherent risks involved in every listing. And don't be fooled, there are a significant number of random variables that can alter your odds of winning or losing the AH gambling game; number of players buying or selling, when farmers are banned or allowed to play, when new patches are implemented, hotfixes, hacks and cheats, Blizzard changes listing fees or AH cuts, when certain regions have network access or others can't access the AH, Blizzard changes random loot, changes loot value, decreases loot drop chances, increases treasure drop amounts, changes skills or items that affect MF%, creates new items or loot, creates new bosses, changes number of monsters per zone, etc. All of these examples can drastically alter the economy and your chances of winning with just the simple flip of a number.

The RMAH metagame is like taking all of your winnings from various casino games, and then gambling with the casino to see if you can exit the building with your prizes. You also gamble to see how much they cut into your profits and how much you get to keep.

Bidding and Posting

Keep in mind that the RMAH "metagame" does involve chance and risk due to the non-refundable Listing Fee. But, there's very minimal case law when it comes to gambling and auction systems. There are a lot of websites or online games right now that are operating in murky legal waters because gambling commissions have not pushed the issue.. yet.

When you're posting items, you're playing a game against other players where very little skill is involved and it's mostly random chance. Bidding for items, on the other hand, is something different and more strategic.

So, forget auction listings.. what about just bidding in an auction?

When you examine the Unique Bid Auction system for example, it's considered gambling but not always enforced in most countries. The reason it's considered gambling is because BIDS are NON-REFUNDABLE.

(a) Paying a non-refundable fee
If no fee of any kind is required to bid, as with traditional auction models like EBay, the scheme is not a lottery because participants are not losing money or kind.

In Diablo 3, bids are refundable.. but posting items is not.

Last year, the Italian government shut down a number of online auction sites because they were charging non-refundable fees for bids. So, in Italy, unique bid auction sites are considered games of chance and they are illegal to operate without a gaming license.

And this was just for BIDDING on an auction, not even the POSTING aspect that I've been writing about.

There is also the Bidding Fee auction system (aka Penny Auctions) where players must pay a non-refundable fee to place on a small incremental bid. Some lawyers claim it's illegal and others say it is legal because bidding on the items is strategic. But, once again, it's very ambiguous because government regulators haven't pushed the issue.

In South Africa, however, this type of auction/gambling system is considered illegal. And, here's the interesting bit as to why:

(7) No fee may be charged for participation in an auction, but this does not apply to refundable deposits.

In other countries, though, they don't have any clear legislation about this type of auctioning system. Because of the advances in technology, gaming regulators just can't keep up and there are a lot of legal loopholes being exploited.

Swoopo is a good example in the US. They've gone bankrupt now, but it was under heavy criticism because of its gambling nature. This NY Times article was a funny read, the gambling industry consultant basically said: 'Well.. it's not really permitted in some states and most of Europe, but it's also not explicitly prohibited either." Brilliant. :)

I liked this part too from the sources in the Wikipedia entry: "the non-determinism comes directly from the actions of other users." That sounds very similar to the D3 RMAH, however Blizzard also has the ability to alter the non-determinism of LISTINGS by changing loot flow and random chance within the game.

If Blizzard and PayPal want to avoid any possible legal complications, they should remove the Listing (Non-Refundable) Fee to remove the definition of gambling from its auction system.

But, that would mean EBay is also gambling!

There are huge differences between EBay and the RMAH. Anyone who uses this as an example shows just how little they understand about the situation. It would be the only possible "auction" system they could think of, for example, and they wouldn't be aware that there are forms of online auctions that are in fact illegal.

Here are some of the reasons why EBay is not considered gambling, and how the RMAH is different:

• EBay does not create all of the items that are sold in the auction.
• EBay cannot control of the odds and random chance of user auctions.
• EBay does not sell any products or services that they own themselves.
• Users do not sell items that they received through gambling with EBay.
• Users do not play games of random chance with EBay directly to sell items or to receive items to sell.
• EBay does not create virtual auction items that have no real value.
• Users sell physical items that have real value and depreciate.
• Users sell something they own, and are transferring ownership. They are not selling something that EBay owns and continues to own after sale.
• Users buy items for less or equal to what they are worth. They do not pay increasingly high prices for zero value items in which EBay profits.
• In EBay, users compete with other users. There is transparency and rules. In the RMAH, you are playing against the House.
• Users do not use a proprietary currency created by EBay.
• EBay users know who they are selling to, financials are traceable, and monetary transactions are refundable or recoverable.
• EBay users sell highly unique items. Not millions of the same item.

