Battle.net, WoW, Diablo IV affected by DDoS attack | Hacker News Reader

Battle.net, WoW, Diablo IV affected by DDoS attack

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For all the coverage of DDoS attacks it always raises the question of "why"?

Is blizzards reputation bad enough that people are willing to pay just to harm them? Is someone protesting a ban? Is it an attempt at ransom? Etc etc. These are questions i don't know the answer to.

Happens every other week, doesn’t it?

I loved these games. But the community around them is so utterly toxic now. Maybe it always was. But it didn’t feel so seedy to me back in the day.

Blizzard doesn’t seem to care about cheaters anymore, and doesn’t do any sort of community standards enforcement... you used to get banned for saying racist or homophobic things, or selling stuff for real money. There doesn’t seem to be any moderation any more.

Blizzard even added the ability to pay them for gold now, even in WoW Classic. So... it just feels gross. Monetized and gross. You buy gold, from Blizzard or non-Blizzard sellers, and then you pay incels to run you through dungeons to get gear. No need to make friends, or treat people like people. You can just (indirectly) pay to win.

That's just not the game I loved. And the fact that people all just sort of accept the way it is makes it hard for me to enjoy these games now.

IME it's the opposite, where you could say anything and would never get banned unless you met some manual review threshold. You can be reported by a small group and receive an automated 24hr (increased if recurring) mute regardless of content. This led me to stop talking at all in these games.

Can you elaborate on cheaters? What kind of cheaters? Actual honest-to-god manipulating memory and getting some advantage? Or do you mean someone abusing an exploit?

RMT is a tricky subject and hard to get right. Even in Diablo 4, on release if you just traded a 'fair' amount of gold (~30million) you would get an automated ban. I wouldn't call this not caring.

Have they deleted anyone's account for buying gold recently in Classic WoW?

Go join a PUG raid and the first thing they do on the Discord is offer to sell you gold so you can buy gear in the raid. It's all just GDKPs now.

Rather than enforce the rules... ever... they just made it so you could buy gold directly from Blizzard now too.

And there are still a billion bots endlessly farming dungeons in the game. Still a bunch of people running auto-hot-key scripts (or outright rotation bots) so they can parse. Check the AH, you'll see impossible amounts of fish and ore and herbs all being sold by the same characters...

Why should they intervene in RMT? If you want to buy gold that's fine, if not that's good, it's none of your business if someone else does.

Also there are guilds that don't use GDKP, of course all pugs do it. You can also assemble your own raid and charge as much as you want and reserve everything you like. That's the good part of assembling a raid. The bad part is... everything else.

Because the game should be separate form my real life.

If I can just swipe my credit card to win... it takes the joy out of it for me. I can do that in real life enough already. We aren't talking about "a lot" of money to your average adult. It's not impressive for someone to spend a few hundred bucks -- but it really is impressive if someone earns 300k gold all by themselves in the game.

I don't want to play a game where paying real money is even an option. What you have in the game should represent your skill, talent, knowledge, and social skills / communication skills. Not your willingness to spend real money on a video game.

Back when the game was real, I didn't know anyone who bought gold. I'm sure they existed. But in Classic, the very first PUG I joined sent a link to a Discord where they were like, "Hey buy gold, everyone is doing it!" And it just felt perverted to me. I get a lot of gaming is based on real money now... and that's a huge reason I don't play many video games any more.

You talk about the community being toxic and then you say people running dungeons for gold are incels. I think the community is better without you.

I'll give you an example...

I had played the game for like an hour... and someone had a guild name of like, "Sixteen is Legal in TN" or something to that extent. And it's all just super cringy. That to me is a sign the person behind that character hasn't spent much time around women.

> or selling stuff for real money

Gold sellers were spamming Trade and LFG when i played WoW back in 2005

I really enjoyed playing the original Everquest for a while, then followed friends over to WoW. I was definitely impressed by the game and the world in WoW, but within about a year I could see how "MMO economics" would become a dominant force in that style of game.

I bailed and never looked back, and nothing in the intervening years has changed my mind about the fundamental issues with that sort of game. Pay to play is just so dull and predatory.

What I don't understand is how, all these years later, they can spam the same message from the same accounts thousands of times before they are caught. They are using such exotic techniques like putting spaces between the letters in the url. It amazes me how little effort has been put into stopping these things over the decades now. One can only assume it's not considered a problem to them.

