A Diablo 3 player has earned more than $10,000 through the real-money auction house in Blizzard Entertainment’s action role-playing game. The player, WishboneTheDog claims that he legitimately earned the cash through investing and trading in the item market and even has proof of his Paypal transactions to back up his claims.

“I have never botted, scammed, used any of the number of exploits, or cheated in any way whatsoever,” he said in a Reddit Ask Me Anything post.  “Before this game, I never made any money off of what I did because it was against the rules. Investing and trading in the item markets is part of how I have my fun, it wouldn’t make sense for me to cheat. Anyone who played D2 with hacks knows what I mean.”

NEWS: Diablo 3 Has Sold More Than 10 Million Copies; WoW Subs Down To 9.1 Million

His Reddit AMA goes through his practices, how he started up, the state of the economy in Diablo 3, and more. If you’re interested in video game economies, I highly recommend checking it out . 

Diablo 3 Started Edition is now available for would-be heroes who aren’t sure if taking on hordes of evil is right for them. Sanctuary needs a few more good men and women, so if you’re up for the task, you can play for free  up to the Skeleton King boss at the end of Act 1. The level cap is 13.

REVIEW: Diablo 3 Video Review

To get access to Diablo 3 Started Edition try one of the ways listed below.

Log in to your existing Battle.net account at http://www.battle.net, and sign up for the Diablo III Starter Edition through the “Your Game Accounts” section.
Create a new Battle.net account here and the Diablo III Starter Edition license will be added to your account automatically.
Grab the Diablo III game disc from a friend, install the game, and then log in with your Battle.net account. The Diablo III Starter Edition will be added to your account automatically.

If you decide to give Diablo 3 Started Edition a whirl, and then decide to keep playing, your progress will carry over. 

Blizzard has taken the Diablo 3 gold and real-money Auction Houses offline after the game’s 1.0.8 patch, which went live earlier today, introduced a gold duping bug that led to players amassing up to trillions in gold, causing serious problems with the Diablo 3 economy.

Announced in April, the patch aimed to bolster Diablo 3’s cooperative multiplayer experience. It added multiplayer bonus changes, matchmaking tags and a long list of general fixes.

“After the release of Patch 1.0.8 this morning, we made the decision to take the gold and real-money Auction Houses offline to investigate a bug that certain players were exploiting to dupe gold,” a Blizzard spokesperson told Polygon. “Our team is working hard to fix any outstanding issues and take appropriate actions with the accounts involved.”

According to a Battle.net post, many players now have billions in gold and one player has amassed 371 trillion gold through the exploitation. A NeoGAF forum member wrote that when Blizzard dropped the gold floor from $0.25 a million to $0.25 cents per 10 million “players then bought gems for real money and converted them to gold,” and then the gold dupe was discovered with “some streamers duping TRILLIONS.”

Blizzard revealed on a Battle.net post at 10:15 p.m. PT, that it believes it has found a fix for the gold duping bug and will deploy it to all regions. Diablo 3 will be in maintenance for an hour as a result.

Diablo 3 players are petitioning Blizzard via multiple threads on Battle.net to roll back to the start of the patch; however, Blizzard stated in a post that it needs “to determine whether or not a rollback is appropriate.” 

The competition will be stiff. Activision is set to launch a third Skylanders title, Skylanders Swap Force, this fall into a market where Disney Interactive’s Disney Infinity — a similar family-friendly title with physical toys — has already been released. And while the next Call of Duty title, Call of Duty: Ghosts, will be released Nov. 5, Activision said earlier this year that it expects poorer sales performance from Ghosts than from Black Ops 2.

Activision reported “better-than-expected” financial results for the first quarter of 2013 today, but according to CEO Bobby Kotick, the company expects to encounter a more challenging back half of the year.

The publisher brought in net revenues of $1.32 billion during the quarter that ended March 31, a 13 percent improvement over the same period in 2012 and 14.1 percent ahead of the company’s projections. Activision also showed a marked year-over-year jump in net income from $384 million to $456 million, a 13.75 percent increase.

Activision’s earnings were buoyed by the impressive sales performance of StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, which was the top-selling Windows PC game in North America and Europe even though it launched with three weeks left in the quarter. In addition, Diablo 3, Skylanders Giants and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 all continued to sell well.