If EBay were to be run like the RMAH, here's how it would work:

EBay would have their own proprietary currency. Users would buy a license in order to use EBay, and told that they don't own anything. EBay would create virtual items themselves (that are worthless), and users could win these items through games of random chance. Users could then attempt to sell these items on the EBay Auction House, but selling the item would be completely random chance and based on odds that EBay controls. You would be competing against "the House" to sell your item and EBay can make it easier or harder to sell your item. You have to pay for the Insertion Fee every time you lose an auction. All transactions would be anonymous, and you have no idea if you're playing against a real person, a minor, a criminal organization, or an automated system.

But it's only pennies!

I think a lot of people don't see the gambling nature of the game because the transactions are just so small. But, I see it as an entire world (or virtual casino) full of microgambling transactions in different forms. All of the little games are presented in different ways, there are different rules and players, and they have flashy graphics and colorful disguises.. but at their core, it's still gambling and everyone knows it.

Making $0.10 per day by gambling items on the RMAH doesn't sound like a lot, but multiply that by millions of transactions per day or per hour.

Like Blizzard said, it's an item centric game. The entire game is about items and gold (basically, casino chips), managing them, organizing them, buying and selling them, and gambling even further with them.

In a typical gaming session, an average player might participate in thousands or tens-of-thousands of microgambling related interactions and not even realize it. NPCs drop tons of treasure (from 1-10 objects like gold or loot). Say you kill 500 monsters in one session (which is probably very low); that's potentially 1000-2000 random dice rolls at a game of chance. Salvage the items for their mats and that's another 1-2k in attempts at gambling for higher valued items. Craft items from those mats or sell on the Auction House; that's another gambling metagame.

PayPal is also part of and supporting this new infrastructure. For the past several months, they have been eliminating the "illegal" black market gold sales competition and clearing a path for Blizzard to be the only authorized gold seller for Blizzard games.

What's even more funny is that gambling is strictly against PayPals own policy.

PayPal Acceptable Use Policy

You may not use the PayPal service for activities that:

- involve gambling, gaming and/or any other activity with an entry fee and a prize, including, but not limited to casino games, sports betting, horse or greyhound racing, lottery tickets, other ventures that facilitate gambling, games of skill (whether or not it is legally defined as a lottery) and sweepstakes unless the operator has obtained prior approval from PayPal and the operator and customers are located exclusively in jurisdictions where such activities are permitted by law.

Other Impacts

I imagine that when the RMAH launches it will be a rather frightening time for Vivendi, Activision, Blizzard, and PayPal. But, let's say the RMAH is highly successful, and either the governments of the world don't consider it gambling or they win court cases proving that it's not considered gambling.

The problem up until now is that online gambling is illegal, but the lack of prosecution has made it an unwritten rule that indirect online gambling (or within video games) is legitimate. No one has ever pushed the boundaries (take Linden Labs for example), but once an entity pushes the boundaries, everyone else can learn from it or abuse it.

* Blizzard, for example, could push the boundaries even further. They can start introducing more game features that look a lot more like obvious gambling; for example a real "Gheed" gambling vendor in the game, minigames where players can compete against each other, or a UI and payment system for Arena PVP gambling and betting. If it becomes a popular spectator sport (like Starcraft), there might be a fee system for watching or participating in the fights.

* Setting a legal precedent will allow gambling sites in many countries to create a legal loophole for their own games. Here's a video game example; players buy the MMO game from a retail store or online, players meet together as avatars in a virtual world with casino games and can compete to win virtual gold, this virtual gold can be sold on an auction house to other players for real money. New players must buy virtual gold from the auction house in order to participate in the casino games.

* Don't want it to look like real gambling? Change the name "Horse Racing" to "Bunny Chase" and swap their textures. "Dog fighting? No no.. that's just the players demon pets engaged in PVP". Gambling sites could seriously exploit this same approach by just changing names around, or make it indirect gambling. Kill a monster by tapping the space bar a few times.. oh wow, he just dropped a deck of cards. Let's use this deck of magic cards (that looks just like a poker deck) with some other players in my zone. "The casino isn't running this virtual economy.. it's a PLAYER RUN ECONOMY! See, there's a difference! This is legal!"

* Other than the new waves of gambling addictions, how about the other real world economical or sociological effects? Blizzard has condemned Gold Selling due to the detrimental effects that it has on players. It's a well known fact that RMT is an effective business in developing countries and it encourages exploitation, forced labor, creation of sweat shops, and other what we would call inhumane conditions.

Whether it's a black market or legitimate RMT business, it makes no difference. Sweat shops will still be created no matter who is running the RMT business. By "legitimizing" RMT, however, it makes it easier for more people to participate, potential buyers feel more safe, it creates a system for them to use that guarantees trust and certified sales, and if anything, it makes it much more easy to profit from the exploitation of workers. I wonder what human rights groups would say to a business that first condemns exploitation of workers, and then turns around and supports the activity because they profit from it?

