Blizzard decides it hates its customers

[General Zod]

So yeah, this is probably the single biggest level of bullshit I've ever seen from any gaming company. Even Project $10 doesn't take restrictions to this level of extreme.

tl;dr if you're thinking of buying a digital copy of Diablo 3, you're now essentially paying for a timed demo for 72 hours before you can progress past Act 1.

As of patch 1.0.3, when purchasing a digital version of Diablo III through the online store or your Battle.net Account, players are restricted to the Starter Edition for the first 72 hours (sometimes less). Players on Starter Editions have the following restrictions:
Act I up to the Skeleton King is available
Level 13 cap
Matchmaking available only with other Starter Edition players
No Auction House access (Real Money or Gold)
Global Play is not available. Players attempting to connect to Diablo III Starter Edition in a region other than their Battle.net Account's home region will receive Error 12. See the Global Play support article for more information.

More information regarding the Starter Edition is available here:
http://us.battle.net/support/en/article ... guest-pass

If you are still encountering the Starter Edition restrictions over 72 hours past the date of purchase, please let Customer Service know: http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/contact

[Darksider]

I'm completely confused. Is there any reason to be doing this, even from Blizzard's point of view?

[Mr Bean]

I'm completely confused. Is there any reason to be doing this, even from Blizzard's point of view?

As a DRM validation step, apparently the DRM for digital editions was already broken as was the validation steps and this forms the basis of some way to break the existing steps to break the game.

Or at least so goes the theory elsewhere. I'd just say it's some form of DRM.

[General Zod]

I'm completely confused. Is there any reason to be doing this, even from Blizzard's point of view?

As a DRM validation step, apparently the DRM for digital editions was already broken as was the validation steps and this forms the basis of some way to break the existing steps to break the game.

Or at least so goes the theory elsewhere. I'd just say it's some form of DRM.

Imagine buying a movie, but being told you can only watch the trailer for the first three days you own it. That's the level of bullshit this is and I'm pretty sure it's some kind of blatant consumer protection violation.

[Darksider]

This almost seems like a move to discourage people from buying the digital version. Is there any reason Blizzard would want to do that?

[Mr Bean]

This almost seems like a move to discourage people from buying the digital version. Is there any reason Blizzard would want to do that?

None as digital copies are 100% Blizzard profit.

[Rossum]

Welp, guess if I ever feel the need to buy a dungeon crawler I'll buy Torchlight 2.

[Terralthra]

The auction house restrictions seem key to me. This seems like a step to keep farming/hacking networks from creating throwaway accounts for aggregating large amounts of gear/gold and playing the AH for money. Accounts that are used for this are identified and banned regularly, but the people running the network just create new ones. This would at least put a dent in how quickly they can get going after a wave of bans.

[General Zod]

The auction house restrictions seem key to me. This seems like a step to keep farming/hacking networks from creating throwaway accounts for aggregating large amounts of gear/gold and playing the AH for money. Accounts that are used for this are identified and banned regularly, but the people running the network just create new ones. This would at least put a dent in how quickly they can get going after a wave of bans.

If that were true they'd just restrict the auction house without punishing customers that want to play the campaign.

[Irbis]

If that were true they'd just restrict the auction house without punishing customers that want to play the campaign.

Except, restricting just access to AH does nothing, because farmers would just farm gold and wait until it's open. By restricting to level 13, you can't accumulate gold in worthwhile quantities.

And yeah, Blizzard is shit ever since 'we'll sell you S2 three times'.

[madd0ct0r]

The auction house restrictions seem key to me. This seems like a step to keep farming/hacking networks from creating throwaway accounts for aggregating large amounts of gear/gold and playing the AH for money. Accounts that are used for this are identified and banned regularly, but the people running the network just create new ones. This would at least put a dent in how quickly they can get going after a wave of bans.

no it dosen't - becuase 1) for the amount of gold farming you'd need to do, an extra 3 days is jack shit and 2) nothing to stop me buying and prepping accounts ahead of time. If I'm getting banned at regular intervals, I just buy new accounts at regular intervals too.

[bilateralrope]

The auction house restrictions seem key to me. This seems like a step to keep farming/hacking networks from creating throwaway accounts for aggregating large amounts of gear/gold and playing the AH for money. Accounts that are used for this are identified and banned regularly, but the people running the network just create new ones. This would at least put a dent in how quickly they can get going after a wave of bans.

I don't think so. Blizzard gets a cut of every RMAH sale, so why would they go after the people with the highest volume of sales on it ?

