If I am not wrong, botting doesn't require active knowledge of the source code and duping was in part done by Blizzard by restoring accounts.
While, yes emulated servers exist, this is where I think you are absolutely wrong, I don't believe they have anywhere near complete source code. Take a look at both Path of Exile and Diablo 3, both games that require you to be online to play. Both games have very rudimentary level "hacks" going on in them. Now, conversely look at Torchlight, which is both an online and single player game, where modding tools were also released with the game. Take a look at the integrity of the Torchlight vs. PoE and D3, you see a drastic difference.
The thing is the comparison your making isn't valid because Torchlight was designed like that, just like how the console version of Diablo 3 was. Torchlight had next to no-anti cheat and allowed players to mod the online version, the game wasn't even stored on there servers it was local servers when players went online so there was no hacking involved at all cheating in torchlight online took the same effort as cheating in single player so it's just not something you can compare. From an integrity point of view torchlight isn't riddled with hacks because it has a single player mode because the online mode isn't server side and they have taken no action to keep the game protected.
Diablo 2 had a SP mode and yet that remained hack free pretty much up until Blizzard stopped caring and let people hack, WoW has private servers yet that game is practically hack-free yes there are a few hacks but they are far from rampant. These are the things you compare it to and they are proof that some form of offline mode doesn't do nearly as much damage as some seem to believe and any damage it would have done is now passed as the game has been out for over a year and hackers have been hard at work to break it, they are beyond needing the code from a single player mode.
Truthfully you have zero "additional evidence". Saying you "think it is close enough" really is nothing more than conjecture on a topic with evidence that clearly points in the other direction.
We've proven that the game got hacked anyway, that offline modes exist for hackers to abuse anyway, that games with a offline modes lasted a very long time just as hack free as Diablo 3 has been and that the only real true remaining defense against hackers is Blizzard not the lack of information hackers have at there disposal.
What is this evidence that clearly points in the other direction?
TBH ruksak I really don't get why u keep replying, every message you write is just flame and insults with no actual additional information whilst others have linked proof of hacks, proof of private servers and actual given constructive responses. You call others trolls who refuse to admit there wrong while having 0 knowledge on the thing your talking about and no constructive input in any message you write.
If you have some form of proof that adding a single player mode at this stage will greatly increase the amount of hacks, or some sort of proof that the current offline version of the game hackers have isn't enough for them to get what they need or well anything useful at all to bring to this conversation then feel free but otherwise please stop spamming your hateful flame and let us have a civilized conversation.
Fitsu, there really isn't much more I can say about it. if you aren't willing to accept that people are having an easier time hacking Torchlight 2 because there is an off-line mode and their modding tools provide insight on the underpinnings of how the game works then the conversation just isn't worth having and we can agree to disagree.
And what points in the other direction? I don't know, pretty much every client side game that is riddled with hacks no more than 3 hours after it launches versus the level of effort involved in every other on-line only game mentioned above and how they are much, much, much cleaner in terms of "hacking".
So your proof to the fact single player causes online mode to end up broken is a 13 year old game with no working anti-cheat system? Your really grasping at straws if that's the best you can get.
Fitsu, there really isn't much more I can say about it. if you aren't willing to accept that people are having an easier time hacking Torchlight 2 because there is an off-line mode and their modding tools provide insight on the underpinnings of how the game works then the conversation just isn't worth having and we can agree to disagree.
And what points in the other direction? I don't know, pretty much every client side game that is riddled with hacks no more than 3 hours after it launches versus the level of effort involved in every other on-line only game mentioned above and how they are much, much, much cleaner in terms of "hacking".
You don't seem to understand the difference between "client-side" and "server-side", this is the thing that prevents online games from getting hacked. The fact the files are stored on Blizzards servers and arn't accessible by players is what prevents the game being hacked, the reason Torchlight 2 or any client side game is riddled with hacks is because the files are client side and thus accessible, it's easy to hack a game when you don't have to work out how to access the secure files...