Players from any country can farm on whatever D3 regional server they select, and players would have no idea of what their money is supporting or what was involved in farming that anonymous item that was purchased.

Don't get me wrong..

I'm not anti-RMAH or really pro-RMAH either. What I like about the RMAH is that it's new, exciting, thought provoking, and untested for such a popular franchise. But, I also have no illusions about Blizzards new direction.

I'm most excited about the concept of "illegal online gambling" and if it can be legally applied to Diablo 3. Online gambling is very ambiguous at the moment, and no one has taken the risk of going to court over the issue. Because of this big push into virtual world gambling, we should see some interested things come out of it.

From a morality standpoint, we all know it's gambling, but that doesn't matter because it comes down to what you can prove in court. If it's made legal, so be it; it will open a door to new opportunities for online casino owners. I wonder if they're tracking this new direction at all and understand how it affects them..

The first few months should be really fun, but it probably won't happen the way most players are expecting.

Everyone is talking about selling items, but no one is talking about buying items. Every forum message I see is, "Oh man, I can't wait.. I'll be farming for hours and selling this stuff for cash baby!" like they're truly expecting everything they post will sell. I haven't heard anyone say, "I can't wait to spend all my money to help level up my character!" or "The first thing I'm going to do is buy a new character!"

During the beginning phases, there's going to be an explosion of people selling every item imaginable with impossibly expensive price tags. All of the rookies think they've discovered the holy grail and foolishly believe that no one else will be doing the same thing. The market will be flooded, and no one will be buying because everyone just wants to sell. Blizzard is going to clean up on all of those Listing Fees. Investors will be very happy.

The sad truth is that eventually the casual player isn't going to care as much about making money on the RMAH, they'll give up, and fall in line like everyone else. The RMAH will become a place to visit occasionally and spend money on a couple microtransactions every once in a while. More time will be spent enjoying the game, but it's the select group of professionals who will know how to drive RMAH revenue and they'll be the ones making all the sales.

Problem is, content will be desperately needed to continue driving players to collect loot. What's the point in getting better and better gear, if you already have adequate gear to beat the final difficulty level solo? Players need new content where gear is more valuable, especially in cases like PVP battlegrounds. Introducing more PVP features will increase the need for the better items on the RMAH. And we all know that's where the best gear will come from.

Blizzard should have a very good understanding of their players, especially from all of the lessons learned through World of Warcraft. Increasing PVP features (1v1, 2v2, 10v10 arenas and huge battlegrounds) will significantly increase RMAH sales and also drive up their revenue. Because of the importance of driving revenue, and how directly related PVP is, you should see a TON of PVP features implemented in the future through both patches and expansion packs. Right out of the gate, though, it will be limited.

I do know that large scale battleground combat will eventually be made available. It's their destiny.

Related Posts

Here's a summarized list of the other various Diablo 3 Gambling related posts that I have written. I think they're a very important read, and more people should be aware of what's going on.

How the RMAH can be considered online gambling: [LINK]
Comparison of D3 to other forms of gambling: [LINK]
Another follow up on illegal gambling: [LINK]
How players are forced into using the RMAH: [LINK]

On a related note to that last link, the Listing Fee for the gold auction is currently 15% of the final price. That's a HUGE amount, and definitely a turn off for players who could save a ton of money by paying the Cash Auction House flat fee. Not only will players only be able to obtain the best gear on the RMAH, but the current state of the Gold Auction House is further pushing players into the RMAH.

So far, there's really nothing out there on the net that discusses this important topic. But if I find any thought provoking articles, I'll be sure to post them here.

* Here's an old article from 2005 about gambling in emerging MMORPGs that is relevant today.

[Sept. 24, 2011] Update:

* Here's an interesting read about the South Korean GRB (Game Rating Board) questioning multiple large MMO developers about types of gambling within their games.

Blizzard is not one of them (since they don't have any current in-game cash systems), however NCSoft, Mgame, and Nexon are included in their investigation. Their concern is about "jackpot items", or basically players who have certain or little chance of winning high value items. I wonder if this could be applied to selling high value items with little chance?

* And, here's an older post from the same Korean site about the MCST (Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism) considering regulation about Random Items. It's a very grey area there too, but it's still recognized by many as gambling.

Even the UK Government has been drafting legislation in which auction site owners would need to obtain a gambling license to operate. Certain auction sites would be exempt, but this is for the substantial changes in online auction and gambling systems and still years away from completion.

