Something going right for me for a change. I will probably go out and buy the players guide while I wait for it to be shipped to me.

PSA:

D3 accounts are already being hacked, stolen and stripped down to naked characters. If you don't have an authenticator, get one.

I also beat Normal this weekend and started up on Nightmare.

I was wondering why I was having such a hard time until I realized I was still wearing gear from my mid 20s in Act 2. Had to spend like 100k on the AH (such a terribly designed interface, full of fucking price gougers) to get some equipment that was actually my level. Once I did that, I found it easier to kill things before they killed me.

Accounts on Diablo 3 hacked

After getting through the bevy of release date errors, Diablo 3 players are finding their accounts under attack. It’s not clear whether it’s an exploitable glitch within Diablo 3 or improperly secured accounts on the client side, but many accounts on Diablo 3 have been hacked on May 19 and 20. Those who have recent activity with an account named “leyiong”, “Nevin”, “SBJunkie”, “luckllezz”, “McLeast” or any other person you know you never played with are almost assuredly the victims of this hacking and will need to take steps to re-secure their account as well as get their items back.

Blizzard’s answer to the mass of hacked Diablo 3 accounts, is, "Change your password and get an authenticator" - though many accounts with authenticators have also been among those hacked.

You can also submit a ticket to support and authorize an account roll back. This will take your character back some levels - how many will depend on when Blizzard staff can reset your account back to - and return some of your gold and items. Be aware that there are restrictions on the number of rollbacks available - it seems to be two based on answers to submitted tickets - and that being hacked more than once will cause your account to be banned permanently from using the soon-to-be-released real money auction house.

Most likely this group of hackers is preparing for the opening of the Diablo 3 real money auction house. This is just a taste of what’s to come in the future when the auction house officially opens and hackers everywhere try to steal goods and gold to sell for real cash.

This reporter, after having her own account with authenticator hacked, firmly believes this is a serious security breach on Blizzard’s side, though they either do not want to admit it, or are still unaware of the problem. Many who have had their account on Diablo 3 hacked were logged in at the time of the hack and support staff tells them there was no evidence of their account being hacked. That indicates there is an exploit in the system being taken advantage of.

If you're a Hawaiian player and you've had your account rolled back, but found yourself missing a lot of levels as well as some gear and gold, you can find honest players in the Hawaiian time zone by checking this thread on Battle.net. Playing with someone on your time zone can help you collect back some of your gold and loot, as well as earn back a few levels, without losing any sleep.

What games and services does the Battle.net Dial-in Authenticator protect?
The Battle.net Dial-in Authenticator protects any World of Warcraft accounts attached to a Battle.net account, as well as Battle.net Account Management. The Battle.net Dial-in Authenticator is not currently compatible with StarCraft II or Diablo III, though that may change in the future.

Congrats. If you are trying to save money, why would you buy a player's guide? Everything in that $20 guide is available for free on the internet, and I know you know how to use that.

Prevent Friends From Jumping Into Your Game

Games by default are set private, but that only prevents strangers from joining your game unannounced. If you have a Battle.net friends list, they can hop in and make the enemies you’re fighting right now much harder by clicking on “Quick Join” when they log in. This isn’t fun when you’re in the middle of a boss fight or are playing in Nightmare Mode. Of course, when a game can potentially kill you with a connection hiccup, playing in Nightmare Mode just isn’t a good idea. Anyway, go into Options and under Social uncheck the “Enable Quick Join” checkbox. You can still invite your friends to your game, but they can’t just jump in.

Customize Your Skills

Diablo 3 starts you off by giving you different skill slots, each with their own collection of skills. You don’t need to be bound to this. Elective Mode opens up all six skill slots to all of your skills, letting you map anything you want to the left mouse button, right mouse button, and the 1, 2, 3, and 4 number keys. Go into the Gameplay Options tab and check the Elective Mode box. Unfortunately, you don’t get a neat drop-down of icons like you do with passive skills. You need to scroll through each skill section to set your skills.

Keep Item Labels Displayed

By default, Diablo 3 only shows you the labels of items for about ten seconds when they drop. After that, you can hit the Alt button to show the labels for another ten seconds, but then they disappear again. Go into the Gameplay tab and select Push to toggle (On/Off) under Item Label Display to turn the Alt button into a toggle that turns the item labels on and keeps them on.

Buy Gems at the Auction House

Gems are ridiculously cheap at the auction house. In Act III, when I barely could find the components to make ordinary gems, I could buy stacks of perfect gems for a fraction of the price of an orange weapon. Socketed items are easy to find once you get to Act II, and if you keep a bunch of perfect and radiant gems in your stash you can give them a better boost than legendary items offer. A perfect ruby in Act II can let a blue weapon deal more damage than an orange weapon, and you can find them for a few hundred gold each in the auction house. This still doesn’t break the game as much as making a Monk in Elective Mode.