Paying 3rd parties for gold, items, or xp was a Diablo 2 thing. They specifically designed Diablo 4 to make this hard to impossible.

You can't trade legendary items. They're account bound. And if you're trading lots of gold you get banned.

It was even a D3 thing already, remember the RMAH ? The main reason why (almost) all ActiBlizz games are online only is to make cheating harder. (They are particularly victims of their own success here, less popular games have it easier.

> I loved these games. But the community around them is so utterly toxic now.

A good number of my friends play Final Fantasy XVI, and something that surprised the heck out of me is how friendly the community is. The moderation team of the game is quite active in muting problem players, and the community seems to have come to the consensus that acting like a toxic WoW player is frowned upon. They still run into them occasionally, but they're outnumbered.

because game is hollow.

That's really good to hear.

I am hopeful that, when I'm old, I can be in the nursing home raiding ZG like it's 2005 again!

I think Classic WoW was sort of like "New Coke" in that it wasn't at all the game as I remembered it. It was more the "Private Server" version, where everyone min/maxed the fun right out the door... and (because I'm old now) I didn't understand what all the "GOAT Chads" were saying. And various Discords were all just alt-right Trump Frog memes and I lost interest in that fast. There's like a generational lingo that I just wasn't part of.

Since Blizzard closed WoW in China, I found https://www.azerothcore.org/. They have a simple docker setup tutorial. I’ve been playing for a month and it’s been very interesting because they only support the English client. I’ve also learned a lot of English and currently feel great exploring the whole world alone.

For what's a pretty complex project, it would have been great if more of the community could have settled on a single project, rather than having to have mangos/trinity/sunwell/azeroth =/

I don't recall DDoS attacks breaking single player games in the past. In the past you could DoS yourself by disconnecting from the internet and your single player game kept working. #gasp

Neither of those are single player games so I'm not sure what your point is.

Why are people downvoting this? Both WoW and D4 are multiplayer games. The dungeons are instanced in D4 but the overworld is always played with other players.

And the stuff you find/earn in single player mode is the stuff you use in PvP mode. So yeah, definitely multiplayer, they need to control mods/hacks.

This isn’t a case of Sim City 4.

Diablo 4 has no legitimate reason to be a multiplayer game, its primary reason for being "always online" is to enable the microtransaction economy.

Why is the microtransaction economy illegitimate? I’m not a fan of Blizzard and I have no interest in playing Diablo IV (or any of their other recent games) but I fail to see your point.

Diablo IV players want the microtransaction economy. They hated the cheating in Diablo I & II. They want to know that items they purchase from other players are legitimate. They want to be able to participate in PvP without worrying about other players cheating to get the best items.

You can implement those features and keep an offline-capable single player mode. Just allow characters to be offline-only at the time of character creation. I've never been interested in the online parts of Diablo, and I've skipped this game because of that.

I mean that’s fair. It’s one of the reasons I’m not interested in Blizzard games either. But I don’t think it’s illegitimate. I think it’s partly an anti-piracy measure and partly supportive of their microtransaction model for monetizing their games.

Diablo II had two ways of playing online - Open BNet and Closed BNet. Open BNet allowed you to use your offline characters, but Closed BNet did not.

The theory of the system was sound. The practical reason why Diablo II was a mess was because the game was buggy and trusted the client too much, making "Closed BNet" turn out to be not so closed after all. There is no technical reason why Diablo IV couldn't have been designed with the same two-tier system, they _chose_ not to do so.

Microtransactions are added to games to pad the pockets of their shareholders, not because they contribute to the experience of the game. This makes it an illegitimate reason to stay "always online". It's something that simply should not be a part the game. Monetization can be solved in many different ways, microtransactions are always just corporate greed.

>Diablo IV players want the microtransaction economy. They hated the cheating in Diablo I & II.

Some* Diablo IV players want the microtransaction economy.

If you have some study to prove that it was a majority of players or even a significant number of them, that simply sounds unlikely to me. My anecdotal experience is that I know of noone that appreciates the addition of microtransactions to games, even games that by their nature must be online.

Diablo IV is the fastest selling game in Blizzard history. So if microtransactions are a deal-breaker for players, I don’t see the evidence of that. I don’t care for microtransactions and I don’t care to play the game, but they are a legitimate way to make money and lots of players are fine with them.

