Beware Diablo 3 Auction House Escrow Error 317402

“Failed to escrow funds” or “Failed to escrow items” seems to be the key phrase of the day...or rather, week. After patch 1.0.4 a new auction house error has surfaced where players are losing items and money in a bit of a bug vacuum. The forums is crawling with bug reports about this new auction house error and always, be careful about buying and selling items on the auction house.

So far there doesn't seem to be any reports of missing funds from players who buy from the Real-Money Auction House, yet, but there are reports of the escrow error for sellers on the RMAH. But this error has only appeared since last week's patch for Diablo III. An example of how the error works and what it does is explained by a D3 forum goer who writes...

When trying to buy Exquisite Essences from the AH, I got an error and never got the Exquisite Essences.

The problem is that the gold was also deducted without getting the materials.

The following error was displayed: "Failed to escrow funds. The player is locked. (317402)".

The problematic orders were ORDERS #811901758, #811904342 and #812200536. They were all failed attempts of buying Exquisite Essences. I can't remember the exact amount of gold deducted, but the total was above 22 millions gold (Order #811904342 was a large amount of Exquisite Essence: 15,000).

Now the common consensus is that this isn't really news. These sort of bugs happen all the time for MMOs (even though Diablo III isn't an MMO). The only difference is that Diablo III has a Real-Money Auction House attached to it, and while so far there haven't been a lot of reports of error 317402 plaguing RMAH users, it's definitely something you should be mindful of if you plan on using Blizzard's legal gambling house.

It's not all flames and sulfur, though. One player notes that after waiting a bit his item was returned to him. A few days ago one player reported the 317402 bug, yet later that day the player returned to the forums, rejoicing over having the item returned, despite encountering the error. Other players haven't been so lucky, though, and are still awaiting a response from customer service as well as a return of their gold and items.

The issue isn't quite as widespread as the hacking claims that surfaced with unhinged fervor during May and June, but the error does seem to be picking up some traction. There's also the issue of a lot of players simply not taking to the forums to discuss the issue. I imagine if real money was lost in limbo due to an escrow error the buyer/seller would probably be more inclined to keep the issue private and get it resolved with Blizzard's finance department, Paypal or their credit card company. The forums is probably a last resort for someone who lost real life money to a digital bug.

We'll keep you posted if Blizzard decides to fix the problem at some point or if they stealth patch it and hope it never goes public. I mean, could you imagine if players with real money were losing funds to an escrow error and it managed to make it out there for everyone to see? That would be horrible for their public image, especially since they've claimed that their RMAH is safer than the gray and black market traders.