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Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

minimaxir.com

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Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#21

Post by minimaxir »

eduardordm wrote: post #16

Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret. Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time. Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promi…

I played enough to get a lv. 60 Monk and lv. 60 Demon Hunter. The problem with Diablo III, compared to Diablo II from 10 years ago, is that nowadays there are so many options for online games without monthly fees that there's little incentive to stick to just one.

Then I started Guild Wars 2 a few months later, and played that to death. :)

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#22

Post by codeduck »

eduardordm wrote: post #16

Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret. Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time. Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promi…

Don't let the initial Eve gameplay get to you. Join an active faction and go on some roams. Pvp is where the game shines.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#23

Post by vyrotek »

eduardordm wrote: post #16

Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret. Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time. Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promi…

It's basically a very pretty slot machine. I played quite a bit of D2 and D3. The thrill comes from grinding for hours (and hours and hours) and finding that one item that earns you hundreds of dollars. (Yes real dollars) You can thank the the Real-Money Auction House for both destroying the game and being the one thing that keeps so many people coming back for more.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#24

Post by mickeyp »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #15

Reminds be of a bug waaaay back. In the original Elite, you could obtained a missile lock on a space station, then dock and sell all your missiles, launch, and finally fire a missile (you still had the missile lock). Suddenly you have 255 missiles! 0-1 = 255 in unsigned 8 bit integer math! You could then sell all your new shiny missiles for loads of money. Made a hard game a bit easier.

Those games (Frontier Elite and First Encounters included) had loaaads of bugs like that.

Another one in FE had you put in passenger holds, fill them with passengers, then sell the holds -- this would obviously not work as you had to evict the passengers first, however the game logic credited you with the cash anyway because the check came after the money had changed hands.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#25

Post by dangoldin »

vyrotek wrote: post #23
eduardordm wrote: post #16

Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret. Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time. Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promi…

It's basically a very pretty slot machine. I played quite a bit of D2 and D3. The thrill comes from grinding for hours (and hours and hours) and finding that one item that earns you hundreds of dollars. (Yes real dollars) You can thank the the Real-Money Auction House for both destroying the game and being the one thing that keeps so many people coming back for more.

I loved Diablo 2 and probably spent a good portion of my high school hours playing it. I was very excited for Diablo 3 and tried to get into it but just couldn't.

I felt that they just took a ton of ideas from WoW and implanted them into Diablo. Sure it may have made them more money but it made it a lot less fun.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#26

Post by Ixiaus »

eduardordm wrote: post #16

Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret. Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time. Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promi…

You're very wrong in that assumption. Don't get me wrong, I wasted 9 months of my life becoming completely absorbed by the game but it's so immersive that no other game can compare.

It's about hoarding, alliances, corporations, mining ops, PVP ops, big alliance battles, 0-sec space mining/pvp ops (this is the best part of the game).

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#27

Post by Hairy_Sandwich »

eduardordm wrote: post #16

Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret. Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time. Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promi…

I've heard Eve online called an animated space themed spreadsheet before. I tried it myself a long time ago, and I felt it was too complicated and boring.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#28

Post by jes5199 »

codeduck wrote: post #22
eduardordm wrote: post #16

Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret. Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time. Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promi…

Don't let the initial Eve gameplay get to you. Join an active faction and go on some roams. Pvp is where the game shines.

Every time that I've been blown up in Eve, it's happened so quickly that the fight didn't even render on my screen. Just one second I'm in a spaceship, and the next I'm back at my home station. That feeling doesn't make me want to learn combat!

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#29

Post by Guvante »

lmm wrote: post #3

Just another reminder that it's never worth bypassing the normal deployment process. Every year or two I learn a similar lesson myself: it's so tempting, the fix is so small, it couldn't possibly break anything (heck, I once had a data-gathering script that made a bunch of read-only calls to our system's API cause a live issue). Just say no.

To be fair, I am not sure if anyone would try posting 6 billion gold onto a PTR equivalent of the RMAH or whether the RMAH is even available on the PTR, which might explain why it wasn't tested.

Re: Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug

#30

Post by apetresc »

seanalltogether wrote: post #20

The fact that the diablo economy has reached the point where users are running around with 6 billion gold shows its been broken for much longer.

Why? It's just a matter of scale. Until very recently, Romania's currency was such that most middle-class families had 8-10 digits in their bank account at any given moment, and the economy is relatively healthy.

Good items sell for hundreds of millions. The number of zeroes doesn't matter, as long as the balance between items and monetary value is stable.

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