People have an easy time hacking torchlight 2 because there is no secure online mode, not because there is an offline mode, think about it please. Look at Diablo 2 again, in offline mode you have tons of programs to alter your stats, mods, crazy items etc... Yet none of that existed on the Bnet because ultimately all it takes to hack a single player game is to change a few numbers on your files the real challenge is working out how to hack through Blizzards protection which is the difference, sure people worked out how to do some hacks on bnet like FCR hack and bots but that's due to Warden being turned of and people learning how to work around Blizzards protection something that would be even more challenging in D3 it has nothing to do with the game having a single player mode.
People have an easy time hacking torchlight 2 because there is no secure online mode, not because there is an offline mode, think about it please.
People have an easy time hacking TL1/2, Diablo 1/2 because the SERVER FILES were stored on the local computer. How it works is easy:
You have a client. It connects to a server. In the single-player version of D1/2 and TL1/2 the game actually starts up a copy of the server software on your machine and connects to localhost instead of some IP address out on the internet. This means that any hacker can take the server files and decompile them. This is what leads to hacks: people knowing EXACTLY how the server operates.
Compare D1/2 and TL1/2 to D3 and PoE and the difference should be obvious.
As to bots, as best I know, current bots interpret screen pixels. Should this be the case, it means that there is NOTHING Blizzard can do to proactively stop bots, other than learn what they're doing and sending out ban waves. Detecting the pixels on the monitor doesn't access game files or data in RAM (and therefore is undetectable by Warden) and no amount of DRM can prevent a program from reading the pixels on your monitor. So long as it's possible to play a game by interpreting the pixels on the screen, botting will be possible.
Back to "hacking" though. The reason you don't see online character trainers is because it's pretty difficult, even for a hacker, to convince the game that you're able to violate basic rules. For example, in D2, a level 50 character could only have so many statistic and skill points. There's no way to tell the server that your level 50 character had 1000 skill points. But, you are able to convince the server that items dropped that didn't drop, because that's a single event. And that's basically what hackers/dupers were busy doing: convincing the server that items dropped which didn't actually drop. How did they do that? By understanding the client-server protocol and observing server code to see the weaknesses which would allow those things to happen.
If you can't see the server code (because it's not running on your local machine) then this becomes basically impossible. This also lends credence to the fact that "D3 private servers" aren't really D3 servers. If they were, then a hacker could easily analyze their code and use that to have full working knowledge of the Blizzard servers. But they haven't, which would basically mean that these "private servers" are not operating off the same codebase that the Blizzard servers are.
Thanks shaggy for the first real informed response, I feel like I learnt something from that. Now i'm wondering your saying you need to be able to see the server code and without that information there would be no way of understanding how to trick the server (which is what I was trying to say earlier but didn't put it in such an elegant way). The thing I don't understand is why would you be able to see server code if your only running the game in a single player mode? Does it still need to run server-side code even if your not actually running a server, just a single player client? If you were to try and set it up through a LAN game would that require sever code to be running?
The thing I don't understand is why would you be able to see server code if your only running the game in a single player mode? Does it still need to run the code even if your not actually running a server, just a single player client? If you were to try and set it up through a LAN game would that require sever code to be running?
In order to make development simpler, the single-player and online/LAN clients are the same thing. This allows the developers to only have to maintain and test one "version" of the game.
What that means, though, is that if you are playing a single-player game you still need to connect to a server. This server runs on your machine instead of the Blizzard servers. If you are playing a LAN game then one of the players acts as a server (and runs the server code as well as their client code) and the other players connect to that.
What most people do not understand is, because developing and maintaining two versions of the game would be very costly (and significantly slower) and would result in bugs present in one version but not the other, even when you're playing single-player you are running a copy of the server on your machine. This is so the client code is no different. The ONLY difference between a single-player game and a LAN/online game, technically-speaking, is that your client is instructed to connect to "localhost" instead of your friend's IP address or a Blizzard IP address.
In layman's terms, the client ALWAYS requires a server to connect to in order to prevent the need to develop and maintain multiple client versions.
