News Diablo 3 director defends always-online DRM

Diablo is becoming mor WOWish ... I just hate MMORPG, they are to me Diablo fused with msn.

 

NO just NO.

always online does not mean MMO diablo is still a single player game with multiplayer features. You can access everything in the game without ever playing with other people or intereacting in anway.

Always on-line i a pain in the arse but doesnt change the fundementals of the game.

I for one will still be purchasing this as i will play only with friends anyway so we wont interact with the AH or Real AH or anyone else. Ill simply start a server, password it and be done it with it.

 

Much like WoW!

 

MMO as selling your items .... why such a feture require always on ? There was item selling / trading via forum and battlenet on D2.

I didn't bought SC2 when I saw what they'd done to it ... all those years for that ! IMHO Diablo is a single player hack an slash that you can eventually play with your friend ... items can be trade by creating a private game on B.net.

Since WOW, blizzard is not making anything good, but it only involves me.

And again WOW is Diablo with msn included .... you can play MMO's and still be playing it alone (lvling lvling lvling .... left clic left clic F2 F3 right clic left clic .... Diablo) and quest are mainly finding an item or two and killing a BOSS ... Diablo again.

 

I lol'd when someone claimed Blizzard were alienating the African gamer, is there a localized version in their language, an official release or a number high enough with computers capable of running the game even???

I totally fail to see the problem with the always online thing, seriously the VAST majority of people in the western world have a perfectly fine internet connection,

If you are one the minority who happens to have a crappy connection then I do feel sorry for you but you have to know that this minority is small and getting smaller, why the hell would blizzard cater to an incredibly small and getting smaller audience?

The threat of 1.3 billion free copies of Diablo III hitting China is a far bigger fear!!!

 

This is pure non-sense that it is mandatory to be ON to play offline. This is a real discrimination too. Even here in France, and less than 80km away from Paris, I know more than 1 village having nothing but 56K .... meaning 1000's of houses where D3 cannot be played !

I have a pretty bad internet, I don't even have the bandwidth to watch TV over internet and I'm 20km away from Paris. I think I won't appreciated losing rare items because my connection sucked and I wasn't able to loot the item before being disconnected (what append every 20 minutes on D2 on battle.net) ... but with D3 it will append even during offline game

 

I don't see what all the fuss is about. Yes on principle Blizzard have done a poor job, but if you want to play online the DRM won't effect you and if you want to play offline the community will provide a crack for you. The end result exactly the same as if Blizzard had behaved themselves.

I'm still much more offended by MW2 removing dedicated servers, that absolutely ruined the entire multiplayer experience. I held true to my boycott on that.

@Th3Maverick

Wow, I didn't know you could get Steam to extend the offline on your account, that's really cool.

 

Boycotted MW2 since all my friends who are playing it are doing it on X360 ... and I cannot play against them with my PC (thanks to the lack of dedicated server).

For D3, they should have kept the licence key from D2 ... you have a genuie key then you can play it on battle.net .... else, offline only.

 

Whatever, I've become so jaded towards this game at this point I wouldn't be surprised if they announced a monthly subscription. Me and 2 other friends of mine were really looking forward to this game, being huge fans of D2. We've all decided that we're taking our money to Grim Dawn and Torchlight. Blizzard can keep there always online and real money whoring b.s., I'm out. I will never pay for this title.

 

That's quite all right Blizzard, you do whatever you like with D3 as I'll be playing Torchlight 2 online, offline or LAN only which I will purchase at full RRP on day of release.
I'll pick up Diablo 3 when its on special or in the bargain bin for a fiver to play through the single player, always online, and then forget about it as some things are just to much to take.

 

Sounds about right. Torchlight 2 is going to be immense!

 

Torchlight 2 and Guild Wars 2

 

Only problem I see is the people looking to pirate the game instead of buying a copy are stuffed.

A new genre is created by Blizzard.

Born is the SPORPG (Single Player Online Role Playing Game)

 

Yup.

 

lol SPORPG ... I'd always bought my games but I can understand that it is annoying to get online to play offline, with the risk of being disconnected due to poor connection and loosing verry rare items (it happened to me on battle.net when killin Diablo in hell, he dropped unique item but I got disconnected before being able to get them on the floor).

Another thing ..... no D3 in LAN parties, no D3 when you are on the go, no D3 offline if you're internet connection is out of order (happened to me during 2 month).

