[citation][nom]Kamab[/nom]They aren't talking about people cheating in offline mode, they mean the architecture of the game that is designed for single player is easier to in some way truly hack than a game based off a server (server vs client side information). In diablo II it was possible to dupe items in the multiplayer setting, load maps, and predict drops because so much of the information was on the client's side.The hacks* you are talking about in WoW i have never heard of. I HAVE heard of bots/chinese convicts herbing/mining for Gold which they sell for real money. That's not to say the hacks didn't exist, I just doubt that WoW was as severely hacked as D2.Then again, I don't totally disagree with you. Some of this probably has to do with the AH in the in game economy. And it will be simpler for them to make the platform secure.[/citation]
In the second paragraph toward the end, Jay Wilson specifically mentions the duping issue for why they have the single player mode requiring online all the time. To me, that's a very apparent hollow excuse. And yes, I know one part of multiplayer allowed trading and that was an issue. The closed part didn't. This could easily be solved by having the multiplayer work by keeping it the way they have set it up while allowing a traditional single player model.
And let's not forget, 2 to 3 years ago Guild Wars had a duping issue. So having things run off a server does in no way guarantee there will not be duping. As for the WoW hacks, I played from launch until a couple of months ago when it was just painfully obvious that Bobby Kotick's influence was all over decisions with Blizzard's titles. Gold sellers in WoW have for years been using an underground hack to allow fast travel to a herb/mining node, gathering them while underground, and then moving very fast to the next. It was something a lot of players noticed in places like Wintergrasp and other mineral/herb rich areas. Blizzard tried putting a stop to it, but the hackers within days had a workaround and for months Blizzard has apparently not even attempted to stop it anymore. So I have no confidence that similar things won't be done in Diablo 3.
It just seems like a very bad business decision, one that is built more around them getting their cut from the real money auction house, to force players who only want to play single player mode to have to play online and have our gameplay experience affected by server slowdowns, maintenance and the, in this day and age, likelyhood of a Blizzard network hack.
But none of this still addresses my question why people respond to with the "this is good because it stops duping" to people who complain about the single player game being online when nothing about duping in single player will affect those making these statements.