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A few years back Blizzard released the remastered edition of Diablo 2. That was one of my favorite games growing up. I figured I would spend some time playing t

A few years back Blizzard released the remastered edition of Diablo 2. That was one of my favorite games growing up. I figured I would spend some time playing the original to give myself some nostalgia (on the old school battle net from the early 2000s). This was a game where you level up a character, collect loot, and trade. Without online trading and cooperation, the game can become difficult. As I started playing, I noticed that 1) there were less games to join and 2) there were still somehow thousands of people playing, as seen in the character rankings. So somehow you didn't see people playing, but they were leveling up ahead of you. Well, as you might have guessed, those thousands of players were actually bots. It actually made me kinda sad because the lively online experience I once had as a kid was gone. It didn't seem like there would ever be any going back either.

SleepilyLimping 3y ago
This is similar to what people found when they went back to World of Warcraft after it introduced an automated "dungeon finder" that matched you with people doing the same content across multiple servers. You had no real social interaction, because you just queued for your role with the tool, got teleported to the instance immediately, did the content, then left. Because you were never going to talk to these people again, you had no real incentive to "meet" them properly, unlike when you were doing public (but admittedly clumsy) "Looking for Group" channel pings/organization. Also, it's important to realize when going back to remasters/old games how much less distraction players had back then. Because of the prevalence of free-to-play games on phones/Steam, or the immense backlog people have, or the OTHER "lifestyle, log in every day" games people have, they aren't likely to be sticking around with games as long as they did before. A game like Diablo 2 could be "your game" for the entire YEAR because of how much content you had, but also because you might not be able to afford another game until Christmas/birthday. This is also what has kind of killed custom content: people made Starcraft Brood War or Warcraft 3 custom maps that became their own games (Dota, some Tower Defense variants) because they needed to extend the value of the games they were playing. That isn't the case now.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> It actually made me kinda sad because the lively online experience I once had as a kid was gone. Yeah... Few things on the internet are sadder than a dead online game. https://youtu.be/pC_aGQyFETU https://youtu.be/pC_aGQyFETU
TylerE 3y ago
There were all kinds of cheats and hacks in basically every networked game back in the day. Hardly some new thing or change.
- zero-sharp 3y ago
  It's not about whether the cheats or bots existed in the past. I'm confident they did. It's about the experience that the online game is now mostly bots playing with bots. I mean, they're programmed to work in teams. So, for example, you might enter a game and find that 7 out of the 8 players (8 players is the max per game) are bots doing a speed run. And those are pretty much the only games you see. I'm sure something similar existed in the past, but it definitely wasn't as visible. And I'm not an active gamer, so that was the first time I experienced it. It just completely trivialized the game. Whenever you needed an item, someone would eventually find out and just give it to you for free. At least back in the day there was an economy where things had value. People even paid for participating in certain events. What made the game fun was the challenge of progress and the excitement of getting that rare drop.
- jprete 3y ago
  Cheats and hacks aren't the same as bots. Even a cheater wants to engage with other players. Bot players are only there to farm items or leveled characters for sale as quickly as possible.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    There were bots. So so so many bots. Countermeasures were basically non-existent. This is before even stuff like early versions VAC.

SleepilyLimping 3y ago

This is similar to what people found when they went back to World of Warcraft after it introduced an automated "dungeon finder" that matched you with people doing the same content across multiple servers. You had no real social interaction, because you just queued for your role with the tool, got teleported to the instance immediately, did the content, then left. Because you were never going to talk to these people again, you had no real incentive to "meet" them properly, unlike when you were doing public (but admittedly clumsy) "Looking for Group" channel pings/organization. Also, it's important to realize when going back to remasters/old games how much less distraction players had back then. Because of the prevalence of free-to-play games on phones/Steam, or the immense backlog people have, or the OTHER "lifestyle, log in every day" games people have, they aren't likely to be sticking around with games as long as they did before. A game like Diablo 2 could be "your game" for the entire YEAR because of how much content you had, but also because you might not be able to afford another game until Christmas/birthday. This is also what has kind of killed custom content: people made Starcraft Brood War or Warcraft 3 custom maps that became their own games (Dota, some Tower Defense variants) because they needed to extend the value of the games they were playing. That isn't the case now.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> It actually made me kinda sad because the lively online experience I once had as a kid was gone. Yeah... Few things on the internet are sadder than a dead online game. https://youtu.be/pC_aGQyFETU https://youtu.be/pC_aGQyFETU

TylerE 3y ago

There were all kinds of cheats and hacks in basically every networked game back in the day. Hardly some new thing or change.

zero-sharp 3y ago
It's not about whether the cheats or bots existed in the past. I'm confident they did. It's about the experience that the online game is now mostly bots playing with bots. I mean, they're programmed to work in teams. So, for example, you might enter a game and find that 7 out of the 8 players (8 players is the max per game) are bots doing a speed run. And those are pretty much the only games you see. I'm sure something similar existed in the past, but it definitely wasn't as visible. And I'm not an active gamer, so that was the first time I experienced it. It just completely trivialized the game. Whenever you needed an item, someone would eventually find out and just give it to you for free. At least back in the day there was an economy where things had value. People even paid for participating in certain events. What made the game fun was the challenge of progress and the excitement of getting that rare drop.
jprete 3y ago
Cheats and hacks aren't the same as bots. Even a cheater wants to engage with other players. Bot players are only there to farm items or leveled characters for sale as quickly as possible.
- TylerE 3y ago
  There were bots. So so so many bots. Countermeasures were basically non-existent. This is before even stuff like early versions VAC.