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.

> 5/10/13 8:10 p.m. PDT: Maintenance has concluded, and both the gold and real-money Auction Houses are now live. Gold trades have also been reactivated. Please note that we have temporarily reverted the stack size for gold on the real-money Auction House from 10,000,000 to 1,000,000. (At the moment, there’s an active bug preventing gold stack sizes from displaying correctly in the Auction House at values higher than 1,000,000, so we've temporarily reversed this change the until we can fix it.)

Important: To help reduce load and improve the overall stability of the auction house system, the game may temporarily limit traffic to the auction house, especially following maintenance. This is done automatically, and players may occasionally see a grayed-out auction house button as a result. If the auction house button is grayed-out, please wait a few minutes and then try again.

> 5/10/13 3:25 p.m. PDT: We've made substantial progress with our audit, but the process is not yet complete. We don't yet have a specific ETA as to when the Auction Houses will be available, but we wanted to at least touch base with the community and let you all know that we're still working hard to address the effects of the gold dupe. We'll be providing another status update by 7:00 p.m. PDT, as well, so be sure to stay tuned to this thread. Thank you!

> 5/9/13 12:10 p.m. PDT: As we mentioned earlier, we're currently auditing transactions that were performed on the both the gold and real-money Auction House following the discovery of a gold exploit after patch 1.0.8 released. For those just tuning in, we decided to perform a complete audit and focus on the few players that exploited this bug rather than performing a full rollback and taking everyone offline for a day (or more) – losing all the progress they made.

This audit is a time-intensive process, and to make sure that we can do a thorough job, we’re going to keep the Auction Houses in maintenance until that work is complete. Unfortunately, our previous estimate was incorrect, and for that I personally apologize. We don’t have a new ETA, but we anticipate that the service will be unavailable for at least another 24 hours. We’ll continue to provide updates in this thread regarding the status of our Auction House maintenance as they become available.

> 5/9/13 9:00 a.m. PDT: We are still in the process of reviewing all of Tuesday's transactions and need to keep the Auction House offline for a while longer to complete our audit. At this time, we will not be able to bring the Auction House online by 10:00 a.m. PDT. We're re-evaluating required downtime, and will provide another update by 12:00 p.m. PDT.

Hey everyone,

We're currently looking into two issues that are affecting players who've patched up to 1.0.8:

• Item Label Display is reverting back to "Push to Show" after changing it to another setting.

• When trying to switch to a different character, the character model (including its class, gender, name, and banner) in the menu does not update, but equipped gear will. This appears to simply be a visual bug, as joining a game session will use the correct character.

We'll be sure to provide an update in this thread once we've more information. In the meantime, thank you for your reports! To help keep the conversation streamlined (this will help us talk to you better, and vice-versa), we're going to be locking and redirecting posts to this location.

Thanks for the report. We sent this up so it could be looked at as well. Of course, as soon as we have an update we'll let you all know. Thanks again!

EDIT: So, we've seen multiple posts from players saying that Inspiring Presence is not affecting the Barbarian or other party members. When these posts first started to appear, we were pretty darn sure everything was working correctly. Your reports mean a lot to us, though, so we decided to hop into the game to do some testing of our own. We were able to confirm that everyone in the party was benefiting from the appropriate amount of additional regeneration, but the way Inspiring Presence it works in 1.0.8 visually is a little tricky. It now works similarly to a heal-over-time spell, which prevents it from updating in the details section of the character stat window.

I think it's important that I let you know how we tested it, so you can see it for yourself. The first step is to turn on Healing numbers. You can do this in Options > Gameplay > Display Healing Numbers. Make sure you have no Shouts activated, and remove a piece of gear with Vitality on it. Once you put that piece of Vitality gear back on, you should notice a green number floating off of your characters head, and that's how much Life you're regenerating every half second. Next, perform a Shout that will activate Inspiring Presence, and you (and your party members) should notice a distinct increase in that number.

We agree that this can be confusing for players, so we’re taking a look at how to make those values more noticeable. Beyond that, we don't have any additional information about if or when Inspiring Presence will update the Life Regeneration stat in the character pane, but we'll let you know when we do.

While I can empathize with players wanting "proof" of what precise actions are being taken against individual accounts, the investigations and actions taken on a player's account are private. They can only be discussed directly between the account holder and Blizzard Entertainment.

Please be aware that discussing disciplined accounts on the forums is also against our Code of Conduct. If you wish to appeal actions taken against your account, you will need to submit a ticket.

List of tags followed by stage of investigation, how much they duped, level of punishment.
Gonna come right out and say it: No. This is not something we will do. Full stop.

Even if a player does something that very clearly merits a suspension or ban, we still value that person's privacy and aren't going to publicize what (if any) action we have taken in response. There are times where we will speak in general terms, but is not our policy (nor our preference) to discuss personal account information with anyone but the account holder. Ultimately, that kind of dialogue exists between Blizzard and the player, not Blizzard and the community.

