[Update: May be not!] Path of Diablo (PoD) servers shutting down due to hacking

Calling all the 90’s kids: remember Diablo? The sweet multiplayer experience on Battle.net on 56k modem, what a life!

While you can still buy Diablo II and the expansion pack, update it to latest patch and join the official servers, it would be better to switch to private servers. New maps, more weapons and major gameplay experience updates are the key factors behind the rise of these private servers.

Path of Diablo is an example of such a mod, based of Lord of Destruction expansion pack. Released back in 2015, it quickly became popular among Diablo cults.

This Diablo II community server has one main goal: Increase build diversity and replayability with as little changes to the original experience as possible. The skill tree has been rebalanced so that skills that are underpowered and rarely used are now viable, allowing you to create many more builds than before. The end game has also been revamped so that more areas are worth exploring, allowing you to experience more varied content. These modifications combine the best ideas from both Diablo II and Path of Exile, two of the best ARPGs in existence. We hope you join our community and enjoy yourself on the server!

(Source)

Unfortunately the game servers are now shutting down due an exploit. There is an announcement on the official subreddit about the closure:

Shutting Down PoD for an Indefinite Amount of Time

Unfortunately there is an exploit in the game that allows players to intentionally crash our game servers. This can cause rollbacks and is incredibly disruptive.

Fixing it is not something we can do quickly and in the meantime these cheaters prefer to ruin the server than play the game normally.

Considering how Diablo II is 17+ years old now, it means that all of us are adults, most of us over 25+ years of age. So how someone can have such an incredibly sad life to attack a small community server is mind boggling. Well congratulations to these folks. You win. Now nobody can play.

(Source)

No details about the exploit or the way it can be used are available now. The official site is down as well.

Update 1

GreenDude, the man behind the mod, edited the original announcement:

Edit: we had some very nice people contact us and offer their help. unfortunately this problem needs very specific knowledge of d2 servers. luckily we have found a possible way to fix this. with that said those who offered help wont be able to do so until tomorrow so the realm will most definitely stay offline til then. i’ll share details tomorrow. thanks every1

djwaters22, an avid PoD player cum streamer has posted a video on this event:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMtj96wBVRY

Meanwhile looking at the PoD launcher source code, GreenDude is making some changes on the ‘preventautorestart’ mechanism.

Update 2

We have contacted GreenDude via LoD’s official Discord channel. They are kind enough to provide us some ‘cryptic’ hints about possible resolution:

Meanwhile the official site is up, as noticed by the author and other members from the community:

Update 3

There were suggestions about collaborating with other Diablo modding communities, and looks like it is happening.

Few minutes ago, we got another tip to check out the announcement post once again. And it looks like the developers have finally found a fix!

we ended up finding a fix and have completed some tests. it does appear to work beautifully. we need to apply it to all the GS.

but also we need to do a full search of all the items that have been created through these crashes and make sure that no one comes out ahead. and we will be taking care of banning the players who used the exploit. so we might still end up waiting til tomorrow before bringing the servers up as we go through this process. Thanks to all the kind words we received.

I also want to shoutout the ppl who pmed me offering help from various d2 communities, especially the MXL team. Glad the other d2 communities are also interesting in helping each other fight against exploits/cheats. See you later today or tomorrow (depending on how long it takes us and what time zone you live in).

They need to manually test the fix on every objects inside the game. The players who used the exploit need to be banned as well as the items they created should be wiped out from the database. So far the results are good, so keep your fingers crossed.

Let’s wait for tomorrow. ?

Update 4 (29 January, 2019)

GreenDude posted another update. They had to write a new program to remove all the items created by the exploit by pattern matching as manual work would be “insanely time consuming”.

The servers should be up by today (29th Jan).

Update 5 (29 January, 2019)

The servers are up!

Edit4: scan in progress. currently at half a million items so itll still be scanning all items from ladder for many more hours. jan29 still expected.

Edit5: The realm is back online. Thank you everyone for your incredible patience.

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