Blizzard's Battle.net Hacked; Company Recommends All Users Change Their Passwords

[0098386]

And why do we always have to be "online" even when not doing anything multiplayer-related? Why doesn't Blizzard (or others such as Steam) explain that to us?

Ah, the good ol' days of true offline independence...

It's rather simple (and Valve have explained in the past);

Load Steam up.
It automatically creates a digital thumbprint.
You can then play offline.

Change hardware, want to buy something new, want to play online - connect to the internet and go online.

It's not a problem at all. It doesn't even need a fast connection to create a thumbprint. You can log on using a mobile data connection for a second and you're done.

Lastly if an internet connection is important and you don't have one where you live, you should probably look into moving or live in a place of such poverty that games should be the last thing you need to worry about.

 

[NedBookPro]

And why do we always have to be "online" even when not doing anything multiplayer-related? Why doesn't Blizzard (or others such as Steam) explain that to us?

Ah, the good ol' days of true offline independence...

It's most likely to help with anti-piracy.
It's not necessarily a bad thing, and you could understand why a gaming house would do that. It's not a big deal to have to be on line.

At least with DIII there are no ongoing monthly fees and by all accounts the game is quite good.

Shame about the hack. Seems to be more and more these days. Time to batten down the hatches.

 

[littyboy]

Diablo 3? Who? What? People still play that? lol.

 

[Rodster]

They should have included an offline code to play D3 offline. I refuse to buy that game just for the DRM. I'll wait for Torchlight 2 instead which supposedly will cost $20.

 

[Rajani Isa]

Eat that, blizzard for not letting us play single Diablo III offline. What the heck with privacy these days?

If people want to cheat and exploit single player session, so be it. They shelled out $60 just for the purpose, remember? So, aren't they supposed to like ... own the game?

While the real money auction house combined with the fact that your characters are not only single player/offline or Multi-player/onine is a big reason for D3 being constant-online, it's not the only one.

If someone could explain to me why StarCraft 2 requires a constant internet connection though, I'd appreciate that... other than achievements, nothing transfers with you from single player to multiplayer, does it? I don't know about custom games, I only ever play ladder.

DRM. It's their way of trying to prevent piracy.

Except its incredibly easy for them to trace down the people responsible through the bank accounts used.

Even if the accounts used where stolen/created with false ID, and then emptied into some form of easily hidden cash?

 

[Hawkeye411]

Holy crap this is huge!! This is a nightmare for Blizzard and I certainly hope this never happens for my company

 

[iEvolution]

This hacking BS is getting ridiculous and I think its time to hold these companies accountable for lackluster security.

I know some of these companies are using outdated hardware/software with no recent patches applied because they are tight wads and don't want to spend the money or deal with any possible bug that may come with the updates.

I understand that someone will always be one step ahead of the game but I really believe that most of these security breaches are from lack of updates, inside jobs and/or poor security management, not zero day exploits. At least two of these can be fixed (security management and updates).

I love how Blizzard's focus on piracy is actually screwing with the genuine customers more than it is with the software pirates. Really shows where their focus is at.

 

[ncaissie]

You don't understand what a MMORPG is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_game

Sure remove the Massively multiplayer Online part and you back with RPG

Sorry but that is a load of crap. I have been playing for months and haven't yet wanted or needed to play with other people. I like playing on my own. There is no reason i shouldn't be able to play offline when playing single player. The game is not ALL MMO.

 

[Truffy]

I hope hackers destroy blizzard.

Would you care to back that up with some attempt at reasoning, or are you just jerking off?

 

[ncaissie]

As far as why Diablo 3 requires a constant internet connection, even when playing single player: it's to prevent cheating. Because you use the same characters/items both in single player and on Battle.net, it's possible to indirectly cheat online by giving your character some crazy boosts in single player, and then taking him online in multiplayer. What's worse is they have the auction house, where real money is used in transactions. If you were permitted to cheat in single player, you could cause insanely good items to drop on your character, and then go online to the auction house and sell them for sad (stupidly high) amounts of money.

That’s no excuse. They cheat anyway, so to punish the legitimate people for the idiots is just stupid. They simply need to ban the idiots who modify the code or games data files.

 

[Mad-B-One]

That’s no excuse. They cheat anyway, so to punish the legitimate people for the idiots is just stupid. They simply need to ban the idiots who modify the code or games data files.

