Quote (ofthevoid @ Jul 22 2021 10:29pm)
Idk about no one but it would be drastically less.
But let's say you're right. Even if you are, the 3rd party websites that sold duped runes for extravagant amounts every ladder reset did so at least with some blessing from blizzard or people within blizzard. A fuck ton of money was being made at every reset. You really think Blizzard wasn't in on some of these profits? They were just continuously patching a 10, 15, 20 year old game with no in app purchases because of...?
So in a way Blizzard allowing this is the way to fix the low rate, which again created a fairly decent equilibrium from a supply/demand perspective. I much rather have it be like that then getting a high rune every other time I killed Baal.
As I look back, d2 remains one of my favorite RPG's I ever played, not because of the lore or graphics, but precisely because of the item system scarcity and how hard was it to actually have a 'perfect' character. Like I'm playing Witcher 3 now, fantastic game, but once I got the master crafted set (best gear in the game) my interest has significantly dropped.
Really good RPG's have that chasing the magic dragon angle to them, that makes people spend an obscene amount of hours doing repetitive shit for no reason than to just get a little better.
blizzard 100% did not have any profits from 3rd party sites. their financial incentives come from botters and players buying CD keys. when the patched it to be a download with no physical copy, no box, no artwork printed, no shipping, and no retail cut their profit margin exploded. also they cut the price so people bought more, as did botters.
blizzard has only ever one time been able to crack down on botting, elsewise they simply can't tell from the server side who's botting from a programming side. they have to use logical tests on a case by case basis like "has this person been on for 24 hours". in which case botters would just swap out chars/accs/kets/IPs so its not worth the effort for blizzard.
warden protects gear, and games/hour timer keeps bots semi slow compared to say 1.09 meph bots.
but patches and the ladder resets are a part time project for the "classic team" who handles several games and is a team of like 3-4 devs. none of the recent patches since 1.12 have been major, and the patch to WSG they tried went so bad that they reverted it after a few weeks. now i think they learned there lesson and will reset and that's it.