* Here's a case where two players were charged for buying and selling virtual items in Lineage II. Apparently, they bought a large quantity of items through an online trading site, sold the items in-game, and then resold the virtual gold for a much higher profit. Both users were acquitted as the SK Supreme Court ruled that the money was not gained through random chance or coincidence, but rather that it was strategically bought and sold. This is a very good example proving that Auction Houses can be used to buy and sell items in-game, and it's not gambling as long as there's no random chance or risk involved (in getting the items or buying/selling the items.)

* Imagine a penny auction system within a virtual world for buying items. Many geographies would consider that gambling. Or when you try to sell items, it's through luck, coincidence or random chance.. and each attempt costs you money (risk based.)

* A blog that discusses Korean legislation. Interesting read that's related to the gambling issue.

Alright, so by now you're aware that Diablo 3 has been designed with a new type of client/server security system and with methods of exploit detection.

I've also updated the Unrealized Reality of Diablo 3 post with an example showing what happens to areas that haven't been randomly generated yet, and how model editing (for the purposes of world crafting exploitation) is not possible in Diablo 3. Well.. there is sort of a way to still do it, but it's rather annoying and relies on a certain measure of random generation by the server. Plus, Diablo's Warden system will be checking for file modifications.

Anyways, F&F beta players are discovering that the client is doing a lot of little combat tricks in order to keep the flow of combat and mask latency issues. Unlike WOW, which is more turn based in hit and damage calculations, Diablo 3 seems to be taking some liberties with client side damage calculations. Maybe this is just part of the beta test and things will change when it goes live? Who knows.

There are more details here that help explain.

F&F sources have it that Blizzard are using a new method of client/server communication that provides a secure and tamper-proof method of using the local client to handle its own calculations, while sending the data to the server for verification.

This is really good news for hackers.. it's something different, interesting, and a new challenge with some hefty financial rewards. :)

Even during bad latency, combat damage and related calculations are still being calculated on the client end so combat action and fighting appears seamless (and enemies can die) even with terrible latency.

This means that there's a client element involved, and if there is, it can be manipulated or exploited. For example, injecting swing count or damage numbers in the packet stream to increase DPS.

If I was designing the game, the approach that I would use would be a "forward thinking algorithm" where all of your combat damage is already pre-calculated several steps ahead by the server. This could be very easily done in all MMOs to reduce latency, and it's the approach I would take to improve client speed and response time (it's actually more of an illusionary effect) while simultaneously retaining security of data.

For example, you know how the D3 server streams map data to the client as territory is explored? Well, it could also be streaming (pre)randomly generated combat damage data to the client in preparation for all upcoming damage. Say, for example, 100 hits in advance of the actual combat. Even if your connection is experiencing heavy lag, both the client and server knows what damage and identical outcomes to all future combat will be. This way, the data can't be manipulated locally else it will fail security checks.

If this is true, it might also mean that drops are randomly calculated in advance too. :)

It's very clever, but it opens up some new challenges for Blizzard. For one, it means that future hit data would be pre-cached somewhere in memory (so players could essentially determine future damage and make adjustments to exploit it). Knowing future rolls would also allow a player to "reset" the stream to get better loot, but I doubt they would allow this.

That's if "future data" is actually streamed; no one has investigated this yet to confirm. However, if damage IS calculated by the client without a simultaneous server check (maybe there's one within a set period of time?), then latency hacks to adjust DPS will definitely be possible.

Can't wait until someone digs deeper into the client server packet stream. Maybe that D3 Emulator team might discover the truth during their investigation. :)

Blizzard has just announced that PayPal is their third party vendor for managing the Diablo 3 payment service.

We're pleased to announce that in most regions, PayPal will be our payment-service partner for the Diablo III auction house, allowing players who trade with real-world currency the ability to cash out the spoils of their battle-torn adventures via a PayPal account.

PayPal will also soon be added in several regions as a payment option on Battle.net, providing another convenient and secure payment method for digital purchases of Blizzard products and services.

We’ll share region-related specifics, as well as further details on everything mentioned above, in the near future. Stay tuned!

Let me put on my shocked face.

I had thought it was pretty obvious when the two got into bed together to put other PayPal gold sellers and potential Blizzard competitors out of business. Now you why PayPal was so eager to help out Blizzard.. they must have been in negotiations. :)

This also means that PayPal might be unintentionally engaging in potentially illegal gambling once the Real Money Auction House is live. Should be interesting if the FBI launches a probe like they did in Second Life. I would love to see the matter finally settled on gambling within virtual worlds and Activision Blizzard is just the type of company to create the legal precedent.

I guess this also means that the RMAH will have at minimum 4 cuts now: the Listing Fee cut, the Transaction Fee, the Cash Out cut, and the PayPal Cash Out cut and other miscellaneous fees. There's also the government's cut. All I know is that when the Auction House fees are announced, there are going to be a lot of pissed off users. I suspect that $1 in revenue is quickly going to become a 50 cent profit.

