Diablo 3 news. It's an MMO.

[Feil]

Requiring a persistent internet connection to play a game when you're not using any of its online features (or when it doesn't have any) is a pretty significant annoyance. Internet down but you want to play a video game? Good thing you have all those single player games. Too bad none of them work (legally) without an internet connection! Internet goes down while playing? I guess you're reverting to your last save point, sorry. There are better ways to stop cheating.

Worse: it makes the illegal version better than the legal version, for single player. Online play is pretty solidly off limits for pirated games, so the list of people who might pirate your game instead of buying it (as opposed to the people who buy it anyway and the people who wouldn't have bought it even if they couldn't pirate it, but were willing to pirate it nonetheless) is limited to just the people who only wanted single player in the first place. At best this sort of DRM is only going to protect your first-week sales, which other, less-intrusive DRM can do just as well. In the long run I can only see it making legitimate customers unsatisfied while pirates happily play their cracked versions, quite possibly putting a dent in the game's sales.

Disabling LAN play and forcing everything to go through the same central server is a good idea, assuming the central server is up to the task. It's still an inconvenience to the players, but it's one I'm willing to accept, particularly as it does make the game considerably more desirable to paying customers than non-paying ones.

Ingame items for real cash transactions makes sense to me. EVE had the right idea here. Make the gold-selling and item-selling markets a feature and a profitable enterprise for you, instead of wasting money fighting them. It's going to happen anyway, so Blizzard might as well profit from it and package it neatly into a place where it belongs rather than having advertisements intruding on people trying to enjoy the game. This is a much nicer idea than a cash item shop, in my opinion, because it's just a means of exchange for items that are in the game anyway, rather than restricting content from people who have already paid for the game.

Banning mods makes no sense. Not providing mod support I can understand: mod support is difficult and potentially expensive. But banning mods altogether? Mods increase the longevity and appeal of a game. Why you would want to ban people from making free content for your product?

[AMT]

Well looks like another game I was interested in that I won't be playing... sigh.

[Stofsk]

Requiring a persistent internet connection to play a game when you're not using any of its online features (or when it doesn't have any) is a pretty significant annoyance. Internet down but you want to play a video game? Good thing you have all those single player games. Too bad none of them work (legally) without an internet connection! Internet goes down while playing? I guess you're reverting to your last save point, sorry. There are better ways to stop cheating.

How do you know it won't have significant online features? The PVP arena section will be one guaranteed multi-player oriented feature, but I bet there will be stuff related to the single-player campaign as well. I'm just guessing but if SC2 is any indication then at the very least you'll have achievements, progress stats, items you've bought from or sold to the auction house and other stuff like shared inventories between characters (I am p. sure this or something like it has been confirmed) - which, I am guessing, in order to prevent item duping would have to involve storing your characters on their servers, making online access a necessity if you want to swap items around. Additionally, co-op mode to go through the campaign with a party. Like I said before, why wouldn't you want to get together with a couple of friends and do some demon bashing for the evening? I know that's what I'm most looking forward to.

But who knows, maybe there will be a 'play single player offline without any of the online stuff' mode like with SC2. Also, people have mentioned stuff like 'zomg what if i have teh torrentz on while i play??!?' and I uh don't see Blizzard or anyone frankly giving a shit about that kind of problem. Even so, I cannot imagine how playing the campaign in a single player mode will require lots of bandwidth. It may well be possible to have other applications active while the game only checks to see if you're connected.

Disabling LAN play and forcing everything to go through the same central server is a good idea, assuming the central server is up to the task. It's still an inconvenience to the players, but it's one I'm willing to accept, particularly as it does make the game considerably more desirable to paying customers than non-paying ones.

Yeah I think Blizzard is up to the task.

Banning mods makes no sense. Not providing mod support I can understand: mod support is difficult and potentially expensive. But banning mods altogether? Mods increase the longevity and appeal of a game. Why you would want to ban people from making free content for your product?

My bet is this is because most mods for Diablo 2 were god items that could severely unbalance things, or stuff like bots and dupes. I like mods too but this was never a dealbreaker for me.

Well looks like another game I was interested in that I won't be playing... sigh.

Cool.

[Sharp-kun]

My understanding was that items you get in single player can be sold on the AH to other players. If you can keep your character offline that opens it up to all sorts of abuse, especially since items can either be sold for in game currency or $. Thats likely the main reason its internet dependent.

The online only bit doesn't bother me. My connection is fast, good and always on. In the most dire circumstances I can always tether my phone or connect to someone's unsecured wireless. It's not too unreasonable these days to assume if someone has a PC capable of playing modern games that they also have a semi-decent connection. Certainly SC2 didn't take up much bandwidth just in SP.

The option to sell things you make for real money though is interesting, depending on how it turns out I might be able to use that to fund a few beers just by playing.

[PREDATOR490]

Real Money For Items - Sorry, game can go fuck off and die

"Oh look, I found Diablo's head. I will post it on the Auction House for $5"

Players selling their own items for real money.
I call major bullshit on that until I see it in action.

