[Tensor]

How is an Indie developer, like S2 games, able to use dedicated servers with no monthly fees, while their product (HON) isn't even out yet and a HUGE company like Blizzard can not?

And just to let you know, HON has many many more players online right now than SC2 beta, in fact it's been stated in an interview with Dustin Browder that they wana keep the level of concurrency in SC2 beta to about 10k.

I completely agree. HoN on average has 40,000+ players on at any time. Blizzard with their budget of eleventy gazillion dollars, can't support dedicated servers for SC2? It's not like HoN has a subscription. It is just intensely infuriating when you've been on some tiny company's gaming service and it has many features and vast improvements over a giant gaming monolith.

[Yaz]

It's a beta, I hope plenty of people do try to cheat so they can improve their detection before things go live. With only a single account per key it means every ban is going to be a key ban which is going to costly for people with a brand new game. For an old game like SC1 or D2 it's more of an issue simply because people can get new game keys for $5. Lose access to your $50 game though, that's going to hurt. Later, lose access to your $50 game and it's two expansions for cheating, ouch.

[Yaz]

How is an Indie developer, like S2 games, able to use dedicated servers with no monthly fees, while their product (HON) isn't even out yet and a HUGE company like Blizzard can not?

And just to let you know, HON has many many more players online right now than SC2 beta, in fact it's been stated in an interview with Dustin Browder that they wana keep the level of concurrency in SC2 beta to about 10k.

HON is using their so called beta to drive advertisement for their product and get people hooked. It's not really a beta and they long ago started taking orders for the product. Heck I've owned it for months now, my account is marked as owning and so are many others. If you really think it's a beta then you're kidding yourself. It's basically a released product with an invite only demo. Hence why they're more than happy to get as many people as possible, they're selling their game.

SC2 beta is an actual beta at this point. It's being used to really test the platform and get feedback. If they wanted they could throw hardware at it and support more but they don't need that for testing and it's just going to make it harder to sort through the feedback. So really why should they?

[Stratosspear]

Doing such a bang up job on botters and underground mining hackers...

They are. Your 2 or 3 anecdotes about how you saw botters and now you think it's rampant isn't evidence of anything.

[Wintermute]

Pffff. If you have to use a maphack to win a game and feel better about yourself then you're already a loser, no matter how high on the ladder you are.

Pathetic.

It is pathetic, but people figure they won't get caught.

The problem is when these things become common then either every one has to use them, or a lot of people have to suffer frustrating losses to hackers (and get knocked down the ladder unfairly) or people just stop playing competitively.

I stopped playing WC3 when it became fairly obvious that the majority of my opponents were map hacking. I went from being a top 25 caliber player to barely being in the top 100, in the space of a week (and was still dropping), because all of a sudden my opponents seemed to have uncanny insight into the perfect time to attack, what units to build, when they could safely expand, etc despite never making an effort to scout.

As a result I went from enjoying WC3 immensely to never playing it again. There's no joy in competing against people who are obviously cheating, unless it's to talk a ton of trash to those who cheat and still can't win.

[Fuse]

I have seen videos of the maphack working on the cracked single player version

I have not seed these maphacks for online play though.

Can anyone confirm with a replay that shows someone maphacking? I would like to see this.

(I know you cant "see" a maphack in the replay but you can see if they know things without looking)

[MurDeR]

So sick that maphack is already out ;< makes me so mad actually ;d