NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 31: Elon Musk attends Heidi Klum’s 2022 Halloween Party at Sake No … [+]
Elon Musk is a gamer, it’s true. He has spoken many times about different games he is addicted to, previously Cyberpunk 2077 and most recently Diablo 4. But a few months ago, strange things happened when Elon started bragging about being one of the best Diablo 4 players in the world.
It was… true, technically. His account was in fact in the top 20 Pit 150 runs in Diablo 4 for a while, globally. This raised some eyebrows, wondering how he did that, but now that he’s moved on to a new, similar game, that game’s community isn’t having it. Elon is supposed to have god-level, ultra-geared, mind-blowing characters in Path of Exile 2. Except the community and its pros are saying, no, that’s not the case.
There’s no reason to go into too much detail here with Path of Exile’s hyper-specific terminology, but the bottom line is that Elon has characters who are extremely high level with extremely powerful gear to the point that if you know anything about the game, you understand how long it would take to end the game to acquire all of this. In the time that no one can believe Elon has between his multiple businesses, Trump is administering DOGE tasks and tweeting a hundred times a day.
The Path of Exile community’s accusation here it’s not that he’s cheating in the traditional sense, but that he’s asking someone to “pilot” or boost his account, ie. play it for him or prepare him, or he plays on someone else’s account completely. A major piece of evidence was a recent X-stream, which at one point had over a million viewers, in which he broadcasts endgame content about his powerful character. And he… doesn’t really seem to know what he’s doing. At least not for someone who would already have hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay to be where they are.
I’ve watched the stream myself as someone who has spent almost 200 hours and yes, there are a lot of red flags. Among them:
- Elon repeatedly tries to click on a map node that is not connected and you cannot click on it. This is basically the fundamental point of the entire endgame card.
- Elon’s inventory appears to be filled with junk that he has no interest in getting rid of. He tries to collect cards later, seems confused it won’t work, and then manually drags them individually into his inventory, which is not how you collect things.
- Elon doesn’t play with any sort of custom loot filter that is essentially standard for any dedicated PC player. And he goes through valuable orb currencies without retrieving them, apparently not understanding their value.
- Elon does not seem to know the difference between the level required for weapons and the actual level of the item itself, rejecting a powerful weapon because it is too weak without distinction.
- During a boss fight, he seems not to understand that he is out of mana and only remembers to use his potion after he has to.
All of these may be minor, but they paint the picture of someone who shouldn’t have such a strong character or be one of the highest ranked players in the world (which again is the case) .
But he’s still good, isn’t he? It’s difficult content and he plays into it, right? Well, sort of. I also have this character, an Ice/Lightning Invoker Monk, and while no, it’s not as perfectly min-maxed as his, it’s also a stupidly easy build to play, basically two or three active skills which you must use supported by a bunch of passive buffs. This character’s level, gear, and undoubtedly skill setup means that this character is mostly on autopilot for almost all of this content, with the exception of maybe some of the more important bosses.
Path of Exile 2
There is a mixture of bewilderment and outrage from the community about this. I mean, it’s just funny, why would he bother doing that? As a creator Quin said in his video about it, it would be more endearing to watch Elon pick up and play a new game from the beginning rather than… whatever it was (all this with all these mistakes and lack of knowledge also seems like a Diablo player who hasn’t yet really understood all the details of the more complex PoE, which I was at weeks ago).
But the Path of Exile community is also quite prickly, with many calling for GGG to take action against it for boosting or account sharing, as it goes against the TOS and other players would be banned for it. So far, this has not happened, and it is difficult to produce explicit proof when no one has this data behind the scenes. I’ve asked X for comment on Elon’s gaming status and will update if I hear back.
Until then, I can’t wait to see Elon take on Marvel Rivals Season 1, taking his beloved Iron Man model to the highest ranks of Grandmaster. See you soon then.
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