I’m sure lots of people would be happy (and prefer) for the game to be free, but that doesn’t make charging a retail price illegitimate, despite the cost contributing nothing to the gameplay. I fail to see how this reasoning does not extend to microtransactions, which are merely smaller prices charged for content through an in-game (rather than retail) store.

I never stated that microtransactions are deal-breakers, I said they are an illegitimate reason for a game to be "always online". I've never said that charging retail prices for games is illegitimate, I infact said there are many ways to solve monetization, one of which certainly is retail pricetags.

I could've made a rant about how microtransactions are bad for the industry, consumers and the developers in different ways, but since you mostly just misrepresented what I said, I don't feel like it.

> Diablo IV is the fastest selling game in Blizzard history.

That alone is not an argument. If you release a new game that's exactly just as fun as your previous game, you'll still hit "fastest selling game" and "most copies sold" records in your studio's history - this is a consequence of the economic and population growth in general, and in particular growth of the player population.

Do you not play with friends? Do you not engage in world events? Do you not engage in random skirmishes? Do you not find it fun when you're working on a question and it turns out there's someone else working on the same quest and so you roam and fight the mobs they're fighting, too?

I've had many, many fun, multiplayer interactions in D4 that have absolutely enhanced my experience playing it.

I have many negative things to say about Diablo 4; but, it being multiplayer - even it being massively-ish multiplayer - especially after playing it for a couple weeks, is not one of them.

Yeah, I was extremely skeptical of the "forced MMO" aspect and almost didn't get the game because of it, but now I think it's one of the best parts of the game.

I love how it's not in the way and feels natural.

This isn't about online/multiplayer being an option. It's about that being mandatory. Today's DDoS brought the game down even for people who had absolutely no interest or intention to do any of the things you mention, at that time. 100% degradation instead of some lower percentage if online had been optional. Unless you want to argue that there are (or should be) no people who play games alone, your response is a bit of a red herring. Phrasing your statements as pseudo-rhetorical questions, as though the "right" answers should be obvious, is even a bit insulting.

Would you say the same thing about WoW? Most people play solo but no-no would expect it to work offline. If Diablo 4 would be released as a new title with no expectations I don't think anyone would question the always online aspect. It's a new and integral part of the experience.

> Would you say the same thing about WoW?

No. WoW has always been an MMORPG. Playing "solo" still means you're in the world with other players. That has not been the case with Diablo before.

> It's a new and integral part of the experience.

New (i.e. different than the rest of the franchise) and integral is an inherently bad combination. New and optional would be fine. If they want to make a completely new game with no expectations, then they shouldn't be reusing a name that necessarily carries expectations. What they've done is close to a bait and switch, and that's why people are pissed off.

  * Every Final Fantasy for a long time had a different battle system.
    - single-job characters, a jobs system, materia, guardian forces,
      the weird tree thing from 10, the clothing system from 10-2,
      the multi-crystal system from 13. Constant change!

  * Every Diablo game thus far has had an entirely different skill tree style.
    Heck, Diablo 2 and Diablo 2 v1.10 had meaningful changes to the skill tree.
    Diablo 3 is a world different from D2 wrt the skill tree. The skill tree
    in these games is a *major* part of the game experience and it has been
    completely rewritten. I haven't played D1 in foreever, but I'm pretty sure
    it handled all of this very, very differently, too!

New and integral is fine.

> That has not been the case with Diablo before.

But it is the case now. You could say the same thing about any change or new feature in D4 but you draw the line at your own subjective opinion of what a true Diablo game is.

There's nothing subjective about the difference between a game that can run fine offline and a game that becomes unusable when the servers are slow. No engineer would say that. It is perhaps a bit more arguable whether a change in genre is subjective, but I still think the answer is no. There's no comparison between those and something like skill-tree changes which are common, expected, and even somewhat necessary for a series to progress. That's a ridiculous analogy. I get it that some people want to turn Diablo into WoW, but please don't make up insane arguments for your subjective preference.

You still haven't given me one objective argument as to why introducing MMO elements breaks the universal definition of Diablo. You saying it's ridiculous doesn't invalidate the analogy.

Also Internet connection issues playing Hardcore that can't be solved by playing offline any more.

Because both GP and GGP were being sarcastic

You have a curious definition of "always" here...

As someone who did NOT want to play MP the first time through the game, it's not an issue. (I got the impression that brand new areas start with other players disabled until you pass some quest threshold ?)