Ah, that's the vital bit of information that I didn't know I had no idea that single player games still used server code to run and therefore couldn't understand the reasons as to why having a single player mode would cause hacking to run rampant in the online version I thought that it was 2 different versions but what you say makes sense as naturally if people were to be able to get a hold of the server information they would be able to hack into the online version much easier. Thanks for clearing that up I agree that a single player mode would damage the online experience then.
Thanks shaggy for the first real informed response, I feel like I learnt something from that. Now i'm wondering your saying you need to be able to see the server code and without that information there would be no way of understanding how to trick the server (which is what I was trying to say earlier but didn't put it in such an elegant way). The thing I don't understand is why would you be able to see server code if your only running the game in a single player mode? Does it still need to run server-side code even if your not actually running a server, just a single player client? If you were to try and set it up through a LAN game would that require sever code to be running?
Wow ... so you couldn't infer that when I was saying single player/off-line mode that it was in reference to the client? Absolutely incredible and you're the one trying to tell us we don't understand the difference between the client-side and server-side? Yikes!
Tralf I don't think you understood what he said, I knew you was talking about the client what I didn't know (And I expect neither did you) is that even when you run a single player game it still uses the server side code. Like shaggy said from a technical point of view the only difference between offline and online when your running a game is when you load it in offline it calls the localhost instead of the IP of the server your connecting to, but it still runs the server code where as I previously thought that it only ran the client code and didn't need to run off a server if you ran single player.
No, that's exactly what Ruksak and I have been saying the entire time, we just didn't think we'd have to explain that maintaining two different code bases, outside of ports to Playstation or Xbox, would be a giant waste of both time, resources and money.
None of you even once mentioned the fact a client uses server-side code so please don't now claim that's what you meant. Ruksak even linked pure client-side changes, every single message you wrote was completely client-based and in no way explained that people would have server-side code running on the local PC if there was a single player had you been trying to say that, you would have said it so please i'm able to admit I didn't know why can't you? I learnt something today and i'm happy about it.
While it's true that the server-side code wouldn't be all you need to hack the online service of the game it would give you a clear advantage, help u leap over a few very high hurdles as you wouldn't need to work out the client-server protocols so at the very least I respect it as a reason now while previously due to my lack of understanding I didn't.
None of you even once mentioned the fact a client uses server-side code so please don't now claim that's what you meant. Ruksak even linked pure client-side changes, every single message you wrote was completely client-based and in no way explained that people would have server-side code running on the local PC if there was a single player had you been trying to say that, you would have said it so please i'm able to admit I didn't know why can't you? I learnt something today and i'm happy about it.
Quick question.... So if you think none of them knew this info, and you didn't either. How did you think Single-player works? It just appears. Viola GAME!? Like ... really? You thought that a single player game just magically generated code to make a game work? It just "poofed" into existence because it was a client-side game. This is just a very naive way of thinking if so.
Games always have to connect to some sort of "server" where certain files are executed and responded to and obtained and checked. IT's a very simple concept most "gamers" should understand. Basically any game has a backbone code a main code that is used, and in an online game that code is mostly stored on a server so it's harder for hackers to access and obtain. In a single player mode its there but it still has to be connected to. There has to be a link made and when you boot up a single player game it initiates the connection between your clients data (Think D2 Characters) and the servers data (Think all the bigger things like the background code actually running the instance of the game and allowing your client side code run through) By making the game have an offline mode that servers data would still have to be stored somewhere on your client, which makes it easy for hackers to get a hold of thus allowing them to fully understand how to hack the online version too. Clearly an inherent problem so they shut off some of the code and make it server side I.E its on Blizzard servers only and then you connect and use that code to run your game!
To some earlier points you made. I'm almost 100% positive all duped items weren't from hacks but exploits in the AH. I recall it had something to do with reporting an item didn't go through or something on the AH and they gave you a copy of said item and you had yours to keep thus creating 2 items. Not 100% sure of this but i remember reading this somewhere. There really are no "hacks" in D3 currently and that's mostly thanks to the online requirement which is fuckin awesome! And really if this upsets people this much I don't understand why it's so hard to say "okay... I'm not going to purchase this game" They don't make the game YOU want, they make the game THEY want.