You don't have to. You just look for exploits due to faulty code. Diablo 3 economy took a fatal blow when Blizzard did not look into how people got their items they offered at the auction house: You could make your mage invincible and just run and pull everything and bomb it away - for about two or 3 months. These people still play, the items still exist and there is no plan on changing this. The rages in the forums about Blizzard not even reacting to suggestions - especially the inbalanced random bosses....

 

[koban4max]

Would you care to back that up with some attempt at reasoning, or are you just jerking off?

just hate how blizzard is restricting lot of stuff, such as level range restriction. Just another day, a friend had to go to lvl 50 just to get NM mode.
Nerfing skills/items/
for more info. read forum at D3.

 

[ncaissie]

You don't have to. You just look for exploits due to faulty code. Diablo 3 economy took a fatal blow when Blizzard did not look into how people got their items they offered at the auction house: You could make your mage invincible and just run and pull everything and bomb it away - for about two or 3 months. These people still play, the items still exist and there is no plan on changing this. The rages in the forums about Blizzard not even reacting to suggestions - especially the inbalanced random bosses....

Thanks
I don’t believe the auction house should even be there.
It should be a trading post. How do you make your mage invincible?
Cheating is why I prefer to play offline. The same goes for the call of duty and all of the consol games. It sucks.

 

[prezasti]

Lastly if an internet connection is important and you don't have one where you live, you should probably look into moving or live in a place of such poverty that games should be the last thing you need to worry about.

Unfortunately there are many places that still don't have proper technologies in place being provided for a good internet connection, yet they are the best places to live. I have seen slums in major cities that have Fiber connections available if you can afford them.

There are places in the area I live that don't have Hi-Speed internet and these are the most expensive/beautiful places to live. I wouldn't want to move to a crapy city location if I owned one of the homes in these locations just to get better internet and the people that live in these homes don't know what the word poverty means.

So, just because someones internet is crappy, doesn't mean they live in a place of poverty.

 

[Dustman]

Like i never thought about this.

But its actually scary to leave electronic footprints with all the hacking going on these days.

Sony, blizzard, and many many others.

I want to a delete all button on the internett for my info

Wouldn't that be nice. I often think the same thing. Not in like a foil hat kinda way, but 20 years ago all the average stalker had to go on was a phone book. That made me feel safer somehow lol

 

[Mad-B-One]

Thanks
I don’t believe the auction house should even be there.
It should be a trading post. How do you make your mage invincible?
Cheating is why I prefer to play offline. The same goes for the call of duty and all of the consol games. It sucks.

There were two casts a Mage could do in quick succession which triggered a bug. I believe it was a teleport and some sort of mana shield. Both Mana and Life did not go down after this. It's fixed accoding to the hotfix notes. I never played a mage beyond level 5. But if you look at youtube, you will probably find something.

 

[antonis]

Besides the D3 economy that is ruined, game suffers deep core design bugs and it will take a long time and many patches for these to be ironed out - if ever. Class balancing is nowhere to be seen and I am sure this is the main reason the PvP is not released. Just think what will happen when the X class one-shots the Y class without the latter being able to even react, no matter the gear equipped. Somehow, as the game is right now, it punishes the melee classes. 8/10 of the elite affixes are almost exclusively effective against melee classes only.

Itemization is seriously damaged. Most items that drop in Inferno difficulty are useful only for the previous difficulty level which makes no sense and forces you to use AH - but then again this is no solution because of the broken economy.

Just imagine this: in order to play at the top difficulty level (inferno) you have to reach level 60 (that's the max level). Still, at inferno levels, there are still shrines that give you...25% more experience. What for ?

It's a common knowledge now that Blizzard took the down path by the time it joined with Activision as the games publisher. Unfinished and bad designed products rushed out before they are complete was not something we got used to see from blizzard before. I guess this down-path affects the security infrastructure as well.

Blizzard used to make money through the quality of the products they were producing. Now their strategy (Activision's strategy ? ) has changed. It's all about money only.

 

[cerote]

Just imagine this: in order to play at the top difficulty level (inferno) you have to reach level 60 (that's the max level). Still, at inferno levels, there are still shrines that give you...25% more experience. What for ?

I have yet to see an xp shrine in inferno.

 

[macingman]

Lastly if an internet connection is important and you don't have one where you live, you should probably look into moving or live in a place of such poverty that games should be the last thing you need to worry about.

That's a ridiculous thing to say, many people don't have an option to move. There are places where broadband isn't availible even in "1st world" countries.

 

[antonis]

I have yet to see an xp shrine in inferno.

Well, I run into one in act 4 inferno 2 days ago. Not to mention the "reduced level" stat in items dropping from whole inferno. It's a mess right now.