If you are fortunate enough to receive a Diablo 3 beta invite, make sure you support Blizzard as much as possible.

Read quests and lore thoroughly for any spelling mistakes, investigate bugged items or quests, test out all features of the client, try out different drivers and different settings, and simply test everything you can think of.

When you submit reports, keep them clear, concise, and polite.

Providing excellent support now will increase your chances of being invited back for future beta tests. So, be extremely helpful and supportive of Blizzard and don't abuse the privilege of being selected as a beta tester.

Funny how people are completely convinced that since World of Warcraft has been around for 7 years, that there isn't anything left to exploit and all of the holes have been plugged. :)

What's even scarier, though, are the people who believe that "hacks" and "duping" have never happened in WOW. I see these arguments on forums all the time.. and it's very depressing each and very time. (Duping is still a common problem in WOW, and it's going to happen in Diablo 3 too.)

Anyways.. apparently, MMR exploits in World of Warcraft are still around. I don't really follow WOW anymore and I just learned about this by accident. I thought it was worth mentioning..

In fact, I can't remember a time when there HASN'T been a Match Making exploit available in WOW. These types of exploits have been around since Arenas were first launched. More details here on Reddit, and here's a link to the exploit. Users are trying to get as many people to know about the exploit as possible, so that Blizzard will do something about it.

The GCD hack was always my favorite though.

* The big news is that the Beta Opt In rules have suddenly been changed. Previously, it was anyone who owned an Active Battle.net account which required any Blizzard game. Now, it's only anyone with an active World of Warcraft or Starcraft 2 account.

So, for those veteran accounts who have been playing Diablo 2 for 10 years.. they have no chance of getting into the Diablo 3 beta. Starcraft 2 players do, though.

The claim was later refuted, reconfirmed, refuted, reconfirmed, and then refuted again. These were all done by CMs or GMs.. so who really knows what internal rules are really being followed.

I've been told that there are other unofficial rules too.. like unsupported video cards won't make the beta, certain system specs, and "flagged accounts".

What's really interesting about this sudden change in the beta rules, is that it comes 1 week after I wrote about this exact same strategy. I've always known that the blog was monitored by Blizzard, and thankfully Daeity had hooked me up with some tools to track that sort of thing. There's a Blizzard system, for example, that has been "pinging" the blog twice a day at pre programmed intervals for quite a while now. It "watches" front page and new posts only. Just a very strange coincidence that after that blogspot about B.Net accounts, they changed the rules exactly for that situation. :)

* If you're interested in a Diablo 3 Beta "Offline Crack", there's a server emulator in the works. You can get all the information you want here. It's very early stages and something marginally playable is still several weeks away.

* More news from Rockstar, as expected. The release date for Max Payne 3 has been announced.. once that's out of the way, should free up some room for a RDR PC port announcement.

* Blizzard announced 6 games within the next 3 years at the recent Citigroup conference. These games are: Diablo 3, D3 X1, SC2 X2, SC2, X3, WOW X4, and WOW X5. This is all very very old news though and practically everyone already knew all about this. Not sure why this was suddenly "news" on so many gaming sites.

* I was going to add a bunch of stuff about illegal online gambling in this post, but it got so huge that I had to create a brand new post for it. I'll put it up later when it's done.

* I was thinking about writing an article on the "New" Diablo 3 Blackmarket that will emerge. You know, potential changes to the blackmarket now that Blizzard is running their own ingame Cash Auction House.

For example; because RMAH will not be available to Hardcore players, that's one market where items will be available. Because of the rarity and risk involved for farmers, the value of items will be substantially more expensive than Blizzard's RMAH. The size of the Hardcore community is a factor at play here too.

Third party websites will also sell the cheaper items (but in larger volume) with no listing fees. The big seller here won't necessarily be high end gear, but probably items or mats instead.

But, what other kind of stuff? Maybe Hardcore character sales? Maybe even the same stuff sold on the RMAH, but without the listing fee. It all depends on the listing fee, but I'll be pretty disappointed if it's more than $0.20 per item.

I really like the new RMAH, mostly because it's new and different for such a popular franchise, and it creates new forms of competition and tactics in the industry. I'm looking forwards to seeing how the market will evolve, and how Blizzard will combat competitors.

