D3's new SCROLL OF RESURRECTION

[Pappy13]

If you own a copy of D3 already, I have just sent you a BRAND NEW D3 SCROLL OF RESURRECTION!! So what do you get with this scroll? Glad you asked because you get ALL OF THE FOLLOWING!!!
 
1) Come back and play D3 for as long as you like and NEVER have to pay a cent again! That's right, this SOR lasts FOREVER, not a measly month like some other Blizzard games which will remain namless. You can keep on playing for as long as you want and you will NEVER be asked to pay ANYTHING!!!!
 
2) Not only does it cost you NOTHING to play with D3's SOR, but you get all the benefits as well including new patches when they come out with new gear, new skills and abilities, etc, etc, etc! If you haven't played in a while, come back and find out about all of D3's exciting new features that have been added like....
 
3) The new Monster Power feature where you can set your own difficulty curve just how you like it. The game not challenging enough for you? Bump up the Monster Power and give the game a difficulty curve increase! Not only will the game be harder to play, but by bumping up the difficulty setting you will in turn increase your chances of getting better gear and you will receive more gold drops from mobs when you dispatch them! Can you do this in that other Blizzard game that will remain nameless? NO!!! And what if the game is too hard? Well Blizzard has thought of that too, the default MP has been lowered so that even you people with Carpel Tunnel will find it easier then EVER to play!!!! Woo Hoo!!!!
 
4) Wondering what to do when you hit max level? Check out Paragon Leveling!!! Once you hit max lvl in D3, you don't stop gaining XP like you do in that other Blizzard game that will remain nameless, no you continue to gain XP and will gain Paragon Levels instead of character levels. Paragon levels ALSO increase your chances of getting better gear and increases the amount of gold that drops!!! So there will ALWAYS been another level to get and incentives for getting that level too!!!!

5) Looking to release a little pent up hostility on the gaming community? Try the new PvP!!! That's right you can now pummell your friends and enemies into small bits of flesh and bones!! And if you happen to get pummelled, well don't worry you can get right back up and get back into EVEN IN HARDCORE MODE!!!
 
6) 2 different types of Auction Houses!!! That's right, D3 doesn't come with just 1 AH like that other Blizzard game which remain nameless, no there are 2 of them and you can choose which you prefer!!! There's 1 AH that uses in-game gold so that it won't ever cost you a cent to purchase items, but if you don't mind spending a little bit of cash, the Real Money AH is for you!!! D3 understands that you don't always have time to wait around for others to show up to raid or to grind for months on end looking for a single upgrade to your gear! D3 understands that YOU HAVE A LIFE!!! And if part of that life is a REAL LIFE JOB, then why not put that part of your life to good use and simply PAY to get a gear UPGRADE!!!! GENIUS!!!
 
So now that you are asking yourself, JUST HOW DO I USE THIS D3 SCROLL OF RESURRECTION ANYWAY? Well that's the best part, because there's ABSOLUTELY nothing you have to do!! That's right just simply log in and start playing, the D3 SOR has already been applied to your account!!! In fact you will not see anything about it anywhere, you will never even know that I have applied the SOR to your account! It's AMAZING!!!
 
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE...
 
If you don't own a copy of D3, don't fret, we haven't forgot about you either!!! D3's SOR applies to ALL NEWLY PURCHASED COPIES OF D3 AS WELL!!! That's right, go purchase a copy of D3 today and INSTANTLY get a SCROLL OR RESURRECTION applied to your NEW account!!! It's THAT easy!
 
SO DON'T WAIT!  BE THE FIRST TO GRAB YOUR OWN D3 SCROLL OF RESURRECTION TODAY!!!!!***
 
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*** Note: Pappy's D3 SOR is not authorized by Blizzard and therefore you will not find anything about it on D3's website, so don't bother looking, just trust Pappy on this one.

[Brian Fein]

WTF is this all about?

[Pappy13]

  Just me amusing myself.

I had a friend recently start playing WoW again because someone sent them a scroll of resurrection and I thought to myself what a great idea to get people to come back and play D3 again, so I sent everyone a scroll of resurrection for D3.

[Spider-Dan]

Um, not the best timing:

http://kotaku.com/players-claim-diablo-iiis-economy-is-in-meltdown-494689701

Cliffs Notes: Last week, there was a bug that allowed you to duplicate in-game money.  The effect on the economy was predictable: total meltdown.  Blizzard has stated that they will not be rolling back the servers to before the gold bug.

Not a good look.

[Pappy13]

Cliffs Notes: Last week, there was a bug that allowed you to duplicate in-game money.

Much ado about nothing. If you read Blizzard's explanation (can't link to it from work), the reason they decided not to rollback the servers was because they were able to contain it and they didn't want to disrupt the experience of anyone who was not actually effected by it. First off, it was only in the US. Second off you could only duplicate gold if you had over 1 billion in the first place which wasn't that common. Finally you had to know about the bug and how to exploit it. Blizzard found out that only about 490 accounts (all in North America) actually used the exploit. All of those accounts (plus any that were complicit in the exploit, not sure if that's part of the 490 or not) have had an audit done to their accounts and either been banned or modified to remove the extra gold. Since the AH's were shut down as soon as the bug was discovered and left down until after all the auctions expired naturally, there really was a very minimal effect on the economy itself.

