One year ago today, the gates of the Burning Hells opened and Diablo III was unleashed onto the world. Since then, millions of heroes have been created, billions of hours have been spent in games, andtrillions of demons have been slaughtered without mercy. We've grown and improved a lot since release, both as a game team and as a community, and thanks to your feedback, passion, and unquenchable bloodlust, we expect the next year to be even more epic.

To celebrate this milestone and the community that made it possible, we're giving away free buffs! (Who doesn't like free buffs?) Players who log in to defend Sanctuary between May 15 and May 21 will receive a 25% boost to their Magic Find and +EXP stats. The buff is only available while logged in to the game, but it will apply to all characters as well as stack with other similar bonuses -- the +EXP bonus will stack multiplicatively and the Magic Find bonus will stack above the 300% cap!

Happy demon-hunting, Nephalem. Thank you for your continued support, and we wish you the best of adventures in the coming year!

With the continued popularity of third-party applications, which are referred to hereafter as "applications" or "web applications", created by the community of players for use with our games, Blizzard Entertainment has created formal guidelines for their design and distribution. These guidelines have been put in place to ensure the integrity of our games and to help promote an enjoyable gaming environment for all of our players.

Intended Audience

The Third-Party API Usage Policy is for developers developing applications, where applications include distributed and non-distributed products and services that at any point engage Blizzard Entertainment Web API resources. Web API resources include any data that can be accessed through HTTP requests to URLs on the Battle.net website that begin with “/api”.

Example applications include, but are not limited to:

• Client libraries
  
• Desktop applications
  
• Services and deamons such as websites and web services
  
• Scripts and non-compiled applications and utilities

Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to change the location and definition of what constitutes an application and Blizzard Entertainment Web API resources at any time.

Service Availability Notice

Blizzard Entertainment makes no guarantee of the availability of any data, functionality, or feature provided by or through the API. In addition, Blizzard Entertainment may at any time revoke access to the API or disable part or all of the API without any warning or notice.
Applications must abide by the following access guidelines.

The following guidelines have been put in place to ensure that all users of an API will be able to access it:

• Applications may make up to a total of 10,000 unauthenticated requests per day.
  
• Applications may make up to a total of 50,000 authenticated requests per day.
  
• Applications may not use multiple forms of access, including making any combination of unauthenticated and authenticated requests or using multiple API keys, to make more requests than permitted by the guidelines above.
  
• Applications may not use other third-party services to make additional requests on their behalf.
  
• Applications may not sell, share, transfer, or distribute application access keys or tokens.

Applications may be classified, solely at Blizzard Entertainment's discretion, to allow fewer or greater numbers of requests per day. Blizzard Entertainment also reserves the right to revoke access to the API completely and without warning.

Applications may not charge premiums for features that use the API.

"Premium" versions of applications offering additional for-pay features are not permitted, nor can players be charged money to download an application, charged for services related to the application, or otherwise be required to offer some form of monetary compensation to download or access an application when those features use the API. Applications may not include interstitials soliciting donations before features or functionality becomes available to the player.

Applications must not negatively impact Blizzard Entertainment games, services, or other players.

Applications must perform no function which, in Blizzard Entertainment's sole discretion, negatively impacts the performance of Blizzard Entertainment games or services, or otherwise negatively affects the game for other players.

Application code must be completely visible.

The programming code of an application must in no way be hidden or obfuscated, and must be freely accessible to and viewable by the general public.

Applications may not imply any association with Blizzard Entertainment.

Applications may not imply any association with, or endorsement by, Blizzard Entertainment.

Applications must not contain offensive or objectionable material.

Blizzard Entertainment requires that applications contain no offensive, obscene, or otherwise objectionable material, as determined by Blizzard’s sole discretion. Applications should contain only content appropriate for the ESRB rating for the related game(s). For example, World of Warcraft has been rated "T for Teen" by the ESRB, and has received similar ratings from other ratings boards around the world.

Blizzard trademarks, titles, or tradenames should not be used when naming an application.

Applications may not use names based on Blizzard’s trademarks or taken from Blizzard's products as the name, or part of the name, of the application.