Hold Shift When Playing a Ranged Class

This is revealed through tips in the game, but it’s an important thing to remember when you’re playing a wizard, demon hunter, or witch doctor. To stay still while attacking, hold the shift button down. Pair this with the Templar to keep yourself relatively safe and dealing damage from a distance instead of rushing into a crowd because you clicked the ground and not an enemy.

Diablo III Patch 1.0.2 - v.1.0.2.9749

General
Players will now automatically join General chat when logging in
Classes
Monk
Active Skills
Serenity
Skill Rune - Tranquility
Duration of immunity granted to nearby allies from crowd control effects reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second
Mantra of Healing (tooltips will be updated in a later patch)
In addition to increasing Life regeneration for you and nearby allies while active, Mantra of Healing will now also shroud you and nearby allies with a mystical shield that absorbs damage for 3 seconds after activiation (up to a limited amount, based on level)
Skill Rune - Boon of Protection
Boon of Protection has been renamed Boon of Inspiration
Mantra of Healing will now heal you when dealing damage to an enemy (heal amount will be based on hero level)

Bug Fixes
For a full list of documented game and service bugs, please review the Known Issues sticky located in the Bug Report forum.
General
Players should no longer receive an "Error 14009" when logging in
The "Select a Hero" menu will now also display the difficulty level for each character
Several speed improvements have been made to the streaming downloader
Achievements
All players in a party should now receive "Till Death Do Us Part" even if they don’t have Haedrig Eamon as their active follower
Acts
Act IV
Witch Doctors should no longer receive an error if they kill a Shadow Clone with a Damage-Over-Time (DoT) skill after it's launched a Firebomb but before it's reached its target

Auction House
The auction log in the Completed tab will now display a player's activity (bids, buyouts, sales, etc) in the proper order
When placing a new bid over a previous bid on the same auction, players will now be provided with the correct warning message: "Raising your maximum bid on an Auction you are already winning raises your current bid to just above your previous maximum bid. Are you sure you want to continue?"
Players will now receive an error message if they attempt to purchase an item after the 50 item limit has been reached in the Completed tab
The "Physical Damage" Preferred Stats option for rings has been renamed to "Bonus Minimum Physical Damage"
The "All Damage" Preferred Stats option for weapons and armor has been removed and replaced with bonuses of specific damage types
Items which have been purchased from a vendor and equipped by the player can now be sold on the Auction House
Listing items on the Auction House from a different character than the one currently selected should no longer cause item display issues
Battle.net
The public chat list will now sort alphabetically
Classes
Witch Doctor
Spirit Vessel (Passive) no longer clears debuffs when using waypoints or changing equipment

Yeah, it's good. But not "I've been waiting for this 12 years." good. And not from getting too high expectations. It's just meh. I'm still wondering where all the content they talked about that was similar to scripted WoW raid events went.

I also see no point at all to PVP.

I've been using a mobile authenticator for SC2.

Lad, 18, dies after 40-hour gaming marathon

A TEENAGER was found dead in an internet cafe after reportedly playing a video game for 40 HOURS straight.

The 18-year-old lad is believed to have collapsed during a marathon session of Diablo 3.

He was found by workers in the internet cafe in Tainan, southern Taiwan.

It is believed he had not eaten for two days.

The gamer has so far only been identified by his surname, Chuang.

On the morning of July 15, an attendant entered the room and found Chuang resting on a table. After the attendant woke him, he stood, took a few steps and then collapsed, reports said.

He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a local hospital.

Police were investigating the cause of death and an autopsy was being carried out.

It has been speculated that sitting for long hours in a sedentary position created cardiovascular problems for Chuang.

The teen had been playing the latest instalment of the role-playing game.

It is the second death from playing video games in the country this year.

In February, a man in New Taipei was found dead, slumped in a chair facing a computer with his arms still reaching out for the keyboard after playing for 23 hours. The cause of death was reported as cardiac arrest.

He was probably farming gold to sell.

haha ouch but funny at the same time. Yeah I'm going to hell for sure now

Now that an expansion has been announced, I went back through this thread and had a chuckle. I'm curious about a few things...

Did they keep the "always online" thing that everyone bitched about?

Did anyone who said they were not getting this game actually NOT get this game (besides me)?

Isn't it funny that even with an expansion on the way, they still have not released multiplayer and have said that it will not be released with the expansion?