As an aspiring Game developer/Programmer I think to myself why do I change my artistic vision for you. I MADE the damn thing! This isn't to say I can't change things that would result in a better experience, Patch 1.04, Loot 2.0 stuff like that has to be made so their vision of a great game to come true, but If I or any developer decides to say okay D3 will be online-only that is their choice that is the game they are making and that won't change. So if you don't like the game they are making buy a different game, show them with your wallet what you want, because there are currently plenty of alternatives to D3 and many other games.
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I had an idea that a client game would still need to run of something, I just never thought it would use the server-side code, I expected something more simplistic from the game files which just got the game going. I have admitted that it was something I was unaware of and the reason I feel they was to was because I constantly commented on my lack of understanding as to how running a client game would give people knowledge to hack the server and they were never able to respond to that question.
I'm not so much upset as curious, is it so wrong to ask a question? I wanted to understand the reasoning behind it as I knew I didn't, and now I do. I'm not saying damn you change your artistic vision for me, i'm just saying ok you made this decision but I don't entirely understand it could you explain it for me and that has now been done.
Regardless of whether or not i'm an incompetent idiot for not knowing it previously tho, the fact is that Shaggy was the first person to actually give a well written and educated comment and then answer my following question instead of the previous answers which to me just seem like people just as uninformed as I trying to defend something they didn't fully understand. Now thanks to him I do understand the reasons so if anything he at-least deserves some up-votes for that and thank you for teaching me something today :).
I do find it sad though how others are completely unable to admit they didn't know everything, even when if you read over there previous messages it's very easy to tell they didn't or they would have just said it when I asked.
having exact code doesnt allow you to hack online mode instantly, you just have easier way of testing and understanding how it works, so the process of making something to 'fool' server go faster
I don't believe anyone actually claimed it allowed you to "instantly" hack anything.
The point remains that having access to server code makes it SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER to compromise the server. Why anyone would argue against that is beyond me. It's so elementary. The whole idea of obscuring the server code as an anti-hack measure (in addition to DRM) seems so obvious that even GGG used it. It's so much harder to hack/compromise the server if you don't know the inner workings of the server that it's kinda pointless to argue the other side of the coin.
I mean it IS possible to hack D3 without the server code. It's just exceedingly difficult to the point that most people will bother themselves trying to "hack" more-fruitful targets. And that perceived difficulty, in and of itself, is another anti-hack measure.
Think of it like this:
People who have The Club on their steering wheel, whether or not it's actually locked, are much less likely to have their cars broken into than people who do not have The Club on their steering wheel. But you and I both know that an unlocked Club provides ZERO actual security. But if you're a thief... why even take the chance that the Club is locked or unlocked? Why not simply move on to a car that doesn't have it at all? Thieves and such always pick at low-hanging fruit. That's why so many cons are aimed at older, more gullible, people. If you can convince semi-senile granny to mail you $10,000 to pay for the Nigerian lottery she won, well that's a lot easier than convincing you, or me, to do the same.
So, by simply presenting this "we're always online" defense it immediately makes people think their time is better spent elsewhere. Less people trying to hack something is probably going to result in slower success, period. And you accomplish that just by making people think that the OTHER GUY is more suceptible than you are. It's a tried-and-true technique.
Games always have to connect to some sort of "server" where certain files are executed and responded to and obtained and checked.
im pretty much sure Wolfenstein 3D didnt have to do that, or your definition of 'server' is very 'vast' to say the least
I can't speak directly to Wolfenstein 3D. Game development in the 1980s and early 1990s are nothing like what they've become since the internet has become widely-available, and even more since broadband internet has become widely-available.
It IS possible for a developer to provide a completely-separate single-player client. It just costs much more in development time and man-hours and testing. Obviously each company who had a single-player game with an online version would evaluate whether or not this is a good idea on an individual basis. I will say that most big companies are not going to opt to develop and maintain two separate versions of the game, nowadays. Gaming is a lot more mainstream and profits matter. It's just not the same landscape as 1993 and what some developer did in 1993 when most of us didn't even have dial-up internet has very little bearing on what they're doing in 2013 when most of us have better internet connections on our CELL PHONES than we did on our computers back then.
