said by puppy:said by Tweakbl:but they could have end run this by making it so that Character on Offline Mode stay in Offline Mode (and their loot to)
I don't think it's the fake loot, but the millions of unpaid copies of D2. Forcing people to play online is their way of making sure every copy is paid.
They could have just required a once a month connection.
Have it generate a code based on items that uniquely ID the system (MAC address/CD Key/some other stuff) then hash that into a code that's logged with blizz and set to expire in say 1 month. Maybe add in a bit of public key crypto.
then have that renew every time you connect to Bnet (maybe have it be a SSL cert signed by a Blizz CA)
then if you launch the game and it can't validate that the cert is there it just doesn't open or says you need to connect to Bnet