Apparently, I'm going to be very busy over the next little while. :) If I spot anything unusual or interesting, I'll make another update.. but for now there are a lot of D3 videos and streams available for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiCwATxb0a0 (Demonhunter Gameplay)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI4ya75Gig8 (Barbarian Gameplay)
http://www.twitch.tv/day9tv
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nomsayin
http://www.diablounderground.com/diablo-underground-live-stream
http://www.twitch.tv/wigens/b/294468076
http://www.justin.tv/orbitzun4/#/w/1730301568
http://www.twitch.tv/wigens#/w/1730431056
http://www.twitch.tv/crypto137
http://www.justin.tv/fluddastud#/w/1730241232
http://www.livestream.com/pushbuttan

You'd assume that many of them were D2 fans, but judging by their gameplay it's like they've never played an Action RPG before (some, not all). I also haven't seen any "Beta Feedback" menu systems, confirming previous beliefs about it's true purpose. :)

I've also updated a few items on the previous post (Unofficial Diablo 3 Features).

** Okay, so it looks like I won't be as busy as I thought.

I've seen a full play through of the D3 Beta on 3 classes now and it's become very repetitive.

Funny how everything about the beta is now old news to me. People will still be talking about it for the rest of the day and the week.. but if it's over 30 minutes old, then it's old news. :)

Take the D3 DOTA discovery I had made for example. It took at least 4-6 hours before it was even discussed on forums by anyone else (and was still not posted on any gaming news sites), and when I saw it, I thought to myself; wow, that's really old news. A lot of the other stuff in that same "Unofficial Features" post still hasn't made it to the web surprisingly.

This is what the internet has done to me.. if it's 1 hour old, it's really old news, and might as well be from a couple weeks ago.

Anyways, I really have no interest in watching any more videos or streams. I've seen it all now. The beta was a lot shorter than I had imagined and the bosses a little too easy, but overall it looks pretty awesome (I especially enjoyed the voice acting, lore, and audio) and I'm looking forwards to the live retail.

I'm going to create a running list of all of the interesting leaked tidbits extracted from the latest Diablo 3 MPQ. More details here and here if you're not already aware of the latest leak.

A lot of the extracted data is development related too, so you can see a brief view of potential future projects. Most of it will show you monster and boss names, zone names, and all of the player skills and abilities. I'm more interested in neat little things (like what you'll see below).

PVP Game Types

* Cooperative
* "Diablo 3" / Normal
* DotA
* Arena
* Team Deathmatch

It's interesting that they're bringing a DotA style game into Diablo 3. You should see this hitting gaming news sites later today.

Random Features

* Looks like there's a targeting mechanism (toggle key) for selecting the more injured monsters first.
* You can drop your banner for people to see (like an emote) and show off.
* Speaking of /emotes, here's what is available so far: Help, Follow, Give, Thanks, Sorry, Bye, Die, Run, Wait, Go.
* There's a gambling Gheed-like vendor available. This was one thing a lot of people were asking about that Blizzard never confirmed (probably because of the "gambling" and real money implication). Any bets on whether this will be available in the final version?
* You carry a Bestiary and a Lore Book built from all of the random book drops that you can collect throughout the game.
* You can receive notifications when someone is inspecting you. Very useful for World of Warcraft, so don't be surprised if you see that feature added.
* Easy quest selection, just click on the NPC and you can walk away. If you chose to listen, you can stick around though. No more walls of text, and you can jump right into the action. You can also listen (yes, listen not read) to quests or lore items while you're on the go.. a nice little feature borrowed from other FPS/RPGs.
* It appears that leveling up causes a nice little "explosion" effect around you, and for added effect it also causes AOE damage to mobs around you.
* NPCs talk WAY too much when they accompany you (hirelings, quest NPCs, escorts, etc). There is probably an option to turn it off.. or at least, I hope there is.
* When you exit your Campaign Game, you can save your progress and return to it later. In D2, if you started a new game, everything was reset. Would be very cool if you could invite people to your saved game (say you came across a very rare random event.)

Items

* Item Reforging: "Transmutes all properties of a single magic, rare, set or legendary item into an entirely new set of properties. This process permanently reduces the maximum durability of the item by 10% and cannot be used on items with required level 50 or above."
* Your gear can be dyed. Very nice.
* Gear can also be "Undyed" and "Vanished" which apparently makes gear invisible.
* Players can purchase Stash Expansions for extra storage. You can purchase "Slots" and "Tabs".
* Crafting Plans are random drops for making weapons or armor, but there are also a ton that are basically Enchanting Recipes. Many of them look like they're named right out of World of Warcraft, for example "Enhance Gloves: Superior Brawn".
* There are a lot of Crafting Plans for Gemcrafting ("Design: Radiant Round Emerald") as well.
* When loot drops, you can set timers on how long you want the item text to appear. That way, you're not always alt clicking to see loot.
* Quivers can also come with special abilities for your bow (e.g. fire damage arrows, snaring effects, etc.) Will be the same for secondary weapons, like shields too.