Now if you read the forums, people are running all over the place claiming the sky is falling, but it just isn't true. The biggest problem it caused was that the auction houses were down for a couple days. As usual the "scare" was a MUCH bigger story then the actual bug itself, so you probably won't see anything about it.

[Spider-Dan]

Economics:

- ~500 players dupe ridiculous amounts of gold
- these players then go on AH and buy up every item in sight
- Blizzard bans aforementioned ~500 dupers
- ridiculous amounts of gold that they duped and spent remains in economy because Blizzard is not doing a rollback

"It was only in the US" would seem to be a relevant point for US-based players, which comprises essentially everyone who would read this thread.

[Pappy13]

^^ They didn't need to roll back the entire database to roll back the relatively few transactions which were effected by the dupers. I guarantee you that guy's account above was banned as he was clearly exploiting the bug. So the only question then is were those items that he bought worth 1 billion gold? If they were, what's the problem? If someone would have paid 1 billion gold for the item, then he got a billion gold for an item that's worth a billion gold. The account that paid the billion gold came upon the gold illegally, but the item they received has been removed from the game as well, so if it was worth 1 billion then the net effect on the economy is zero. If it wasn't worth 1 billion gold then Blizzard probably removed the gold from the receiving person. Blizzard mentioned that there were accounts that were complicit with the duping, meaning that they exploited the dupe not by actually duping the gold, but rather by selling items that were clearly WAY overpriced and were bought by those that did the duping. Blizzard isn't stupid, they found the people who were exploiting the game and they are ALL gone plus the items that they got and/or the gold they got.

Just FYI, the money that Blizzard got for these transactions is being given to charity.

[Spider-Dan]

^^ They didn't need to roll back the entire database to roll back the relatively few transactions which were effected by the dupers.

It wasn't "relatively few."  When the story broke, I saw an article of someone who bought out almost all the highly-sought items in the AH so he could drop them on the ground for a screenshot.

So the only question then is were those items that he bought worth 1 billion gold? If they were, what's the problem? If someone would have paid 1 billion gold for the item, then he got a billion gold for an item that's worth a billion gold.

Again, economics: when 2 people (to say nothing of ~500) with virtually limitless money get into bidding wars, what happens to the price of items?

What you seem to be missing is that normally, the rate of introduction of gold into the economy is strictly regulated by Blizzard (via gold drops, quest rewards, etc.).  If people can simply manufacture mass amounts of gold, then the result is hyperinflation.  Banning accounts after they've already spent the gold is silly; if you were one of the lucky few who happened to be selling quality items that day, you are now a multi-billionaire.  And if you weren't, your purchasing power has been greatly reduced relative to before the bug.

The account that paid the billion gold came upon the gold illegally, but the item they received has been removed from the game as well, so if it was worth 1 billion then the net effect on the economy is zero. If it wasn't worth 1 billion gold then Blizzard probably removed the gold from the receiving person. Blizzard mentioned that there were accounts that were complicit with the duping, meaning that they exploited the dupe not by actually duping the gold, but rather by selling items that were clearly WAY overpriced and were bought by those that did the duping.

Blizzard is most likely referring to unclean, linked accounts; different accounts with the same e-mail address, CC/banking info, etc.

The idea that Blizzard would try to determine both a) whether or not this item was sold to a legitimate player and b) whether that item is really worth 2B or 1.75B or 1.5B is far worse than any server rollback.  They would effectively be picking winners and losers by arbitrarily setting a value for each item and then allowing every sale below that line but reverting every sale above it.

The better solution would have been to simply undo everything that happened after the update and set everyone back to the original playing field.  Unfortunately, that is a day 1 solution and not a day 6 solution; they've let the problem fester for so long that it's basically unfixable now.  After 6 days, the amount of progress lost in a rollback would also create an uproar.

[Pappy13]

I'm not gonna argue with you Spider, I'll just give you the link to Blizzard's official response. Believe what you want.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8796520380#1

By the way this response was from 2 days ago and the problem was contained within the first couple of hours after the release when they took the AH's offline. Not sure exactly how long the bug actually existed, but it was at most hours, no where close to 6 days. It did take a few days to review all the transactions and either ban the accounts or correct them.

By the way there were screenshots of users with hundreds of billions of gold as well which turned out to be fake. I'm not saying that one user didn't buy up tons of items on the AH and drop them on the ground and put up a screenshot, but what I can tell you is that if you knew about it Blizzard did too and all of that has been rolled back or cleaned up.

Oh and it was 415, not 490, my bad.

[Spider-Dan]

From the thread you linked:

Only a relatively small number of players had the billions of gold necessary to exploit the bug, and only 415 of those players chose to use this exploit for personal gain. [...]