License for Use

Applications that use Blizzard Entertainment intellectual property, such as Blizzard Web API resources, require a license for that use. Blizzard Entertainment may at its sole discretion request that any application that uses its intellectual property be removed and no longer distributed.

Policy Compliance Notice

Blizzard Entertainment is committed to maintaining the integrity of our games and services and to providing safe, fair, and fun gaming environment for all of our players. As such, failure to abide by the guidelines in this policy may result in measures up to and including legal action, when necessary.

Thank you for reading these guidelines, and for helping Blizzard Entertainment continue to deliver high-quality gameplay experiences.

By increasing the stack size to 10m, blizzard put the integer overflow bug back into the game and people duped gold?
Nah. :)

The servers were brought up ahead of schedule before our testing had completed (before we mark realms live after patching, we always take some time to make sure that the patch was applied correctly, that all services are running as intended, etc). This testing phase is important and not something we want to skip, so we brought realms back down to make sure we could complete it.

We know this interrupted game time (and is confusing for players on top of that), and for that we're sincerely sorry. After we complete our testing, we'll bring the servers back online and publish an update.

Servers are up and can't play.
Okay, for the others here who are also experiencing this - please make sure you have the launcher closed down and then go through and try to delete the BNet tools folder. If that doesn't do the trick, please update me here. Thanks!

Edited: Now with link!

Okay, 1.0.8.16603 is the newest version for US - if the game is trying to connect to US and is still having the loop, let's have you try going into the game folder, and delete the updates folder. Once that is done, run the launcher > after the update is done, press HELP > run the repair.

Please let me know if those steps didn't get this resolved. Thanks!

so if its the newest version for US then why am i getting it as an EU server player ? ive never once logged onto American servers ?
If its not been done for EU yet why put it out for download if its going to stop EU players from being able to play ? if so how can you downgrade patch untill its actually out for EU ?
This would be because you have the US game client. If you were to go through options > account > you will see the Global Play selection. A properly patched US client will only be able to log into the US region until EU has concluded with its own patch which happens later today.

If you wanted to play in EU right now, then you'd have to uninstall the game, and reinstall the EU version through Battle.net by logging into eu.battle.net. Omrakos offers more specific details in this thread.

I'll continue to keep my eyes on the thread if anyone else has any further issues with the looping.

So. Any estimated time EU servers will be ready?
*edit* im also getting the loops and tried everythinng to avail. I am EU player though so idk if its just not rdy? is this normal?
EU is scheduled for maintenance at 8p PDT this evening. Thanks for your patience everyone. For anyone who is still having any difficulties connecting who has gone through the aforementioned steps, please contact us directly - we offer live web chat in the US through 6p PDT this evening.

Regards,
Araxom

Hi all, as you've seen from the links posted here - Agent.exe is an official component of our games. Basically, it's a program that helps with the updating and the installation of the games - it can commonly be offset by security programs which think that because it wants to make changes it's something weird. Although having your computer protected with a security program is strongly advised, you want to make sure that Agent is not hindered because if it is your game will not likely update correctly, and may not even launch.

If a security program has shut down Agent, or if a game is not launching - going through the following troubleshooting steps should help you out. If anyone still has any difficulties after checking that out, feel free to let us know, we'll be happy to help.

Leveling up a new character is one of the most boring parts of this game. So much time spent running through dead zones. Why did they only apply this change to Inferno? I was planning on leveling up some of my other champs after 1.08, but now I don't know.
Great question!

The reason we didn’t apply monster density changes to Normal, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties is because we felt this would be detrimental to the new player experience. Players who are just entering Sanctuary for the very first time have different needs and less skills and tools at their disposal, and they require the opportunity to get their feet wet before being assaulted with the additional challenges that higher monster density offers. At the same time, we also agree that this isn’t ideal for players who have already gone through the game and are looking to start up new characters and are ready to take on additional challenges and faster pacing from the get-go.

Along these lines, we’ve considered ideas such as enabling the higher density for MP1 and higher, or simply making higher density a checkbox option. We’re currently working on some other concrete ideas, but we don’t have anything to share just yet, but this is definitely an aspect of Diablo III that we’d like to improve in the long-term.