This is not a witch hunt.
There will be no public shaming (so put down your pitchforks).
Any further threads encouraging harassment of other players will be locked or deleted.

Thanks. :)

Density Does Not Scale with Monster Power
In patch 1.0.8 we adjusted the monster density of various areas of the game for players playing on Inferno on Monster Power 1 through MP10. While Monster Power offers some added perks to those willing to tackle the challenge of playing on higher MP levels, the monster density of areas does not scale upwards as you increase your MP level. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Collecting New Things in Diablo 3
Interesting suggestion! I'd love to hear what players think, as well.

Do you think having collections is something you'd enjoy?
Do you think it's fitting for a game like Diablo III?
If no, why not?
If yes, what kind of implementation would you appreciate most? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Here you go: http://us.battle.net...opic/8770118014

It covers all the latest updates, starting from Tuesday.

This does not say any thing about the AH for hardcore is it the same?
It is. The auction house is down for both Normal and Hardcore characters.

what about when the gold and refunds will be completed?
No ETA, but we believe it will require at least until tomorrow for our anti-hacks team to complete their work. If we have a more conclusive estimate (i.e. a more exact time), we'll absolutely share it. One just doesn't exist at the moment beyond what we've already provided.

Lylirra, thank you for posting, but I honestly think, for the bits of sanity left in the community, you should post on the sticky... let everyone you're having a team working on it. I myself reload the sticky post every 30-45 minutes, even though I know I won't be using the AH til tomorrow at best.
So long as the auction house is down, that means we're working on it. In fact, that's the reason why it's in maintenance right now. We wouldn't keep the auction house offline for kicks, since we know it's an inconvenience for many players.

I definitely appreciate the suggestion, but given that we anticipate the auction house won't be online until at least tomorrow, updating every half-hour would generate a lot of "no news" type of posts (which would make finding the relevant ones more difficult).

Happy to consider other options, though. Any/all feedback is welcome.

Without the AH, 90% of the game is down.
What are people going to do now, grind for garbage gear?
That's up to the individual player. If the game doesn't provide a lot of enjoyment for you right now without the auction house, then you've a few options. You could try self-found or "Iron Born" (there's a pretty strong community for that play style, especially in Hardcore), or wait to play until the auction house is back online.

We'll be keeping the main information post as up-to-date as possible, and we'll be sure to have Breaking News change once auction house maintenance is over, as well.

And your eta's on things needs to be more exact. Ty though.
If we had more exact ETAs, we'd provide them. We don't at the moment, however. Once we reach a point where we can share a time (or even a time frame), we will.

Right now, the ETA is "once our anti-hacks teams has completed their work." Unfortunately, that's hard to measure on a clock face. =/

Lylirra is hit for 1,000,000 Missing the Point damage!
I understood the point. I chose to answer the question at face value, however, rather than comment on what was otherwise an antagonizing, though rhetorical statement. :)

Can I presume then that by the time the AH opens up, all auctions will have expired?

Previously I recall seeing announcements that Blizz do NOT influence the auction house nor 'control' drops to prevent flooding of said market.

Any pre-emptive responses for when it does come online and there are pages and pages of auctions, many which will be below the 'just made' time left?
You presume correctly. By the time auction house is brought back up, all posted auctions will have expired naturally (since it will be > 36 hours).

How about an eta on when we will be able to trade igg for items with other players? Is it going to parallel the AH opening?
At this point, that's the plan. We'll update the main thread if that plan changes.

It would be nice of you guys to shed some light on what will happen to the items that were purchased with the duped gold.
EDIT: I don't know if that comes off as rude, but it's not meant to be. Sorry just in case!
No worries. I didn't interpret it as rude at at all. :)

To answer your question, though, that's still being determined, and I don't have any additional details to share. Right now, we're working on tracking down exactly where everything went, to whom, in what form, and the best way to reverse those effects (this can vary depending on the situation and the player). Whatever course of action we choose to take, though, we'll want to make sure that it impacts players who didn't use the dupe in the smallest way possible (if at all).

One would think that the statement "when we have more info, we'll let you know" would be easy understood, yet it seems that most of the forum goers are just like that kid constantly asking why.
Eh. It's human nature to be curious and want to understand what's happening. Can't really fault anyone for asking questions, you know? Especially if they're being sincere and polite.

