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We've recently issued account bans to several thousand Diablo III players who were found to be using botting programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair play, botting, hacking, and other forms of cheating can also cause technical problems with the game as well as contribute to performance issues with the Battle.net service. To learn more about our exploitation policy for Diablo III and how it may affect your gameplay, please visit our official support site.

As always, maintaining a stable, safe, and enjoyable online environment for legitimate players is very important to us, and we'll be continuing to keep watch on Battle.net and take action as needed. In the meantime, if you wish to report the possible use of botting programs to Blizzard, please see this thread for more information. (We will also be adding the ability for players to report this kind of behavior directly through the game client in a future patch.)

For questions regarding account actions, please refer to Account Administration.

I think we are 9 months to late on that.
This isn't our first rodeo. We have been actively monitoring for exploitative behavior since the game launched and taking action as needed. We haven't been very vocal about that process (though we have made a few announcements for larger ban waves in the past), but that's something we'll be working to change and improve upon going forward.

How does one justify if he/she is botting? I mean, I could play for 12 hours for weeks not saying that would be a good thing but its possible so I am just guessing I would eventually get a ban hammer dropped on my head?
While I'm not about to reveal how we identify exploitative behavior in Diablo III (and understandably so), "playing a lot" is not criteria enough to merit an account action for botting.

If you have received an account action and have any questions about it, be sure to check out and follow the instructions provided here: https://us.battle.ne...-administration

The steps included the article are your best course of action.

From December 17 2012, physical products including Battle.net Authenticators will be temporarily unavailable on the Blizzard Online Store in Europe. This is in preparation for a revamp of the store which will take place during 2013. In the meantime, many items can be found on the US Blizzard Store.

Players wishing to acquire a Battle.net Authenticator have several options. The Battle.net Mobile Authenticator is available for many types of smartphone, and you can find out more about it here. For many people, this is the easiest and cheapest option!

If you prefer to have a physical Battle.net Authenticator, you can get hold of one from several sources including the online retailers and high-street stores listed here.

Problems with Nephalem Valor
Overall, we think Nephalem Valor does a great job at addressing two core needs. First, it helps make sure that extremely short play sessions (i.e. < 1 minute) are not the optimal way to play. Second, there's a lot of value in being able to swap your skills at will and tailor your builds to the environment around you, but there's also gameplay to finding a build that really works for you in a variety of situations -- we like that NV helps balance these two concepts, and allows players to feel like there is some commitment to a skill build without also feeling like they’re locked into that build forever. So, while there are definitely some issues with the current design, we currently think that the pros outweigh the cons of how the game would probably feel if the system were not in place.

That said, you're right -- the system isn't perfect, and we're definitely looking at ways we can do better. Certainly, one of our goals is to allow people to play game sessions that are about 5 to 10 minutes in length and still be rewarded well, but we need to make sure that in the process we don't make rapidly flipping games the go-to method. It's all about striking the right balance for a wide variety of players, and we'll definitely be keeping your feedback in mind (as well as other threads on the topic) as we explore options for how to improve NV.

Great thread!

"5 to 10 minutes in length and still be rewarded well" Is that really one of your goals for this game? o wait this is subjective what do you mean by "well" If that is your goal, the please show effort of proving that, right now 5 to 10 minutes will get me like maybe a full bag of crap rares
I think you might have misunderstood. We're saying that's a goal we want to achieve, that it's an improvement we want to make to the game as it exists currently.

Also are you just balancing the game around Plvl 100?
No, not "just." We take a lot of different factors and play styles into consideration.(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Monster Power XP Scaling
As Grimiku pointed out in the an earlier post, one of the things we want to avoid with the reward structure for Monster Power is creating a situation where players feel forced to run on the higher levels, even if they happen to feel more comfortable at somewhere between MP1 - MP3. Ideally, the added challenge should be the primary motivation for how you select your MP level, with the bonuses simply being a really cool perk that you get in return.

On the flip side, though, we know that lot players currently feel "forced" to run on the lower MP levels because it's more efficient to do so (especially if you're looking to farm XP). That's not a great situation either. So, while we don't want to change up the entire reward system for MP, we do agree that the XP bonuses could be more enticing at the top end, and we're looking to make some improvements.

I don't have a lot of details for you right now beyond that, but we've definitely heard your feedback and are trying to incorporate it in a meaningful way.

The most concern thing is about open public games for any level of MP. Right now, I really feel like I'm forced to play mp0 because that's the only way to do public runs... additionally, it's always act3's last few quests. FIX THAT PLZ.
Totally understood. We're exploring the best ways that we could make that option available (without negatively impacting your experience by making queues longer, for example).

It seems like you were so worried about people feeling forced to run high MPs that you went way too far the other way and now we're all forced to run lower MPs.
It may not be that extreme, but we certainly think that our original goal (and current goal, to be fair) of "don't create a reward system that forces players into the higher MP levels" may have been a little too successful.

While the goal is still a good one to keep, we're looking at ways to balance the reward structure better for the top end, specifically in terms of XP, so that players who want to play at the higher MP levels -- because that's the challenge level they enjoy -- don't feel super penalized for doing so.

It would take like 5 minutes to make the other 3 acts worth playing.
No, that's not really how that works. =/

Even so, we've definitely heard your concerns and feedback about mob density in certain Acts, and are examining ways for how that might be improved. We don't really have any more information to share at this time, though (but the discussion is absolutely on our radar). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Why No Holiday Events?
Speaking very candidly here, special holiday game events are cool and often inspire great gaming moments, but they tend to take a lot of time to produce (they’re very resource-intensive). They also tend to work better in persistent worlds where the gameplay isn’t tied to a finite storyline like it is in Diablo III. So, while we’re not completely opposed to the idea of in-game events if we can find a good fit (and in a way that makes sense for a world like Sanctuary), right now we feel that those resources might be better spent elsewhere on other improvements and don’t have any plans to add holiday content. In the meantime, though, we’re open to suggestions for what you think might be fun! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)