Choosing the right desktop wallpaper to suit your impeccable taste can be an arduous task. There are certainly a lot of appealing choices out there, but too few that strike the perfect balance between the cadence of brimstone and rapture of holy fire.

Until now.

In celebration of Diablo III's one-year anniversary, we're premiering four new desktop wallpapers that feature high-resolution images of the most nefarious beings of the Burning Hells pitted against some of the best and bravest the High Heavens has to offer.

The following images are available in a variety of dimensions that should keep your devices looking hot for the road ahead.

Enjoy!

Diablo III Patch 1.0.8a – v.1.0.8.16603
General

• Made improvements to address "rubberbanding" issues encountered when using movement-based abilities like Tempest Rush, Strafe, and Whirlwind

Auction House

• The stack size of gold on the real-money auction house has been increased again to 10 million (up from 1 million)

Classes

• Barbarian
  
  • Passive Skills
    
    • Inspiring Presence
      
      • Will once again be displayed under Life per Second on the character sheet

User Interface

• Bug Fixes
  
  • Fixed an issue introduced in Patch 1.0.8 that prevented Item Label Display preferences from being saved

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue introduced in Patch 1.0.8 causing dungeon exits to sometimes be placed in abnormally close proximity to the entrance
  
• Fixed an issue introduced in Patch 1.0.8 that prevented players with Starter Edition accounts from being upgraded when playing in an IGR

Our intention is to have as many people take advantage of the authenticators as possible. I would advise against using a friend's phone as this may cause complications down the road for verification of the account. If you cannot use the mobile authenticator please keep in mind that we do have the physical ones available as well. If for whatever reason you are having any difficulties in acquiring one, please open a ticket and let us know and we'll see what we can do.

Regards,
Araxom (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

I just attached an authenticator to my account and now i must enter the authenticator # every stinkin time i log into battlenet for any reason! (even though settings are set to remember me on the forums for 30 days and Not on every login into game)
Hi all, I won't be able to go into too much detail about how our security works behind the scenes, but I'll speak to this a bit. Battle.net has two different places to let us know you want the security challenges to not pop up as often. Firstly, when you log into the account with the authenticator there's the checkbox to allow the system to not ask for the authenticator if you're logging in from the same computer - now, the second place to help the system remember you is specifically on the authenticator info page inside the account. When you log into the account, click 'account' at the top, and there on that page near the top, you'll see security options. It is there on the security options page where the toggle for the challenge is.

Keep in mind that if the system sees any change in access patterns, it will likely prompt you with the challenge.

If anyone has any further questions in regards to this, feel free to let us know. We'll be happy to chat!

Regards,
Araxom (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hi Thortok, I apologize if the lock threw you off guard. I just wanted to make sure that you didn't think I was leaving you hanging if I didn't respond immediately. I also apologize if I didn't totally catch the gist of your original post there. To speak to the issue again here, the issue is that it's by specific design that certain kinds of phones will not work with the SMS protect. As I understand it, this may in part be due to the idea that with a phone that has a regular subscription this may be a more thorough way to ensure security than say if a pre-paid phone was able to be used. It's a question that has been put to us multiple times, however for now the functionality remains as it is.

I may not be able to go into more specific detail or offer much more insight where that is concerned, but I'll keep my eyes on the thread in case you respond.

Regards,
Araxom

A) If it's okay with Blizz that I do this and assume the risk myself, since I know stuff like account-sharing even with members of your own household is against the rules and stuff like that. I don't wanna do this and have some audit detect that the SMS holder's name and my name are different and ban my account or something. If it plain out isn't allowed I'll drop the idea right now.

And B) After the initial setup, how often does it require confirmation through SMS when you post something for sale on the RMAH to cash out to Paypal? Every single time you post something? (If so that would annoy the heck out of my friend to forward all those texts.) Just the occasional time, like once every couple of weeks? Only when there's a problem or investigation necessary? If it's going to be too much of an imposition for her, I wasn't going to ask her anyway, but a text every now and then should be fine. (Could maybe even set them up to be automatically forwarded or something.)