Special Events

* There's a spiral event (which most likely takes place in the Hell Spire in Act 4) where you can keeping moving from one level to another, in either a timed event or a difficulty progression. The more you progress, the better reward you receive. Reminds me of some jRPGs.
* Each zone can have random dungeons or timed events that popup. There are randomly appearing caves, ruins, temples, towers, scavenger dens, mines, cellars within structures, puzzles, and NPC vendors. There's also the Pony Carnival event and the "Secret Bovine Wundercave".
* There's a timed "Gateway to Hell" event. Also, one where Diablo is trying to corrupt the Crystal Arch (Act 4). Speaking of which, I see a lot of references to Black Soulstones (aka Worldstone Shards) that have been cut or added to the game frequently.. maybe they have more expansion pack plans for them.

Character Naming

* 1-32 max. characters in size.
* Spaces and no special characters permitted.
* The banned character names list is a good read.

Future Stuff

* Act I, II, III, and IV are mentioned. As well as Act V and Act VI. (Which we already knew they had planned to release within 3 years.)
* Player titles go up to level 100, in 10 level increments. I suppose they could be PVP titles.. but why the specific character levels? There are also "Corruption" titles for those with evil karma.
* The beta client has a Verisign expiration date of 12/05/11, identifying a retail release prior to Christmas 2011. Of course, all of this was already released by Daeity a long time ago. :)

Hirelings and Pets

* Hirelings can learn skills as they level.
* You can summon a friendly creature and roams around and collects gold for you as you travel.

Shrines

* Pretty much any kind of shrine you can imagine is there; the typical elemental resistance, health, and regeneration.
* Also a Luck Shrine, a socketing shrine, even unsocketing, item augmentation, Identify shrines, Remove Curses, +25% Magic and Gold Find, +25% experience, etc.

Blizzcon

* A lot of references to Blizzcon since this was (and will be) the build that players used during Blizzcon.
* There's a hidden "BlizzconPrize" that players can randomly loot with the message: "Congratulations! You just found something so awesome it grants you fame outside the game! Show this item to any Diablo 3 attendant to claim your prize."

Remember when Blizzard said that they were surprised players were so upset about the online only requirement for Diablo 3? The reason they were surprised is because they compared D3 to World of Warcraft and it's "roots are in Battle.net and now with Diablo 3". Diablo 3 was built just like WOW; it was stylized artistically after WOW, borrowed most of it's features and content from WOW, Stories and Quests borrowed from WOW, monster and NPC designs from WOW, boss fights from WOW, etc.

Blizzard thought that players would expect Diablo 3 to be like WOW. (Even though Diablo 1 and 2 could be played offline.)

But then, they were surprised again at the fan rage about Mods not being permitted in Diablo 3. Their reason? "Well, Diablo 2 didn't have mods."

Do you see the broken logic here?

They implement major features from WOW, stylize the game after WOW, COMPARE IT TO WOW and then, when they leave out other WOW features, they "get confused" when users are angry.

World of Warcraft has spoiled many players when it comes to end game content as well. There are just so many options available.. dozens of instances, dozens of raid content and end game bosses, metagames, professions, exploration, achievements, competition, and PVP. It's a massively awesome game with many possibilities.

When it comes to Diablo 3, though, players are in for a bit of surprise. Blizzard has changed the definition of "end game content" for Diablo 3.

When asked about End Game content, Blizzard says that Inferno difficulty is the End Game content.

Jay Wilson: "One of the things we wanted to do was really create an environment for the player at the end of the game. So, what we've decided to do is create a 4th difficulty we call Inferno." [Source]

@Diablo: “Depends on your definition of end game. Max level happens at end of Normal, so probably Hell, if that's what you mean.” [Source]

Basically, you play Normal difficulty, then Nightmare difficulty, and then Hell difficulty to be level capped. Then the "end game content" is just the next difficulty level.

So, from a World of Warcraft perspective, here's a rough example of what your gameplay experience will be like:

* Here are the different regions you can visit, at the end of each region or "instance" there's a major boss fight. (Based on current Beta Client details, I'll update Act list if there are changes in retail.)

Act 1
New Tristram
The Cathedral
Cemetery of the Forsaken
Fields of Misery
Festering Woods
The Highlands
Halls of Agony (Boss)

Act 2
Caldeum Sewers & Palace
Stinging Winds (Alcarunus, Black Canyon Mines, Khasim)
Dahlgur Oasis
Boneyards
Desolute Sands
Archives of Zoltun Kulle (Boss)

Act 3
Bastion Dungeon (Depths of the Keep)
Bastion's Keep
Fields of Slaughter
Arreat Crater (Boss)

Act 4
Gardens of Hope
Hell Portal
Silver Spire
The Crystal Arch (Diablo Boss Fight)

* From Level 1-20, you run 4 instances.
* From 20-40, you run the same 4 instances again.
* From 40-60, you run the same 4 instances all over again.
* When you level cap at 60, you can go back and run those same 4 instances again but the bosses are colored differently (originally red, then purple, then black, and now radioactive green!) and they are harder to kill..
* All of the best loot only comes from the last instance though. So, your end game is running the same boss over and over and over and over.
* You can personally run all end game yourself, a team is not needed to defeat Inferno difficulty and it's completely soloable.
* But wait, there's also another option available at the end game! It's an item selling meta game.