[Stofsk]

If that were true they'd just restrict the auction house without punishing customers that want to play the campaign.

Except, restricting just access to AH does nothing, because farmers would just farm gold and wait until it's open. By restricting to level 13, you can't accumulate gold in worthwhile quantities.

And yeah, Blizzard is shit ever since 'we'll sell you S2 three times'.

This is arguably off-topic, although the topic seems to be 'blizzard hates its customers' so I think it can apply to SC2 as well as D3. And I want to put in a good Blizzard bash. As far as SC2 goes, I don't think the 'we'll sell it to you three times' thing is that bad, because it depends on the pricing. If they price Heart of the Swarm as an expansion then there isn't really any problem IMO.

But they got rid of the carrier for protoss, and replaced it with some bullshit unit like the tempest. Protoss have gotten the the least improvements in terms of new units, everything else has been a good addition - terran has gotten much-needed expansion to their mech, including a reason to build heaps of helions and some kind of deployable spider mine, while zerg have a couple of cool new units that include an aerial caster and an upgraded ultralisk. These might change the metagame significantly, especially for terran as it might make mech a more attractive alternative to bioball. And since my biggest problem with SC2 is how standard builds are basically the be-all, end-all of the gameplay, anything that gets you away from standard builds is a good thing IMO. It just seems to me that they eliminated one of protoss' most underrated units, and full disclosure it is one of my favourite units too and I consider it a signature starcraft unit; replacing it with something that looks like it's gamey but not all that useful, and other stuff like an aerial harassment unit that I can see being pretty overpowered. But ultimately, nothing will change and protoss players will still have no reason to change from the deathball.

As far as Diablo 3 is concerned, well I don't know why they've done this kind of restriction for digital edition players. It's pretty ridiculous, but I suspect it has something to do with combating farming or something something auction house related. The unfortunate thing is Diablo is a lot of fun but nowhere near perfect.

[bilateralrope]

Now Blizzard's claiming it's all a mistake.

The never-ending soap opera that is Diablo’s online strategy continues. First there were connectivity issues, then claims of hacking, and, yesterday, new buyers began getting slapped with up-to-72-hour restrictions to Diablo III’s Starter Edition – aka, its demo. Next up, we’ll probably find out that Torchlight’s been Diablo’s son all along, but both of them got amnesia and the paternity test exploded. It turns out, however, that the credits haven’t quite rolled on this week’s episode. Apparently, new players actually aren’t supposed to be thrown into demonic demo dungeons. They are, however, still subject to roughly a gazillion other baffling restrictions.

Blizzard clarified the situation to Kotaku, explaining that the Starter Edition downgrade is “an unintended consequence of these security measures” and specifically noting that the level cap of 13 and progression halt at Act I were never meant to plague new buyers in the first place. “We are working to correct this as soon as possible and will provide another update when we have more details to share,” said the beleaguered behemoth in a statement.

However, Blizzard’s suite of fraud-fighting security measures is still very much in place. So, for up to 72 hours, customers can look forward to not looking forward to the following:

No public game access for unverified digital purchasers
No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers
Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive
Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels
Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends
Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers

So then, you’re still being fairly massively (and paradoxically) inconvenienced by the “service” part of “games as a service,” but at least you can cobble together a functional single-player experience out of all that. Well, you know, aside from connection issues, lag, downtime, and the inability to pause, anyway.

It’s honestly sort of incredible how out-of-hand this has gotten. There is, admittedly, a lot on the line between all the personal info and bank accounts that have been stirred into the mix, but when Blizzard announced all of this, it vehemently claimed the ups would outweigh the downs. Convenience, in other words, would make doubters eat their bile-coated words about lack of true single-player or mods. And yet, new barriers to entry keep popping up. I don’t doubt that games can be services, but this is a pretty awful way to do it.

Fingers crossed that Blizzard’s finally run out of whiplash-inducing plot twists, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find us all tuning in for another episode of Diablos Of Our Lives in a week or two.

I guess this time Blizzard decided that the outcry was too great and, like the account hacking, didn't dare tell customers the truth. Not that the 'intended' restrictions are much better, the only one I understand is keeping people out of the real money auction house.

[madd0ct0r]

torchlight's stratergy of launching a month after diablo is starting to look less silly...

[General Zod]

The only unintended consequence here is Blizzard didn't anticipate this much outrage. They sure as fuck knew what these security measures would do.