“While we have had a solid start to the year, we now believe that the risks and uncertainties in the back half of 2013 are more challenging than our earlier view, especially in the holiday quarter,” said Kotick in an investor release announcing Activision’s first-quarter results. Kotick cited the drop in World of Warcraft users, the poor performance of the Wii U, uncertainty surrounding next-generation consoles and increased competition.

But the long-running MMO World of Warcraft suffered a precipitous drop of 1.3 million subscribers, about 14 percent of its user base, over the course of the quarter. That leaves the game with 8.3 million paying users worldwide — still enough to keep the game in the top spot when it comes to subscription-based massively multiplayer online RPGs. During Activision’s first-quarter investor call this afternoon, Kotick said the company expects World of Warcraft subscribers to be lower by the end of 2013. 

Diablo 3 developer Blizzard Entertainment was hoping to bring back the game’s gold and real-money Auction Houses sometime today, but according to the studio’s most recent estimate, they’ll remain offline for “at least another 24 hours.”

The studio kept the Auction Houses in maintenance mode so existing auctions could expire as it continued to review all transactions, and estimated that it would be able to bring the Auction Houses back sometime today. But in an update posted at 3:10 p.m. ET today, Lylirra said the process is still ongoing.

Blizzard took the Auction Houses offline earlier this week due to a gold duping bug that surfaced on May 7, when it patched Diablo 3 to version 1.0.8. The studio was able to fix the bug that night, but decided to put the servers into maintenance mode so it could perform a complete audit of all transactions made since the release of the patch. The team believed that to be a better choice than having to roll back everyone’s progress.

“We feel that this is the best course of action given the nature of the dupe, how relatively few players used it and the fact that its effects were fairly limited within the region,” said Blizzard community manager Lylirra in an update posted at 3 a.m. ET yesterday to the Diablo 3 forums. “We’ve been able to successfully identify players who duplicated gold by using this specific bug, and are focusing on these accounts to make corrections.”

“This audit is a time-intensive process, and to make sure that we can do a thorough job, we’re going to keep the Auction Houses in maintenance until that work is complete,” said Lylirra. “Unfortunately, our previous estimate was incorrect, and for that I personally apologize. We don’t have a new ETA, but we anticipate that the service will be unavailable for at least another 24 hours.”

During a talk at the 2013 Game Developers Conference, Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson said the real-money Auction Houses “really hurt the game,” and added that Blizzard is still figuring out how to fix them. 

After this version of Diablo III was canceled, development commenced on the version that Blizzard currently has in the works. Although there is no release date set, Blizzard hasn’t completely ruled out the possibility of it being released in 2011. If not, two Blizzard games are expected to be released in 2012, one of which might very well be Diablo.

The Diablo III we know today is much different than the one that was originally developed by Blizzard North, and not just in terms of the current art direction that has caused some fans to whine. Prior to Blizzard North’s closure in 2005, it had been developing a new Diablo game that wasn’t up to par. The game was canceled and Blizzard North was shut down.

Diablo 3 Power Leveling and Diablo 3 Gold are hot at www.powerleveling.us, we are welcome for your coming.

The public was never afforded a look at the Diablo game it was working on. That has changed today, as Kotaku has gotten its hands on 17 screenshots of the game. They depict a Paladin-like character in three different areas (Keep, Angelic Lands, and Heaven) and an interface much like Diablo II’s. Judging by nothing other than the screenshots, it doesn’t look like Blizzard had changed the series’ formula very much. As a Diablo fan, it still gets me excited even if I’m not too keen on the way it looks from a visual standpoint.

The hero recovers the sword pieces from the Khazra Den and the Drowned Temple, opposed by the witch Maghda, leader of the local cult known as the Dark Coven. Maghda, however, recovers the third piece before the protagonist does and attempts to force Cain to repair the sword. Leah, however, kills the cultists with a surge of magical power, forcing Maghda to kill Cain and flee with the stranger. Cain, before dying, repairs the sword and tasks the protagonist with returning it to the stranger. The protagonist pursues Maghda into the bowels of King Leoric’s dilapidated torture chambers underneath his manor, rescuing the stranger and returning to him his sword after a violent fight with the Butcher. The stranger’s memories are recovered, and it is revealed that he is the arch-angel Tyrael, the Aspect of Justice. Disgusted with his fellow angels’ unwillingness to protect humanity from the forces of Hell, Tyrael cast aside his divinity to become a mortal and warn Sanctuary about the arrival of the demon lords Belial (Lord of Lies) and Azmodan (Lord of Sin).

