Six Different Diablo III Characters Have Same Exact Item

News
By Tuan Mai
published

Has the Diablo III character profiles finally given up some real evidence of duping?

Last week, Blizzard unveiled its Diablo III Battle.net character profiles. Whether you want to showcase your character or not, this system allows anybody with your unique BattleTag to look up and inspect your characters. Thanks to the new system and a few zealous Diablo III players, we may finally have hard evidence to prove that some sort of duping is going on inside of the game.

Last month, several screenshots appeared online allegedly showing a number of duped bows on the in-game auction house. Shortly after, a group named "Team Vietnahm" claimed responsibility for it, but little details surrounding the possible dupe were available. Now, it looks like there may be more proof of duped items thanks to the recently released character profiles.

Battle.net forum user mcstew posted:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/liemjunhao-6339/hero/18254046http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/leej88-1875/hero/14708745http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/insanity-1884/hero/11671090http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/mosesyr-1925/hero/8430https://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Faetal-1219/hero/22731568http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/passermeaw-6696/hero/4952195Check out their Offhand "Arcanum mind". Probably one of the best sources in the game. Worth 500mill++

One of the possibilities discussed by players is that the item passed along from player to player, but the character profiles haven't been updated yet. Nobody is too certain of how the character profile updating works, but a little over two days have passed since the thread was created and all profiles are still showing the item. The only exception is the user "Faetal" who seems to have removed all gear from his character.

Others claimed it was possible these items dropped with the same stats, but another forum poster Vadoff decided to put the math together, revealing the probability for just one exact duplicate would be something along the lines of 1 in 4,784,474,572,579,344,957,650,000,000,000. The actual numbers may be different but it's probably safe to say the chance of this exact item dropping separate six times is unlikely.

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Tuan Mai
Tuan Mai
Tuan Mai is a Los Angeles based writer and marketing manager working within the PC Hardware industry. He has written for Tom's Guide since 2010, with a special interest in the weird and quirky.
38 Comments Comment from the forums
  • wolley74
    Always online DRM would stop this they said, Always online would be FIIINE they said,

    **** THAT AND LET ME PLAY IT WHEN AND WHERE I WANT, NOT JUST WHEN MY NET CAN SUPPORT IT
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    Well... it wouldn't be a true Diablo sequel without a little duping.
    Reply
  • aznguy0028
    Blizzard's support is TERRIBLE. I personally know one of these players in question and have been gaming with him for ages. When he bought his source off the auction house, I was there with him on vent. He bought it for 400 mil and even has the screenshot to prove it. Blizzard still banned his account for allegedly hacking and duping. When he showed them the screenshot to tell them his side of the story, nothing changed. Over 500 hours on the game, he got amazing gear only to get the ban hammer because of Blizz's horrendous customer policy of "guilty until proven guilty".

    If a screen shot of you buying an item from Blizzard’s own D3 AH does nothing for your case and still get you banned, I can no longer trust nor will buy anything from them again. The worst customer service ever.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    Wolley74Always online DRM would stop this they said, Always online would be FIIINE they said, **** THAT AND LET ME PLAY IT WHEN AND WHERE I WANT, NOT JUST WHEN MY NET CAN SUPPORT ITWell all jokes aside... it has a lot of drawbacks, but they actually have cut down on cheating quite a bit. Diablo and Diablo II were ridiculous hackfests online. Every time they patched they were re-exploited to the max very quickly - and I'm not just talking item duping. So while its far from perfect, it's still a lot better in that particular regard. You're probably too young to remember, though.

    Now, I think they SHOULD have an offline-only mode that supports solo and LAN play. But character data and gear from this mode should not be able to touch battle.net in any way. Also, that would promote piracy to a lesser extent, but enough people already own the game so it would make a nice addition at this point. I know when I showed up at LANs about half the players had legit copies of Diablo II and half didn't. Making sure everyone, pirated or otherwise, was using the same patch version was a PITA.
    Reply
  • It says at the bottom of the character page when it was last updated...
    Reply
  • jalek
    That's a lot of sales they'll never get just to support PvP in a dungeon exploration game.
    Reply
  • Mav-VRX
    They got banned from buying from the AH? Even when Blizzard keeps a history of the purchases? Wow...
    Reply
  • lancelot123
    It is an inside job. Someone working for Blizzard is doing the duping. This was one of the theories on how the Diablo 2 duping was being carried out as NOBODY knows how it was happening.
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    Marketing: Because it's more important to make it look good than to provide adequate support.
    Reply
  • carnage9270
    aznguy0028Blizzard's support is TERRIBLE. I personally know one of these players in question and have been gaming with him for ages. When he bought his source off the auction house, I was there with him on vent. He bought it for 400 mil and even has the screenshot to prove it. Blizzard still banned his account for allegedly hacking and duping. When he showed them the screenshot to tell them his side of the story, nothing changed. Over 500 hours on the game, he got amazing gear only to get the ban hammer because of Blizz's horrendous customer policy of "guilty until proven guilty". If a screen shot of you buying an item from Blizzard’s own D3 AH does nothing for your case and still get you banned, I can no longer trust nor will buy anything from them again. The worst customer service ever.
    Why exactly would a person go as far as providing a screenshot of purchasing an item in the AH unless they figured they would need to at a later date...doesn't make sense.
    Reply