And finally C) If I go to post something, need a confirmation code, and wait for my friend to forward the text, would the time delay matter? (Especially if like she's asleep or her phone's off it could maybe even take hours.) I know an authenticator for instance the code is only good for roughly three minutes or less, isn't it? I could always wait to post stuff until I know she's ready to forward a text, though, but knowing ahead of time would be beneficial.
A) 'Not allowed' may be a strong way of putting it - 'Not advised' is probably more in the range of where I'd go with it. To offer some other perspective here, as we go along with our phone system - we might specifically pull info from the call to aid us in verifying who the caller is. If we see that a phone is registered to a different name than that which is on the account, that might hinder the verification process rather than help.

B) We specifically keep these details a little cryptic as the answer may not be a static one. You may find that the code is not prompted for each and every transaction, however you may also see that at other times it is. What affects this, I am not at liberty to say.

C) I cannot speak to this in specific detail, other than to say that if the code was not entered relatively soon around the time that you were prompted, the transaction may not be authorized.

I know that this has been a ongoing request for the prepaid phone users who like yourself wish to participate in the RMAH. As ever, our policies and procedure are subject to change and this too may be something that is updated in the future. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hi all, I just wanted to jump in the thread here and let you know that we're still in the process of reviewing some aspects of the RMAH issues for accounts that were affected by the audit. If you have any specific questions or concerns about where we're at with an auction on your account, or why a specific course of action was taken, please feel free to message us. Please keep in mind that due to the high volume of inquiries surrounding this issue, we may not be able to immediately respond. During the normal phone hours for our various support regions, we do offer live web chat which you can use to chat with us directly.

Thank you for your patience and for your understanding :)

Regards,
Araxom
Blizzard Customer Support

Heroes of Sanctuary, heed our call!
May 15th marks the one-year anniversary of Diablo III. Help us celebrate the Lord of Terror's rebirth (and contribute to an awesome community project in the process) by submitting your very own birthday greeting!
To participate, simply print out one of the birthday images below (or create your own), take a photo of you and/or your friends, and then tweet the picture to @Diablo using the hashtag #D3BDAY or email it to BlizzardContest@Blizzard.com. In addition to re-tweeting our favorites and uploading them to our Diablo Facebook page throughout the week, we'll also be compiling the most impressive greetings to show off here on the official community site after the festivities have concluded.

  

To kick off this shindig, here are a few festive photos from the Diablo III development and community teams:

      

      

      

      

What are you waiting for, Nephalem? Grab a sign, take a picture, submit your photo, and join in on the diabolical birthday bash! Also, be sure to stay tuned to diablo3.com all this week, as the party is just beginning.

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing public games (Act II included) since patch 1.0.8, and haven’t had any problems finding a game to join. I have a suggestion that might help you find Public Games if you don’t care what quest they’re on.

In patch 1.0.8, we added a feature to Public Game quest selection called “Any Quest” to help players quickly join games and get into the action, and here’s how to find it if you haven’t seen it yet. After clicking the “Public Games” option you’re prompted to select a quest, and each Act now has an option called “Any Quest” at the top of its quest list (you can also select “Any Act- Any Quest” at the very top). I hope this helps you find games with like-minded Nephalem to adventure with! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Join a multiplayer player public game. Any act, any type.
Press ESC. Like you want to leave.
Open game to public is Unavailable. Now why is that?
Making a game session publicly available can be a little confusing, but I’ll try to clear it up a bit. The option is greyed out in existing public games because it’s already been activated and can’t be edited (i.e. changing it from Monster Slaying to Brawling) or turned off. The option will be available if you want to turn a solo session or a private multiplayer session into a public game, but only the party leader can do that if you’re in a group. I hope that helped! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Error 31075
I was referring to something slightly different in my post (grayed-out button), but the scenarios are very similar.

I spoke with our engineers and confirmed that "Error 31075" indicates that the game is attempting to limit traffic to the auction house. The auction house is up, but it's just under heavy load at the moment.

