Diablo 3: A billion highly-motivated hackers = fail game

One of the real pleasures of Diablo 3 is the way it has motivated hackers around the world. (Sarcasm will be used liberally on this site. It should be easy to spot, most of the time.)

Imagine you’ve got your character all outfitted in legendary gear and you log one day – well, one day you can’t log. So you contact Blizzard, give them the necessary info to prove you’re who you say you are, they reset your password (Seriously. “Password” is a weak password. Think of something else.), you log and you discover all your gear is gone.

Bummer, dude.

It’s not scientific, but judging from the forum posts the number of hacked accounts seems excessive.

No worries. It’s just a few billion Chinese gold farmers and hackers trying to get a leg up on the competition. They’re stocking their stash with your legendary gear in anticipation of Diablo 3’s real money auction house.

Get used to it. With money, potentially significant money at stake – at least to people who make less than $12 a day (Average Chinese worker makes about $4,000 a year, according to the World Bank.) – they’re just getting a headstart. Nothing wrong with that.

And this is one of the reasons why, the most significant reason why, Diablo 3 is a doomed game.

Real money auction house. Bad, bad idea.

Real money belongs in casinos not my video game.