It's not to say that EVERY GAME has to have the D2/3/PoE architecture. It's just to say that more often than not it's the financially-responsible decision for a company to make.
I do find it sad though how others are completely unable to admit they didn't know everything, even when if you read over there previous messages it's very easy to tell they didn't or they would have just said it when I asked.
Do you really think that is the problem or maybe it is your simple, rudimentary understanding about client-side vs. server side and how code bases are managed? I'm sorry I didn't put on kiddie gloves and walk you through it step-by-step but I figured that anyone that was debating this topic as feverishly as you were would have some basic knowledge about the topic.
@Maka
I care because the last time that this shit happened in D2 the game was unplayable for weeks on end. In terms of the items or duping it doesn't bother me one bit, but the nasty side of effects of lag are enough to make me care about the topic.
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The thing is the comparison your making isn't valid because Torchlight was designed like that, just like how the console version of Diablo 3 was. Torchlight had next to no-anti cheat and allowed players to mod the online version, the game wasn't even stored on there servers it was local servers when players went online so there was no hacking involved at all cheating in torchlight online took the same effort as cheating in single player so it's just not something you can compare. From an integrity point of view torchlight isn't riddled with hacks because it has a single player mode because the online mode isn't server side and they have taken no action to keep the game protected.
Diablo 2 had a SP mode and yet that remained hack free pretty much up until Blizzard stopped caring and let people hack, WoW has private servers yet that game is practically hack-free yes there are a few hacks but they are far from rampant. These are the things you compare it to and they are proof that some form of offline mode doesn't do nearly as much damage as some seem to believe and any damage it would have done is now passed as the game has been out for over a year and hackers have been hard at work to break it, they are beyond needing the code from a single player mode.
We've proven that the game got hacked anyway, that offline modes exist for hackers to abuse anyway, that games with a offline modes lasted a very long time just as hack free as Diablo 3 has been and that the only real true remaining defense against hackers is Blizzard not the lack of information hackers have at there disposal.
What is this evidence that clearly points in the other direction?
Log on to Diablo 2 and there's my proof.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
And what points in the other direction? I don't know, pretty much every client side game that is riddled with hacks no more than 3 hours after it launches versus the level of effort involved in every other on-line only game mentioned above and how they are much, much, much cleaner in terms of "hacking".
You don't seem to understand the difference between "client-side" and "server-side", this is the thing that prevents online games from getting hacked. The fact the files are stored on Blizzards servers and arn't accessible by players is what prevents the game being hacked, the reason Torchlight 2 or any client side game is riddled with hacks is because the files are client side and thus accessible, it's easy to hack a game when you don't have to work out how to access the secure files...
People have an easy time hacking torchlight 2 because there is no secure online mode, not because there is an offline mode, think about it please. Look at Diablo 2 again, in offline mode you have tons of programs to alter your stats, mods, crazy items etc... Yet none of that existed on the Bnet because ultimately all it takes to hack a single player game is to change a few numbers on your files the real challenge is working out how to hack through Blizzards protection which is the difference, sure people worked out how to do some hacks on bnet like FCR hack and bots but that's due to Warden being turned of and people learning how to work around Blizzards protection something that would be even more challenging in D3 it has nothing to do with the game having a single player mode.
People have an easy time hacking TL1/2, Diablo 1/2 because the SERVER FILES were stored on the local computer. How it works is easy:
You have a client. It connects to a server. In the single-player version of D1/2 and TL1/2 the game actually starts up a copy of the server software on your machine and connects to localhost instead of some IP address out on the internet. This means that any hacker can take the server files and decompile them. This is what leads to hacks: people knowing EXACTLY how the server operates.
Compare D1/2 and TL1/2 to D3 and PoE and the difference should be obvious.