This is pure non-sense to me. Same way with mobo manucfactuers that doesn't include a paper copy of the mobo manual but only a CD one ..... very useful when you do not have another computer available (I saw that many times).

And it goes the same way with facebook now .... many contest are only available via facebook .... and what if I do not want to have a facebook account .... I cannot play. Same with cellphone.

Society assumes that you have a cellphone and mainly an apple one, facebook and internet.

 

This article missed the most juicy quote:

Wilson also told us some of the philosophical and practical reasons behind the decision not to include any sort of offline mode.

“There’s two basic problems with us doing that,” said Wilson. “One is players default immediately to that. So, they basically unintentionally opt out of all the cooperative experience, all the trading experience, and the core of Diablo is a circle-trading game. So for us we’ve always viewed it as an online game – the game’s not really being played right if it’s not online, so when we have that specific question of why are we allowing it? Because that’s the best experience, why would you want it any other way?”

I don't know about this guy, but I spent at least 20 times the amount of time playing single player than online, and I even managed to get 2 necros and an assassin through hell on b.net. I didn't spend much time trading (about 15 mins, cause it was boring as hell), and I certainly was unimpressed by the calibre of most players I came across. Most of them were begging for items, greifing, PKing or were bots who joined your games just to spam messages about their D2 item stores. Almost all of the time, I didn't get any kind of coop going with the random people that joined. They did their thing and I did mine, and that's how it went 99% of the time. Most of the time B.net was a complete clusterf*** of lag, idiots, bots and ********.

He's basically saying "you play the game the way we say, not the way you want", which is infuriating and ridiculous. Maybe in a few years I'll pick D3 out of a bargain bin if they change their stance (fat chance). It seems like blizzard has gotten too big for their boots and are now just ignoring what the community says. The whole fiasco has gone downhill since the original gameplay video for D3 was released, with the bright blue dungeon myst and the freaking rainbow as the characters crossed a bridge.
I mean, come on. A @$#%ing RAINBOW in a goddamn Diablo game.

I remember a time, long ago, when I looked forward to the release of diablo 3....

 

Here we go again.

Let's just make it really, really clear.

Always-online DRM brings no benefits to the consumer WHATSOEVER.

So, to those WITH the perfect internet connection - lucky you - this DRM won't negatively affect you but it won't do anything good for you either.

Those without the perfect internet connection - unlucky - this DRM will screw your experience with the game, and it seems the majority out there are content to say f**k you to everyone deployed overseas, living in the countryside without reliable DSL, travelling on business, living off a 3G dongle or just unlucky enough to be tied into a contract with TalkTalk.

You'll notice Mr Activillain doesn't actually give a credible positive reason for introducing this level of DRM - because there are none. All he's doing is alienating a large (albeit not the majority) portion of the customer base.

I for one have an amazing 50Mb line with Virgin media which is absolutely brilliant - but I won't be buying the game out of principle. I'm not going to send the message to ActiBlizz that it's ok to treat your customers like dirt. I'll vote with my wallet and give my hard earned cash to the chaps making Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn, since they appear to put their customers before their shareholders.

And, with those above, I also boycotted (and remained faithful to) not buying MW2 or later for the same reasons.

So long as the majority of consumers are arrogant and selfish enough to think that everything's ok so long as they're ok - and two-fingers to everyone else - publishers will continue to receive the message that it's to put their customer base last.

F**k Activision, and f**k this game.

 

Same here ... I have 2 necros (lvl 98 and lvl 50 ... the new one), 1 assassin lvl 98 and a spear rogue lvl 87 in hell. Items are one thing ..... but the way you play your character is more important.

They shouldn't have name this game Diablo 3, but World of Diablo .... why enabling the offline game if it was to FORCE us to be online. Every people playing the game should be able to play it the way they want ! I prefear single player too (and play sometimes with 1 friend)

50 MB .... I barely get 50KB when downloading and I have to reboot my internet box twice a day

 

I didn't grab MWF2, but I've bought at least one activision game.


I was being screamed at by a few people (not on here) for cancelling my plans to grab Diablo 3 because of the DRM.

It's about the attitudes of the developers for me. Stinks of uncaring arrogance.

I'm grabbing Torchlight 2 and Grimdawn instead.

 

What I really like, but it's very very very rare, is when studios release a Linux installer of the game (Unreal, Darwinia, etc.) .... it won't happens much now since OGL is disappearing from games, but it is always a nice attention when it happens

This discution convinced me not to buy D3 ... Grimdawn, never heard of it. I'll take a look at it