At best I can see folks selling items on the ingame currency exchange with folks using IRL money to get the ingame currency. Which means the seller gets fuck all in the real world and if they try to sell currency - BAN for being a gold farmer. This is ALSO what EVE does.

Wasnt interested in Diablo 3 much and now I have 0 intrest. Back to Mass Effect 3 and SWTOR

[weemadando]

In reality Pred, a cash marketplace actually fixes many of the issues to do with gold farming etc.

If you remove gold from the game (which isn't a big move considering that Stones of Jordan were the currency that people ended up using in D2) then you negate gold-farming and having a pure barter economy for trade and a cash auction house would mean that time spent farming for minimal amounts of gold in order to create a much larger stash is pretty much redundant.

[Stark]

Is it better or worse than cloned items, sets you never complete, gold farmers, etc? Blizzard makes it pretty clear they've done a lot of market research in that area. As much as I always love to see nerds confounded, Blizzard has the clout to simply not care about that area of the market they'll lose (the portable market, along with the pirate market and the hacked savegame market) in order to implement these features. At worst, if they see themselves losing a great deal of money, they'll just patch in autistic mode.

It's not like they'll be forcing anyone to buy anything in their store; I'm just a bit sad it appears to only be item resale, and not ingame item purchase as seen in FTP MMOs - something else nerds bang on about but which has been amazingly successful. As Sharp-kun rightly notes, if they plan on having real money sale, they ABSOLUTELY MUST ensure no cheating, or their system will not work.

[Sharp-kun]

If you remove gold from the game (which isn't a big move considering that Stones of Jordan were the currency that people ended up using in D2)

From what I've read gold still exists as an alternative to the cash AH for those that want to use it. It would need to otherwise younger players could be locked out of the system depending on parents.

The cash auction house also isn't available if you play on hardcore mode (if you die you really die - another reason for online saved so you can't back it up) since losing the gear you paid $ for would be a bit shit. You need to use the gold AH.

[Minischoles]

I don't get the outrage, Blizzard isn't some shitty company whose servers crash when loads of people use them, they're a company that runs the most successful MMO and one of the most successful RTS games, all on a similar system. It worked pretty well for SC2, the only problem I can see is if they don't use the region system in that, and try what WoW does - AFAIK a lot of players in Australia/Korea/Taiwan have huge lag issues because the servers are all still in America.
No LAN is just to try and combat piracy, can't really fault them for that, the system seems to work fine - just look at the recent MLG, apart from a few lag problems they were able to have a huge tournament go on without any LAN at all.

Real money being able to be used in game also neatly solves the problem they have in WoW, with botting and gold selling being such a huge problem they have to deal with.

[Stark]

In a Diablo-em-up, lag isn't going to be the issue it is in Starcraft (and if their netcode doesn't suck it won't be a big deal at all).

Coming out and bolding introducing 'cash for shit' is something that has probably been on dev teams' minds for a long time. Blizzard is well placed to try it, and it'll be interesting to see if it works out. I still wish you could buy FTP MMO stuff like 'earn extra xp' or 'faster healing' buffs, fast travel nodes, and the like rather than just drops.

[Connor MacLeod]

So as far as we know, it's only at most a pseudo-MMORPG - you're required to "play online" whether you play by yourself or with others, but it's still essentially free to so do aside from buying the game? That makes me less enthusiastic to buy it but its not neccesarily going to kill the deal for me if the game turns out to be fun or interesting.

I'm a bit skeptical that this will be the end of the changes if they're taking this new direction though.

[RazorOutlaw]

You know, I never cheated in Diablo 2 until I beat the game once or twice after I got the x-pack (and started 6, 7, 8 different characters and never finished). Once I started cheating, I never could stop myself because there was always this boring grind to deal with and there worlds were never randomized enough for me to feel like it was enough of a new experience.

Anyway I thought the game was in the right to have no cheats that you could type during gameplay. Having the ability to cheat whenever during the game just makes it too easy to abuse it.

I feel bad for the people with shitty internet connections, though, if it really is a problem. The internet connection in my room can't support an online Starcraft 2 match, by myself against an A.I., without giving me the option to drop myself eventually.

[Stark]

The online-ness is simply to verify the integrity of your character and items. Why would it cost money?

[Connor MacLeod]

Profit?

[RazorOutlaw]

Profit to maintain the servers? I vaguely remember there being rumor/speculation that Battle.net would switch to a subscription so Blizzard could maintain servers (as if there wasn't enough of a stink about WoW costing money in the first place).

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah I remember speculation too (or was that fears) and I think they were tenatively dismissed (at least as far as playing on Battle.net) goes, but considering the thing has no announced release date or even pricing, it could go either way.

[Highlord Laan]

I fucking hate people, why would I want to play a glorified single-player game with them? WoW is enough MMO for me, thanks. Not having an offline mode is just flat-out stupid, and sounds more like Activision being their normally shitty selves than Blizzard jamming their collective heads up their asses.