After this version of Diablo III was canceled, development commenced on the version that Blizzard currently has in the works. Although there is no release date set, Blizzard hasn’t completely ruled out the possibility of it being released in 2011. If not, two Blizzard games are expected to be released in 2012, one of which might very well be Diablo. 

It has really been sometime since the patch 1.0.8 was released. In this patch, players adjusted their skill combinations to experience different builds. Some turn to the other classes to try different options. While, we could not help thinking when the new update could be available, what surprises will this new update bring to us.

Some players come up with their ideas, let’s see what are their expectations.

It is time to do some change to the Demon Hunter. There are five classes in game in total. Even through we know it is hard to keep the balance, but it is so unfair for the Demon Hunter. Comparing to the other classes, this class has little advantage at all. Both in the PVE and PVP, this class is not welcome. Players who have leveled all five classes up to paragon level 100 said that, he spent the longest time to finish the progress for the Demon Hunter. Since the Blizzard can make the Witch Doctor be so hot for the firebat skill, they can definitely change the status of the DH by doing some suggestions.

Make the public game more considerate. Many players have been complaining that when they enter into a public game after long waiting, they have no idea whether the game has just get started or half of the quest has been finished. If Blizzard can make some changes to make the game more considerate, that they can get the information about the game the first second they enter into the public game, or there are several limitations to help match better, they would be more willing to enjoy the public game.

Less but better drops in game. Most players like the increase of the monsters’ density in patch 1.0.8. They feel it is more exciting and challenging to play. The feeling of shuttle back and forth among the monsters is awesome. However, the abundant of drops become one of the most annoy things. There are so many white gears on the ground that you may not want to even have a look at. But you may pick them up by mistake which may waste your time. Since they are useless, and seldom will be picked up by players, why don’t make the drops less and better. It would be more attracting since players may begin to think whether the loots can be used by them. The drops in game can be valuable again. 

Some players like to play the game with fast pace, so they would always put more attention on getting high DPS and taking risks. While some players like to play the game with more stable status. They will take the challenge when they have made plenty of preparation. I am the slow one, so, I prefer to consider the DPS and defensive at the same time. Today, I would like to recommend you a build for the Monk in which you can have good performance both with attack and defense.

Firstly, I would like to introduce the skills combinations. The details about the runes and skills are listed in the below picture.

My main attack skills: Fist of Thunder + Sweeping Wind + Crippling Wave. The Fist of Thunder can attack the enemies with really high speed, as a result, it can help generate the spirit much faster than the other skills. The Sweeping Wind can produce vortrex to cause damages to the surrrounding enemies. As this skill is refreshed everytime you attack an enemy nearby you. So, when you are dealing with crowds of foes, you can keep using this skill without cooldown. Crippling Wave can not only bring you spirit, but also cause great damages to the monsters. The following picture is how I use the Sweeping Wind to deal with the surrounding enemies.

My defensive skills: Mantra of Evasion + Breath of Heaven + Serenity. Since I do not have so much attack skills, it is very important to decrease the damages I have to suffer and increase my defensive ability. The Mantra of Evasion fan help me dodge the attacks better. The Breath of Heavens can heal my life by large degree. While the Serenity can absorb the damages I have to suffer. To make sure that my life is better protected, my passive skills are Near Death Experience and Pacifism.

The Advantage of this build. As I have plenty of skills to ensure that my life is safe, I can rush into the crowds of monsters or fly them to get them together to cause AOE attack. Actually, to this build, the more enemies there are aound you, the safer you will be, as it can not only bring you enough spirit to cause attacks.

The disadvantage of this build. Just like what we have said, this build is more suitable for dealing with crowds of foes. When you are fighting with single or several elites only, you may need to spend much longer time and suffer the problem of shortage of spirits. As the DPS in this build is much lower than the other build, the pace of the battle is slow down by some degree. Please just be patient, as you are getting closer ans closer to the victory.