 

[0098386]

That's a ridiculous thing to say, many people don't have an option to move. There are places where broadband isn't availible even in "1st world" countries.

Absolutely. So don't live in those places and complain about the wrong things.

If I lived in an area with no internet at all (Steam just requires you to log in once), then I'm not going to bother buying games via digital distribution, now am I?
If I lived in an area of such abjet poverty that there wasn't a connection, the last thing on my mind would be £30 games.
If you didn't have a good regular connection and wanted a faster solution (which Steam doesn't) - you've got satellite broadband.

Just change the subject of the argument a little - I hate iTunes because I have a bad Internet connection and can't download music. Sounds silly doesn't it?

 

[antonis]

Absolutely. So don't live in those places and complain about the wrong things.

If I lived in an area with no internet at all (Steam just requires you to log in once), then I'm not going to bother buying games via digital distribution, now am I?
If I lived in an area of such abjet poverty that there wasn't a connection, the last thing on my mind would be £30 games.
If you didn't have a good regular connection and wanted a faster solution (which Steam doesn't) - you've got satellite broadband.

Just change the subject of the argument a little - I hate iTunes because I have a bad Internet connection and can't download music. Sounds silly doesn't it?

The problem was never about the lack of internet connection.

I'm sorry but you are making arguments by twisting the facts here. Nobody expects to download music or connect to an online store without being forced to use the internet. But Diablo 3 is not an online store, it is a single player game with the option of co-operation. Blizzard's official statistics showed that the vast majority of people still prefer playing D3 solo. It used to have an offline mode and it should keep that option. It also used to have the option of playing in an intranet network (aka lan parties) and it should also keep that option.

All these options are now gone from Diablo 3 for the sake of DRM anti-piracy (which is not end-user's problem) and the sake of Blizzard's profit from the auction houses (which is also not end-user's problem). So, this is the reason of the complaints. You don't have to take my word for it, just check how all the game mechanics force you to use the auction houses.

I will not even go further to list the gameplay downsides that have risen by the online-only option. There is plenty of analysis on that in the D3 forums. So, as it is now, they are forcing players to be constantly online in order to play a single-player game.

Now, that is silly.

 

[macingman]

The problem was never about the lack of internet connection.

I'm sorry but you are making arguments by twisting the facts here. Nobody expects to download music or connect to an online store without being forced to use the internet. But Diablo 3 is not an online store, it is a single player game with the option of co-operation. Blizzard's official statistics showed that the vast majority of people still prefer playing D3 solo. It used to have an offline mode and it should keep that option. It also used to have the option of playing in an intranet network (aka lan parties) and it should also keep that option.

All these options are now gone from Diablo 3 for the sake of DRM anti-piracy (which is not end-user's problem) and the sake of Blizzard's profit from the auction houses (which is also not end-user's problem). So, this is the reason of the complaints. You don't have to take my word for it, just check how all the game mechanics force you to use the auction houses.

I will not even go further to list the gameplay downsides that have risen by the online-only option. There is plenty of analysis on that in the D3 forums. So, as it is now, they are forcing players to be constantly online in order to play a single-player game.

Now, that is silly.

Not that silly. The ****tards that pirate games are the ones that forced this. Because blizzard needs to check each and every time someone plays they are running the game legally is the reason that the majority of good honest gamers can't play like they used to.

----------

Holy crap this is huge!! This is a nightmare for Blizzard and I certainly hope this never happens for my company

Meh, companies are hacked all the time.

 

[antonis]

Not that silly. The ****tards that pirate games are the ones that forced this. Because blizzard needs to check each and every time someone plays they are running the game legally is the reason that the majority of good honest gamers can't play like they used to.

Nah, piracy is a common problem for every game maker. As I said, that's a Blizzard's problem and they should find a way of solving it without punishing the legal gamers. Heck, if piracy was their concern, they could at least offer a "online once, offline play" option like steam does. But no, they made D3 online only because of greed. They are trying to milk every single coin they can out of this game series, and the way to do it is called auction house - but this only works in online mode.

 

[MH01]

Sorry but that is a load of crap. I have been playing for months and haven't yet wanted or needed to play with other people. I like playing on my own. There is no reason i shouldn't be able to play offline when playing single player. The game is not ALL MMO.

If your talking about wow, yeah it is! dumb concept to play offline, where you get all the resources of the world to yourself, think about it! Not to mention the game is all about end game raiding or PVP. but hey, whatever you get out of it.