Don't give two shits about an auction house. Why would I want to drop an asinine amount of ingame currency on an item when I can kill Baal and loot his cooling carcass myself?

[Stark]

Profit?

You must be pretty fucking paranoid to think they'd make a statement outlining their contraversial setup for their game and neglect to mention the part where you have to pay like an MMO. Their whole model is built around ongoing profit through trade of ingame items, and charging people like an MMO will just resurrect the piracy threat they just destroyed in a marketplace where many MMOs find it more profitable to -not-charge to play.

I'm glad people are so desperate to dislike change they are talking about rumored speculation about battle.net from 2003. I wonder if these people, in the security of their own minds, recognise that this behaviour is simply knee-jerk reactionism, or if they think their bizarre fears are well-founded.

Following up some of Sharp-kun's points I'm getting the impression, sadly, that their marketplace may require a level of external server interaction that the console networks won't like, even if Blizzard's hunger for gold pushed them into that market. A shame, if true.

[RazorOutlaw]

I'm glad people are so desperate to dislike change they are talking about rumored speculation about battle.net from 2003. I wonder if these people, in the security of their own minds, recognise that this behaviour is simply knee-jerk reactionism, or if they think their bizarre fears are well-founded.

I'm sort of seeing this as an answer to my post, unless you've seen other such examples online elsewhere. If it is, I think I see what I did wrong here. I didn't mention that I don't mind being online to play this game at all. I hadn't meant what I said about subscriptions to be a bunch of hyperventilating about Blizzard gouging players for money. I just thought it was an answer to your question, but admittedly a sloppy one.

Anyway, I don't expect them to charge for this online play. Battle.net in SC2 seemed to work out fine (aside from my shitty internet connection) without having to pay and it does a hell of a lot more than "old" Battle.net.

[Hawkwings]

Looks like they aren't charging for multiplayer. Good. Big sigh of relief here. Must be connected to the internet to play singleplayer though? Bad move. Terrible move. What about those of us that get random drops in connectivity a couple times an hour? Oh well sucks to be me? I'd definitely get the crack to "fix" that issue as soon as it came out.

What, exactly, is wrong with having a singleplayer experience that is not connected to multiplayer at all? No, I don't want to play with other people. Other people are stupid, I want to play by myself. Prevent cheating? Why, it's a simple matter of storing online characters in a central server. You can't import your hacked SP character into MP, after all. So it's just another DRM scheme, one that will work for a couple months at best. And then what? People who want to play alone will get the cracked version, and people who buy the game will have to deal with connectivity issues. Newsflash: not everyone has 100% reliable internet everywhere they go.

While Pardo recognizes that people sometimes want or need to play offline (such as internet outages, or playing on a laptop during an airplane flight), he notes that the increased security, plus benefits like the above, outweigh those other concerns. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, ell, there are other games to play for times like that."

Awesome. Guess I'll play those other games then.

[Sharp-kun]

Must be connected to the internet to play singleplayer though? Bad move. Terrible move. What about those of us that get random drops in connectivity a couple times an hour? Oh well sucks to be me? I'd definitely get the crack to "fix" that issue as soon as it came out.

Depends if it can be easily cracked if the character data etc is being stored server side. It likely won't be a simple case of disabling the "online check", you'd need to duplicate the BNet functionality locally.

[AniThyng]

How about gameworld data? The single player mode be a specific private instance run locally, presumably, thus avoiding the need for a low latency connection, and resulting in any disconnects resulting in a minimal disruption?

[Hawkwings]

The crack would probably be some other program that you run in the background while playing the game, that duplicates the functionality of a server, including storing character data.

[Stark]

Depends if it can be easily cracked if the character data etc is being stored server side. It likely won't be a simple case of disabling the "online check", you'd need to duplicate the BNet functionality locally.

Other games snag the authentication traffic (in this case, it'd need to be the character data too, depending on how they do it) and re-route it to a service on the local machine. If its doable it'll be done. I'm pretty sure (as Blizzard clearly is) that losing a few fatties who insist on being able to play on a laptop in a basement during a nuclear war is worth the far more robust DRM and the percentage they doubtless take off AH sales. Those that buy it will get a game that isn't horribly ruined by cheaters and lets you game with whoever you want without having your shit ruined; oh no, the humanity.

I thought some Steam games kept saves etc online anyway?

[Dread Not]

I shall not be buying this. I refused to buy any Ubisoft games while they had their constant online DRM scheme and I will be consistent with that standard here, though I haven't bought an Activison or a Blizzard game in years, so I won't really be changing my buying habits. I refuse to buy any games that have such restrictions on them. I like having the ability to borrow or lend games to others. I don't like publishers having the ability to strip me of my single player content. I don't like downloading cracks and jumping through hoops so I can play a game on my terms. The gradual shift in the industry from selling games to leasing games is not a movement I like and has caused me to become much more frugal when it comes to gaming. If a publisher only wants to lease me a game, I will spend my money elsewhere.