As of this this post, we have already recaptured more than 85% of the excess gold from the accounts involved, and over the days ahead we will continue to pore over our audit data to reclaim as much duplicate currency as possible. [...]

This means that if your account was not involved in the exploit, you will get to keep your items and gold, as well as any money you received from sales on the real-money Auction House.

So then:

- in order to use this bug, you apparently needed to create an auction for 6Bn gold
- according to Blizzard, a "relatively small number of players" had that much money (so, 6Bn is a lot of money)
- streamers were shown duping trillions (with a "t") of gold
- Blizzard has recovered "85%" of said trillions

Guess what?  If these ~415 dupers manufactured only 100 trillion gold (combined), and 85% of it was recovered, that would mean 15 trillion gold has been introduced into an economy in which 6 billion meant you were among the wealthy elite.

Even Diablo 3's director admitted that the Auction House "really hurt the game" and "It's not good for a game like Diablo" (and that was before the duping exploit).  He provided the following slide for his GDC panel, which sums up Diablo 3 in a nutshell:

[Pappy13]

From the thread you linked:
So then:

- in order to use this bug, you apparently needed to create an auction for 6Bn gold

This part about 6 billion is not from the thread that I linked. I don't know if that 6 billion number is correct or not. My understanding is that you had to have at least a billion in gold to use the exploit. It may have been 6 billion, but I suspect that was only an example.

- according to Blizzard, a "relatively small number of players" had that much money (so, 6Bn is a lot of money)

Yep. It's a lot of money. Yep, 415 is a relatively small number compared to the millions of accounts there are.

- streamers were shown duping trillions (with a "t") of gold

I have no way to verify if this is correct or not, but again this did not come from Blizzard, you are getting this information from a third party. I'm sure it's possible that one person could have made up to a couple trillion in gold through this exploit. That certainly seems feasible, but I'm also just as certain that it wasn't common. I'm sure that if one guy did make trillions, he was caught and his trillions recovered.

- Blizzard has recovered "85%" of said trillions

I have no way of knowing how much they have recovered or the total amount. They said they have ALREADY recovered 85% and are continuing to recover more. That was 2 days ago. They might now be at 99% for all we know and perhaps they will get 100% eventually.

Guess what?  If these ~415 dupers manufactured only 100 trillion gold (combined), and 85% of it was recovered, that would mean 15 trillion gold has been introduced into an economy in which 6 billion meant you were among the wealthy elite.

Pure speculation on your part. You don't know how much it was in total. You don't know how much Blizzard has recovered now. You don't know how many actually had 6 billion prior to the bug or how many have that now. Yes 6 billion is a lot, but if you truly did need 6 billion and 415 accounts participated in the exploit and the link mentions that not everyone that had the money participated in the exploit, then it stands to reason that more than 415 accounts had at least 6 billion in their bank accounts already. It was WELL known throughout the game that people were sitting on billions in gold. So now there might be a few more. Possibly even a dozen more. And this has ruined the economy? No. It barely made a scratch because millions have at least a million in gold and most had a heck of a lot more than that. All you had to do was look at the AH and see page after page after page of items selling for hundreds of millions to realize that.

Even Diablo 3's director admitted that the Auction House "really hurt the game" and "It's not good for a game like Diablo" (and that was before the duping exploit). 

Exactly. That quote has absolutely NOTHING to do with this bug, so I'm not sure why you are even bringing it up. It doesn't support your argument in the least unless your argument is that the bug is not the issue at all, the AH itself is which is an entirely different argument that has been around since the game was released. You have mentioned this before, so I'm sure that for everyone who already had issues with the AH, this has become a feather in their hat for their argument, but the fact is this bug really didn't change things much, those who didn't like the AH are still against it and those that do like the AH are still in favor of it and the economy is what the economy is.

[Sunstroke]

Love that Bruce Wayne/Tony Stark money graphic...freakin' hilarious.

[Pappy13]

For D3's 1 year anniversary (this week) Blizzard released some numbers.

14.5 million accounts have been created.
At it's peak there were 5.8 million active accounts in a single day.
2.1 million accounts are active on average in a single day.
67.1 million characters have been created.

Diablo 3 is not as popular in China as is WoW so it's actually almost exactly even across all 3 realms.
22.2 million characters created in the America's.
22.1 million characters created in Europe.
22.9 million characters created in Asia.

But the one that's of most interest to this thread might be this one:
Over 648 trillion gold has been looted in the game to date.
The average amount of gold per character is almost 10 million and the average number of characters per account is 4.63 so the average amount of gold on an account is around 45 million.

[Lee]

I just happened on a very interesting article, completely related to this topic.

I am an avid player of of the Diablo series.  However I agree with Spider-Dan that the economy is on its way down.

Now, here is an article linking the similarities between the Diablo economy and real world examples of hyper-inflation.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-21/diablo-3-case-virtual-hyperinflation

[Spider-Dan]

Nice article.  Explains the horrors of the D3 economy quite well.

There will always be apologists, but oh well.