End game content should not be compared to WOW; they're not similar at all. Since Diablo 3 is targeting spoiled (in it's most positive sense, since WOW is such an amazing game) WOW players, I'm wondering if they'll be upset when they realize the lack of options in D3 re playability.. maybe they'll find it extremely boring since there are no options available? And everything can be done solo?

Maybe D3 should have taken the WOW approach, and unlocked multiple new "instances" and "zones" when the user hits the level cap.

For Diablo players, this won't be a problem. They're already used to the Pokemon "Gotta Collect 'Em All" item game. But for WOW vets, it will be an odd gaming experience to jump back into.

Difficulty levels also should never be used to artificially increase the length of a game. It should only be reserved for more difficult and challenging adventures, with better rewards because of the risk involved, but that's it.

If Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes 30 hours for a full play through, it shouldn't be advertised as a "90 hour RPG" because there are 3 difficulty levels available.

This might be a little late with the Diablo 3 beta starting soon, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

If you're not a Blizzard Employee, a Friend & Family member, or have any inside connections, but you desperately want to increase your chances of winning a Diablo 3 Beta invite, I have couple suggestions.

Most of the guides out there suggest that you join a top end guild, have a high end gaming PC, or get in good with a Blizzard employee. If you're a past beta tester, chances are also higher for you to be invited back too.

Now, in order to opt-in to the Beta Invite, you need an active Battle.net account with any Blizzard game title attached to it. Then, "Beta testers are chosen according to their system specifications and other factors, including an element of luck."

You can't just create hundreds of B.Net accounts and create Free Starter packs to opt-in, unfortunately, it has to be a full version game attached.

Here are my suggestions;

* Use your classic games. If you're lucky and still have Diablo 2, WC3, or Starcraft CD keys (or any expansion packs) lying around that haven't been registered to your main B.Net account, simply create new B.Net account names (register them to your family members if you want) and use each of those CD-Keys individually for each B.Net account. If you have WoW, D2, D2:LOD, WC3, SC, and SC:BW you can have 6 Active B.Net accounts that are all eligible for the beta.

* If you're more desperate, and have the cash, all of the classic games can be obtained from pawnshops, EBay, Amazon, etc. for $3-10 per game.

* Check with friends or family members with old CD-Keys that they don't use anymore. All you need is the CD-Key to register it to your B.Net account. You never know who out there hasn't played the game for years, but still have the CD case or box lying around.

* Even if you only have 3 CD-Keys.. at least you're 3 times closer to win than before. :)

* Blizzard can replace a lost CD-Key, if you turn in your CD case or manual as a replacement. However, there's a fee of $10 which is typically more expensive than what you can buy it for elsewhere.

* If you don't have the money, but have the time, you could attempt random CD-Key generators. This is rather insidious, but it is possible to generate random CD-Keys that can be authenticated on B.Net. They're extremely rare and will take a lot of time, but if you don't mind the risk, it's a viable option. This link, for example, generates Starcraft CD-Keys which are the most simple to create and authenticate. I'm not sure if it's randomly generated on the backend though, or displayed from a pre-made list. I tried a couple dozen, and ended up with 3 that were legit however they were claimed and in use by other users. Diablo 2 CD-Key generators also work, but are more difficult to get a real B.Net key. Just make sure you create a new B.Net account, a new email address, and do this through an anonymous VPN service.

* You don't want a high end gaming PC, if anything, submit system specifications for an average gaming PC. Blizzard wants to reach the widest audience possible, and the most invitations will be sent for average PC builds.

* Network and make friends with players with B.Net accounts (e.g. your guild mates). Convince them to opt-in. Many beta winners won't have time to play (too busy with school) and will offer the beta key (no "keys" for D3 Beta AFAIK, instead the account is flagged) or share their B.Net account.

It's called a beta, but it isn't so much a beta as it is a demo. There will be very little change between the D3 "beta" and the retail release. Just like WOTLK and Cataclysm. It's more of a stress test on their new servers and authentication systems. The D3 beta is supposed to be much shorter than previous Blizzard betas as well.. so, just hang on there and I hope this information helps out some of you that forget about your classic games and unregistered expansion packs. :)