Here are the exact values for clarification:

• Experience granted by the following monsters has been reduced to better match their HP:
  
  • By 75% for:
    
    • Brood Hatchlings, Cavern Spiders, Spiderlings, Stygian Crawlers, and Tormented Stingers
  • By 60% for:
    
    • Accursed, Betrayed, Blazing Ghouls, Ghouls, Murderous Fiends, Reviled, Savage Fiends, and Vicious Ghouls
  • By 50% for:
    
    • Bile Crawlers, Crazed Cultists, Crazed Summoners, Dark Conjurers, Dark Cultists, Dark Summoners, Dark Zealots, Deranged Cultists, Doom Wraiths, Enraged Zealots, Fallen, Fallen Grunts, Fallen Peons, Fallen Soldiers, Foul Conjurers, Ravenous Dead, Shade Stalkers, Shadow Vermin, Skeletal Crawlers, and Spine Lashers
  • By 40% for:
    
    • Dark Moon Clan Impalers, Moon Clan Impalers
  • By 34% for:
    
    • Blazing Guardians, Charged Constructs, Chilling Constructs, Frost Guardians, Noxious Guardians, Shock Guardians, Smoldering Constructs, and Toxic Constructs
  • By 25% for:
    
    • Dust Shamblers, Hungry Corpses, Retching Cadavers

• The chance for the following monsters to drop loot has also been reduced to better match their HP:
  
  • By 60% for:
    
    • Accursed, Betrayed, Blazing Ghouls, Ghouls, Murderous Fiends, Reviled, Savage Fiends, and Vicious Ghouls
  • By 50% for:
    
    • Bile Crawlers, Crazed Cultists, Dark Cultists, Dark Zealots, Deranged Cultists, Doom Wraiths, Enraged Zealots, Fallen, Fallen Grunts, Fallen Peons, Fallen Soldiers, Ravenous Dead, Shade Stalkers, Shadow Vermin, Skeletal Crawlers, and Spine Lashers
  • By 40% for:
    
    • Dark Moon Clan Impalers, Moon Clan Impalers
  • By 34% for:
    
    • Blazing Guardians, Charged Constructs, Chilling Constructs, Frost Guardians, Noxious Guardians, Shock Guardians, Smoldering Constructs. and Toxic Constructs
  • By 25% for:
    
    • Brood Hatchlings, Cavern Spiders, Crazed Summoners, Dark Conjurers, Dark Summoners, Dust Shamblers, Fallen, Fallen Grunts, Fallen Peons, Fallen Soldiers, Foul Conjurers, Hungry Corpses, Retching Cadavers, Spiderlings

These changes were about balancing monster difficulty vs. monster reward. It also helped us make sure that we weren't making any zones in Act I, Act II, and Act IV too OP, or the next must-go-to place for farming, by increasing their density. This way, zones should be more even in terms of reward, which should in turn give players more options when deciding where they want to farm.

So once again we get the "on one hand see what we did for you isn't it great? "(monster density) then as a side maybe they wont notice "oh by the way no trash mob is worth killing anymore even though there is twice as many"

Why do you insist on giving on one hand and taking away more with the other? Really a STUPID way of doing things.
The goal of increasing monster density was two-fold: 1) play up the fantasy of being a barbarian, demon hunter, monk, witch doctor, or wizard by giving players more monsters to kill and 2) provide viable alternates to Act 3.

The first goal is pretty easy to achieve: just up the density. DONE. However, if that's all we did, we would have just shifted where players farmed, not actually created any alternatives -- which didn't really solve any problems. Increasing density was just part of the equation. To make zones more equitable, we also needed to better scale the rewards of the monsters in them.

There were several monsters in the game pre-1.0.8 that were more or less outliers in terms of reward. That is, they provided similar experience and had drop rates comparable to monsters that were much more difficult to kill. What we did is essentially make it so that their rewards now match their difficulty -- and that's something that's just better for game overall. Wyatt provided a relative explanation here, as well. He only focused on scorpions, but the rationale is the same.

(Also, keep in mind that we buffed the hell out of EXP. What's not included in that post is that Enlightened Shrines stack multiplicatively, too.)

If anyone's upset about the "nerfs," I suggest you try playing the game some. It really does balance out, or if anything, you come out ahead. Yeah, they drop less often, but you kill many more mobs with about the same speed, so it's a net gain. Add to that, the fact that it's a lot more fun to wade through a populated map then run through a vacant one and...just try it.
This was our goal, and we think we were able to get everything to point where it feels like a net gain when you're in the game playing.

Obviously, if you've played and you disagree, let us know. We're still monitoring feedback on the new density changes and would love to hear (see?) if players think we could make some further improvements.

Rejoice, heroes of Sanctuary! The Diablo III game guide has just been updated with information on the new features in patch 1.0.8:

• Matchmaking Tags
  
• Players Near You
  
• Combat Alerts
  
• Multiplayer Game Bonuses
  
• Updated Account Compromise & Rollback Policy
  
• Multi–User Chat Conversations

After your requests for information on the specifics behind the bidding system, we’ve also added a How Bidding Works section to the Auction House page. We’re always looking for ways to expand and improve the guide with answers to all of your questions. If there are any particular aspects of the game you’re curious about, let us know in the comments!