We wanted to provide an additional update in light of the community feedback we’ve received. It’s clear that more transparency is needed in this situation, so we want to provide some additional details and the philosophy behind the steps we’re taking to combat this and future exploitive behavior.
In approaching this situation, we wanted to make sure any actions we took ensured the following key points:
• Not punishing legitimate players, including those who may have participated unwittingly, such as other members of a 4-man party where only the Necromancer and Demon Hunter were exploiting.
• Punishing the worst offenders. To do so, we will be issuing temporary suspensions over the upcoming Bonus XP weekend to those who are found to be the most egregious abusers, with a focus on those who continued abusing this exploit after we originally issued a public warning.
This may seem lenient, and that brings us to a philosophy we’re working on: improving our communication. This includes both currently and in the future. Diablo III is a game designed to encourage players to find powerful combinations of skills and items. While the effect of this particular combination was unintended, nothing in the game explicitly indicated that was the case. It is our responsibility to clarify intent, and we simply weren’t quick enough with our communications.
One more point we want to emphasize: We are not okay with exploits. We made mistakes in our communication and the speed of our actions, and for that, the community has our utmost apologies. Our intent is to continue to fix exploits and communicate clarity behind them as quickly as we can in the future.
