News Diablo 3 will have always-online DRM, player-to-player microtransactions

Wrong.

Back in 1996 when Diablo was released broadband didn't even exist. Dial-up was monthly fee PLUS pay-by-the-minute plus pay-for-extra-bandwidth-used PLUS kept your phone line occupied.

Multiplayer existed on LAN (which was quite laughable in Windows 95 over IPX/SPX) when you could get a mate round at your (parents) house for long enough to have a decent session.

Thus, for many, many people Diablo 1 was a single player experience - and a thoroughly enjoyable one at that - all without an Internet connection in sight.

Diablo 2 comes long a few years later and many of those who started with Diablo 1 played Diablo 2 the same way - single player - and still very much enjoyed it. Why, then, is it so unreasonable to ask the same of Diablo 3?

 

+1, this is pretty much how I played D1, D2 and the expansion packs.

 

+1 here also - makes you wonder if some posters were gaming (or even born) when D1 was released (I still cringe on hearing the whine of a modem handshake).

Things have changed a lot since, but some gaming publishers seem determined to undo the benefits that progress has bought.

 

Precisely.

 

I think people are taking this a bit overboard, there's nothing unexpected there. Things have changed and so has Diablo.

Always online? Yeah, that's pretty much the standard now, and if it helps kill pirating I'm all for it. You can still play solo if you're so antisocial so what's the problem anyway, don't have internets?

No mods well that's kindof disappointing, but again understandable since it's an online game. You can't be changing gameplay when it's a shared system, there's no way around that it would cause way too many issues. Opens the door for cheating too which is lame.

Microtransactions again is nothing surprising, that's the big idea lately in gaming. Hey at least there's no subscription fees or anything, you don't have to use the auction hosue if you don't want to. No one's forcing you to use it so don't complain if you don't like it because it's there for those who do.

I don't know what people expect. Obviously this is the direction things were heading considering their success with WoW. Just be grateful we're even getting another installment of Diablo.

 

In some ways I find this viewpoint fascinating...

There's been ample coverage of Ubisoft's "always online" system and its successful launch and plenty of debate about similar systems here and elsewhere so the downsides should really be obvious. But then, plenty of people patronised DRMed music stores, again with obvious downsides, only to lose their purchases as store after store closed.

Piracy? Uh, nope. Ubisoft's DRM was cracked in a day which meant they had a hassle-free (as well as money-free, excluding those who paid and *had* to pirate due to Ubisoft's server problems) experience. Of course, piracy is a convenient scapegoat - but the target is, and likely always has been, the second-hand game market. Despite it being legal, software publishers are quick to liken it to piracy - since they've almost surely bought items second-hand themselves at some time, it shows how hypocritical they can be.

 

That's the whole problem! It doesn't help kill piracy - all it does is make life more difficult for legitimate purchasers. Why are you and others so quick to handover control to the publishers?

As an analogy, consider, if you will, the gradually diminishing civil liberties of UK citizens. We've conceded the right to physical privacy (stop and search/CCTV etc). We've conceded much of our freedom in the name of preventing terrorism (entering without warrants/indefinite imprisonment). We've now conceded the right to privacy on the Internet. And so on and so forth. Every single one of these acts was small enough and stealthy enough that when compared to the present state - the accepted norm - the response would almost certainly be "that's just how it is now - just accept it".

To go back to our game, Diablo 3 - DRM has been creeping in over the years. I'm a big fan of Steam - I'm using it right now - and I'm not a hippy revolutionary - but I *do* care that every couple of years we concede just one more small thing - which seems perfectly acceptable, until the next "small thing" comes along.

Compared to the previous accepted state *all* small changes seem insignificant. I'm 32, and I've seen the shift in the way publishers treat consumers first hand, as I'm sure many others have, and I'm not happy with it. Newer gamers who have never known any different might find it acceptable - I don't know.

So long as it doesn't directly affect you, though, there's no problem....right? Wrong. What's going to be next? Remember the EA/Bioware DRM that was designed for your serial number to "check in" every 10 days before or it would deactivate?

"For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play."

It's a slippery slope. If you can't see that then you're either blind, ignorant or in the pockets of the publishers, and if you're the ones playing Diablo 3, I'd rather play single player - OFFLINE.

 

Ars Technica has just produced an article relevant to this: How to ruin your PC port in five easy steps.

 

"Just so we're clear, when you're bored on a plane, and you have your laptop, and you want to play the game you bought in order to fight boredom, Blizzard's official recommendation is that you play someone else's game. That's pride, right there."

Brilliant.

 

Thank goodness I didn't preorder. Nor will I order. I can't be attached to an internet connection 24/7 just to play a single player game. I'm in and out of the hospital all the time either for myself, my wife or my kid. Funnily enough I like to game without a connection. When I'm home, I'm limited to a 10GB cap per month on a 3G dongle, because even though AT&T's Uverse pipe runs ACROSS MY PROPERTY they have said they have no plans to ever offer broadband to my area, which is two miles outside the city limits. Nor do Comcast or Charter.

Always on DRM will mean yet another game I won't play. I'm not even pirating them, I just don't play them. DRM is ruining PC gaming for me, and consoles just suck. Instead of quitting gaming, I'll just roll my own.

 

Great link, thanks.

That's the way to kill DRM right there!

 

I don't know about anyone in the UK, but I have Charter over here in the states and I lose my internet connection atleast once a day for about 1-4 hours randomly every day to every other day. It pisses me off when I'm on Xbox live and it pisses me off when I'm on any other online game on my computer. So this game is off my pre-order list. Also, the offline solo was one of the reasons that I played Diablo 2 so much. It's more fun (IMO) trying to murder the bosses when it's only you running back and forth like a headless chicken shooting fireballs and meteors and ****. Lol, good times

Ps. The DRM will likely be cracked in a month, but likely sooner. I don't care how good of a programmer those developers are, there's a reason hackers can break into any database they want, DRM's are practice for these guys.

 

I see.

*cancels pre-order and reinstalls Diablo 2*

 

I can honestly see this being like the "Modern Warfare 2 with no dedicated servers" outcry.

Everyone will say they aren't buying it, but will get it anyway.

 

this means that even if your house burns down your diablo 3 chars with still be saved online?
Maybe this sort of tihng will drive pressure for a always on always fast internet for everyone?

I think it is within the realms of possiblity for every computer to be connected to at least a half decent connection ALL the time, prehaps even for free or very little money.

 

I'm all for this, whatever stops people from cheating/hacking and makes things fair for everyone else. I was a die hard Diablo 2 fan, completely agree it was so much fun playing coop online, never really played the single player offline mode. Increases the chance of farming? - Excellent even farming in diablo 2 was so much fun, I wouldn't expect any less

 

My train travels through areas with no phone signal, and large portions has no 3G signal.

 

Very little 3G coverage here either.

 

And mobile internet offers horrible latency in most cases even with a strong signal. It's a stupid, ignorant suggestion to solve a problem that we shouldn't have to deal with in the first place.

XXAOSICXX's long post above basically says it all and says it well.

 

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