Still maybe interesting point: in the past it was feature that your game kept running after your disconnect and you were able to continue on reconnect.

Now if you disconnect in Diablo 4, dungeons reset and everything related to your character in the world resets.

Probably, because they dynamically assign you to some world instance. And do not want to add load to servers if someone is not logging back.

No, it's because they don't trust your game client to be authoritative on the physics of the game, even in a single-player instanced dungeon. Your game client is synchronized to a server that is also running the physics, and the server's version of reality wins. This prevents cheating/modding. Which they care about, because anything you can cheat to give yourself, they can't sell you through microtransactions.

But what is preventing forcing of physics synchronization to the client on reconnect?

It should be possible.

The synchronization is one way only. The server sends the authoritative world state to your client. Your client only sends your inputs to the server, not the results of those inputs, and the server validates your inputs by running them through the game engine. Modifying your local copy of the simulation will just desynchronize you from the server, forcing a resync.

Yes, my point was indeed that why client cannot load server world again? E.g. state of the dropped items, killed monsters etc.

As it just provides input for the world, this should not be a technical challenge, or is it?

Not input for the world. Keyboard and mouse (or controller) input. This is an impossible challenge without gaining control over the server directly.

Hmm, yet D4 is way too fast and responsive-feeling of a game to run the way you suggest it does ?

I don't think this is some insurmountable technical challenge, just a design decision.

Many MMOs have persistent mobs and dungeons even if a player disconnects. PoE will keep your instances open for at least 15 min of inactivity, for example, so you can leave and come back if you need to. Keeping an extra instance open for a few more minutes isn't a big deal.

Even in D4, the world doesn't reset if you disconnect (like if and you a bunch of strangers are doing a world boss or world event). Maybe solo dungeons would, not sure. But in general it's not a big deal for a game like D4. If it resets you just go back in. Not like they take more than 10-20 min anyway. If you die you just respawn (unless you're in hardcore).

It's probably not a resource constraint, just a missing quality of life feature in D4 like so many other little details they neglects. For a game that took a decade to release, it sure feels incomplete and rushed.

> But in general it's not a big deal for a game like D4. If it resets you just go back in. Not like they take more than 10-20 min anyway. If you die you just respawn (unless you're in hardcore).

It is a big deal because D4 is bringing PoE like maps with Nightmare dungeons. If you disconnect, it disappears. Dungeons can have rolls and high level ones are somewhat expensive.

Ah, I didn't know that. Hope they add reconnect recovery then. And a lot of other QoL things.

And Diablo 2 was riddled with cheaters and duplicated items, which ruined the online game for all.

It's just not a viable option in 2023, with modern expectations from players.

Escape from Tarkov was put in the spotlight a few months ago because some Youtuber investigated rampant cheating, and it literally killed the game pretty much instantly.

In a day and age where internet is considered as a basic commodity, there's no reason to open the door to cheaters for rarely needed convenience.

Sounds like an issue only for extremely popular games, and maybe some genres attracting the worst kind of players ?

The wasted potential for when D3,4 (and even D2R) servers shut down, and even shortly after release because of no modding is just sad.

I suspect they're talking about the always-online requirement for DIV's single player mode, surely you already know that however.

There is no single player mode. It's not because you can play alone that it's a single player game.

There is no "single player mode". You will be playing with others in the overworld whether you want to or not.

Blizzard has forced multiplayer on everyone. It's not essential for the core gameplay. This is the root issue

Crossing Fingers MS does buy them.

So that compatibility with Wine for all games is broken?

I don't know that it would help with this specific issue, DDoS protection isn't exactly a MS core competence.

For example Outlook 365 and the Azure portal were down for extended amounts of time just a couple of weeks ago due to DDoS attacks. (MS pretended for a week it was just random things like rollouts going wrong, and then admitted it was actually due to DDoS late Friday night before a long US weekend.)

It was just in general. Blizzard has a lot of problems in general. So this was just one more straw on the camel. I wasn't trying to compare DDoS statistics between the companies. We can point to all of the big companies and they have had outages, so don't think on a whole MS is worse. But a couple weeks ago my MS Outlook was not down, so I didn't see that effect. With all of these metrics, they can be localized, so hard to track.

Fair enough; I thought you were commenting specifically on the acquisition helping with DDoS attacks, rather than solving other problems that Activision/Blizzard has.

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