Seriously, the lamest fucking thing I have ever beheld...

But first some background:

I play Diablo 2, a PC game produced by Blizzard Entertainment.  Seriously one of the best video games I have ever played, if the fact that I've played it for more than ten years says anything about the replayability of the game.  It is an Action RPG in which the player assumes the role of a powerful mortal hero out to accomplish nothing less than defeating the forces of Hell to save the world.

If one chooses to play online, you can join forces with other heroic types.  The game is, at a very fundamental level, designed with cooperative play in mind.  However, one is also free to declare hostilities against other players for some hot, PVP action.

Bliz saw fit to provide an arena for hacks and cheats and glitched characters of all sorts called Open Battle.net.  The unfortunate thing is that being a cheat amongst cheaters is no fun.  The playing field is far too level.

There is, in D2, a certain duality.  There is softcore mode in which character death is a minor annoyance and hardcore mode where death is the end.  Level 5 or 95.  Five minutes of play or five years of polishing, a hardcore character's death can be cause for true remorse.  Anger comes when this death is not due to some failure on part of the player, nor the unreliable nature of network play, but at the hands of a cheater (who is often at a much more advanced level) whose only apparent joy in life is the ruination of another human's enjoyment.

Akin to kicking a baby, PVP (player-versus-player) characters are built in a manner totally unlike a player-versus-monsters (PVM) character such that there is no challenge, no risk, no sport on behalf of the murderer.  But, that is simply not advantage enough... no, no.

I just saw a Paladin teleport, in town (that's not possible) and then turn my screen black.

"Win if you can, lose if you must; but always cheat," said a wrestler-turned-governor.  That seemed good advice for those who would play the heel in life, I guess.

But, in the end, the thing that pisses me off the most is that the vast majority of player-killers (read: murderers, cheats, and liars) tend toward the Paladin.  Paladins, holy warriors, just happen to make the best killers, it seems.  And so the "natural party leader" becomes the party's greatest threat.  The class whose existence screams righteousness, honor, and virtue has become the lowliest of all slime in the Battle.net Realms (the online play).

It simply isn't enough I have to share the same planet as people who name their characters "Kunt_Fuker" in a show of massive intellect and originality and just can't seem to find anyone who would like to more fully explore the RPG aspect of this Action RPG title, but I have to see such a thorough shattering of the theme of the universe that the savior is the enemy and the most "misunderstood" class (Necromancers) becomes the one you can count on for honesty and honor 99% of the time.

And so, to sum it all up with a nice, little bow on top:  I fucking hate children.