“Diablo 3” has been out for a while now, and the game came out to mixed responses as players were confused over some features that Blizzard had decided to implement. At the same time, there was a lot of controversy over some decisions that the company took with regards to the game’s overall gameplay direction, and in the end it was a mixed bag for many. Still, the title had plenty of redeeming qualities that made players enjoy it greatly in some regards, including old school fans of the franchise who were expecting to be disappointed once the new game came out.
Blizzard also put some active effort into improving it and they introduced various features that made the gameplay smoother and more interesting in the long term, and they have been listening to feedback quite actively. They even backtracked on some of their more controversial decisions at various points and the company was generally praised for their approach to the development of this title.
And yet, “Diablo 3” is still plagued by some issues that its players have had to deal with since pretty much day one, and they have only gotten worse in time. Most recently, botting has been a hot topic within the community. This is the practice of using software to assist one’s play, getting better results and more consistently farming for resources without having to actually be at the computer.
This gives an obvious advantage over those who are just playing regularly, and botting has actually been a common issue for “Diablo” since previous installments in the franchise. Blizzard have always had a very strict stance against it, punishing players harshly when they were caught botting, and it wasn’t common for accounts to get banned over this. But now, the situation is apparently not going quite well with “Diablo 3” as the game is reportedly plagued by the same issue on a pretty large scale, and players have been growing increasingly frustrated with the way things are.
Blizzard have been trying to resolve the problem in various ways already, but their efforts are seemingly not enough in the eyes of some fans, as they have requested a more active approach from the company. We don’t know how much more Blizzard can do in this case, but for what it’s worth some players have sent an open letter to the developer, claiming that they need to take the issue more seriously if they don’t want to see their game dying because of it.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that this kind of issue is not actually relevant to all players, but just the ones playing at a higher level. Usually, bots are not that prevalent in the lower-ranking games, so less experienced players never even notice the issue in the first place. This has led to a slight divide in the community, as some players believe that this is not really a problem and is being blown out of proportion, which only serves to aggravate high-level players even more.
Some have claimed that botting is actually something that Blizzard don’t have a problem with, internally – according to that argument, the studio actually stands to benefit from this situation as it boosts their own profits, and they have been incentivized to not do anything to combat botters. However, looking at the way they have been handling the situation previously, that doesn’t seem to be quite the case.