I did read the update. She obviously edited the update (in italics) after I had already posted this thread...
Nope! But I will go back and update it now to also state "Error 31075" so it's more clear. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Players Near You
The "Players Near Me" feature will call out players on your Local Network (so, same apartment, same university, same office, same PC baang, etc). Thisis what the notification looks like, for reference. And here's how it will look in the Friends List.

Hope that helps! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

If you purchased BlizzCon 2013 tickets for family or friends, just a reminder you have until next Tuesday, May 14to enter or edit attendee information, including:

• The names to be printed on the badges
  
• Battle.net account names for the pre-show online merchandise sale for BlizzCon ticket holders—more details to come. (Please note that only registered accounts will be able to access this pre-show sale.)
  
• Optional game information such as World of Warcraft character, realm, clan, and BattleTag.

If this information hasn’t been entered by May 14, all badges will default to the name on the purchaser’s Battle.net account. Don’t miss the opportunity to customize your badges!
For more info, check out the Badge Information page.

Head to your Order History within Battle.net account management to edit attendee information before it’s too late!

Hey everyone,

I'm John Hight, the production director for Diablo III. As most of you know, after the release of patch 1.0.8 a small number of players exploited a bug to duplicate gold. The bug has since been fixed, and the Auction Houses and gold trading are back online.

While the issue is resolved, we know a lot of players have questions about what happened and what we're doing about it, so I wanted to take some time to discuss the details with you here.

So, What Happened?

Shortly after we released patch 1.0.8 in the Americas on Tuesday, players discovered a bug that allowed gold to be duplicated via the real-money Auction House. The bug was the result of a coding error that was exposed when we increased the gold stack size from 1 million to 10 million. This resulted in an overflow on cancelled auctions that yielded a greater amount of gold in return. Only a relatively small number of players had the billions of gold necessary to exploit the bug, and only 415 of those players chose to use this exploit for personal gain.

To all of you who reported this to us, thank you! As soon as we confirmed what was happening, we took the Auction Houses in the Americas offline and suspended gold trading in order to isolate the problem. From there, we were able to troubleshoot, develop a fix, test it, and deploy it to all regions before the day ended—also ensuring that patch 1.0.8 rolled out in other regions (without the bug) as scheduled. The Auction Houses remained offline and gold trades remained suspended until we completed a full audit of all transactions that occurred during this period. Once that was completed, we brought everything back online.

While this was happening, we locked accounts that appeared to be exploiting the bug as well as collaborators that held gold or items for the exploiters. Once we confirmed that an account was involved in this exploit, we either banned or rolled back the account depending on their activity.

What Does That Mean for Me?

Soon after the exploit was discovered, we contemplated doing a complete rollback, as was suggested by a number of players here in the forums.

The vast majority of players did not participate in the exploit and we didn't like the idea of punishing them for the bad behavior of a few people. A rollback would mean bringing the servers down for a lengthy period and a loss of all progression since 1.0.8 was released. Many players made significant accomplishments in the game that required time and dedication, and we felt it was worth the work involved to try to preserve these efforts and go after the exploiters instead.

With this in mind, we elected not to roll back the servers in The Americas and are instead working to remove duplicated gold from the economy through targeted audits and account actions (as indicated above) without taking away progress that our players rightfully earned.

As of this this post, we have already recaptured more than 85% of the excess gold from the accounts involved, and over the days ahead we will continue to pore over our audit data to reclaim as much duplicate currency as possible. We've also done a full audit of our code to help make sure that something like this doesn't happen again.

So, What's Next?

Many people bought and sold items and gold on the Auction House on Tuesday. We're making sure that all legitimate transactions go through. This means that if your account was not involved in the exploit, you will get to keep your items and gold, as well as any money you received from sales on the real-money Auction House. We'll also be donating all proceeds from auctions conducted by the suspended or banned players—including all of THEIR sale proceeds that we intercepted as well as our transaction fee—to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

Thank You!

On behalf of the development team, I just want to say thanks again to those of you who took the time to notify us about this situation, as well as apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you personally. We highly value fair play, and we’re going to continue to monitor the game and take steps necessary to prevent exploits like this from happening in the future.