Blizzard laying down the Diablo 3 Ban Hammer

Took Blizzard long enough to whip out the Ban Hammer. If you're doing certain exploits, bots, and cheats to break or make the game easier, watch out because they are out to do some permanent bans. I consider cheating, or rather breaking the game part of any game, but with Diablo 3 being an online-only game with an Auction House soon to give players the option to buy gear with real money, this wasn't a surprise. 

From Blizzard:

Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating in any form in Blizzard games very seriously, and that's no different for Diablo® III. If a Diablo III player is found to be cheating or using hacks, bots, or modifications in any form, then as outlined in the Diablo III end user license agreement, that player can be permanently banned from the game. This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net® to play Diablo III with his or her account.

Playing Diablo III legitimately means playing with an unaltered game client. Doing otherwise violates our policies for Battle.net and Diablo III, and it goes against the spirit of fair play that all of our games are based on. We strongly recommend that you avoid using any hacks, cheats, bots, or exploits. Suspensions and bans of players that have used or start using cheats and hacks will begin in the near future.

This what happens when a game goes online-only. Heck, I bet Blizzard won't give a damn if this game had an offline mode with no Auction House. But it is what it is. Exploits and cheats are part of video games, especially for games that are considered a single player game. Decisions like this reminds me that gamer's that bought the game don't really own the game. I've already given my thoughts regarding Diablo 3 going online-only and I won't dwell on that anymore.

Real Money Auction house is coming on the 13th and I can see a series of shit storms coming in the next few days.