My guess is from account compromises. Accounts get hacked, and the hackers sell the gems cheaply and quickly to get as much as they can out of it before the account gets locked. Then Blizzard rolls back the account to before the hack and in a round-about way, we have blizzard duping gems for us. Cycle repeats, and the market is flooded.
That's what I'm hearing also, but this could all be rumors.
My guess is from account compromises. Accounts get hacked, and the hackers sell the gems cheaply and quickly to get as much as they can out of it before the account gets locked. Then Blizzard rolls back the account to before the hack and in a round-about way, we have blizzard duping gems for us. Cycle repeats, and the market is flooded.
That's what I'm hearing also, but this could all be rumors.
it's the rumor that makes the most sense. I'm sure a lot of accounts get hacked each day.
However, one thing that doesn't make sense is that the price has dropped A LOT since the newest patch. I sold my topazes before 1.0.5 hit for $10 each. Now they're 4-5M gold (about $2.5). It seems like a rather drastic drop in just over a week.
It's dupe. It is either Blizzard's own employee (which is highly likely) doing the duplicate. It doesn't cost them anything to run the script to create a million gems. Since all gems has the same property and unlikely to detected. Or some other hackers who find a exploits while on PTR, and then once the patch gone live, massive dupe. The gems value drops so much since 1.05. I remembered flawless emerald was like 1300 the night before 1.05, then a day after 1.05, it is in the 100s.
Only reason to craft it yourself if you already have a lot of unused perfect star gems that you can combine to one radiant star for a "modest" fee (even that one craft from 3x perfect start to 1 x radiant start costs 400k gold!!!).
People have better drop rates since patch 1.05, due to this they make more profit on the ah and all of a sudden where able to buy higher end gems. After that they are stuck with their old gems that they wanted to sell... hus market gets flooded with lower gems such is perfect stars
All the "non gem sink" guys need to wake the F up. There is absolutely no connection between lack of gem sink (which may or may not be needed regardless, but that's a different discussion altogether unrelated to the topic at hand) and the current gem prices.
You can't point towards unused gems as people upgrade theirs. The highest gems are actually the most absurdly cheap ones. As in, the AH price divided by the jeweler total crafting fee for the same gem is lowest for radiant star gems.
People quitting the game makes no sense. There can't be so many people who use radiant stars quitting over people who actually reached the point where they want to start using them (heck, only a select few people use radiant stars outside of helm/weapons).
While it's obvious supply is greater than demand and that's why the prices are lower, that's not a real answer. That's stating the obvious. The real question that needs answered is how is the supply increasing beyond demand.
After all, if supply grows slightly greater than demand for whatever reason, everyone who considered crafting gems immediately stop crafting them as they can buy them cheaper, and thus the supply no longer increases. That said, supply is increasing compared to demand, which makes no sense if we assume the only way to obtain radiant star gems is to craft them for >15mil a piece.
The only explanation is people obtaining gems outside of crafting. AKA duping or other shady activity. I thought at first that this had something to do with the times where selling gold on the RMAH was unavailable or impractical due to high minimum price and thus gold was converted into gems so that it can be sold, but since nowadays selling gold is a non-issue, it doesn't really explain why the prices keep dropping. Therefore the only thing I can think of is duping on massive scale. Maybe it has something to do with the 10$ Diablo 3 copies as that can seriously increase the "create account, take lots of stuff, give them away, claim you got hacked and use your restoration, sell profits on RMAH and use money to buy more Diablo 3 copies" trick as it becomes 6 times less risky. Alternatively, it could simply be a new glitch in 1.0.5 that allows duping.
In any case, I believe that the gem price issue is a big f-up on Blizzard's end. Not on the game design side, but on the technical/security side of things. Someone is creating gems for less than the crafting fee and thus the market gets flooded, and there is no legitimate way this would happen in 1.0.5 conditions (where gold can be sold directly on the RMAH at the same fees as gems).
