Some of you may recall that I posted a picture last night of my Diablo 2 character as the #1 amazon on USEast hardcore ladder. While this is still true, it probably won't be for long, and I'd like to explain why and its importance to Diablo 3 in the most comfortable of all formats: the long-winded forum post.
As I type (and likely as you read), I am in the process of losing the rather large lead that I had yesterday. It is now a medium-sized lead, and it is one that will probably be non-existent by this time tomorrow. I am currently losing ground to a follow bot; for those who aren't familiar, a follow bot is a computer-controlled character that follows another computer-controlled character into games, where it automates the completion of Baal and his minions over and over, facilitating the gain of experience without any input from whoever it is that controls the character. Unlike the character that actually has to clear the throne room (who is, as previously mentioned, also computer controlled), the follow bot is never in any danger so there is basically no way to impede its function short of cheating. This means that the "player" who is about to pass me probably isn't even aware of that fact and may not know it for many days afterwards.
Should I not be passed by the cheater who possesses the follow bot, I will surely be subdued by the cheaters who are trying to kill me. Being on the top of a ladder from which you can be removed by being killed (hardcore characters have only one life) means that invariably someone will try to kill you, which is a fact of which I am aware and certainly not complaining about. However, very few players have tried to kill me through legitimate means: Two attempts have been made to kill my character by surrounding a town portal in monsters and masquerading it as a safe portal; I'm always prepared for this possibility so these attempts were not successful, unscrupulous as they are. The majority of the attempts to kill me, however, have been through the TPPK, a cheat that allows a character to kill another character without putting themselves in any harm. It functions by firing a slow-moving projectile at a monster, entering a town portal, and then hostiling so that that projectile is now able to target the player that the TPPKer is trying to kill (in this case, me). Blizzard made a valiant effort at stopping the TPPK but it was not quite good enough, so it is still very much possible.
The short version is that because of such a prolific cheating population, I will probably lose my spot at the top of the Amazon ladder. I have held my position for nearly nine days (the ladder was reset on May 2nd), and I have done it without ever cheating; I've accomplished that by putting in a huge amount of time and effort to play my character. But nine days is nothing for a bot, and my accomplishment will be worthless in a short time from now. I will likely be leaving Diablo 2 knowing that my attempts to play my favourite game of all time at my best was entirely squandered by someone who downloaded a script, and I can't help but think of how important it is that Blizzard be vigilant at preventing cheaters from taking over Diablo 3 like they have Diablo 2. If they can't make botting a thing of the past, then all of the work that they'll have done on the game will be irrelevant. For players who like to see some sort of tangible indication of their accomplishment -- a group which make up a significant percentage of those that play RPGs online and which includes this poster -- allowing cheaters to proliferate completely destroys any purpose to playing the game. And that bites.
I am probably making too big a deal over what is ultimately just a game, but I was really hoping I could go out with a bang after having played it for twelve years. I don't plan on giving up (my intention was to stay on top until midnight on the 15th, and I'm still going to try to do that), but I'm not optimistic.