[Terralthra]

If that were true they'd just restrict the auction house without punishing customers that want to play the campaign.

Except, restricting just access to AH does nothing, because farmers would just farm gold and wait until it's open. By restricting to level 13, you can't accumulate gold in worthwhile quantities.

And yeah, Blizzard is shit ever since 'we'll sell you S2 three times'.

no it dosen't - becuase 1) for the amount of gold farming you'd need to do, an extra 3 days is jack shit and 2) nothing to stop me buying and prepping accounts ahead of time. If I'm getting banned at regular intervals, I just buy new accounts at regular intervals too.

The people running farm networks don't level up characters themselves to farm with. That would be a massive waste of time for them, compared to just using your already-leveled and -geared character.

The general way it works is that they will phish/spoof/hack an account, use that account at areas below level-appropriate, but still yielding a decent payoff, farm for eight hours or so, then go convert everything in that character's inventory and equipment to gold (or auctionable gear), and send that off to a mule account. The mule accounts then auction the gear, aggregate the gold, then send that off to a separate mule account which uses the piles and piles of gold from multiple farm/sale excursions to either sell gold for RM, or, more likely in D3, buy high-priced items on the gold AH and sell them on the RMAH.

Blizzard doesn't generally even bother targeting the first-tier mules for bans. They pinpoint those mules, then track their mail and trades to find the head mules which are actually making the RM trades/sales, and ban those. Mind you, when I said "regularly," I didn't mean that they do it on a schedule which can be predicted, just that it happens fairly often.

Banning these mule accounts (with the loss of capital that goes with it) and then blocking off the farmers' trade/AH access for 3 days will absolutely put a dent in their business. Buying and prepping accounts ahead of time would also put a dent in their profits, though not as much as it would with WoW, I suppose.

[General Zod]

The people running farm networks don't level up characters themselves to farm with. That would be a massive waste of time for them, compared to just using your already-leveled and -geared character.

The general way it works is that they will phish/spoof/hack an account, use that account at areas below level-appropriate, but still yielding a decent payoff, farm for eight hours or so, then go convert everything in that character's inventory and equipment to gold (or auctionable gear), and send that off to a mule account. The mule accounts then auction the gear, aggregate the gold, then send that off to a separate mule account which uses the piles and piles of gold from multiple farm/sale excursions to either sell gold for RM, or, more likely in D3, buy high-priced items on the gold AH and sell them on the RMAH.

Blizzard doesn't generally even bother targeting the first-tier mules for bans. They pinpoint those mules, then track their mail and trades to find the head mules which are actually making the RM trades/sales, and ban those. Mind you, when I said "regularly," I didn't mean that they do it on a schedule which can be predicted, just that it happens fairly often.

Banning these mule accounts (with the loss of capital that goes with it) and then blocking off the farmers' trade/AH access for 3 days will absolutely put a dent in their business. Buying and prepping accounts ahead of time would also put a dent in their profits, though not as much as it would with WoW, I suppose.

So that makes it acceptable to punish legitimate customers . . . how?

[Terralthra]

So that makes it acceptable to punish legitimate customers . . . how?

I never said it did. Maybe you're mistaking me for someone else who did say that?

[General Zod]

So that makes it acceptable to punish legitimate customers . . . how?

I never said it did. Maybe you're mistaking me for someone else who did say that?

Sounded to me like you were trying to justify why they're doing this. If you don't bother saying if you support it or not it looks like you're supporting it.

[Losonti Tokash]

It didn't look like that at all. He was just giving a possible rationale that doesn't rely on Blizzard being moustache twirlers.

[General Zod]

It didn't look like that at all. He was just giving a possible rationale that doesn't rely on Blizzard being moustache twirlers.

Good intentions don't mean the idea is suddenly any less shitty.

[Losonti Tokash]

Would you chill out? Literally no one has said it's not a shitty idea but you have to keep reminding us like anyone is arguing against you.

[Sriad]

Sounded to me like you were trying to justify why they're doing this. If you don't bother saying if you support it or not it looks like you're supporting it.

Explaining is not the same as excusing, even though having insight into rationale makes the accused's position seem less unreasonable.

[Irbis]

The people running farm networks don't level up characters themselves to farm with. That would be a massive waste of time for them, compared to just using your already-leveled and -geared character.

That requires quality hackers. Lower-tech farming networks do indeed level characters themselves using either forced labor or badly paid workers from Third World countries. Nothing is a waste of time if you can profit from it.