The only duping method I heard of is using the Blizzard "I got hacked!" restorations and using the profits to buy more copies to repeat the process. However, it's still hard to believe Blizzard isn't catching on to how the hell a fresh account suddenly got so much gear on it for free from friends just to get "hacked" immediately after.
Then again, the fact items seem to be duped more than gold (is gold is even being duped) might point at the above not being the problem, but rather something more similar to what was shown in the video. After all, if you just used restorations then how come they only dupe items rather than just dupe gold.
Basically, whatever is being used for duping is a huge blunder on Blizzard's end no matter how you look at it. The only explanation for how something like this can happen is Blizzard simply not caring enough about this game. They've had a very long time to figure out what the hell is going on (as in, since gem prices started to plunge, which was already quite too late), yet the prices are still dropping meaning the mass-duping is still going on.
The only duping method I heard of is using the Blizzard "I got hacked!" restorations and using the profits to buy more copies to repeat the process. However, it's still hard to believe Blizzard isn't catching on to how the hell a fresh account suddenly got so much gear on it for free from friends just to get "hacked" immediately after.
Then again, the fact items seem to be duped more than gold (is gold is even being duped) might point at the above not being the problem, but rather something more similar to what was shown in the video. After all, if you just used restorations then how come they only dupe items rather than just dupe gold.
Basically, whatever is being used for duping is a huge blunder on Blizzard's end no matter how you look at it. The only explanation for how something like this can happen is Blizzard simply not caring enough about this game. They've had a very long time to figure out what the hell is going on (as in, since gem prices started to plunge, which was already quite too late), yet the prices are still dropping meaning the mass-duping is still going on.
You mean those Chinese guys with 100 accounts with bots running 24/7? They look legit if planned carefully, and yes thats being done if thousands of dollars is at stake.
And dont kid yourself, gamemasters wont spend 2 hours looking up where every item came from. They might take a quick look for suspicious activity, but man oh man thats easy to cover. ( IP change - No authenticator to start with - flow "stolen" items through a couple accounts and sell them etc etc. - Report "i got hacked a week later")
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t...
Things are getting out of hand pretty quick... Friday night i was on doing some key runs and i got a pst from a gold seller ingame.
He was offering 2 Billion gold for 90 dollars. The message was something along the lines of save 90% when comparing to other gold sellers. I did some maths and it was roughly 45 cents per 10 mil if i was correct.
I know this isnt really on topic but i just thought to share this experience. 90 USD 2 Billion Gold... that has got to wreck the game.
You mean those Chinese guys with 100 accounts with bots running 24/7? They look legit if planned carefully, and yes thats being done if thousands of dollars is at stake.
No, not bots. Bots "just" farm gold and have no reason to convert it into gems.
Accounts asking for restoration may be a way to duplicate items if you're doing it on a small scale. But once it becomes large-scale, I find it outrageous that Blizzard isn't catching on to it and become more strict regarding restoration requests and actually taking a look at what items they are restoring and how long that account has been active before it got "hacked".
You mean those Chinese guys with 100 accounts with bots running 24/7? They look legit if planned carefully, and yes thats being done if thousands of dollars is at stake.
No, not bots. Bots "just" farm gold and have no reason to convert it into gems.
Accounts asking for restoration may be a way to duplicate items if you're doing it on a small scale. But once it becomes large-scale, I find it outrageous that Blizzard isn't catching on to it and become more strict regarding restoration requests and actually taking a look at what items they are restoring and how long that account has been active before it got "hacked".
By these bots I meant these accounts could easily be used for roleback dupe, as they have plenty of time played and are often active for months.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t...
That's what I'm hearing also, but this could all be rumors.
it's the rumor that makes the most sense. I'm sure a lot of accounts get hacked each day.
However, one thing that doesn't make sense is that the price has dropped A LOT since the newest patch. I sold my topazes before 1.0.5 hit for $10 each. Now they're 4-5M gold (about $2.5). It seems like a rather drastic drop in just over a week.
Or for the achievement.
It's a bloody expensive achievement, though!