As to bots, as best I know, current bots interpret screen pixels. Should this be the case, it means that there is NOTHING Blizzard can do to proactively stop bots, other than learn what they're doing and sending out ban waves. Detecting the pixels on the monitor doesn't access game files or data in RAM (and therefore is undetectable by Warden) and no amount of DRM can prevent a program from reading the pixels on your monitor. So long as it's possible to play a game by interpreting the pixels on the screen, botting will be possible.
Back to "hacking" though. The reason you don't see online character trainers is because it's pretty difficult, even for a hacker, to convince the game that you're able to violate basic rules. For example, in D2, a level 50 character could only have so many statistic and skill points. There's no way to tell the server that your level 50 character had 1000 skill points. But, you are able to convince the server that items dropped that didn't drop, because that's a single event. And that's basically what hackers/dupers were busy doing: convincing the server that items dropped which didn't actually drop. How did they do that? By understanding the client-server protocol and observing server code to see the weaknesses which would allow those things to happen.
If you can't see the server code (because it's not running on your local machine) then this becomes basically impossible. This also lends credence to the fact that "D3 private servers" aren't really D3 servers. If they were, then a hacker could easily analyze their code and use that to have full working knowledge of the Blizzard servers. But they haven't, which would basically mean that these "private servers" are not operating off the same codebase that the Blizzard servers are.
In order to make development simpler, the single-player and online/LAN clients are the same thing. This allows the developers to only have to maintain and test one "version" of the game.
What that means, though, is that if you are playing a single-player game you still need to connect to a server. This server runs on your machine instead of the Blizzard servers. If you are playing a LAN game then one of the players acts as a server (and runs the server code as well as their client code) and the other players connect to that.
What most people do not understand is, because developing and maintaining two versions of the game would be very costly (and significantly slower) and would result in bugs present in one version but not the other, even when you're playing single-player you are running a copy of the server on your machine. This is so the client code is no different. The ONLY difference between a single-player game and a LAN/online game, technically-speaking, is that your client is instructed to connect to "localhost" instead of your friend's IP address or a Blizzard IP address.
In layman's terms, the client ALWAYS requires a server to connect to in order to prevent the need to develop and maintain multiple client versions.
/Thread
Wow ... so you couldn't infer that when I was saying single player/off-line mode that it was in reference to the client? Absolutely incredible and you're the one trying to tell us we don't understand the difference between the client-side and server-side? Yikes!
Quick question.... So if you think none of them knew this info, and you didn't either. How did you think Single-player works? It just appears. Viola GAME!? Like ... really? You thought that a single player game just magically generated code to make a game work? It just "poofed" into existence because it was a client-side game. This is just a very naive way of thinking if so.
Games always have to connect to some sort of "server" where certain files are executed and responded to and obtained and checked. IT's a very simple concept most "gamers" should understand. Basically any game has a backbone code a main code that is used, and in an online game that code is mostly stored on a server so it's harder for hackers to access and obtain. In a single player mode its there but it still has to be connected to. There has to be a link made and when you boot up a single player game it initiates the connection between your clients data (Think D2 Characters) and the servers data (Think all the bigger things like the background code actually running the instance of the game and allowing your client side code run through) By making the game have an offline mode that servers data would still have to be stored somewhere on your client, which makes it easy for hackers to get a hold of thus allowing them to fully understand how to hack the online version too. Clearly an inherent problem so they shut off some of the code and make it server side I.E its on Blizzard servers only and then you connect and use that code to run your game!
To some earlier points you made. I'm almost 100% positive all duped items weren't from hacks but exploits in the AH. I recall it had something to do with reporting an item didn't go through or something on the AH and they gave you a copy of said item and you had yours to keep thus creating 2 items. Not 100% sure of this but i remember reading this somewhere. There really are no "hacks" in D3 currently and that's mostly thanks to the online requirement which is fuckin awesome! And really if this upsets people this much I don't understand why it's so hard to say "okay... I'm not going to purchase this game" They don't make the game YOU want, they make the game THEY want.
As an aspiring Game developer/Programmer I think to myself why do I change my artistic vision for you. I MADE the damn thing! This isn't to say I can't change things that would result in a better experience, Patch 1.04, Loot 2.0 stuff like that has to be made so their vision of a great game to come true, but If I or any developer decides to say okay D3 will be online-only that is their choice that is the game they are making and that won't change. So if you don't like the game they are making buy a different game, show them with your wallet what you want, because there are currently plenty of alternatives to D3 and many other games.
I'm not so much upset as curious, is it so wrong to ask a question? I wanted to understand the reasoning behind it as I knew I didn't, and now I do. I'm not saying damn you change your artistic vision for me, i'm just saying ok you made this decision but I don't entirely understand it could you explain it for me and that has now been done.
Regardless of whether or not i'm an incompetent idiot for not knowing it previously tho, the fact is that Shaggy was the first person to actually give a well written and educated comment and then answer my following question instead of the previous answers which to me just seem like people just as uninformed as I trying to defend something they didn't fully understand. Now thanks to him I do understand the reasons so if anything he at-least deserves some up-votes for that and thank you for teaching me something today :).
I do find it sad though how others are completely unable to admit they didn't know everything, even when if you read over there previous messages it's very easy to tell they didn't or they would have just said it when I asked.
I don't believe anyone actually claimed it allowed you to "instantly" hack anything.
The point remains that having access to server code makes it SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER to compromise the server. Why anyone would argue against that is beyond me. It's so elementary. The whole idea of obscuring the server code as an anti-hack measure (in addition to DRM) seems so obvious that even GGG used it. It's so much harder to hack/compromise the server if you don't know the inner workings of the server that it's kinda pointless to argue the other side of the coin.
I mean it IS possible to hack D3 without the server code. It's just exceedingly difficult to the point that most people will bother themselves trying to "hack" more-fruitful targets. And that perceived difficulty, in and of itself, is another anti-hack measure.
Think of it like this:
People who have The Club on their steering wheel, whether or not it's actually locked, are much less likely to have their cars broken into than people who do not have The Club on their steering wheel. But you and I both know that an unlocked Club provides ZERO actual security. But if you're a thief... why even take the chance that the Club is locked or unlocked? Why not simply move on to a car that doesn't have it at all? Thieves and such always pick at low-hanging fruit. That's why so many cons are aimed at older, more gullible, people. If you can convince semi-senile granny to mail you $10,000 to pay for the Nigerian lottery she won, well that's a lot easier than convincing you, or me, to do the same.
So, by simply presenting this "we're always online" defense it immediately makes people think their time is better spent elsewhere. Less people trying to hack something is probably going to result in slower success, period. And you accomplish that just by making people think that the OTHER GUY is more suceptible than you are. It's a tried-and-true technique.
I can't speak directly to Wolfenstein 3D. Game development in the 1980s and early 1990s are nothing like what they've become since the internet has become widely-available, and even more since broadband internet has become widely-available.
It IS possible for a developer to provide a completely-separate single-player client. It just costs much more in development time and man-hours and testing. Obviously each company who had a single-player game with an online version would evaluate whether or not this is a good idea on an individual basis. I will say that most big companies are not going to opt to develop and maintain two separate versions of the game, nowadays. Gaming is a lot more mainstream and profits matter. It's just not the same landscape as 1993 and what some developer did in 1993 when most of us didn't even have dial-up internet has very little bearing on what they're doing in 2013 when most of us have better internet connections on our CELL PHONES than we did on our computers back then.
It's not to say that EVERY GAME has to have the D2/3/PoE architecture. It's just to say that more often than not it's the financially-responsible decision for a company to make.
Do you really think that is the problem or maybe it is your simple, rudimentary understanding about client-side vs. server side and how code bases are managed? I'm sorry I didn't put on kiddie gloves and walk you through it step-by-step but I figured that anyone that was debating this topic as feverishly as you were would have some basic knowledge about the topic.
@Maka
I care because the last time that this shit happened in D2 the game was unplayable for weeks on end. In terms of the items or duping it doesn't bother me one bit, but the nasty side of effects of lag are enough to make me care about the topic.