People have better drop rates since patch 1.05, due to this they make more profit on the ah and all of a sudden where able to buy higher end gems. After that they are stuck with their old gems that they wanted to sell... hus market gets flooded with lower gems such is perfect stars
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Storm-21498/hero/47687845
You can't point towards unused gems as people upgrade theirs. The highest gems are actually the most absurdly cheap ones. As in, the AH price divided by the jeweler total crafting fee for the same gem is lowest for radiant star gems.
People quitting the game makes no sense. There can't be so many people who use radiant stars quitting over people who actually reached the point where they want to start using them (heck, only a select few people use radiant stars outside of helm/weapons).
While it's obvious supply is greater than demand and that's why the prices are lower, that's not a real answer. That's stating the obvious. The real question that needs answered is how is the supply increasing beyond demand.
After all, if supply grows slightly greater than demand for whatever reason, everyone who considered crafting gems immediately stop crafting them as they can buy them cheaper, and thus the supply no longer increases. That said, supply is increasing compared to demand, which makes no sense if we assume the only way to obtain radiant star gems is to craft them for >15mil a piece.
The only explanation is people obtaining gems outside of crafting. AKA duping or other shady activity. I thought at first that this had something to do with the times where selling gold on the RMAH was unavailable or impractical due to high minimum price and thus gold was converted into gems so that it can be sold, but since nowadays selling gold is a non-issue, it doesn't really explain why the prices keep dropping. Therefore the only thing I can think of is duping on massive scale. Maybe it has something to do with the 10$ Diablo 3 copies as that can seriously increase the "create account, take lots of stuff, give them away, claim you got hacked and use your restoration, sell profits on RMAH and use money to buy more Diablo 3 copies" trick as it becomes 6 times less risky. Alternatively, it could simply be a new glitch in 1.0.5 that allows duping.
In any case, I believe that the gem price issue is a big f-up on Blizzard's end. Not on the game design side, but on the technical/security side of things. Someone is creating gems for less than the crafting fee and thus the market gets flooded, and there is no legitimate way this would happen in 1.0.5 conditions (where gold can be sold directly on the RMAH at the same fees as gems).
You can't actually fix the way people are duping at the moment. And this concerns me...
Then again, the fact items seem to be duped more than gold (is gold is even being duped) might point at the above not being the problem, but rather something more similar to what was shown in the video. After all, if you just used restorations then how come they only dupe items rather than just dupe gold.
Basically, whatever is being used for duping is a huge blunder on Blizzard's end no matter how you look at it. The only explanation for how something like this can happen is Blizzard simply not caring enough about this game. They've had a very long time to figure out what the hell is going on (as in, since gem prices started to plunge, which was already quite too late), yet the prices are still dropping meaning the mass-duping is still going on.
They sell you the gems get gold and sell gold on their websites
You mean those Chinese guys with 100 accounts with bots running 24/7? They look legit if planned carefully, and yes thats being done if thousands of dollars is at stake.
And dont kid yourself, gamemasters wont spend 2 hours looking up where every item came from. They might take a quick look for suspicious activity, but man oh man thats easy to cover. ( IP change - No authenticator to start with - flow "stolen" items through a couple accounts and sell them etc etc. - Report "i got hacked a week later")
He was offering 2 Billion gold for 90 dollars. The message was something along the lines of save 90% when comparing to other gold sellers. I did some maths and it was roughly 45 cents per 10 mil if i was correct.
I know this isnt really on topic but i just thought to share this experience. 90 USD 2 Billion Gold... that has got to wreck the game.
No, not bots. Bots "just" farm gold and have no reason to convert it into gems.
Accounts asking for restoration may be a way to duplicate items if you're doing it on a small scale. But once it becomes large-scale, I find it outrageous that Blizzard isn't catching on to it and become more strict regarding restoration requests and actually taking a look at what items they are restoring and how long that account has been active before it got "hacked".
By these bots I meant these accounts could easily be used for roleback dupe, as they have plenty of time played and are often active for months.